We Are Already Living the Project 2025 Nightmare
Trumps plans for education and justice are upon us
The other day, I wrote about Cassandra, the priestess in Greek mythology cursed to always give accurate predictions that no one would listen to.
The thing about Cassandra is that when she warned Troy not to accept the Trojan horse and they didn’t believe her and called her crazy, she didn’t get to say, “I told you so.” Instead, she had to watch her nation burn. There is no satisfaction in being right when your homeland suffers in agonizing but preventable ways.
We are already living the Project 2025 nightmare and Trump isn’t even president yet.
Video surfaced of Trump earlier this year laying out his plans to obliterate education in this country:
“I will direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination. Schools that persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity will not only have their endowments taxed, but through budget reconciliation I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment. A portion of the seized funds will be used as restitution for victims of these illegal and unjust policies, policies that hurt our country so badly.”
Many have pointed out that this sounds like reparations… for white people.
In a country of white people that captured and enslaved black people for centuries. That forced black people to pick their cotton and harvest their tobacco, clean their homes, and nurse their babies while their own children starved. In a country that beat and raped them and chased them with dogs.
In a country that considered black people three-fifths human. That fought an entire war over over whether or not they were people or possessions. In a country that finally freed slaves but declined to tell them about it. That denied them the right to own land, buy property, open a bank account. In a country that tried to dictate where they lived, and denied them generational wealth, education, social equality, and votes.
In all the ways this country has openly tried to suppress Black Americans, to decide that WHITE people are the ones who deserve reparations is, well…
WILDLY RACIST
It’s also not unexpected. Trump’s video is just one of his attacks on academia that echo Project 2025’s verbatim plans for public education. Project 2025 AND Trump have talked about abolishing the Education Department with all of its pesky rules and standards for making learning accessible for students of all races, sexes, religious beliefs, and abilities. The behemoth 920-word document describes removing more than 180,000 teacher positions, eliminating Title 1 protections, and harming more 2.8 million vulnerable students across the country.
Project 2025 describes punishments for any school that tries to continue DEI initiatives, uses affirmative action, pursues racial justice, or is otherwise considered “woke.”
The next president “should promote educational opportunities outside the woke-dominated system of public schools and universities, including trade schools, apprenticeship programs, and student-loan alternatives that fund students’ dreams instead of Marxist academics.” [Page 15]
Later, Project 2025 describes withholding funds from public schools and giving them to private, K-12 schools and universities, especially those that are considered religious, military-oriented or patriotic. It puts students from those schools in the propaganda pipeline where diversity of thought is reviled and authoritarianism is celebrated. This reminds me of the Hitler youth, the youth organization of the Nazi Party in Germany that dates back to 1922. By the time those students came of age, they were already desensitized to violence and taught to hate Jews. They were primed for the horrors the Nazis were ready to unleash on Europe and the world.
But that can’t happen in America, right? Who will carry out these investigations and punishments of public schools? Who will decide which ones to defund? That’s where the Justice Department comes in.
We know of Trump’s plans to use the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. In order to make his plan work, he just needs an unscrupulous lackey with as sordid a background as his own.
Enter Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, who Trump named Attorney General yesterday. A House Ethics Panel has been investigating allegations that Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, and sex trafficking underage girls. Now that Trump has given him the role of AG and paved the way for him to begin work without a Senate confirmation, it seems he’s off the hook and the report will be buried.
And while I believe that someday history will tell the vile details of Gaetz’s behavior, justice delayed is justice denied. His victims will be silenced as he rises to power. Gaetz will likely have the opportunity to abuse the American people in unimaginable ways before he will ever face accountability for any of his past abuses.
Tapping a known sexual predator of underage girls for Attorney General because why not? All those criminals that MAGA voters were supposedly so afraid of? They just put them in the highest places in our government. I guess they’re only scary when they’re immigrants.
Hey conservatives, I would worry less about boys in girls locker rooms and more about pedophiles in the Oval Office.
I’ll be honest, the Gaetz appointment has me absolutely reeling. Attorney General is probably the most powerful of Trump’s cabinet selections. It mostly hurts because it’s not like women already felt bereft about America choosing a sexual predator as president. Now we will have one in charge of our justice system too.
What’s next? Hannibal Lecter for the head of the USDA?
Gaetz is also uniquely unqualified because he’s spent his time in office not working for the good of constituents, but sowing chaos in the House of Representatives. Early during the pandemic, he wore a gas mask on the floor of the House to ridicule representatives and constituents who were taking the pandemic seriously. Later he played a role in trying to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat.
Is this a man who has ever written a bill to help his constituents? No. Is this a man who has ever even made a casserole for a friend in need? Also no.
But Trump isn’t looking for qualifications, he’s looking for yes men with a proven track record of sociopathy. He’s looking for people he can control, not people who care about the rule of law. With yesterday’s announcement that Republicans have a majority in the House, conservatives control all chambers of government now. In order to stop what is happening, there have to be Republicans with the courage and integrity to hold Trump accountable and stand up for the constitution. The number willing to do that is dwindling by the day.
People will want to deny and downplay what is happening. They’ll want to dissociate, focus on their holiday shopping and their football games, and their travel plans. Don’t let them. It’s important that autocracy doesn’t sneak up on us, that we can see it, name it, fight it. Not to say, “I told you so,” but to save our country from flames and ruin. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here with you to help with that.
But for now, I’m going to go watch a true crime documentary to relax.
Onward, Democracy Defenders
I'm dreading the holidays with my reality-denying family members
Attention should not be on Trump. He's just a decoy, a patsy. In a year he is of no more value for P2025 once he's established their strongholds. Then he will hear the awful truth, will live an easy life in the White House while others will run the shop, for him in name only.