Project 2025 and the Need for Worker Solidarity

The former President of the United States Donald Trump was shot less than four months before an election that will define America's future at a pivotal moment in history. The bullet grazed the ear of the former President and current presidential candidate, leaving him scarred but with a resolve that could lead to certain defeat for his opponent, the current Vice President Kamala Harris. This has become even more evident now that the current president, Joe Biden, has had to drop out of the presidential race and begin, finally, focusing on basic reform to a system that has been corrupt since its inception. The last time a President or former President was shot was over forty years ago when John Hinckley shot President Ronald Reagan in Washington. That incident bolstered Reagan’s support and directly led to him introducing programs that have destroyed any hopes of financial security, let alone growing generational wealth, for the American working class. His attempted cuts, and then "reform" of Social Security, successive Federal budgets which cut Federal assistance across the board led to a massive US budget deficit, a doubling of military spending, deregulation of industries, and attacks on striking workers. Reagan’s regime directly led to the worst economic crises since the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The failed assassination attempt of former President Trump will likely be no different. With his failed coup attempt three and a half years ago, his reactionary tendency toward the George Floyd protests, his appointed Supreme Court member pushing the balance to end the precedent of Roe v. Wade, and the slow leaking of his supporters' plans under Project 2025, the likely reactionary backlash that would accompany a Trump victory in November could be catastrophic for the majority of American people.

Project 2025, for those of us who have not had the pleasure of hearing the sickening details of this reactionary scheme, is another gift to us from the Heritage Foundation. The first Mandate for Leadership was created for the Reagan administration in the 80s and he loved it so much he handed out printed copies to his cabinet members. According to the Heritage Foundation’s current Mandate For Leadership, "This volume—The Conservative Promise—is the opening salvo of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, launched by The Heritage Foundation and our many partners in April 2022. Its 30 chapters lay out hundreds of clear and concrete policy recommendations for White House offices, Cabinet departments, Congress, and agencies, commissions, and boards." They focus their goals into four broad fronts: restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children, dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people, defend our nation's sovereignty, borders and bounty against global threats, and finally, secure our God-given individual rights to live freely. 

The over 900 page document seeks to subordinate the entire Federal government under the President. It strips government assistance from Federal employees, eliminates the Department of Education, guts several other Federal agencies and departments including the FBI, destroys what little economic regulation remains, begins the largest deportation program in American history, cuts all research to renewable energy, and cuts regulations on fossil fuels. It suggests the Department of Health and Human Services should, "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family," banning porn, banning phrases like "sexual orientation," "gender equality," "abortion," and "reproductive rights," ending all diversity, equity and inclusion programs, making the DOJ prosecute cases of "anti-white racism," and deploying the military to be used as domestic law enforcement. It’s important to understand that 2025 refers to the year of the project's completion, not its start date. There are multiple steps in the nearly 900-page document that must be followed in order to bring about its vision. The fact is that groundwork for Project 2025 is already being laid. Recent Supreme Court rulings repealing Roe v. Wade and the Chevron deference, providing Presidential immunity for “official acts,” state-level attacks on public schools through book bans and expanded school vouchers, restrictions on gender-affirming care for trans youth, and the building of “cop cities” across the country are all setting the stage.  

While this is not Trump's publicized plan, two-thirds of the Heritage Foundation’s 1981 mandate was adopted by President Reagan in practice and similarly so for their 2015 mandate for President Trump.  Trump denies knowledge of Project 2025, but a video from a 2022 Heritage Foundation event in Florida shows him praising the project’s “colossal mandate.” Even if Trump isn’t working with the Heritage Foundation (multiple ex-Trump administration officials, however, are directly involved), his campaign platform Agenda 47 is nothing more than a watered down version of Project 2025.

