TRUMP THE AMERICAN HITLER IN HIS PROJECT 2025
Project 2025 Exposed: The Trump allies seeking a Christian nationalist coup: A leading Holocaust historian just seriously compared the US to Nazi Germany
Project 2025: A wish list for a Trump presidency, explained
EPAA proposed Republican party platform has been approved at the party’s national convention, but a much more detailed proposal from a conservative think tank has also been drawing attention.
Project 2025 was created by the Heritage Foundation and runs for nearly 900 pages.
The document calls for the sacking of thousands of civil servants, expanding the power of the president, dismantling the Department of Education, sweeping tax cuts, a ban on pornography, halting sales of the abortion pill, and more.
There is agreement between many parts of the official Republican platform and Project 2025, although the think-tank document is much more detailed and in some policy areas goes much further than the party line.
There is a sharper contrast between the two when it comes to the issue of abortion, with Heritage urging much more aggressive anti-abortion policies.
Who wrote Project 2025?
It is common for Washington think tanks of all political stripes to propose policy wish lists for potential governments-in-waiting.
The conservative Heritage Foundation first produced policy plans for future Republican administrations in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was about to take office.
It has produced similar documents in connection with subsequent presidential elections, including in 2016, when Trump won the presidency.
A year into his term, the think tank boasted that the Trump White House had adopted nearly two-thirds of its proposals.
The Project 2025 report was unveiled in April 2023, but liberal opposition to the document has ramped up now that Trump has extended his polling lead.
The Republican nominee himself has distanced himself from the proposal.
"I know nothing about Project 2025," he posted on his social media website, Truth Social. "I have no idea who is behind it.
"I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal."
But the team that created the project is chock-full of former Trump advisers, including director Paul Dans, who was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management while Trump was president.
Russell Vought, another former Trump administration official, wrote a key chapter in the document and also serves as the Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform policy director.
More than 100 conservative organisations contributed to the document, Heritage says, including many that would be hugely influential in Washington if Republicans took back the White House.
The Project 2025 document sets out four main policy aims: restore the family as the centrepiece of American life; dismantle the administrative state; defend the nation's sovereignty and borders; and secure God-given individual rights to live freely.
Here's an outline of several of its key proposals.
Government
Project 2025 proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, be placed under direct presidential control - a controversial idea known as "unitary executive theory".
In practice, that would streamline decision-making, allowing the president to directly implement policies in a number of areas.
The proposals also call for eliminating job protections for thousands of government employees, who could then be replaced by political appointees.
The document labels the FBI a "bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization". It calls for drastic overhauls of this and several other federal agencies, as well as the complete elimination of the Department of Education.
What does the Republican party platform say?
The party platform includes a proposal to "declassify government records, root out wrongdoers, and fire corrupt employees", pledges to slash regulation and government spending. But it stops short of proposing a sweeping overhaul of federal agencies as outlined in Project 2025.
Immigration
EPAIncreased funding for a wall on the US-Mexico border - one of Trump's signature proposals in 2016 - is proposed in the document.
Project 2025 also proposes dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and combining it with other immigration enforcement units in other agencies, creating a much larger and more powerful border policing operation.
Other proposals include eliminating visa categories for crime and human trafficking victims, increasing fees on immigrants and allowing fast-tracked applications for migrants who pay a premium.
What does the Republican party platform say?
Not all of those details are repeated in the party platform, but the overall headlines are similar - the party is promising to implement the "largest deportation programme in American history".
What a Trump second term would look like
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What a Donald Trump second term would look like
If he returns to the White House by winning the 2024 election, here is what he has said he wants to do.
Climate and economy
Carbon-reduction goals would be replaced by efforts to increase energy production and energy security.
The paper sets out two competing visions on tariffs, and is divided on whether the next president should try to boost free trade or raise barriers to imports.
But the economic advisers suggest that a second Trump administration should slash corporate and income taxes, abolish the Federal Reserve and even consider a return to gold-backed currency.
What does the Republican party platform say?
The party platform does not go as far as Project 2025 in these policy areas. The platform instead talks of bringing down inflation and drilling for oil to reduce energy costs, but is thin on specific policy proposals.
Abortion and family
Project 2025 does not call outright for a nationwide abortion ban.
However, it proposes withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market, and using existing but little-enforced laws to stop the drug being sent through the post.
