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For many conservative groups, Project 2025 is the revolutionary agenda America needs to restore herself and become great again. However, Democrats and progressives share the perspective that Project 2025 outlines a terrifying installation of an authoritarian regime. It symbolizes a final dystopian blow to what makes America great—her democracy. The Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, doesn’t believe Project 2025 forcibly transports America to a new, uncharted, and autocratic territory but instead patriotically returns America to a familiar scene, her roots. In his viewpoint, it is simply another American Revolution, and much like the previous revolution, it will be tasked with taking this country back. However, Democrats believe that Project 2025 is linked to a political regime, authoritarianism, that is in direct opposition to America’s current political structure, democracy.
The conservatives linked to Project 2025 define themselves as true patriots, but Democrats such as James Singer, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, lament that Trump and his allies are “dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America.” He recanted the spirit of the American Revolution and explained how Project 2025 misrepresents this spirit: “248 years ago... America declared independence from a tyrannical king, and now Donald Trump and his allies want to make him one at our expense.” Other Democrats share the same sentiments, with former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson writing on the social media platform X, “This is chilling. Their idea of a second American Revolution is to undo the first one.”
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| “The stakes just couldn’t be higher,” Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California told The Associated Press.
Huffman said the Project 2025 agenda will hit “like a Blitzkrieg” and
lawmakers need to be ready. (Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons) |
This depiction of Project 2025 sharply contrasts with conservative groups who view the agenda as returning America to her revolutionary roots. Project 2025, according to them, is about securing America’s independence from the tyrannical enemies of American values, or, as Roberts described, “carrying out the Second American Revolution to take back power from the elites and despotic bureaucrats.” The confusion from voters who aren’t clinging to the far ends of either political spectrum must be immense. For example, Roberts portrays the left as bloodthirsty with a “long history of violence” who may not allow a peaceful transfer of power. However, much of the left, such as Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, are deeply troubled by the idea of a second, possibly violent, American Revolution. She described Roberts’ comments as “a bit terrifying but also elucidating.” The engaged voters on both sides are warning and being warned that the opposite end of the political spectrum is occupied by terrifying, violent, and bloodthirsty rivals.
Even though 922 pages are openly offered by Project 2025, few are on the same page. The communication channels between the Democrats and conservatives have deteriorated. The aggressive tug-of-war for power has left the electorate dissatisfied and alienated. They are discouraged from being involved and do not know where to place themselves in between the supposed extremes. Just like many conservatives, Roberts feels that America has been pushed far away from her original core values, but many Democrats, such as Beirich, are convinced that “Roberts, the Heritage Foundation, and its allies in Project 2025 want to reorder American society and fundamentally change it. He’s said the quiet part out loud.”
The routine political disagreements and cultural clashes over the meaning of the American Revolution, definitions of true American values, and whether America is progressing or declining have not been resolved or reconciled. These tensions have culminated into both sides of the political spectrum cowering further away from each other in mistrust, and other times even hatred. If there is no consensus on what are American values, then the capacity to productively discuss how to preserve and promote American values will be incapacitated. Each side will seem too unfamiliar and threatening to the other to possess a valid argument. The disparate views on even basic policy ideas will escalate into each political group being terrified of one another.
As of now, few political leaders are willing to agree on what the general American public wants. While conservatives are convinced that Americans desire the policy goals in Project 2025, for Democrats the core issue is their belief that the majority of Americans are absolutely opposed to the aims within Project 2025. Therefore, Democrats assume that conservatives possess an undisclosed plan to install authoritarianism and force the agenda’s implementation. Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, explained that “JD Vance embodies MAGA—with an out-of-touch extreme agenda and plans to help Trump force his Project 2025 agenda on the American people.” However, Trump praised the Heritage Foundation as a “great group” that would “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do” when “the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
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| “I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party — and unite our nation— to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” Kamala Harris, Vice President and Presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee as of July 25, 2024. (Image Credit: Lorie Shaul, Wikimedia Commons) |
According to progressives, the most disconcerting aspects of Project 2025 include the recommendation to replace 50,000 government workers, according to conservatives, the “deep state” bureaucracy, with loyalists for former President Donald Trump. For Democrats, the intent of the architects of Project 2025 is to override the will of the American public with an army of loyalists who will eagerly implement a unified right-wing agenda without question, resistance, or hesitation. Republican operative and director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, Paul Dans, is investing crucial resources to scan social media platforms for potential loyalists and create a committee specifically designed to recruit “conservative warriors.” These efforts are depicted as extreme political behavior outside conservative circles. But within conservative circles, these efforts are normalized and justified as non-threatening. They are touted as necessary measures to ensure that government workers can work in unison to make America great again and cohesively repudiate the “woke” agenda that many conservatives assume Americans are quietly dissatisfied with. Dans boldly remarked, “We need to flood the zone with conservatives.”
While this seems like an extreme takeover, the aims appear to be formulated from a rational strategy. Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, complains that there are not enough conservatives in government. Likewise, Trump presents the concern that the federal workforce is filled with too many liberals. So will Project 2025 carve out a fairer ideological balance or usher in an autocratic monarchy poised to only do the bidding of Trump? Well, according to Kathryn Dunn Tempas, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, the federal service isn’t in need of these seemingly self-serving reforms. “It’s just a dangerous sign. It really suggests that a president wants to aggrandize more authority and more power. And that should make everybody nervous.”