The people must oppose this tyrannical treatise tooth and nail. It serves to crown a conservative king and completely destroy any semblance of freedom and democracy in this corrupted republic. With a 22 million dollar budget, a database of conservative loyalists, and a program designed to train them to take over the job of any purged Federal employee, this may be the end of any facade of democracy and meritocracy in an oligarchy that has been villainous from the beginning of the nation's foundation. The question for us, the people, is “How do we engage with this farcical political process and protect ourselves from a backlash which will only become more violent with time and increases between the contradictions of capitalism and life on Earth?” The Heritage Foundation will continue to push these policies as they have done for over forty years now. Even if Trump loses, there will more than likely be a Project 2029, 2033, 2037, etc. Democrats have done little to nothing to prevent this; it’s useful for guilting voters into supporting the Democratic Party, even though they’ve proven they are unable or unwilling to prevent the spread of fascism. We must learn how best to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities from the prevailing reactionary attitude and coming reactionary terror both of the physical and mental variety. 

Huey P. Newton, revolutionary and co-founder of the Black Panther Party with Bobby Seale, in his piece “In Defense of Self Defense,” gave an insightful lesson on the people's right to self govern and self organize.

Before 1776, white people were colonized by the English. The English government had certain laws and rules that the colonized Americans viewed as not in their best interests but as a colonized people. At that time, the English government felt that the colonized Americans had no right to establish laws to promote the general welfare of the people living here in America. The colonized American felt he had no choice but to raise the gun in defense of the welfare of the colonized people. At this time he made certain laws ensuring his protection from external and internal aggressions from governments and agencies. One such form of protection was the Declaration of Independence which states, “…whenever any government becomes destructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Now these same colonized white people, these ex-slaves, robbers, and thieves, have denied the colonized Black man the right to even speak of abolishing this oppressive system which the white colonized American created. They have carried their madness to the four corners of the earth, and now there is universal rebellion against their continued rule and power.

The Black people in America are the only people who can free the world, loosen the yoke of colonialism and destroy the war machine. As long as the wheels of the imperialistic war machine are turning there is no country that can defeat this monster of the west. But Black people can make a malfunction of this machine from within. Black people can destroy the machinery that’s enslaving the world. America cannot stand to fight every Black country in the world and fight a civil war at the same time. It is militarily impossible to do both these things at once.

While Newton's focus on Black liberation is an important part of the struggle, only when it is united with women's liberation, Indigenous liberation, Latine liberation, LGBTQIA+ liberation, and the eventual liberation of the entire working class from the shackles of capitalism and the rule of the few over the many—only then can we take up arms and hold true to the ideals of liberty, equality, and humanity which we all believe we fight for. No marginalized group can be left behind if we seek to build the critical mass necessary to overcome the horrors and terror of the reactionary menace coalescing before us. 

Voting alone won’t save us; the fight against authoritarianism and exploitation doesn’t stop if we beat Trump in November. We can’t rely solely on electoral politics every 2-4 years to bring about the change we need. Change comes through mass action, political education, and general organization. In order to know what your community needs, you have to go out and be part of your community. Between the rising heat and our own isolation into small units or bubbles, this is a daunting task for many. Being scared to step out of our comfort zones both physically and mentally is something we all experience on a daily basis, but in order to build a better world, we must also push ourselves to be better people everyday. It requires daily conscious effort and the support network provided by friends, family, community, and organizations in order to fight against our instincts. No self-interested friends can help with this, no self-confident family will help with this, only self-sustaining democratic organizations that represent the people and only the people will help when the capitalists go down the path of reactionary terror rather than the more recent road of temporary liberal stagnation or mild reform. We must build these networks ourselves, because we have repeatedly seen that the capitalists and the capitalist state can’t or won’t help us in our hour of need. It should matter little what their true reasoning is.

This won’t be easy and won’t happen overnight, but that’s all the more reason that we must begin building up these networks now. So talk politics with your family and friends. Question their presumptions and your own about how things are and what can and can’t be changed. Educate yourself and your neighbors about what’s going on in your local, state, national, and international community. If you have the means, help out your communities by going out and being a force for good and change within it. If you have the time and energy after working to sustain yourself, organize other people in your community to more effectively help and represent the people in that community. Through organization, cooperation, and solidarity anything is possible, even building a brand new world free of class distinctions, hunger and hate.

The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working people of all countries, UNITE!