The document suggests that the department of Health and Human Services should "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family".
What does the Republican party platform say?
On this issue at least, the document differs fairly substantially from the Republican platform, which only mentions the word "abortion" once. The platform says abortion laws should be left to individual states and that late-term abortions (which it does not define) should be banned.
It adds that that access to prenatal care, birth control and in-vitro fertilisation should be protected. The party platform makes no mention of cracking down on the distribution of mifepristone.
Tech and education
Under the proposals, pornography would be banned, and tech and telecoms companies that allow access would be shut down.
The document calls for school choice and parental control over schools, and takes aim at what it calls "woke propaganda".
It proposes to eliminate a long list of terms from all laws and federal regulations, including "sexual orientation", "gender equality", "abortion" and "reproductive rights".
Project 2025 aims to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs in schools and government departments as part of what it describes as a wider crackdown on "woke" ideology.
What does the Republican party platform say?
Project 2025's proposals in this policy area are broadly reflected in the Republican platform, which in addition to calling for the abolishing the Department of Education, aims to boost school choice and parental control over education and criticises what the party calls the "inappropriate political indoctrination of our children".
Social Security
Although Heritage has long supported reforming the country's public pension plan, Project 2025 barely touches this third rail of American politics.
What does the Republican party platform say?
The platform says Social Security is a "lifeline" for millions of retired Americans and Republicans will "restore Economic Stability to ensure the long-term sustainability" of the programme.
The plan's future
Project 2025 is backed by a $22m (£17m) budget and includes strategies for implementing policies immediately after the presidential inauguration in January 2025.
Heritage is also creating a database of conservative loyalists to fill government positions, and a programme to train those new workers.
Democrats led by Jared Huffman, a congressman from California, have launched a Stop Project 2025 Task Force.
And many of the proposals would likely face immediate legal challenges from Trump's opponents if implemented.
A leading Holocaust historian just seriously compared the US to Nazi Germany
“If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell.”
Browning, a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina, specializes in the origins and operation of Nazi genocide. His 1992 book Ordinary Men, a close examination of how an otherwise unremarkable German police battalion evolved into an instrument of mass slaughter, is widely seen as one of the defining works on how typical Germans became complicit in Nazi atrocities.
So when Browning makes comparisons between the rise of Hitler and our current historical period, this isn’t some keyboard warrior spouting off. It is one of the most knowledgeable people on Nazism alive using his expertise to sound the alarm as to what he sees as an existential threat to American democracy.
Browning’s essay covers many topics, ranging from Trump’s “America First” foreign policy — a phrase most closely associated with a group of prewar American Nazi sympathizers — to the role of Fox News as a kind of privatized state propaganda office. But the most interesting part of his argument is the comparison between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Paul von Hindenburg, the German leader who ultimately handed power over to Hitler. Here’s how Browning summarizes the history:
Paul von Hindenburg, elected president of Germany in 1925, was endowed by the Weimar Constitution with various emergency powers to defend German democracy should it be in dire peril. Instead of defending it, Hindenburg became its gravedigger, using these powers first to destroy democratic norms and then to ally with the Nazis to replace parliamentary government with authoritarian rule. Hindenburg began using his emergency powers in 1930, appointing a sequence of chancellors who ruled by decree rather than through parliamentary majorities, which had become increasingly impossible to obtain as a result of the Great Depression and the hyperpolarization of German politics.
Because an ever-shrinking base of support for traditional conservatism made it impossible to carry out their authoritarian revision of the constitution, Hindenburg and the old right ultimately made their deal with Hitler and installed him as chancellor. Thinking that they could ultimately control Hitler while enjoying the benefits of his popular support, the conservatives were initially gratified by the fulfillment of their agenda: intensified rearmament, the outlawing of the Communist Party, the suspension first of freedom of speech, the press, and assembly and then of parliamentary government itself, a purge of the civil service, and the abolition of independent labor unions. Needless to say, the Nazis then proceeded far beyond the goals they shared with their conservative allies, who were powerless to hinder them in any significant way.
