What is Project 2025?
Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a political manifesto designed to reshape the United States government into an authoritarian, Christian Nationalist regime. The Heritage Foundation, in partnership with 110 conservative Christian organizations, drafted the plan to consolidate executive power under Donald Trump through the implementation of anti-democratic, far-right policies determined to reverse decades of civil rights progress. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts recently threatened "we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be." Former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson responded on X, “This is chilling. Their idea of a second American Revolution is to undo the first one.”
Project 2025 is the latest, and most comprehensive blueprint for complete conservative control of the American government. As America becomes less white, less Christian, and more sexually diverse, a growing contingent of conservatives are waging an ideological war on democracy. In step by step detail, their 920 page Mandate For Leadership: The Conservative Promise outlines the Republican creation of a totalitarian government, all in God’s name. They will use the Bible, not the Constitution, to create public policy. Just not the Jesus parts. The red letters have always been inconvenient instructions to religious fundamentalists. It’s why evangelicals are plastering the Ten Commandments all over public schools instead of the Sermon on the Mount. The tribal, violent God of the Old Testament is far more politically expedient than woke Jesus. After all, how do you set up a tyrannical theocracy around a guy who commanded us to love our enemies and do good to those who who hate you?
Under Project 2025, Republicans will attack women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and the BIPOC community by eliminating the agencies and offices responsible for enforcing civil rights laws while simultaneously placing groomed right-wing ideologues in staff positions throughout the federal government. Project 2025 is the GOP’s version of Mein Kampf, a bit longer and even more sinister. The Washington Post calls it "the most detailed articulation of what a second Trump term would look like."
Project 2025 details four goals and an exhaustive presidential transition strategy. The four goals are:
Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
Dismantle the administrative state.
Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely.
Before you dismiss this as yet another progressive crying wolf, hear me out. I was an evangelical’s evangelical. I worked in leadership at Focus on the Family for ten years. I’ve been in meetings with the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, and Family Policy Councils. I heard the private parts out loud. Project 2025 is decades in the making. This cabal of politically motivated evangelical Christians are Dominionists. They believe in their God-given mandate to rule, to seize power as the surest way to bring about God’s kingdom. Though the Constitution strictly forbids it, “45% of U.S. adults – including about six-in-ten Christians – say they think the country ‘should be’ a Christian nation, reports Pew Research Center. “The 'Christian' in Christian nationalism is more about identity than religion and carries with it assumptions about nativism, white supremacy, authoritarianism, patriarchy, and militarism,” writes Amanda Tyler of the Baptist Joint Committee. In the American evangelical worldview, there is no distinction between Christianity and America, much less the Republican Party platform. The cause of Christ is directly linked to the proliferation of conservativism. You remember what American Jesus said don’t you? “Thy kingdom come, the Republican Party’s will be done.”
Not only is Christian Nationalism heretical, it will lead to violence. When political victory is undertaken in the name of God, “there can be no limit to the killing, because so much is allegedly at stake,” warns theologian Stanley Hauerwas. Every time powerful Christians have attempted to bring heaven down to earth in the form of political authority, they have unleashed hell up from below.
Project 2025 is an Orwellian nightmare. America will become, like conservative evangelical beliefs, infallible and all-powerful, free from critique, void of scientific reason, bereft of compassion, replete with conspiracy theories, holistically cruel, and burning with hatred toward the other.
Project 2025 Public Policy
The most troubling aspect of Project 2025 is The Presidential Transition Plan. It paves the way for an extremist, authoritarian administration based on four pillars:
Party Policy: In partnership with Moms For Liberty, Alliance Defending Freedom, Hillsdale College, Turning Point USA, The Claremont Institute, and Liberty University, The Heritage Foundation crafted an alt-right, Christian Nationalist policy agenda intent on seizing control of the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission. The plan will abolish the Department of Education and significantly reduce climate care projects. It will eliminate the Head Start program. It will cut overtime protections for 4.3 million workers. The mandate will criminalize pornography and remove legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs will be abolished, and the teaching of critical race theory will be banned. Party policy also takes direct aim at same-sex marriage by seeking to "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family." Project 2025 will “Embolden racial discrimination in everything from housing to education to employment,” writes Democracy Forward. Taken straight from the Nazi playbook, the Project recommends the arrest, detention, deportation, and annihilation of undocumented immigrants. Like the Third Reich, party policy will be government policy. No variation between Republican ideology and the American government will be tolerated, since Trump will unilaterally control both.
