Photo: Trump speaking at a campaign rally in 2016. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
For people who fight for radical change in society, the very conceivable prospect that a second Trump administration will come to power should not be ignored or minimized. To prepare for this scenario, it is crucial that we study any available evidence that will allow us to anticipate the shape of the struggle to come. There is perhaps no better place to look than the extensive program prepared by the public policy elite of the far right themselves — an initiative called Project 2025.
The centerpiece of Project 2025 is a nearly thousand-page long document that lays out in detail the sweeping reactionary measures to be implemented during a second Trump administration. It is a plan to shred fundamental civil and social rights won over generations of struggle. At the same time, it is being held up by the failing Biden campaign as one of the few rationales remaining to vote for their candidate. Lacking any kind of positive program or compelling argument to motivate their base, and having failed to address the dire crises facing working people while sponsoring the Gaza genocide, the Democratic leaders are pointing to Project 2025 and saying, “Look how bad the alternative is.”
Project 2025 has rivals on the right wing. Other ruling class power centers and cliques are putting forward alternative programs, like the ultra hardline official Republican Party platform or the “Agenda 47” initiative. Perhaps sensing how deeply unpopular the proposed policies are, Trump has recently sought to distance himself from Project 2025. But campaign trail calculations aside, Project 2025 represents the true agenda of some of the most powerful forces backing Trump that would be in a prime position to shape the actions of his second administration should it come about. Some pieces of this agenda are already being implemented by the Supreme Court, which has issued a string of recent rulings to shred corporate regulations.
This article is the first in a series from Liberation News analyzing the different facets of the Project 2025 agenda. This article is written with the perspective of mobilizing the broadest possible struggle of the working class to defeat the right wing’s attack, and of advancing towards the end of the capitalist system that makes these types of attacks inevitable. Doing that means exercising total political independence from the Democratic Party and the liberal wing of the ruling class.
Far-right elites lay the groundwork for historic attacks
Project 2025 consists of the primary policy document, a shorter-term plan called the 180-day Transition Playbook, a training program called the Presidential Administration Academy, and a database of “public servants” who are vetted and approved as loyal adherents to the plan. The political program lays out a comprehensive assault — rolling back the right to unionize, smashing any program aimed at addressing racism, privatizing and cutting vital social programs that help working people survive, and unleashing a wave of repressive violations of civil liberties along with a hyper-militarist policy abroad.
It is an initiative of the Heritage Foundation, perhaps the most important think tank of the right-wing elite. Heritage puts out a similar proposed program ahead of every presidential election called the “Mandate for Leadership.” But this time around, it takes on renewed significance given the extreme lengths that Trump and the circle around him are willing to go to smash people’s rights.
The director of Project 2025 is Paul Dans, who served as chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management during the Trump administration. His background is especially relevant considering the emphasis the project places on staffing a future Trump administration with political hacks. Johnny McEntee, Trump’s White House Personnel Office director, is also reportedly part of Project 2025.
In fact, the apparatus of the federal government itself is a centerpiece of the Project 2025 agenda. Over the years, rules and regulations have been put into place to ensure that the core functions of the federal government are carried out by civil servants who remain in place regardless of the administration that is in office. Project 2025 seeks to reverse this and replace career public sector workers with staffers of Trump’s choosing. Or in many cases, the federal workers who are fired would not be replaced at all — the architects of Project 2025 want to do away with many institutions of the government involved in regulating corporations. This includes measures like abolishing the Department of Education, abolishing the EPA, getting rid of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and more. The drastic measures being proposed reflect the fact that the right wing of the ruling class believes they have a historic opportunity ahead of them.
A bid to turn back the clock
The terms of exploitation and oppression under U.S. capitalism are subject to change over time — as much as the core of capitalist class dictatorship remains the same, the system is in other ways highly flexible. Like any ruling class, the Wall Street billionaires sometimes prefer to offer concessions and lessen the level of misery working people suffer in order to stabilize their hold over society in moments of crisis. But the U.S. ruling class is historically very hesitant to offer concessions, preferring other tactics like divide-and-conquer racism or open, unrestrained violence. But at some junctures, the accumulated pressure becomes so great that a wave of reform rearranges the political and economic order in highly consequential ways.
One such moment came in the 1930s, in the depths of the Great Depression. Faced with a rising tide of labor union militancy, the growth of the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, and the strengthening of the communist movement around the world, the Roosevelt administration implemented the New Deal reforms. These reforms legalized unions, created social security, banned child labor and, generally speaking, introduced into practice (in a partial way) the idea of a social safety net guaranteeing people a minimum standard of living. It was a sharp break from the past, when relations between labor and capital were less formally structured and bosses had freer reign to trample on their employees through sheer force. Roosevelt himself was from one of the key families of the U.S. bourgeoisie, but he understood that progressive reforms could be the only way to save capitalism itself.
A similar set of sweeping reforms was enacted in the 1960s, doing away with the formal apartheid character of the U.S. system of government. The regime of Jim Crow segregation inflicted on Black America since the overthrow of Reconstruction in the 1870s was finally overthrown in a massive expansion of democratic rights. By 1964, the surge in the Black liberation struggle that began in the 1950s — coupled with the worldwide wave of anti-colonial struggle — gathered enough momentum that the maintenance of an explicit system of racial apartheid was no longer tenable. The Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and the implementation of the first affirmative action programs marked this historic advance against white supremacy. This period also saw the enactment of social reforms like the creation of Medicaid, Medicare and the expansion of public housing.
