As the second Trump administration and the 119th Congress take power, the Center for Progressive Reform will defend our safeguards and stand up for our democracy. We’ll also drive, support, and showcase progress and positive developments on climate justice, environmental justice, a just energy transition, and more when and where they occur in the states.
As a candidate for president, Donald Trump repeatedly denied any knowledge of or full support for the Project 2025 agenda. As President-elect, however, Trump and his transition team are now warmly embracing its recommendations and the personnel who put their names behind them. Several people close to Trump have said they “can’t wait” to start implementing the Heritage Foundation’s authoritarian blueprint. And Trump has nominated several Project 2025 contributors to key positions in his administration, including chief architect Russell Vought, who is set to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget, a role he played during Trump 1.0.
We’ve offered a constructive alternative to Project 2025, and while we don’t expect the second Trump administration to take it up, it can serve as an outline for future administrations focused on the public interest.
Related op-ed: The Regulatory Review, “The Administrative State in a Project 2025 World”
Donald Trump wasted no time in preparing to take a wrecking ball to decades’ of progress on our health, safety, climate, and environmental protections. Soon after the election, he announced the creation of a “Department” of “Government Efficiency,” which is neither an official department of the federal government nor structured to be particularly efficient as Trump nominated two people to lead the effort: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
We immediately called out this preposterous but dangerous undertaking, noting that while it’s tempting to dismiss the proposal as deeply unserious, we learned under Trump 1.0 that even the most foolish initiatives can pose a significant threat to the health of our economy and our democratic institutions. Indeed, “DOGE” has the potential to inflict a lot of damage — particularly if a federal judiciary stocked with Trump-appointed judges gives its activities a free pass with little or no review.
Among other things, the advisory body could provide the institutional platform for implementing many of the most radical proposals in Project 2025; become the epicenter of corruption and conflicts of interest in the Trump administration; contribute to the erosion of public esteem for our governing institutions, adding more momentum to our backsliding into illiberalism; and do serious damage to efforts to ensure clean air, clean water, a livable climate, uncontaminated food, safe workplaces, and financial security for hundreds of millions of Americans.
Going forward, we at the Center will draw on our expertise to hold this body accountable and do what we can to limit the damage.
Related op-ed: The Hill, “Inefficient and reckless: Why DOGE could be so dangerous”
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