In recent months Project 2025: The Heritage Foundation’s right-wing extremist blueprint for a second Trump presidency has come under increased scrutiny by presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, the media and voters. Among the long list of highly detailed policy proposals the plan calls for: immediately firing thousands of qualified civil servants and replacing them with Trump loyalists; further abolition of reproductive rights; deploying the National Guard to crack down on protests; using the military for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants; and weaponizing the Department of Justice to prosecute Trump’s political opponents and pardoning Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
One central feature of Project 2025 that’s often overlooked is that this 900-page document is rooted in Christian nationalism — with the clear goal of replacing democracy with an extremist Christian theocracy that would enable people to use their faith to ignore many civil rights and replacing man’s law with “God’s law.”
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Andra Watkins, a New York Times best-selling author, who’s devoted many months researching and dissecting Project 2025 on her Substack online newsletter, “How Project 2025 Will Ruin Your Life.” Here Watkins, who was raised in a Christian fundamentalist home, attended a Christian nationalist school and a church that was one of the founding members of Jerry Falwell Sr.’s “Moral Majority,” talks about the threat posed by Project 2025, that despite recent denials, would serve as a blueprint for a second Trump presidency.
ANDRA WATKINS: Project 2025 starts with four promises to the American people and the first promise is that the family is the most important thing in American life. But their definition of the family is the traditional heterosexual one man married to one unrelated woman with as many children as God gives them.
Christian nationalism is steeped in the view that the Bible is infallible and inherent and it is God’s perfect law. So all of the people in our government who adhere to Christian nationalism believe that they are called by God to replace any law that violates their interpretation of the Bible or God’s law, with God’s law, which is a form of biblical law, sacred law, sharia law. However you want to define it.
They believe that they are ordained by God to do that. So we have seen red states, Republican states follow through with that in areas of abortion and IVF, with the ruling in Alabama. In Republican refusal to enshrine the right to contraception as federal law. In attacks on transgender people and same-sex marriage and no fault divorce. All of these are things they tie to their interpretation of the Bible and they believe that they are called by God to make all of us, whether we even believe the Bible or not, live by their interpretation of the Bible as enshrined in our laws at the federal and state level.
SCOTT HARRIS: Andra, in a recent Trump speech, he told a group of Christian supporters there that if they elect him in 2024, they won’t have to vote anymore if he wins the November election. What’s the message he’s sending there? That he will declare the end of democracy? Or is it something less nefarious?
ANDRA WATKINS: Project 2025 declares the end of democracy. And the Supreme Court already paved the way for that the week of July 4th in their ruling that presidents have limited immunity and can be above the law. They also passed other rulings that week weakening the power of the federal government, all of which was called for in Project 2025.
Project 2025 is not just a policy document. They have a secret tactical document that Kevin Roberts even admitted to a couple of weeks ago. And so we can look at what various red states are doing vis-a-vis these kinds of things: transgender laws, book bans, anti-DEI and critical race theory teachings, anti-LGBTQ laws, etc. Of course abortion bans, to see what is in the tactical document that undergirds Project 2025.
So many red states are already living in a version of Project 2025 theocratic America, whether people realize that or not. So it’s really important for people to understand that if we do not vote to have democracy in November, we may never get to vote for democracy again. Trump was being honest about that. They intend to establish a theocratic dictatorship and Project 2025 invests almost all the power of the federal government in the president, who would be a dictator.
For more information, subscribe to Andra Watkin’s Substack newsletter, “How Project 2025 Will Ruin YOUR Life.”
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