Let’s take another look at Project 2025

Under the heading of Writing History I’ve posted several times on actions taken by Donald Trump and his administration and with how those actions map to Project 2025. Indeed you might argue – I certainly do – that P2025 and those behind it are driving Trump’s daily agenda and all the executive orders. How else could the administration act so quickly and on so many fronts?

I keep up with the news, or at least as much as I can tolerate. And there are times when I despair at just one day’s worth of actions. We are more than eight months into a relentless march towards authoritarianism. The parallels with 1930s Nazi Germany are frightening. (I’ve written about that as well.)

And yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order threatening to prosecute donors who support antifascist philosophy!

As others have pointed out, there is no such organization as ‘Antifa’, antifa means anti-fascist. So what he’s really doing is targeting anyone who is against Trump and the MAGA movement.

So today, let’s look at Project 2025 again using the list of worrisome/dangerous actions I created several months ago.

Dismantle the government – check! In eight months, almost every department has undergone radical change, senior leaders across government have been dismissed and replaced by Trump loyalists, agencies have been gutted and/or defunded.

Beyond these actions is an attempt to consolidate and manage data from across government in ways that were never intended and will likely have dire consequences. The Trump administration is also working to secure access to state-level data for any programs that receive federal funding.

Deregulate industry – in a May 2025 article, The Regulatory Review (a publication of the Penn Program on Regulation) outlined President Trump’s First 100 Days of Deregulation. That article specifically mentions three executive actions:

• Executive Order 14,192 calling for agencies to identify at least 10 existing regulations or guidance documents to be revoked for every new one to be added;
• Executive Order 14,215 applying the White House regulatory review process to independent agencies; and
• Executive Order 14,219 calling on agencies to revisit their statutory authorizations of existing regulations.

A later article from The Regulatory Review titled “The Man Behind the Trump Deregulatory Throne” cites Russell Vought, a primary author of Project 2025 who was nominated in November by Donald Trump to be Director of the Office of Management and Budgets, as the man who is pushing such regulatory changes.

Ask yourself why this government is so afraid of regulation? Also, ask yourself who benefits by less regulation and who is damaged?

Deport 11 million+ immigrants – the ICE report below (source ICE as reported by WOLA – The Washington Office on Latin America) shows daily average arrests within the US. WOLA estimates that since Donald Trump took office in January, ICE has deported over 216,000 people. According to TRAC, “the total number of people held in custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has increased to 59,380 detainees as of August 12, 2025, up from 56,945 two weeks earlier on July 27, 2025.” TRAC provides comprehensive information about staffing, spending, and enforcement activities of the federal government.

And don’t forget the amount of money designated for ICE through the OBBBA – that large bill authorizing cuts in spending and tax cuts for high-income Americans – the OBBA will nearly triple ICE’s budget! So expect to see these numbers go up and more armed ICE agents running around in masks arresting people throughout the country.

Nonetheless, an 11 million target will be hard to meet. So expect those ICE agents to be around for a long time. And, by the way, those ICE agents are armed. They represent a federal force – many of them newly trained – that could be turned against other Americans this administration decides to target.

Weaponize the Department of Justice – an article in The Guardian suggests that Donald Trump is abusing the DOJ as he “expands investigations of his foes and ousts dozens of lawyers and staff who worked on cases targeting himself and his allies, scholars and ex-prosecutors say the rule of law is under siege in the US as the department morphs into Trump’s ‘personal weapon’.” Pam Bondi is a willing partner in these efforts. It’s important to note that she was also a lawyer for Project 2025.

Another Guardian article provides many examples:

• investigate critics from Trump’s first administration like
• halted major prosecutions
• fired or forced out lawyers who didn’t meet the Trump loyalty test
• investigate a key Democratic fundraising vehicle
• Pam Bondi established a ‘weaponization working group’ to determine actions – let that sink in. Bondi knows exactly what she’s doing and who she’s going after.
• punish enemies – a recent social media post by DT identifies specifically James Comey, Adam Schiff, and Letitia James. His post was directed to … you guessed it … Pam Bondi.
• reward allies
• firing those who object to Trump’s changes, new rules, other firings and so on
• threatening judges who rule against the Trump administration’s actions
• pursuing cases against universities and students who demonstrate – specific targets are students demonstrating on behalf of Palestine
• investigating officials who did not back his claims that he won the 2020 election
• closing a DOJ cryptocurrency unit – so, guess what, the Trumps and their cronies who run cryptocurrency companies cannot be investigated
• stopped the prosecution of those charged under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
• revoked journalists’ free-speech protections by greenlighting authorities to force journalists to reveal confidential sources in leak investigations
• stonewalling federal court orders
• the list goes on …

Establish the United States as a Christian Nationalist ethno-state – one of Trump’s early actions was to establish a White House Faith Office. According to the official announcement, “The White House Faith Office will empower faith-based entities, community organizations, and houses of worship to better serve families and communities.” Paula White-Cain heads this office. She was part of Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board during his 2016 campaign for president. According to the Christian Broadcasting Network, “Paula White-Cain believes her role as senior advisor and director of the White House Faith Office is a direct call from God.” She is also a multi-millionaire televangelist – so you can imagine what faith she prefers.