In both the 1930s and the 1960s, the pro-reform wing of the ruling class had to overcome bitter opposition from the wing that opposed granting concessions. Opponents of the New Deal like JP Morgan and the DuPont family even went as far as preparing to carry out a military coup against Roosevelt. The “Dixiecrats” like Alabama Governor George Wallace adopted the symbolism of the Confederacy and rhetoric that harkened back to those who waged a war of secession a century prior. The decision to bend to popular pressure is an extremely difficult one for capitalists to make, and it is rarely done with unanimity.
The Heritage Foundation itself is a product of this current in elite politics. Driven back in the 1960s, the right wing sought to regroup and retake leadership of the government. The creation of think tanks was a key organizational form adopted by this counter-offensive. Heritage, founded in 1973, was at the heart of this effort.
As time went on, the position of the U.S. empire in the world has gone through twists and turns. Right now, the ruling class is faced with mounting difficulties at home and abroad. The dynamism of U.S. capitalism is waning, with profitability on the decline and dominance in key, cutting-edge industries diminishing. Formerly colonized nations are now rising to become economic powerhouses, and China has become a formidable counterbalance in what U.S. imperialism hoped would be a unipolar global order that was under their unchallenged control. In this context, a sweeping campaign to obliterate social rights while crushing internal dissent becomes increasingly attractive.
It is fitting that the Heritage Foundation is the sponsor of Project 2025 — the plan, if implemented, would be the crowning achievement of this highly reactionary current that never made peace with the New Deal and the end of Jim Crow. Trump is the battering ram they want to use to make this a reality. Trump is himself a figure solely concerned with his own standing and interests. But as he pursues political power, he is mobilizing a section of the population that is potentially large enough and impassioned enough to smooth the implementation of what is, at its core, a highly unpopular program that would have an adverse effect on the vast majority of people in the country.
Biden and the Democrats cannot stop the far right
The Democratic Party knows that it cannot win the next election with a campaign based on Joe Biden’s merits. He is deeply unpopular and, especially following his disastrous debate performance, is widely seen as unfit to do the job. A purely tactical argument, that electing Biden is the only way to stop a far right government from coming to power, is the only compelling one for a large segment of the population. Driven by this consideration, Project 2025 has recently been the subject of heightened attention especially in liberal or anti-Trump media outlets. The Biden campaign has even launched its own website in response to Project 2025.
But the threat of the far right will never be neutralized as long as opposition to their reactionary agenda is led by an organization as politically bankrupt and decrepit as the Democratic Party. As good jobs disappeared year after year, inflation decimated living standards, public services declined and wars raged on endlessly, the message to the public from official liberalism was that everything was basically fine. Who could forget Hillary Clinton’s vapid messaging in 2016 that “America is already great because America is good” or Biden’s pledge to ultra-rich donors in 2019 that if he’s elected, “nothing will fundamentally change.” When they do feel compelled by circumstances to promise to enact meaningful social reforms, like Biden was early in his term with the “Build Back Better” proposals, the Democrats abandon these promises without a fight, oftentimes as a concession to the most right wing members of their party. It is an organization with zero credibility.
The policies the elite circles around Trump are pushing will have a direct and material negative impact on the lives of the vast majority of working people in order to further enrich millionaires and billionaires. The remarkable feat of packaging this as a program to take down the establishment is made possible by a foil like the Democrats and Joe Biden. Trump acknowledges the state of crisis in society, but identifies false causes — immigration, “woke” ideology, China, etc. — and offers fake solutions.
The far right can only be defeated on the basis of a program that recognizes the deepening suffering people face under this system and calls for fundamental change. In the immediate sense, this includes positions like a price freeze, universal healthcare and education, guaranteed housing, a living wage with union representation, a rejection of racism and an end to the endless wars – all rooted in the perspective that what’s ultimately necessary is a radical reorganization of society so that the people take control of the government and the economy. This type of program will deny far-right forces the oxygen they need to grow, preventing them from establishing a monopoly over anti-establishment politics. To the extent that this type of program is embraced by a larger and larger section of society, the less credible it is for Trump to present himself as the only alternative to an out-of-touch liberal elite.
Far from embracing this type of politics, the instinct of the Democratic Party has been to move further and further to the right in a vain effort to defuse criticism from the Republicans. Take the issue of immigrant rights, for instance. Rather than making a clear case for why immigrants are not responsible for decreasing living standards for U.S.-born workers, or explaining that asylum seekers are largely fleeing the effects of U.S. foreign policy, Biden has sought to posture as a tough-on-the-border hardliner. He has effectively adopted the core policies of the Trump administration when it comes to denying entry to asylum seekers and unleashing stepped-up violence from Border Patrol. Democratic strategists might calculate that this provides a short-term electoral boost, but in the broader sense this makes it look like Trump was right all along and fuels the growth of anti-immigrant sentiment.
Understanding Project 2025 in depth puts us in a better position to expose the plans of the right wing and the true political character of the Trump campaign. It allows us to prepare for what may come and formulate alternative proposals that can be the basis of struggle. In the face of the utter failure of the liberals in the capitalist class, it is up to socialists to lead the fight to push back and defeat the far right.
