How our democracy could be replaced by "autocratic Christian theology"
Details of how Trump and Project 2025 would upend the Constitution, deny rights and enable climate change
A month before the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump said of opponent Joe Biden, “If he’s elected, the stock market will crash… you will have a Depression the likes of which you’ve never seen."
In fact, Biden was elected and stock prices went up. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/apocalypse-delayed-trump-promising-doom-never-comes-rcna170151
Trump also insisted back then that the country would “collapse” and be “finished,” that Biden would impose a “blanket shutdown” to kill the American dream, and, “If you vote for Biden, it means no kids in school, no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgiving, no Christmas and no Fourth of July together.”
Those dour predictions also failed to materialize. I’ve heartily celebrated Christmases with family; friends’ kids have graduated and gotten married; and the U.S. is still ticking away. The 2020 presidential loser is now reverting to some of the same idle threats about a win by Kamala Harris.
But if there’s any uncertainty about what Trump will do if elected president this time, take it from his own words, which The Washington Post has compiled into a list of 41 pledges he plans to put in place on his first day in office. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/21/trump-day-one-promises-president-election/
Among them:
Begin mass deportations, the largest in U.S. history.
End birthright citizenship.
Eliminate every “open borders” policy of the Biden administration.
Cut federal funds to schools that teach critical race theory and transgender identity (in Trump’s words, “transgender insanity.”)
Ban transgender women from women’s sports.
Expand oil drilling.
Eliminate perks for electric cars.
Repeal the Green New Deal
Repeal Biden’s expanded background checks for gun purchases.
End promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the federal workforce.
As the Post reports, “Many of Trump’s promises fall outside the scope of a president’s authority under the Constitution, according to legal experts… But Trump has tried to bulldoze past such constraints before, and he may try again in a potential second term. Pressed late last year to promise not to abuse power if he were to return to the White House, Trump said that he would not be a dictator “except for Day One.”
Those stated plans dovetail with the Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership,” laid out in a 920- page template Trump claims not to have read. We can probably believe him on that part, if not on his intentions for implementing it. The document was compiled by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation in partnership with former Trump administration officials and a variety of extreme right-wing organizations.
I had the good fortune last week to hear an informative if ominous talk about it by Julie Witthoff, an Iowan who has read all 920-plus pages. Witthoff isn’t a political operative. She’s a certified financial planner with a background in history and a profound concern for the future of her country, so she’s been speaking up on it where she can. I heard her at Des Moines’ Scottish Rite Park, a senior living community, where a very engaged audience paid keen attention.
In what sounds like something out of a dystopian film, Witthoff described “a road map to change the government to an autocratic Christian theology,” in which the only recognized family structure would be heterosexual couples with multiple children – “as many as God grants,” encouraged along by every relevant federal agency. USA Today says the plan would “impose a Christian-centric worldview onto the federal government and pose concerns for the religious liberties of those of other faith traditions or no faith at all.”
She described a plan for an alternative form of government that gives extraordinary power to the executive branch. The president would appoint a partisan political workforce aligned with this philosophy and screened for their loyalty to replace some 50,000 currently nonpartisan administrative employees, Witthoff said. Agency heads wouldn’t be subject to Senate confirmations as they now are.
While abortion laws would be left to the states, the plan would severely limit abortion access nationwide by reversing FDA approval of the abortion drug, mifepristone. The ACLU warns the plan would revive the 19th century Comstock Act, to ban any abortion medications, equipment, or materials from being sent through the mail. Providers would be required to report abortions to the federal government, said Witthoff, which could also impose sanctions against “liberal” states for allowing “ abortion tourism. Doctors could be prosecuted for doing abortions.
Once screened, prospective employees would take a series of online courses to “outwit bureaucrats and develop policies that excise any “left-wing code words,” said Witthoff quoting from the Project 2025 text.
A number of federal agencies would be reorganized or dismantled. The Department of Department of Education would be gone, with public education dollars diverted to private religious schools which would be free to discriminate in admitting children. Also eliminated would be the departments of health, public safety and national security, said Witthoff, with FBI investigations subject to review by the president and the Department of Justice becoming a political arm of the presidency
All agencies dealing with the southern border would be consolidated to answer directly to the president, and camps would be created to hold undocumented migrants, whom the military would be authorized to remove.
“They plan to completely shutter all of the environmental protective agencies’ research on climate science and roll back huge swaths of environmental regulations,” Witthoff said. All references to climate change would be stricken, government subsidies for electric cars would be expunged and oil drilling, mining and logging on private lands and in national parks would be permitted.
As for health and social programs, Head Start for low-income children would be ended. A lifetime cap would be implemented on Medicaid beneficiaries, even for those with long-term illnesses. The retirement age would be raised. The federal government would be prevented from negotiating prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. Taxes would be raised on lower-income people and lowered for the very wealthy and corporations.
As the ACLU puts it, “Project 2025 includes a long list of extreme policy recommendations touching on nearly every aspect of American life, from immigration and abortion rights, to free speech and racial justice.”
https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained
Those of us living in Iowa already experience some aspects of what the plan, and Trump, would impose at the federal level, including the six-week abortion ban and public school defunding through vouchers. We have a would-be autocratic governor who calls the legislature into special session to get her bills approved, campaigns against fellow Republican lawmakers who don’t support her agenda, and has given herself greater power to pick Supreme Court justices.
Tough as it is to think about this outrageous, unconstitutional roadmap that would upend America as we know it, we need to get educated, get the word out and use our votes to stop Trump from getting elected and putting it into action.
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Thank you for consolidating this madness into a very concise list of the dangers that will affect all of us, Rekha. We need to pay attention and vote like our children’s and grandchildren’s lives depend on it. Because they do.
Thank you for laying this out for us, Rekha. It is terrifying, and so important that everyone knows what the plan is and that a our votes are the only way to stop it.