Sharon Kennedy: Beware of Project 2025

For readers who don’t keep abreast of national politics, you might be as surprised as I was when I learned of Project 2025. Depending upon your point of view, it’s either an outstanding political agenda or a fairly sinister project with tentacles reaching deep into the bowels of the federal government. The official name of this undertaking is the “2025 Presidential Transition Project.” It’s not a traditional Republican policy platform, but something new and exciting for those who believe in the MAGA movement.

Thanks to the Heritage Foundation — that pillar of conservatism — the skeleton for the project was conceived in January 2023. Since then, sinew and organs have been added. By now the thing is a fully fleshed living organism much like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.

The four main pillars breathing life into this brainchild are: “A Policy Agenda, a Presidential Personnel Database, a Presidential Administration Academy and a Playbook for the first 180 days of the next Administration.” The administration referred to is Republican with DJT as President, Mr. Pillow as Veep and that deranged Green woman as Chief of Staff. These are my suggestions, but the Heritage Foundation might disagree, preferring to install other Jan. 6 deniers. There’s a glut to pick from in Congress.

Since we know the title of each pillar, it might bode well to understand the foundation upon which they’re built. According to a sentence that sounds like a mission statement, Project 2025 website states, “[We’re] building now for a conservative victory through policy, personnel and training.” In other words, their mission is to centralize unlimited power to the man in the Oval Office. This means he would possess unrestrained and unopposed authoritarian rule over every agency and employee he considers a threat to his authority.

As I understand it, individuals and agencies — perhaps even Congress and the Judiciary — within the federal government would be answerable to the president. If they refused to go along with his playbook, they’d be fired and replaced with people who promised loyalty to DJT. This is not a joke or a hidden agenda. Listen to his rants. He means what he says. If he regains the White House before being found guilty of multiple felonies, he’ll become the first Dictator of the United States, but he won’t be the last.

Once unitary executive authority giving unchallenged power to one person takes hold, it will be difficult to return to our former way of governing. The old idea of three separate branches with checks and balances will be laughable. Most Americans accepted our democratic system as infinite, not merely as an experiment with a termination date, but the arrival of No. 45 changed things. To quote French historian and politician, de Tocqueville, “As one digs deeper into the national character of Americans, one sees they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to a single question: How much money will it bring in?”

Thanks to my useless liberal arts education, I also learned the 19th-century foreigner, although concerned about our preoccupation with material goods and wealth, and overlooking slavery, child labor and a slew of other inequalities, thought democracy was, “The great overriding theme of the historical evolution of the West and perhaps even of the entire world.” I wonder what his opinion would be today as the system he admired slides into a fascist pool and swims with dictators, both dead and alive.

So beware of Project 2025. Find a rational conservative to replace the MAGA man.

— To contact Sharon Kennedy, send her an email at authorsharonkennedy.com. Kennedy's new book, "View from the SideRoad: A Collection of Upper Peninsula Stories," is available from her or Amazon.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Sharon Kennedy: Beware of Project 2025