Ever since the general public began hearing Project 2025, the document scared those who listened. Although it was described by its authors as the agenda for Trump’s second term and it was written by veterans of the Trump administration, Trump pretended he knew nothing about it. Who wrote it? What does it say? Never heard of it.

For sure, very few people have read its 900+ pages. I read the section on education. Eliminate the Department of Education. Voucherize programs like Title 1, Headstart, special education funding, with no federal regulations attached to the money. Promote funding for religious and private schools. Ditch separation of church and state.

It also calls for a national ban on abortion and for eliminating the Civil Service and replacing career government employees with people loyal to Trump. It is the document that describes—department by department, agency by agency—how to destroy “the administrative state.”

There’s a saying that comes to mind: “When an authoritarian tells you what he plans to do, believe him.”

Heather Cox Richardson wrote about Trump’s clumsy efforts to distance himself from an agenda written by senior officials in his administration:

On Friday, speaking to Christians at the Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump begged the members of the audience to “vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what: it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine…. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

The comment drew a lot of attention, and on Monday, Fox News Channel personality Laura Ingraham gave him a chance to walk the statement back. Instead, he said: “I said, vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true.” “Don’t worry about the future. You have to vote on November 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care, because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore, because frankly we will have such love, if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s OK.”

Trump’s refusal to disavow the idea that putting him back into power will mean the end of a need for elections is chilling and must be viewed against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s July 1, 2024, decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States. In that decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court’s right-wing majority said that presidents cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a president’s “official duties” and that presidents should have a presumption of immunity for other presidential actions. 

John Roberts defends the idea of a strong executive and has fought against the expansion of voting rights made possible by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The idea that it is dangerous to permit minorities and women to vote suggests that there are certain people who should run the country. That tracks with a recently unearthed video in which Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance calls childless people “psychotic” and “deranged,” and refers unselfconsciously to “America’s leadership class.” 

The idea that democracy must be overturned in order to enable a small group of leaders to restore virtue to a nation is at the center of the “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy” championed by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán’s imposition of an authoritarian Christian nationalism on a former democracy, in turn, has inspired the far-right figures that are currently in charge of the Republican Party. As Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts put it: “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”

Kevin Roberts has called for “institutionalizing Trumpism” and pulled together dozens of right-wing institutions behind the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 to create a blueprint for a second Trump term. Those who created Project 2025 are closely connected to the Trump team, and Trump praised its creators and its ideas. 

Today, The New Republic published the foreword Vance wrote for Kevin Roberts’s forthcoming book. Vance makes it clear he sees Kevin Roberts and himself as working together to create “a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics.” Like others on the Christian right, Vance argues that “the Left” has captured the country’s institutions and that those institutions must be uprooted and those in them replaced with right-wing Christians in order to restore what they see—inaccurately—as traditional America.  

That determination to disrupt American institutions fits neatly with the technology entrepreneurs who seem to believe that they are the ones who should control the nation’s future. Vance is backed by Silicon Valley libertarian Peter Thiel, who put more than $10 million behind Vance’s election to the Senate. In 2009, Thiel wrote “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” 

“The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics,” he wrote. “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” 

Thiel set Vance up to invest in companies that made him wealthy and touted Vance for the vice presidential slot, and in turn, the Silicon Valley set are expecting Vance to help get rid of the regulation imposed by the Biden administration and to push cryptocurrency. Trump appears to be getting on board with comments about how the tech donors are “geniuses,” praising investor Elon Musk and saying, “We have to make life good for our smart people.” In a piece that came out Sunday, Washington Post reporters Elizabeth Dwoskin, Cat Zakrzewski, Nitasha Tiku, and Josh Dawsey credited the influence of Thiel and other tech leaders for turning Vance from a Never-Trumper to a MAGA Republican. 

Judd Legum of Popular Information reported today that the cryptocurrency industry is investing heavily in the 2024 election, with its main super PAC raising $202 million in this cycle. Three large cryptocurrency companies are investing about $150 million in pro-crypto congressional candidates. 

On Saturday, Trump said he would make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world.” He promised to end regulations on cryptocurrency, which, because it is not overseen by governments, is prone to use by criminals and rogue states. That regulation is “a part of a much larger pattern that’s being carried out by the same left-wing fascists to weaponize government against any threat to their power,” Trump said. “They’ve done it to me.”

But the problem that those trying to get rid of the modern administrative state continue to run up against is that voters actually like a government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights. In recent days, Minnesota governor Tim Walz has been articulating how popular that government is as he makes the television rounds.

On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper listed some of Walz’s policies—he passed background checks for guns, expanded LGBTQ protections, instituted free breakfast and lunch for school kids—and asked if they made Walz vulnerable to Trump calling him a “big government liberal.” Walz joked that he was, indeed, a “monster.” 

“Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own health care decisions, and we’re a top five business state, and we also rank in the top three of happiness…. The fact of the matter is,” where Democratic policies are implemented, “quality of life is higher, the economies are better…educational attainment is better. So yeah, my kids are going to eat here, and you’re going to have a chance to go to college, and you’re going to have an opportunity to live where we’re working on reducing carbon emissions. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to have personal incomes that are higher, and you’re going to have health insurance. So if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.” 

The extremes of Project 2025 have made it clear that the Republicans intend to destroy the kind of government Walz is defending and replace it with an authoritarian president imposing Christian nationalism. And when Americans hear what’s in Project 2025, they overwhelmingly oppose it. Trump has tried without success to distance himself from the document. 

He and his team have also hammered on the Heritage Foundation for their public revelations of their plans, and today the director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, stepped down. The Trump campaign issued a statement reiterating—in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary—that Trump had nothing to do with Project 2025 and adding: “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should service as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign—it will not end well for you.” 

The Harris campaign responded to the news by saying that “Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country. Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real—in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding.” 

The reasoning behind the idea of a strong executive, or a “leadership class” that does not have to answer to voters, is that an extremist minority needs to take control of the American government away from the American people because the majority doesn’t like the policies the extremists want. 

When Trump begs right-wing Christians to turn out for just one more election, he is promising that if only we will put him into the White House once and for all, we will never again have to worry about having a say in our government. As Trump put it: “The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore.”