Jim Hightower is a Texas Democrat who spent some time in state government, back in the days when Democrats had a shot at winning statewide offices in Texas. He warns here about the real purpose of Project 2025: to turn our country into a white Christian nation. The Founders never said that. In fact, the only things they said in the Constiturion was that there should be no religious test for office. And the First Amendment barred any establishment of any religion and guaranteed freedom of religion. So what these extremists are doing is a blatant violation of the Constitution.
Hightower writes:
We’ve seen a ton of social media posts and emails in the last week or so about Project 2025, and although we’re still working on a fuller analysis to give you the lowdown on what it means to you, as well as tools to fight it, we felt it was urgent to get some solid info into Lowdowner’s hands as soon as we could. Y’all are quite the army of activists (we see the results when you take action!) and we know that if we offer up the goods, you can take them and run with them.
Here’s our brief primer on what this mess is, what’s at stake, and what you can start to do.
What is it?
If you don’t know what Project 2025 is, or would like a brief summary to use to alert others about it, here you go:
It’s a painstakingly detailed, 922-page step-by-step plan to impose an American dictatorship of moneyed authoritarians and Christian nationalists, removing your and my democratic rights. Yes, this is an actual coup.
It sounds insane, yet there it is—a document written and being loudly promoted by a power-mad cluster of Trump bosses, Putin-esque despots, Reagan-loving economists and Ayn Rand-ian academics, moneyed corporate donors, and general far-right quacks and media blowhards. It’s innocuously coded “Project 2025” because the intent is to launch their full assault on the democratic fabric and structure of our national government next January, on Day 1 of another Trump presidency.
This scheme has been devised by The Heritage Foundation, a DC think tank set up in 1973 to promote the elitist economic and cultural doctrines of its über-rich founding funders, Joseph Coors (yes, that Coors) and Richard Mellon Scaife (yes, that Mellon). In recent years, Heritage has gone from merely being right-wing zealots to off-the-charts Trumpists… and now they’re going deep into the distant extremist cosmos. Thus, the head cosmonaut, Kevin Roberts, has megalomaniacally exulted that Project 2025 is “the second American revolution.” Unfortunately, it’s a dangerous devolution, with little tin-hat Kevin acting out what he pretends is a heroic coup.
This would be silly and inconsequential, except the Trump Party has become alarmingly treacherous. Ominously referencing the January 6th violent assault on democratic rule, Kevin said that his coup “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Of course, “the left”—i.e., sane democracy fighters like you and me—do not acquiesce to tyrannical wannabes.
But his ace is that The Donald, despite his denials, has hailed Heritage’s authoritarian agenda as his own and has cheered its plan to fire thousands of public employees on Day 1, replacing them with a lockstep army of enforcers that Heritage and others say they’ve already recruited to seize and Trump-ize every federal agency. This, combined with Trump’s own pledge to use the US military to enforce his political will, is where Project 2025’s subversive coup gets real.
Here are just a few of the steps we’ve learned so far that Heritage autocrats intend to implement:
- Nearly eliminating abortion access altogether at the national level.
- Cutting Social Security benefits.
- Giving ever-more tax breaks to corporations and gabillionaires.
- Selling off national parklands, wetlands, wildlife sanctuaries and other public properties
- Eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NPR, PBS).
- Imposing a “biblically-based” definition of marriage and families.
- Eliminating the Department of Education.
- Preventing LGBTQ+ couples from adopting children.
- Eliminating the food stamp program (SNAP) and the free school lunch program.
- Putting the Department of Justice and other independent agencies under the direct political control of the President.
- Eliminating organic food promotion, conservation programs, and most climate policies of the Agriculture Department
For more in depth reading, check out this series from the Center for American Progress.
Why is this different from previous right-wing agendas?
One, they were piecemeal proposals, like Bush the Second’s failed attack on Social Security, or they were just sloganeering war whoops, like Grover Norquist’s empty call to make government small enough to drown it in a bathtub.
Two, Project 2025 is a comprehensive, all-in-one blueprint for a radical plutocratic and theocratic takeover of our government, surreptitiously advanced by many of the same anti-democracy corporate supremacists and billionaires who’ve already seized control of the judicial branch.
