Earlier this week, the Republican Party adopted its political program for a possible next government, but it is another script, much more radical and promoted by those closest to Donald Trump, that is generating debate.
Titled “Project 2025,” this 887-page plan was drawn up by the Heritage Foundation, a highly influential conservative think tank in Washington.
In particular, it plans to reform the status of federal employees, until now protected from political power shifts, which could allow Trump, if he returns to the White House in 2025, to position loyal ultraconservatives in strategic positions.
The text also proposes the restructuring of federal agencies to centralize executive power in the White House and thus allow the implementation of a very conservative policy on issues ranging from immigration to abortion.
Opponents of the former Republican president denounce the project as a compilation of authoritarian and far-right ideas.
Among the most criticized measures are the creation of “abortion surveillance” by state governments, the ban on the abortion pill used in most voluntary pregnancy terminations and the limitation on the use of the morning-after pill.
They also criticize measures that aim to end all clean energy programs or that promote even more aggressive exploitation of fossil fuels.
– Campaign pitch for Biden –
“We are on the path to a second American revolution, which will be bloodless if the left does not oppose it,” Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, said in early July, referring to a recent Supreme Court decision granting the former president broad immunity.
His comments were criticized by some politicians.
In light of the controversy surrounding “Project 2025”, Donald Trump distanced himself from the text.
“I haven’t seen it, I have no idea who’s behind it,” the candidate said on his Truth Social network, declaring that the Republican Party-backed program “has nothing to do” with Heritage.
In 2022, at a dinner hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the billionaire said, however, that the work then carried out by this organization would lay the foundations “for what our movement will do” during a second term.
If the script adopted at the Republican convention in Milwaukee shows much more moderate positions, especially on abortion, the “Project 2025” takes up multiple ideas put forward by Donald Trump.
For example, the dismantling of the Department of Education, or the reform of the federal government, which he accuses of being instrumentalized against conservatives, or even the carrying out of mass arrests and deportations of irregular migrants.
His rival, Democrat Joe Biden, was quick to make the plan a central plank of his campaign, accusing Trump of trying to hide his ties to the bill, which he said was enough to “terrify” voters.
Democrats point to several members of the Republican tycoon’s inner circle for their relationship or participation in the preparation of “Project 2025”.
Among them, Stephen Miller, Trump’s main former advisor, and even Ben Carson and Christopher Miller, former members of his cabinet.
In Milwaukee, where the Republican convention is taking place, the Democratic Party also installed a dozen posters denouncing “the terrible Project 2025 program” of Trump and his running mate JD Vance.
The Democratic comments are “misinformation,” spokespeople for the Heritage Foundation in Milwaukee criticized Monday.
2024-07-17 20:10:14