Party Loyalty: The most loyal party followers will hold key positions throughout the government. Project 2025 is currently creating a vetted database of Right Wing extremists to assume leadership roles in the new administration. This presidential database consists of Trump disciples who are currently being vetted, trained, groomed, and positioned as foot soldiers in the new regime. These bureaucratic henchmen will be loyal to Trump alone. To be admitted to the "Presidential Personnel Database," a potential recruit must answer a number of detailed questions pertaining to his or her ideologies. One question is "name one living public policy figure whom you greatly admire and why." A recruit's social media accounts are scrutinized, and any disloyalty to the party immediately disqualifies one from service. Tens of millions of tax payer dollars will be spent to install as many as 54,000 Trump loyalists at every level of government. This will give new meaning to the phrase, “Working Toward the Fuhrer.”
Party Indoctrination: Project 2025 has established the Presidential Administration Academy, an online institute of classes, trainings, and certifications designed to indoctrinate the next generation of government officials in American exceptionalism, Deep State propaganda, Christian Nationalism, and the practicalities of navigating the federal government hiring process. The Presidential Administration Academy is currently training MAGA lackeys who will be ready on day one of Trump’s presidency to “take back our government.” Borrowed from the Hitler Youth, the academy will indoctrinate the next generation of federal employees in the MAGA mentality and theocratic ideology.
The Party Playbook: The fourth pillar of Project 2025 is a step-by-step guide to the first 180 days of Trump’s second term. As they say in their own words: “It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration.” This isn’t just about winning the election, it is about the complete and totalizing control of the federal government. The “Transition Playbook” is a comprehensive, concrete strategy to seize party control of every federal agency by eliminating dissent, replacing existing federal employees with Presidential Administration Academy graduates, and merging party and government into one monolithic movement. Under Project 2025, the only people legally allowed to work in the federal government are Republican Party goons.
A Note on Language
I spent the better part of the Fourth of July reading the Mandate For Leadership. It is terrifying. You can feel the venom in every paragraph. Hatred leaps off the page. Joseph Goebbels would be proud. The language in their policy manual is authoritarian, deceptive, violent, and a dog whistle for a whiter past. Every totalitarian regime needs a demonic enemy. What the Jews were to Hitler, “woke culture warriors,” are to Right Wing evangelicals. Entire paragraphs are dedicated to dehumanizing language toward kind, inclusive, tolerant, and thoughtful people and policies. Even the word “family,” which regularly appears throughout the mandate, is riddled with meaning. When the mandates states they want to “Restore the family” and “protect our children,” they don’t mean your family or your children. They mean white, conservative, heterosexual, patriarchal, Christian families. They will ban no-fault divorce and potentially even criminalize same-sex unions. “Federal power must instead be wielded to reverse the crisis (single-parent homes) and rescue America’s kids from familial breakdown.” Funny, there is no mention of the greatest single threat to Christian kids, which is their local Southern Baptist youth pastor. Project 2025 will also strip women’s rights and force you to stay in abusive marriages.
Some of the more alarming language in the Mandate For Leadership includes the following:
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment Rights.”
“The noxious tenants of ‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology’ should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country…Every threat to family stability should be confronted.”
The authors of Project 2025 claim to support limited government, while giving government the unlimited power to control your sexuality, reproductive decisions, and marital status. “They claim to support the working class, while calling for tax cuts for the rich, elimination of labor protections and deregulation of big business and the oil industry,” writes Carrie N. Baker at Ms. They claim to support free speech while muzzling party dissent, banning critical race conversations, and forcing educational institutions to teach American exceptionalism.
Project 2025 is a direct assault on American democracy. If Trump is elected, the United States will degenerate into a violent theocracy led by white evangelicals. They have no intention of giving any quarter. Nothing less than a full Christo-fascist takeover of American public, political, social, sexual, and economic life is their final solution.
What Can You Do?
It is now painfully obvious that politically motivated conservative evangelicals are the greatest threat to American democracy. Their collective susceptibility to authoritarian leaders, conspiracy theories, hatred of the other, and a penchant for violence make them one of the more radicalized subsections of American society. How do we respond? How do we resist Project 2025 and the bootlickers behind it?