Three, the Republican Party is perfectly willing to submit to and grovel at the feet of moneyed extremists, media demagoguery, and political thuggery—even in support of stupid, poisonous policies the American people overwhelmingly reject.
Four: Donald.
What can I do?
Right now, the most important thing you can do is to tell your friends and family about this terrifying agenda. Right-wingers are currently attacking the media reporting on this, calling progressives and even moderates who oppose the coup “Chicken Little”-types, trying to minimize this elitist assault on America itself. We cannot let them.
The most important people to share it with are not your super conservative relatives that drive you nuts, but rather people who may be feeling ambiguous about voting for a Democrat (whoever that is ends up being) for President. You’re not going to change the people who’ve already gone over to the crazies, but you have a chance at inspiring more undecided voters to at least vote against an explicitly un-American, Christian Nationalist, fascist ideology.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
All one has to do is read the Old Testament to see that many of the so called Judeo-Christian tradition have acted to isolate God in a box, i.e. the Temple in Jerusalem, and use that isolation to promote ethnic exclusivity. This is what happened with the development of the Roman Catholic Church and now with the current Mega Church phenomenon. This is why the Dominionist Crowd is never heard quoting the “Sermon on the Mount” Jesus but predominantly Old Testament scripture. Those of us who live in the South have seen this first hand throughout the region for ever. Now it is national. The scary part of this is that Christian Nationalism has become an international enterprise as evidenced with Putin’s embrace of Russian Orthodoxy and the Israeli Theocrats who are currently holding that country hostage wanting to expand their borders to that of the Davidic era. If Trump is defeated in November it will ironically leave the movement floundering because The Donald is such a willing charismatic foil for their project. However, the search for a more destructive messiah will continue.
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True enough. Southern dominionism is a fact of its history since the days of slavery and single crop agricultural practices.
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Project 2025 is a plan to destroy democracy. The way for Democrats to combat this assault is to expose the right wing extremists for the unhinged, “weird” lunatics they are. This will require Democrats to collaborate, stay on message and channel their inner death match warrior and go negative. They do not have to lie. They simply have to expose the right for their lies and hypocrisy.
Chuck Schumer is calling for a vote on the child tax credit to expose the “family value” lies that will be exposed with their no vote. There is so much hypocrisy that Democrats will be busy exposing it all. The right loves to wave the flag, but votes “no” on benefits for veterans. The right thinks we should have easy access to weapons, but Democrats should expose the massive carnage in our communities from such reckless policies. The GOP wants to hang the border crisis around Harris’ neck, and Democrats need to point out how Trump refused to address the problem for political gain. Democrats, thus far, have been reluctant to pull out the Russian sympathizer card, although they did a little of it with Vance. They need to go there with Trump and replay the images of a sheepish Trump kissing Putin’s tail after their secretive meeting. Democrats need to exploit the fact so many in the GOP met with Viktor Orban to fashion their anti-democratic document, Project 2025. They must not be afraid of exposing right wing lies and hypocrisy. Democrats must stay in the kitchen and not be afraid of turning up the heat.
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Orban’s conceptual explanation of “illiberal democracy” is just as frightening as Mussolini’s adoption of the word “fascist,” taken as it was from the Roman history he longed to reinvent.
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The entire global enterprise is scary. The combination of Iranian Mullahs, Russia, North Korea, China (to a lesser degree, and Orban could result in a major global conflagration once they begin to confront one another for preeminence. These guys make Machiavelli look like a Sunday school teacher.
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The “Real” purpose of project Old Testament is that, while the “Real” purpose of project New Testament is this, followed by another “Real” purpose of prohibiting a religious test for office, while swearing in, for office, on the project Bible. The “Real” purposes are revealed in the results. The wall of separation between “In God We Trust ” currency continues to render almost half of the “Demos” as unable to meet a $400.00 emergency. What the founders said, controls reality as much as quoting them, or quoting the Bible, or the Constitution, or the (fill-in)…
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There never has been a DEEP STATE.
However, now one is waiting to take over. And because that movement’s leaders are ruthless racist fascists, they will do anything to win in November.
