Dear John,
Who could have guessed it? Just a matter of hours after the US election result was announced, Trump’s allies flat-out admitted that Project 2025 was the plan all along.
It looks like America is heading towards the theocratic, authoritarian vision laid out by the far-right Heritage Foundation - despite Trump distancing himself from it during the election campaign . What does that mean for US democracy…and how might it affect us here in the UK?
Here’s what we know so far:
Various authors of the Project 2025 Report are now jockeying for positions in the new government;
Work has begun on plans to fire tens of thousands of non-partisan federal civil servants, and to replace them with Trump loyalists;
Rumours are swirling that high-level government officials are being made to swear a loyalty pledge – including senior military personnel.
Trump’s team has begun work on a mass deportation plan that will give federal agents unprecedented powers to invade homes and communities, with a bottomless budget to pay for it.
Part of that plan includes new “denaturalisation” powers, which would allow the US government to strip any Americans of their citizenship. It’s not difficult to see how a man like Trump could use this as tool to crush opposition and dissent.
For those of us who didn’t take Trump’s denials at face value, it wasn’t hard to see this coming. This is a blueprint for 21st century authoritarianism and we’re about to see it put into practice. The hollowing-out of the civil service, the rapid expansion of executive powers, the enforced loyalty of senior public officials, the mass mobilisation of the police and military - this is textbook fascism, customised for the modern era.
We’ve seen the playbook. It would be naive to think that Trump’s allies here - Farage, Johnson, Truss, Badenoch, et al - aren’t already working-up their own version for 2029.
We need to be resolute in our opposition to that.
