Why it matters: This dream — a true decades-long, unfolding nightmare for Democrats — is closer to reality than at any point in our lifetimes.
1. A strong president indifferent to pressure. Well, that's Trump. He has long held that his power in office is virtually unchecked. The Supreme Court just added another layer of protection. The Justices ruled in Trump v. U.S. that presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within their core constitutional duties, and presumptive immunity for other official acts. It'll take years to sort out the elasticity of immunity — but it's wide.
2. A compliant, Republican-controlled Congress. It's a coin toss who wins the House and Senate this year — much like it has been throughout this era of a 50-50 America. The Senate looks promising for the GOP, thanks to a favorable map that has Democrats playing defense in deep-red West Virginia, Montana and Ohio, plus five swing states. The House is harder, mainly because there are lots more Republicans in Biden-won districts than vice versa.
3. A conservative Supreme Court. A 6-3 majority is significant, as the most recent decisions showed. It was the six Republican-appointed justices who expanded presidential power. The three Democrats warned of a looming monarchy.
4. A weakened administrative state. The Court, in a series of rulings but most notably the reversal of the Chevron decision, handed Republicans a massive triumph in a 40-year war to weaken independent agencies. It basically ruled that individual bureaucrats and independent agencies can no longer set the rules for business regulation.
5. Purge hostile federal employees. Right now, a lot of the nitty-gritty of governing is handled by full-time civil servants who aren't political appointees and often operate outside the full control of the president. But Trump has threatened to fire tens of thousands of these civil servants and replace them with pre-vetted loyalists.
The intrigue: Trump last week tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which is recruiting loyalists to help carry out radical plans to transform the U.S. government.
by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, Axios | Read more:
Image: Shoshana Gordon/Axios; Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
[ed. Project 2025. Can you imagine the back-stabbing and loss of institutional knowledge that will occur as thousands of new, inexperienced federal employees are hired simply because they're conservative and have a mandate to dismantle government? No words do justice (though a time-worn analogy/precedent comes to mind - Nazi Germany). See also: What this would actually mean in practice (Washington Post):]- If you're a Republican, you probably love this. If you're a Democrat, you probably loathe it. Either way, readers should be clear-eyed about the totality of sweeping change in governing power.
- If Trump wins and congressional Republicans run the table, the other components for the most powerful White House in history are set firmly in place, and increasingly in law.
2. A compliant, Republican-controlled Congress. It's a coin toss who wins the House and Senate this year — much like it has been throughout this era of a 50-50 America. The Senate looks promising for the GOP, thanks to a favorable map that has Democrats playing defense in deep-red West Virginia, Montana and Ohio, plus five swing states. The House is harder, mainly because there are lots more Republicans in Biden-won districts than vice versa.
3. A conservative Supreme Court. A 6-3 majority is significant, as the most recent decisions showed. It was the six Republican-appointed justices who expanded presidential power. The three Democrats warned of a looming monarchy.
4. A weakened administrative state. The Court, in a series of rulings but most notably the reversal of the Chevron decision, handed Republicans a massive triumph in a 40-year war to weaken independent agencies. It basically ruled that individual bureaucrats and independent agencies can no longer set the rules for business regulation.
5. Purge hostile federal employees. Right now, a lot of the nitty-gritty of governing is handled by full-time civil servants who aren't political appointees and often operate outside the full control of the president. But Trump has threatened to fire tens of thousands of these civil servants and replace them with pre-vetted loyalists.
The intrigue: Trump last week tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which is recruiting loyalists to help carry out radical plans to transform the U.S. government.
- He claimed to "know nothing about Project 2025." Truth is, Project 2025 was largely written by his allies and encapsulates a lot of what he hopes to do — and how he might do it, longtime Trump officials tell us.
- But the biggest long-term victory for the conservative agenda (although not necessarily presidential power) is the Supreme Court's end to independent agencies or officials dictating everything from securities laws to toxin levels in food or water.
- It's not hyperbole to say this Supreme Court did more to weaken agencies and federal bureaucrats in a few days than previous courts did in decades.
- "And yet it's far from clear that the right will be in any place to meaningfully capitalize on that fact, or that it's likely to persist and bring an end to the back and forth of the partisan seesaw that has characterized the 21st century," he added. "Since the beginning of this century, both parties have interpreted each of their narrow and ephemeral election wins as ushering in a sustainable new era they will dominate. They have been wrong to think so every time ... An election between two 80-year-olds feels more like an ending than a beginning."
Image: Shoshana Gordon/Axios; Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
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"The exhaustive plan calls for, among other things, dismantling the Department of Education, passing sweeping tax cuts, imposing sharp limits on abortion, giving the White House greater influence over the Justice Department, reducing efforts to limit climate change and increasing efforts to promote fossil fuels, drastically cutting and changing the federal workforce and giving the president more power over the civil service.It also includes building an “army” of conservatives ready to take jobs should Trump win in 2025. The project was partially fueled by a desire to be ready for “Day One” of a conservative presidency. Vacancies in key jobs, for example, contributed to chaos during Trump’s first term.
“Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State,” Paul Dans, the project’s director, said on the project website."
