How a second Trump term is the 'final stage' of the far-right’s 'master plan': columnist

29 August 2024

If former President Donald Trump succeeds in his third bid for the presidency this fall, it could mean checkmate for the far-right's decades-long plan to completely take over the federal government.

That's according to columnist David Sirota, who recently wrote in the Guardian about how the authoritarian Project 2025 initiative could become reality should Trump win the November election. He specifically noted that Project 2025 effectively marks "the final stage of [conservatives'] grand half-century scheme to destroy the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society."

Sirota — a former speechwriter for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) — is publisher of LeverNews.com, which has delved into the 1971 Powell Memo in its "Master Plan" series. He noted that the memo, which was authored by Nixon-appointed Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, "created the foundation for Citizens United and the modern era of corporate politics."

As Sirota wrote, the Heritage Foundation, which is the chief organization pushing Project 2025, "carved out a special role for itself" in the aftermath of the Powell Memo as the public policy arm of the far-right's plan to merge corporate power with conservative politics.

"[W]ithin a few years of its launch, [Heritage] was focused on influencing presidential administrations with the original version of Project 2025 – Mandate for Leadership, described in the press at the time as 'a blueprint for grabbing the government by its frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out 48 years of liberal policy,'" Sirota wrote. "[Former President Ronald] Reagan delivered a speech at Heritage lauding 'the importance of the Heritage Foundation ... in bringing to Washington the political revolution.'"

Now, in Trump's second run for a second term in the White House, he's attempted to distance himself from Heritage and Project 2025, insisting "I don't know what the hell it is" on the campaign stump. This is hard to take at face-value, given that roughly 140 of his former staffers and advisors had a hand in writing Project 2025 and that his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) wrote the foreword to a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts.

Sirota additionally warned readers to not trust Trump when it comes to his downplaying of Project 2025, noting that Heritage "boasted" about how Trump implemented roughly two-thirds of its policy proposals during Trump's first year in the White House. He also quoted Vance's foreword for Roberts' book to illustrate how the Republican ticket privately views the group behind Project 2025.

“The Heritage Foundation isn’t some random outpost on Capitol Hill,” Vance wrote. “It is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.”

Democrats have seized on Project 2025 as a means of highlighting what their Republican opponents would do if given the levers of power again. As People magazine wrote in July, the document lays out a detailed plan to institute "a far-right, Christian nationalist vision for America that would corrode the separation of church and state, replace nonpartisan government employees with Trump loyalists and bolster the president's authority over independent agencies."

Click here to read Sirota's column in its entirety.

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