McConnell, in Browning’s eyes, is doing something similar — taking whatever actions he can to attain power, including breaking the system for judicial nominations (cough cough, Merrick Garland) and empowering a dangerous demagogue under the delusion that he can be fully controlled:
If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more. Nowhere is this vicious circle clearer than in the obliteration of traditional precedents concerning judicial appointments. Systematic obstruction of nominations in Obama’s first term provoked Democrats to scrap the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominations. Then McConnell’s unprecedented blocking of the Merrick Garland nomination required him in turn to scrap the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in order to complete the “steal” of Antonin Scalia’s seat and confirm Neil Gorsuch. The extreme politicization of the judicial nomination process is once again on display in the current Kavanaugh hearings. ...
Whatever secret reservations McConnell and other traditional Republican leaders have about Trump’s character, governing style, and possible criminality, they openly rejoice in the payoff they have received from their alliance with him and his base: huge tax cuts for the wealthy, financial and environmental deregulation, the nominations of two conservative Supreme Court justices (so far) and a host of other conservative judicial appointments, and a significant reduction in government-sponsored health care (though not yet the total abolition of Obamacare they hope for). Like Hitler’s conservative allies, McConnell and the Republicans have prided themselves on the early returns on their investment in Trump.
This is the key point that people often miss when talking about Hitler’s rise. The breakdown of German democracy started well before Hitler: Hyperpolarization led Hindenburg to strip away constraints on executive power as well as conclude that his left-wing opponents were a greater threat than fascism. The result, then, was a degradation of the everyday practice of democracy, to the point where the system was vulnerable to a Hitler-style figure.
Now, as Browning points out, “Trump is not Hitler and Trumpism is not Nazism.” The biggest and most important difference is that Hitler was an open and ideological opponent of the idea of democracy, whereas neither Trump nor the GOP wants to abolish elections.
What Browning worries about, instead, is a slow and quiet breakdown of American democracy — something more much like what you see in modern failed democracies like Turkey. Browning worries that Republicans have grown comfortable enough manipulating the rules of the democratic game to their advantage, with things like voter ID laws and gerrymandering, that they might go even further even after Trump is gone:
No matter how and when the Trump presidency ends, the specter of illiberalism will continue to haunt American politics. A highly politicized judiciary will remain, in which close Supreme Court decisions will be viewed by many as of dubious legitimacy, and future judicial appointments will be fiercely contested. The racial division, cultural conflict, and political polarization Trump has encouraged and intensified will be difficult to heal. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and uncontrolled campaign spending will continue to result in elections skewed in an unrepresentative and undemocratic direction. Growing income disparity will be extremely difficult to halt, much less reverse.
I’ve observed this kind of modern authoritarianism firsthand in Hungary. In my dispatch after visiting there, I warned of the same thing as Browning does here: The threat to the United States isn’t so much Trump alone as it is the breakdown in the practice of American democracy, and the Republican Party’s commitment to extreme tactics in pursuit of its policy goals in particular.
We are living through a period of serious threat to American democracy. And Browning’s essay, a serious piece by a serious scholar, shows that it’s not at all alarmist to say so.
Banning transgender troops from service, revoking the VA’s ability to provide abortion-related care and slashing the number of general officers in the ranks are just a few of the policy proposals laid out in a political playbook for what the next Republican administration could look like.
Known as Project 2025, the plan organized by the conservative think thank The Heritage Foundation would make sizable changes to the lives of service members and veterans if implemented.
The lengthy guidebook that seeks to reform several facets of the federal government has taken the spotlight in the 2024 presidential race.
While Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, Democrats have called the agenda a “dangerous blueprint” for what his second term could look like.
Project 2025 was authored by many officials who served in the first Trump administration.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump said in July on Truth Social. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
He doubled down on that message just days later, and did so again in a campaign speech delivered following an attempted assassination against him.
But Democrats are not ready to let him off the hook yet. Vice President Kamala Harris, who received an endorsement from President Joe Biden to serve as the next commander-in-chief after he dropped out from the presidential election this past weekend, warned in a social media video that Trump and his team intend to implement Project 2025.
What exactly is Project 2025?
The Project 2025 initiative includes a roughly 900-page policy agenda, a personnel database for those who could serve in the next Republican administration, a training for those individuals called the “Presidential Administration Academy” and also plans for a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of office.
The effort includes recommendations by former Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, and has been led by other former Trump administration officials including Paul Dans, former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management, and Spencer Chretien, former special assistant to the president and associate director of presidential personnel.
Policy recommendations stretch across the executive branch, from the White House to the Department of Justice to independent regulatory agencies, each broadly seeking to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
“Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State,” a prelude to the handbook states.
