'Next come the roundups': Yale Scholar details timeline in Trump’s second administration

Former President Donald Trump, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and others on the Trump campaign have been making a concerted effort to distance the 2024 presidential nominee from Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation's 920-page blueprint for a second Trump Administration. Even GOP lobbyist Corey Lewandowski, during a recent interview with MSNBC's Ari Melber, insisted that the campaign has nothing to with Heritage's proposals.

Many Democrats, however, have countered that the architects of Project 2025 are close allies of Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris' website has an entire section devoted to Project 2025 and its connection to the Trump-Vance ticket.

Yale University professor Daniel Martinez HoSang, in an op-ed published by The Guardian on September 9, details the Project 2025 timeline that would likely unfold in a second Trump Administration.

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"It's a cold day in Washington DC in late January 2025," HoSang writes. "Though Donald Trump has lost the popular vote for a third consecutive election, his narrow capture of the Electoral College has delivered the presidency…. As Trump utters the last phrase of the oath of office — 'so help me God' — the first phase of what Project 2025's authors call 'the playbook' begins."

The Yale scholar continues, "First come the firings. Thousands of federal, non-partisan civil servants — environmental and food safety regulators; authorities in disaster relief coordination; attorneys overseeing anti-discrimination policies in housing, education and employment; medical and scientific researchers — receive immediate layoff notices…. Next come the roundups. As drafted by the MAGA nativist-in-chief Stephen Miller, a broad range of law enforcement, from the National Guard to state and local police, are deputized for a new deportation army."

After the firings and mass deportations, HoSang warns, MAGA Republicans would implement other elements of Project 2025.

"In the following months," the professor explains, "other parts of the agenda unfold. Cuts in corporate taxes so generous they would make the robber barons blush…. Pornography is criminalized. Ditto for abortion rights, emergency contraception and many reproductive health programs. Adiós also to most public sector unions, labor organizing rights and anti-poverty programs."

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