Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. … You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.
That’s Donald Trump speaking to the Believers Summit in Florida. It sounds as though he wants to Christianize everything so permanently that there will be no reason left for Christians to bother voting. Apparently if you're among the 122 million Americans who aren't Christian, you're out of luck. But what could Trump mean specifically? Project 2025 gives us answers.
Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation’s playbook for “the next Republican President” as they phrase it. With input from many other conservative organizations and many former Trump Administration officials, Project 2025 is a 920-page compendium of conservative policy proposals for every federal agency. Project 2025 is also the gathering and vetting of thousands of resumes from conservative/MAGA Republicans to fill the four thousand high-level government positions a new president gets to fill.
The Heritage Foundation has been developing policy proposals for new Administrations since the 1980s but not with a 920-page road map until this year. Heritage officials want Donald Trump to be as prepared this time to bring in conservatives and implement conservative policies as he was unprepared in 2016. It’s questionable how much interest he has in who is hired for a deputy assistant secretary position at an agency or what they do there. Project 2025 eliminates the need for him to ever worry about that. It provides the people to run his federal government and their objectives.
Our mission at the Secular Coalition for America is to defend the rights of nonreligious Americans and to fight for the separation of church and state. When we see 920 pages of ideas for changing the federal government and the words “religion,” ”religious,” “faith-based,” “Christian,” “Sabbath,” and “God” show up 170 times, well, we know Christian nationalism when we see it. We know a plan that must never be implemented. And we remember that the Constitution of the United States contains those six words a combined total of one time, and that’s where it says there will be no requirement for a religious test for any public office. The Constitution is a secular document that established a secular government. Project 2025 spells out ways for the next Republican president to change that.
Here are ten of the 170 examples, all quoted:
Not every proposal in Project 2025 that would benefit faith-based organizations or schools, or allow discrimination based on religion, includes any of those six keywords such as “religion” in the text. For example, Project 2025 wants the Department of Education to greatly expand funding for school vouchers that could be used at private, and therefore religious, schools, weakening public school systems in the process. But that section doesn’t mention religious schools, just private schools.
One of the most insidious threats in Project 2025 is the plan to change the employment status of tens of thousands of federal employees who currently can’t be fired without any reason by a new president, and then fire them and replace them with loyalists who may not actually be qualified for those positions. Currently medium- and lower-level federal employees have job protections that allow for continuity when a new president takes office so federal agencies can maintain experienced employees who do nonpolitical work. Can Donald Trump fire tens of thousands of federal employees without cause? He actually did change their employment status in 2020, but never actually got to the firing stage of the plan, and then President Biden reversed it. So yes.
Donald Trump has disavowed Project 2025, saying "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.” Which is difficult to square with his statement from two years ago at the Heritage Foundation: “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.” If elected Trump would probably suddenly discover the value in making use of Project 2025, or his top advisors certainly would. Eight years ago he was apoplectic when he found out he had to pay the salaries of the people working on his transition team (that he eventually fired). This time there’s no charge, courtesy of the Heritage Foundation.
Project 2025 is a plan written with help from Christian nationalists such as Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director to infuse religion in federal programs and benefit religious groups receiving federal funding. There’s a lot more to dislike in Project 2025; the climate change denial, the politicization of the Justice Department, the consolidation of power with the President.
The Secular Coalition for America is sounding the alarm and organizing our 20 member organizations to keep Project 2025 from ever happening because of its un-American merging of church and state.