Project 2025 doesn’t play by the rules. They plan to be around a lot longer than Traitor Trump. They may even get rid of the traitor if their coup succeeds. And it isn’t a new coup. it’s been going on for decades, inch by inch. When Mitch McConnel refused to let President Obama appoint a US Supreme Justice to fill an empty seat, that was one of the inches.
“It’s a painstakingly detailed, 922-page step-by-step plan to impose an American dictatorship of moneyed authoritarians and Christian nationalists, removing your and my democratic rights. Yes, this is an actual coup.“
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The Lincoln Project produced a a podcast this week that stated that the real deep state is K Street lobbyists.
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EXACTLY!
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I support civility. Democrats have tried to rise above the fray. In these uncertain times maybe we need a different strategy. Vicious social media have lowered the bar for discourse, Civility seems to be equated with and perceived by young people as weakness. Perhaps it is time to meet them on their turf and take off the gloves. Fight fire with fire as my mother once said. We need to use their hateful, divisive words, hypocrisy and plans against them.
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Correction: “And because that movement’s leaders are ruthless racist XTIAN fascists,”
Make no mistake, the xtian theocratic underpinnings of Project 2025 cannot be denied.
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Correction to Grover Norquist’s balderdash and much quoted blarney about the bathtub: I don’t want to abolish the GOP (unless the voters decide otherwise). I simply want to reduce the GOP to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the TOILET and then flush, flush, flush, and flush some more. Fixed
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Thanks for the laugh!
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Freedom FROM Religion
The constitutional principle of a “wall of separation” between government and religion in America goes back even far further than our 1797 Constitution: Already back in 1635, Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island Colony, declared that a “wall of separation” must forever separate American government from any religion.
But England imposed Anglican church membership in the colonies, and although many of our Founding Fathers were Deists, not Christians, they were compelled to join the official British government’s Anglican religion in order to be able to vote or take any part in government.
James Madison, whom we honor with the title “Father of our Constitution” because so many of our Constitution’s key principles are derived from his ideas, wrote that “the purpose of the separation of church and state is to keep forever from our shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries”.
That bloody “ceaseless strife” of religious war in Europe was well known to Madison and to our nation’s other Founding Fathers because they had recent ancestors who suffered and been killed because of the endless warfare between Christian religions throughout Europe during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Those centuries of bloodshed and misery followed the Protestant Reformation which led to the establishment of dozens of warring Protestant religions, none of which agreed with each other in their dogma, and all of which disagreed with the Catholic church.
Thousands and countless thousands of people died as each Christian religion tried to force their version of religious beliefs on the others.
George Washington, whom we honor with the title “Father of our Nation”, was in complete agreement with the Establishment Clause and wrote that “the United States government is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
Thomas Jefferson, author of our Declaration of Independence, compiled his own version of the Bible, known as The Jefferson Bible, that basically treated Jesus as an admirable philosopher, but not divine. Jefferson’s non-Christian edition of the Bible became widely popular, and for decades every new member of Congress was given a copy of it when sworn in to Congress.
And yet, today, self-righteous religious zealots — some of whom are even on the U.S. Supreme Court — are driving our nation toward a time of bloody religious warfare in America; warfare that will divide and weaken our nation and allow our enemies abroad to destroy us. That destructive division is already on the stage with the demands that The Ten Commandments be posted in schools and public places and that public schools must teach the Bible: The coming conflict looms with the question of whose version of the Ten Commandments will be displayed and whose version of the Bible will be taught.
Protestants and Catholics each have their own version of the Ten Commandments and their own version of the Bible. Whose version of the Commandments and whose version of the Bible would be posted and taught in public schools?
In the Protestant version of the Commandments, the Second Commandment says that it is sinful to make “graven images”, such as statues — the Catholic version of the Commandments says nothing about graven images, so Catholic churches are filled with statues of Mary and the saints. Will Catholic children in public schools be shamed by their classmates as sinful because Catholic churches contain statues of Mary and the saints?
If America doesn’t remain true to the constitutional rule established by Our Founding Fathers that our government must be separated from all religion by a solid wall, bloody conflict will ultimately follow…and a weakened America will then be conquered by its international enemies.
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