The “administrative state” refers to executive branch agencies exercising the power to create, enforce and adjudicate their own rules. Those who oppose such a setup, primarily Republicans, argue that unelected officials should not have such powers.
How would Project 2025 impact troops?
The policy chapter on remaking the Department of Defense includes reducing the number of generals and reinstituting policies barring transgender individuals from serving in the military.
That portion of the guidebook was written by Miller, who served as acting defense secretary in the final months of the Trump administration.
“Our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, our impossibly muddled China strategy, the growing involvement of senior military officers in the political arena, and deep confusion about the purpose of our military are clear signals of a disturbing decay and markers of a dangerous decline in our nation’s capabilities and will,” Miller wrote.
Some of the suggested personnel changes Miller put forth fall in line with conservative culture war arguments, including:
- Reinstating service members to active duty who were separated for not receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, restoring their rank and providing them back pay.
- Abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion offices and staffs.
- Reversing a policy that lets DOD cover travel costs for troops seeking reproductive care, including abortion services.
- Eliminating “Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs,” which the text does not provide examples of.
Other prescriptions include:
- Suspending the use of the recently introduced Military Health System Genesis, where military applicants are medically examined before they can sign up.
- Requiring completion of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the military entrance examination, by all students in schools that receive federal funding.
- Increasing the Army force structure by 50,000.
- Aligning the Marine Corps’ combat arms rank structure with the Army’s.
- Maintaining between 28 and 31 larger amphibious warships as opposed to the what is specified in current Navy shipbuilding plans.
- Increasing F-35A procurement to 60–80 per year.
- Providing necessary support to Department of Homeland Security border protection operations.
- Improving base housing and considering the military family “holistically” when considering change-of-station moves.
Separately, in a chapter dedicated to revisions to the Department of Homeland Security, it was suggested that the Coast Guard, which currently operates under DHS during peacetime, be transferred out to another department.
Ken Cuccinelli, a former DHS official from the Trump administration, who wrote that section of the guidebook, said the maritime service should instead be moved to the Department of Justice when not at war, or alternatively to DOD for all purposes.
How would Project 2025 impact veterans?
The policy chapter on reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs involves rescinding VA’s ability to provide abortion services and revising hybrid and remote work options for the department’s employees.
That section of the handbook was written by Brooks Tucker, who served as the VA’s acting chief of staff in the last year of the Trump administration.
“The VA must continually strive to be recognized as a ‘best in class,’ ‘Veteran-centric’ system with an organizational ethos inspired by and accountable to the needs and problems of veterans, not subservient to the parochial preferences of a bureaucracy,” Tucker said.
Changes that Tucker advocated for include:
- Rescinding all departmental clinical policy directives related to abortion services and gender reassignment surgeries.
- Reviewing in-person work options. Tucker cited that, specifically for VA staff in the nation’s capital, the remote work policy is “undermining the cohesiveness and competencies of some staff functions and diluting general organizational accountability and responsiveness.”
- Requiring Veterans Health Administration facilities to increase the number of patients seen each day to equal the number seen by DOD medical facilities: approximately 19 patients per provider per day. Currently, Tucker said, VA facilities may be seeing as few as six patients per provider per day.
Not everyone however agreed with taking that approach.
“VHA healthcare providers need to spend more time with veterans during their appointments to effectively address their complex health needs,” Russell Lemle and Jasper Craven, from the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, wrote in a Task & Purpose op-ed. “By demanding that VHA facilities match the patient volume at DOD facilities, Project 2025 risks shortchanging veterans and compromising the quality of care they receive by treating them as if they are in the prime of their youth,” they added.
Other recommendations from Tucker included:
- Embracing the expansion of Community Based Outpatient Clinics without “investing further in obsolete and unaffordable VA health care campuses.”
- Revising disability rating awards for future claimants while “preserving them fully or partially for existing claimants.”
- Establishing a veterans “bill of rights” so vets and VA staff know exactly what benefits veterans are entitled to receive.
- Transferring all career Senior Executive Service individuals out of specific positions on the first day to “ensure political control of the VA.”
Michael Embrich, a former member of the Advisory Committee on the Readjustment of Veterans, shared in an op-ed for GovExec that following Project 2025′s plans to reshape the government workforce “would disproportionately affect veterans, many of whom rely on these positions not only for employment but also for a sense of purpose and community.”
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