Serious question: Do the republicans in office want to go back to the America of the 50's or am I trying to make sense of it by thinking too simple?

[email protected]

TL;DR: Project 2025 is a 920-page conservative blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation and 100+ organizations to radically reshape the federal government if Republicans win the presidency.

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 is a comprehensive plan created by The Heritage Foundation along with over 100 conservative organizations to prepare for the next Republican presidential administration. The project aims to "assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State." Wikipedia Heritage

The Four Pillars

Project 2025 is built on four main components:

"Mandate for Leadership" - A 920-page policy blueprint covering every federal agency
Personnel Database - A "Conservative LinkedIn" to vet and place loyalists in government positions
Training Programs - To prepare conservatives for government roles
Implementation Playbook - Step-by-step guide for the first 180 days The Heritage Foundation

Key Policy Proposals

Labor & Economy:

Eliminate overtime eligibility for millions of workers by lowering salary thresholds Democracy Forward AFSCME
Weaken child labor protections and allow youth to work in more dangerous jobs AFSCME
Require federal contractors to be 70-95% U.S. citizens Wikipedia
Massive cuts to corporate and personal income taxes AFSCME

Social Programs:

Eliminate Head Start program serving 833,000+ children in poverty AFSCME
Impose work requirements on SNAP food assistance Democracy Forward
Phase out income-driven student loan repayment and Public Service Loan Forgiveness AFSCME

Reproductive Rights:

Remove abortion drug Mifepristone from market or limit to first 7 weeks AFSCME
Enforce the Comstock Act to ban mailing abortion medications AFSCME
Replace reproductive healthcare task forces with "pro-life task forces" AFSCME

Education:

Dismantle the Department of Education entirely AFSCME
Promote school choice and parental control over curricula

Immigration:

Cut off asylum at the border and slash legal immigration pathways Democracy Forward
Use local resources for mass deportations and detention Democracy Forward

Government Structure:

Reinstate executive orders restricting federal employee unions Wikipedia
Consolidate statistical agencies like Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics Democracy Forward
Replace career civil servants with political loyalists

Trump Connection

Despite Trump's public denials during the 2024 campaign, at least 140 people who worked on Project 2025 previously worked in Trump's first administration. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts described the organization's role as "institutionalizing Trumpism." CBS News Wikipedia After winning the 2024 election, Trump nominated several Project 2025 architects to key positions, and analysis shows nearly two-thirds of his early executive actions mirror Project 2025 proposals. PBS ACLU

Timeline & Funding

Project 2025 was established in 2022 and represents an eight-figure investment from conservative organizations. Wikipedia The Heritage Foundation planned to have 20,000 vetted personnel in its database by 2024. Wikipedia

Bottom Line

Critics argue Project 2025 represents an unprecedented effort to rapidly implement far-right policies that could affect millions of Americans - from cutting overtime pay for 4.3 million workers to reducing food assistance for 40 million people. Democracy Forward Supporters see it as restoring conservative principles and rolling back decades of liberal policies, with some looking to reverse precedents from the 1960s Great Society, 1930s New Deal, and even 1880s civil service reforms. PBS

The plan's comprehensive nature and rapid early implementation during Trump's second term has made it one of the most significant policy frameworks in recent political history.

Citations:

More sources:

Project 2025's "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise" | DocumentCloud

Generated by claude.

Also check out BBC's article. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c977njnvq2do

My concern as a citizen is the unfettered power of the president and loss of government institutions that were created to help and protect citizens. Our immigration process has been ducked for a long time but the anti immigration sentiment that is being stoked will have far reaching consequences that will impact families and our local economies from labor and tourism.

[email protected]

More like 1850s laws where they could own people they deemed lesser, with a 1950s Leave it to Beaver Coat of paint slapped on top... Where women couldn't get divorced without specific cause or have their own bank accounts, and everyone was pretending to be Christian due to the red scare

[email protected]

Did you know that in North Carolina, you need to be physically separated from your spouse for a full year before you can get divorced?

[email protected]

No utopias there, just rednecks doing whatever they want with no consequences. Or, that's what they think as the consequences build up until they're all dead.

This isn't rebirth, it's fire. They're setting the place on fire, because they want to see people burn as they die. They think it's funny. Their fictional god told them it's OK!