Due to the Heritage Foundation’s and allies’ perception of American roots, values, and culture, they believe there is no reason to fear. According to their perspective, the American public should celebrate these actions as a victory. The majority of Democrats and progressives resonate with Mary Guy, a professor of public administration at the University of Colorado Denver, who admits, “It frightens me.” For conservatives, this is a return to a fairer system. But for most Democrats and progressives, including Guy, it would bring a “return to a political spoils systems” and invite immense corruption.
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Other aims include abolishing the United States Department of Education and banning abortion. This extremism is the result of political factions within America clashing over what the education system should resemble and its purpose, and consequently refusing to accept any input from the other side that could balance policy recommendations. Is the United States Department of Education integral to America’s value system, or is it a parasitic entity that drains an oversized portion of our country’s resources and weakens America’s dominance in education? It is admittedly a relatively new creation that was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter as recently as October 17, 1979. But perhaps the formation of the U.S. Department of Education, with verifiable origins from 1867, sprung from a genuine need due to America’s culture and economy. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of unfettered access to abortion on January 22, 1973, with Roe v. Wade, also relatively new. However, as early as the 1930s, about 800,000 abortions were being performed annually by licensed physicians, and from the 1950s to the 1960s, an estimated 1.2 million illegal abortions were performed each year. So although abortions were intermittently illegal in many states throughout America’s history and the decision from Roe v. Wade is relatively recent, abortion is still a significant part of America’s cultural history. Does change or progress mean that America is betraying her true identity or finally recognizing herself and establishing new institutions such as the U.S. Department of Education to accommodate her growth?
The Heritage Foundation is also relatively new, with its founding in 1973. If new institutions and policy initiatives are to be viewed with suspicion and as a threat to original American values, then the Heritage Foundation meets the criteria for such suspicion. However, the Heritage Foundation has been the predominant conservative think tank, releasing conservative agendas that most progressives consider extreme since the 1980s. In addition, the political actors who assisted with crafting Project 2025 are quite notable. According to Vox, two-thirds of authors and editors already served in the Trump administration, such as HUD Secretary Ben Carson, acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, deputy White House chief staff Rick Dearbear, and top DHS official Ken Cuccinelli. Conservative politicians who support Project 2025 are also influential and familiar faces on the political landscape, such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Sen. Josh Hawley (R.-Mo.), Gov. Jim Justice (R-W.VA.), and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.). So should the Heritage Foundation be looked at with suspicion? How about abortion? How about the U.S. Department of Education, or 50,000 federal workers? And how about Medicaid, enacted on July 30, 1965, even before the Heritage Foundation was founded? Many voters can’t seem to agree and are too collectively confused to confidently pinpoint American identity, values, and goals and hold all politicians accountable to them.
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| “He’s trying to hide his connections to his allies’ extreme Project 2025 agenda,” President Joe Biden said of Trump. “The only problem? It was written for him, by those closest to him. Project 2025 should scare every single American.” (Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons) |
Navigator Research, a progressive messaging and polling resource, attempted to discover how Americans felt about Project 2025 and unsurprisingly discovered that the electorate overall was clueless about its existence due to being disconnected from the political sphere altogether. Navigator Research found that seven in 10 Americans were too uninformed to have an opinion about Project 2025. Four in five Americans claimed that they never heard about Project 2025. So the American public does not appear terrified or galvanized by Project 2025. For Americans who are informed about Project 2025, there is either the extreme opinion that it “represents the next conservative Republican president’s last chance to save the republic, rescuing the country from the grip of the radical left through the right governing agenda and right leadership,” with the other side perceiving the project as “an extreme Republican plan that will give the president new and unchecked powers over federal agencies, eliminate abortion access, and roll back action on climate change, LGBTQ+ rights, and other areas.” The general consensus from Navigator Research is that once the previously uninformed learn more about Project 2025, their opposition grows exponentially, but historical political research has revealed that political apathy is the general state of the American public. Danielle Alvarez, a campaign spokesperson, stated, “Team Biden and the DNC are lying and fearmongering because they have nothing else to offer the American people.”
Overall, the American people don’t appear particularly frightened about Project 2025. Trump also downplayed the alarm with the quip that after Day One, once he closes the border and begins drilling, he will eschew the role as dictator. However, most Democrats and progressives feel that they are honestly informing the public about the danger of an authoritarian regime looming, especially after Trump commented in an interview with Glenn Beck that he will have no choice but to lock up political opponents. But will this be viewed with alarm and signal Trump’s secret ambition to be a dictator to the average voter, or be casually dismissed since Trump is also on the verge of being locked up by a political opponent? To the uninformed, it might be considered part of an intense political game that both sides willingly play. Despite it all, Democrats and progressives will continue to sound the alarm about the many dangers of Project 2025 far and wide to a largely disinterested, disengaged, confused, and politically apathetic American public.
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