Trump has also established a Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. He has also stated that ‘while I am in the White House, we will protect Christians in our schools, in our military, in our government, in our workplaces, hospitals, and in our public squares.” Notice that he doesn’t refer to any other faiths.

After a thorough review of Project 2025, the Charles F. Kettering Foundation – a non-profit research organization that focuses on advancing inclusive democracies – writes that the central agenda of P2025, “is to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States. Christian nationalism believes that the Christian Bible, as God’s infallible law, should be the basis of government and have primacy over public and private institutions.” By the way, this Christian Nationalism view sees women in their primary role as wives and mothers.

It’s clear that those who wrote and are now implementing Project 2025 espouse a Christian Nationalist agenda. How exactly that will unfold remains to be seen, however, the implications are not pretty. And let’s not forget another objective of Project 2025: Further erode and eventually eliminate the separation of church of state.

Disengage economically from China – the Trump administration seems to doing a good job of creating a tariff approach to China that has disrupted trade between the two countries and created great uncertainty with back and forth tariff adjustments and continually revised timelines.

According to China Briefing, produced by Dezan Shira & Associates a pan-Asia, multi-disciplinary professional services firm, on Sept 9, Trump urged the EU to hit China with 100% tariff over Russia oil purchases. Also, “Trump’s tariffs have taken a major toll on US-China trade in 2025, the August trade data from China Customs reveals. In the first eight months of the year, two-way trade dropped 14.4 percent from the same period in 2024 in US dollar terms, with exports falling at an even faster 15.5 percent rate.” “The latest trade data suggests supply chains are restructuring in the wake of Trump’s tariffs, with smaller markets increasing purchases of Chinese goods.”

What Donald Trump and colleagues might not have anticipated is the moves by China to position itself as a leader of other world players – bad actors? – such as Russia, India, and North Korea. Ray Dalio in his book The Changing World Order points to factors suggesting the rise of China and the decline of America. He describes a concept called the country’s ‘external order’ which considers things such as trade/economic wars, technology wars, geopolitical wars, capital wars and military wars. Except for military wars, all are at play between US and China. Dalio writes that the US “external disorder is a risk. More importantly, the United States and China, which is fast-rising and the No. 2 power are having significant conflict.”

Another question that comes to mind: what replaces trade with China for American companies? One example: US soybean farmers have been hard hit by China’s tariffs – in retaliation to Trump’s tariffs on China. Many will suffer financially. Some will go bankrupt. Other industries are also affected.

By the way, Project 2025 itemizes other actions to be taken against China: Cold war with China. (#32) plus more Trump-era tariffs on China (#37) plus Jack up tariffs on China to a point where Chinese products are no longer sold in the U.S. (#90). Don’t you think senior people in Xi Jinping’s administration will have read Project 2025? Don’t you think China will have created strategies to combat whatever actions the Trump administration takes?

Well, that’s probably enough for one day. In future posts, I’ll tackle other topics with an emphasis on what has happened more recently. For now, I’ll leave you with a list of those topics.

• Discontinue climate change research
• Abolish the Gender Policy Council – already done
• Legitimize discrimination
• Limit the ability of unions to protect workers’ rights. (#11)
• Nuclear proliferation (ie: expanding the US nuclear arsenal). (#15)
• Halt promotions for military officers who aren’t loyal to the P2025 agenda (#19)
• End federal oversight of election security. (#21)
• Withhold federal disaster aid from states which disagree with P2025. (#24)
• Purge government leadership on day one of the next administration and replace them with loyalists to Donald Trump – already done
• Unilaterally freeze any/all ongoing treaties and agreements. (#29)
• Restrict/destroy freedom of the press. (#34)
• Shut down the Dept of Education – in March, the White House announced the closure of this department
• Deregulate food production and discontinue any efforts towards sustainability. (#39)
• Amend Title IX such that it allows schools to legally discriminate against students (#46)
• Discontinue all federal funding into research and development of renewable energy (#48)
• Eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances (#50) plus several other objectives that will undermine sustainability and mitigating climate change.
• Cut off federal funding for states which allow elective abortion (#56) and Federally ban chemical abortion medications (#57) plus a few more aimed at abortion and women’s health.
• Bring back discriminatory racial practices in affordable housing (#70)
• Terminate any FBI or DOJ investigations that are “contrary to the national interest.” (#76)
• Legalize and encourage employment-based discrimination (#78)
• Dismantle the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) (#82) which means “no more free weather forecasting, severe storm warnings, or climate monitoring”
• Reduce the tax system to two brackets of 15% and 30%, and reduce the corporate tax rate to 18% (#84)
• Repeal Dodd-Frank regulations on big banks (#86)
• Eliminate the dual mandate as it pertains to the Federal Reserve, dropping the focus on employment and focusing only on inflation.  (#88)
• Stop prosecuting violations of campaign finance law. (#94)
• Investigate and potentially prosecute companies for respecting environmental and social concerns. (#95)

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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel THAT WAS THEN is a contemporary thriller. Mary’s other novels, THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook or on her website www.mktod.com.