[email protected]

Other people have more detailed and factual answers, but a good heuristic is "there must be outgroups for the law to bind but not protect, and in groups for the law to protect but not bind". That's what they want. They want to do what they want while women and queers and non-whites are subjugated. They want to say something inappropriate and touch their women coworkers without consent, and know if she raises her voice she'll be fired.

They are scum.

[email protected]

And the benefit of using the harassment of women against you in the future if you step out of line.

It's *consequences for thee and not for me" at the finest.

[email protected]

Try 1830s

[email protected]

The voters were probably thinking about the nostalgia they had as a result of the progressive eras, because they'd get all the benefits, while also not having do deal with racism since they're white.

[email protected]

Correct.

They are legitimately too stupid to tell the difference between their specific childhood and the state of the entire world, so they think they can go back there if they try hard enough and force everyone else to pretend.

[email protected]

Agreed. I think this is more specifically it rather than the 50s.

Unfettered domestic commerce devoid of worker protections.
International trade viewed as zero-sum and managed using blunt instruments like tariffs.
America as a rising manufacturing power.
Nominally speaking there is no slavery, but Reconstruction is "done" and Southern elites have been rehabilitated and reintegrated without having to give up their power.
Foreign policy built on late-stage colonialism where areas within a great power's sphere of influence are silently allowed to be dominated so as not to antagonize other great powers. Relations handled by a stupid nest of ad-hoc limited-party treaties.
No effort is given to contextualizing what the American experiment has meant, and who it has harmed, just literally a "manifest destiny" from god to fill the land.

Ignore that the era was laissez-faire with immigrants actually arriving (though of course the robber barons who were working their laborers to death were okay with this... until they began to unionize), and it's a remarkably apt analogy. I'm pretty sure you can see Trump openly pining for The Gilded Age from time to time, though that may literally just be because he thinks gilding things is awesome.

[email protected]

I think people are desperate for change. Housing crisis and costs of living are unbearable for a huge portion of the population, which drives them crazy.

[email protected]

Do you have any examples of what you mean?

[email protected]

They're the Technocracy movement, started in the 1930s and stewing as a behind the scenes backer of conservative movements, such as the heritage foundation

Wikipedia link. If you read through that, you'll find a lot of the seemingly random shit they say, like taking the Panama canal, Greenland, and Canada, it's all related. This is the end goal

[email protected]

I do not think that they are pure technocrats. I think they do want to make an American empire, which has a spiritual and religious component to it.

[email protected]

I gave up on trying to understand because its all just racist, sexist, xenophobic bullshit with no substance of thought behind it. It's all the loudest, dumbest people taking control of the government while ultra-wealthy, straight-up evil oligarchs try to steer the idiots to their benefit. I stopped trying to convince MAGA-folks of anything because they are incapable of listening and thinking for themselves, and instead I'm working on my pistol aim and developing a mutual aide community.

[email protected]

The want the racist, sexist social aspects of the 50s, but not the economic ones. LBJ's New Deal allowed a thriving middle class to actually exist at the expense of wealthy people having as much money in their hoard. Can't have that!

[email protected]

I think they want to remove Atheism and all associated things with it from society. Trump calls himself christian, and his followers (voter base) are evangelical Christians.

Evangelical Christians ...

believe once Israel builds a temple the judgement day comes
all people who do not believe in Jesus is the personified God (or something like that) will go to eternal hell
believe in free market capitalism and hate all kinds of communism and state control in economy (even science)

And these evangelical gospels align well with Trump.

[email protected]

Ok? Even that archaic law is still world's better than "he's an asshole and there's no love left, but since he hasn't beaten me yet I can't EVER get a divorce" like it used to be before no fault divorce was legal. And marital rape was just...allowed.

So not sure what point you're trying to make here.

[email protected]

I was agreeing with you and providing an example of a stupid archaic law about marriage.

[email protected]

They're fascists. Literally.

They want to oppress in order to gain total control. Because that's what fascists do.

So no, the 50s don't really fit the bill for what they're being clear they want. In the 50s the middle class was strong because we taxed the everloving fuck out of the wealthy. That's not what they're going for here.

agnos.is Forums