Project 2025, rejected by Trump, is now an integral part of his plans – San Diego Union-Tribune

During the election campaign, Donald Trump rejected the 2025 project. After the election, Donald Trump is humming a different tune.

Maybe the song goes, “No one should confuse campaigning with governing.” Or maybe Russ Vought’s words better fit a song title: The Enthusiasm for “Graduate-Level Politics.” Either way, Trump certainly likes the tune and is now embracing the Project 2025 agenda.

The most obvious sign that Trump is enthusiastic about Project 2025 is the fact that several of his nominees for senior administration posts have direct ties to the conservative plan. The author of the Project 2025 chapter on the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, has been tapped to lead the same agency. Tom Homan, Trump’s choice to lead his immigration efforts as the country’s “border czar,” is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a contributor to Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” John Ratcliffe, another Project 2025 contributor, will , if confirmed, to lead the CIA.

It’s too early to say whether Carr, Homan and Ratcliffe will be confirmed, but if and when they are confirmed, we will have a clearer idea of ​​whether their past comments will actually be implemented, and that’s what I’ll be talking about report in more detail here.

However, we don’t have to wait to learn about the intentions of two of Trump’s supporters, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who have been chosen to lead the yet-to-be-created Department of Government Efficiency, a direct offshoot of Project 2025’s main goal is to “dismantle the administrative state and return self-government to the American people.”

On November 20, they co-authored an editorial in the Wall Street Journal in which they described their mission as “shrinking the federal government.”

There is no doubt that Democrats, Republicans and independents should welcome all efforts to create efficiencies in government. But we must be vigilant about the details of these cuts, analyzing costs and benefits to ensure that cuts are made for efficiency reasons and not based on political or cultural motivations that endanger the weak and powerless.

Linda McMahon, a longtime Trump ally and chosen by the president-elect to lead the Education Department, supports wherever possible Project 2025’s plan to break down the half-century-old bureaucratic divide. She did so from her position as head of the America First Policy Institute, another conservative think tank with growing influence in the Trump administration

AFPI’s America First Parents Initiative, its Higher Education Reform Initiative, and even its Biblical Foundations Project all affirm Project 2025’s agenda of parental choice, the promise of charter schools, local and state control of curriculum, the restoration of a retributive school disciplinary model, and opposing DEI initiatives, transgender rights in participation, pronouns and naming, critical race theory, confronting America’s discriminatory past, and so on further.

Again, we need to be vigilant in the coming weeks and months to see whether Trump’s candidates live up to their pre-election promises.

Vought, who is widely expected to return as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, is probably the loudest proponent of Project 2025. He wrote the chapter on the President’s Executive Office, but his encouragement of the right-wing agenda of the Heritage Foundation go far beyond this individual contribution.

The CNN report on Vought’s beliefs should be alarming to everyone, regardless of whether you are a Trump supporter. Vought calls for the creation of a “Christian nation.” He rejects the legislative practice of establishing abortion exceptions for rape and incest. He insists that mass deportation of immigrants will “save the country.” He brags that he works on “shadow” operations to control the government.

And when asked why the president-elect distanced himself from Project 2025, Vought responded with admiration. “College-level politics,” he said, grinning. “We have to win elections.” So true. That’s music to Trump’s ears.

The jury is still out, but the trends are becoming increasingly apparent.

Breslin is the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair in Political Science at Skidmore College and author of “A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation’s Fundamental Law.” He wrote this for the news organization The Fulcrum.