'MAGA imperial presidency': Analysis reveals the radical 'theocracy' central to Project 2025

06 June 2024

In Project 2025, also called the Presidential Transition Project, allies of 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump offer a detailed, in-depth blueprint for a second term if Trump defeats Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden in November.

Critics of Project 2025 argue that the plan, if implemented, would give way too much power to the federal government's executive branch and seriously undermine the United States' system of checks and balances. Project 2025, critics warn is a game plan for far-right authoritarianism.

One of those critics is The Nation's Chris Lehmann.

In an article published online on June 6 and also in the June 2024 issue of its print edition, Lehmann lays out the "Christian nationalist" and "theocratic" elements of Project 2025.

According to Lehmann, some of the most troubling proposals in the plan for a "MAGA imperial presidency" come from Russell Vought, former director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and founder of the Center for Renewing America (CRA).

"For adherents of actual democratic self-governance," Lehmann explains, "Vought's administrative theory of maximum executive power is plenty unnerving on its own. But an even fuller picture of the sort of substantive policy agendas that it would serve emerges in the theocratic mission of the think tank Vought launched after his tour at the OMB: the Center for Renewing America."

Lehmann continues, "This group is a partner in Project 2025, but it's also a policy shop positioned firmly in the vanguard of the Christian nationalist movement, fiercely dedicated to shoring up a militant right-wing culture-war agenda and based on the lie that the United States was founded as an exclusionary, Christian nation."

Lehmann notes some of the headlines that have appeared on CRA's website, which include "Yes, America's Institutions Are Grooming Your Children" and "School Systems Are Corrupting Children with Pornography" as well as "Biden's Woke War on Police."

"The overarching mood is less that of a colloquy of policy wonks than Steve Bannon podcasting on a meth binge," Lehmann warns. "Yet this is the labor of intellectual love undertaken by a man plainly positioning himself to be the cross-agency administrative czar in a second Trump Administration."

Lehmann adds, "So if Trump wins another term and grants Russell Vought's wishes, stand warned: He has already pledged his fealty to a vision of the MAGA imperial presidency that is equal parts Cotton Mather and Roy Cohn."

Read Chris Lehmann's full report for The Nation at this link.

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