'Authoritarian agenda': Trump allies lay out 'blueprint' to 'Christianize' the federal government

The Washington Post and the New York Times have been providing in-depth, detailed reporting on Project 2025, Donald Trump and his allies' game plan for giving the United States' federal government a total MAGA makeover if he wins the 2024 GOP presidential primary and defeats President Joe Biden in the general election.

Project 2025, according to reporting in the Post and the Times, is designed to undermine the country's system of checks and balances and make sure anyone working in the federal government is an unquestioning Trump loyalist. And critics of Project 2025, from liberals and progressives to right-wing Never Trump conservatives, have been attacking it as a recipe for full-fledged authoritarianism.

In an opinion column published on December 13, MSNBC's Sarah Posner zeros in one of the troubling elements of Trump's Project 2025 agenda for a possible second term: an emphasis on "Christian nationalism."

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Posner has had a lot to say about Trump's alliance with far-right white evangelicals; she's the author of the 2021 book "Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind."

"Whatever Republicans like Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota may claim," Posner warns, "Donald Trump was not 'being funny' about governing as a dictator. …. We know he meant it because we saw what he did in his first term, including after his 2020 loss. We also know he's not joking because he has an army of right-wing activists who are bent on carrying out their own authoritarian agenda for the Christianization of the federal government, especially at the Department of Health and Human Services."

Project 2025's "Christian Right agenda," Posner notes, is outlined in the Heritage Foundation's "Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise" — a document she describes as "the blueprint for a possible Trump second term." Some of its proposals for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) come from Trump ally Roger Severino.

"In the Heritage document," Posner explains, "Severino makes clear that punishing blue states remains a key goal. He proposes cutting off Medicaid funding to states like California that require coverage for abortion services in health insurance. Severino also promotes the right-wing trope that protection of LGBTQ rights is a malevolent ideology deployed by soulless bureaucrats to crush the freedom of religious Americans."

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Sarah Posner's full MSNBC column is available at this link.