Remember Our Roots
In its infancy, the Jesus movement was an underground, anti-imperial band of cultural misfits living on the margins of society. Followers of Jesus had no power, little wealth, and shared all they had in common, yet they changed the world. They were universally nonviolent and refused to force their beliefs on others. Despite being hunted, persecuted, and oppressed, they thrived as a community of resistance to the brutal normalcy of the Roman Empire. This fledgling community saw the cross of Christ as the central political event in all of history and realized the blasphemy of identifying any earthly political order with the reign of God.
Like them, our task isn’t to join in nationalistic causes or ascend the corridors of power. Rather, we find our deepest identity as members of an alternative global community whose social, economic, political, and ethical allegiance is to Christ alone. Instead of ruling over others, we serve them. “The place of the church is thus not in the seats of the establishment but in the camps and marching columns of the protestors,” writes author and missionary Leslie Newbigin.
Follow the Way
“From his first testing in the desert to the last one in the garden, Jesus’ unceasing temptation was the plea of the crowds and of his disciples to strike out on the path of righteous kingship,” writes theologian John Howard Yoder. The second Satanic temptation in the wilderness was Christian Nationalism.
“The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.’”
The temptation has always been to bring about God’s good ends through evil means. Whenever the disciples wanted to use force to bring about God’s kingdom, Jesus rebuked them. The way of power is not the way of Jesus. He chose to fulfill his kingdom through weakness, not coercion—which might be why the religious leaders of his day and of ours would rather follow Barabbas the insurrectionist than Jesus, the nonviolent resister. God reigns from a wooden cross, not a golden throne.
Speak Truth to Power
The last thing we need are more courtly pastors comfortable in the Oval Office. Instead of nationalistic Christianity, we need prophetic Christianity—a Christianity that calls into question the very empire in which we live and move and have our being. We need prophets who speak truth to power. People like Dorothy Day, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Oscar Romero. We need saints, not militants, who disrupt, not support, the “dirty rotten system.” In a nation ripe with domination, divided by racism, entrenched in patriarchy, and ruled by the wealthy at the expense of the poor, our role is to be prophetic, not powerful. “Although the Bible may not endorse any particular political agenda, it places in question any agenda that protects the privilege of some at the expense of others,” writes Episcopal Church Bishop Thomas E. Breidenthal.
Create Beauty
Authoritarianism and Christian Nationalism are totalizing ideologies. They thrive in cultures overwhelmed by propaganda. In such regimes, there is no room for dissent. The voice and opinions of the party are absolute. No wonder evangelicals are always clamoring about “absolute truth.” However, there remains a class of citizens created to cause good trouble—poets, writers, actors, painters, content creators, and dreamers daring the powers that be with new creation and alternative worlds. Artists inherently question the status quo. They offer another perspective beyond the singular party voice. They have the power to capture the imagination and change the course of history. It is no wonder artists were some of the first victims of the Holocaust. It’s why the authors of Project 2025 vehemently attack higher education and the intelligentsia. In Eve Ewing’s New York Times editorial Why Authoritarians Attack the Arts, she shares:
“As Hitler understood, artists play a distinctive role in challenging authoritarianism. Art creates pathways for subversion, for political understanding and solidarity among coalition builders. Art teaches us that lives other than our own have value. Like the proverbial court jester who can openly mock the king in his own court, artists who occupy marginalized social positions can use their art to challenge structures of power in ways that would otherwise be dangerous or impossible.
One of the simplest ways to resist Project 2025 and the ugly ideology behind it is to create beauty. “Every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist,” declares Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann. Be creative. Let your voice be heard. Write poetry. Support local artists and content creators. Platform writers and artists who are speaking out against Christian Nationalism.
Project 2025 is on the ballot in November. Tell everyone you know about it. Share this article on your social media accounts. We can defeat Christian Nationalism. There are more compassionate citizens in this nation than cruel Christians. May we the people join forces to create a more perfect Union. We can create a nation where justice, tranquility, general welfare, inclusive belonging, and the blessings of liberty are given to everyone no matter their race, creed, sexual orientation, or gender identity. That sounds like the Kingdom of God to me, not the evangelical hellscape that is Project 2025.
Democracy isn’t the only item at stake this November. The very nature and character of the church is being redefined and corrupted by this quest for power. May we be people of peace, willing to shed rivers of blood instead of spilling innocent blood to finally bring about God’s peaceable kingdom.
Gary Alan Taylor
The greatest danger to the future of American democracy is white, evangelical Christians.