Project 2025 is the GOP’s version of “Mein Kampf”—and it’s 100% Trump’s vision

They want to control every aspect of our lives

On July 18, 1925, Adolf Hitler released volume one of his political manifesto, Mein Kampf. This 400 plus page book—written while Hitler was in prison for his failed attempt coup known as The Beer Hall Putsch—has been described by historians as “a blueprint of his agenda for a Third Reich.”  Hitler would later release the second volume of Mein Kampf titled, “Die Nationalsozialistische Bewegung” (“The National Socialist Movement”) that outlined the political programs that his party would implement in an effort to “Make Germany Great Again.”

Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933 after his Nazi party’s success in the 1932 national election. From there, Hitler would implement his evil manifesto while ending Germany’s fledgling democracy known as the Weimar Republic.

Flash forward to 2024. We are confronted with Donald Trump--an aspiring authoritarian--who like Hitler led a failed coup but then pivoted to use democracy to destroy the Republic. And like with Mein Kampf in the 1930’s, today we are faced with an equally sinister political manifesto called, “Project 2025.” It’s formal name, though, should be “Donald Trump’s Project 2025” because everything about it is Trump and MAGA.

Thankfully, there has been increasing media coverage of Project 2025 and its anti-democratic, oppressive goals. That is why Trump on Friday posted on social media a “disavowal” of Project 2025, claiming he didn’t know who is behind it. In reality, what Project 2025 calls for is based exactly on what Trump did in office in his first term and vowed to do if he returns. That is not a surprise given those involved in Project 2025 are key people from Trump world including Ben Carson, Peter Navarro, Russ Vought (Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget), high-ranking former Trump official Paul Dans and many more.

Project 2025 -which should more accurately be called Project 1925 because that’s where these people want to take America back to—was spearheaded by the Trump loving Heritage Foundation. They organized a vast coalition of more than 100 Trump supporting organizations to collect their extreme wish list from Turning Point USA to the Susan B. Anthony anti-abortion organization to Moms’ for Liberty.  In sum, they have put in writing a “Christian nationalist” vision for America, which is not only about imposing their religious views upon us--but also ensuring white supremacy.

Project 2025 is not hiding the goal of turning their ideas into policy as stated in the opening of the manifesto: “It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration.”

To that end, Project 2025 has created a Presidential Administration Academy to train people in advance so they can be ready to impose the Project 2025 policy agenda once Trump wins.  From there, Project 2025 lays out the 180-day playbook that articulates the policies that they will work to impose in the first six months of Trump’s Reich.  Here are just a few of policy examples which are obviously taken right from Trump:

1.     Making the President a king. The GOP Supreme Court obviously beat Project 2025 to this goal with their recent ruling that a President is literally above the law—as Trump requested of them. But in the case of Project 2025, the focus is not avoiding criminal prosecution, it’s about placing the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, under the direct control of the President. This is 100% in line with Trump’s stated goals in this campaign.

2.     Ending civil service protections to ensure only those loyal to Trump/MAGA are in control. This is literally reinstating a Trump-era executive order that makes federal employees fireable at-will, stripping tens of thousands of employees of civil service protections. In other words, Trump can fill his administration with people loyal to him above the Constitution.

3.     Banning abortion and access to certain birth control. This is part of the Christian nationalist agenda of Project 2025 and can be achieved by Trump ordering his FDA to reverse approval of abortion drugs. But let’s not play games, their goal is a total national abortion ban where women are forced to carry a fetus to term against their will. If a GOP controlled Congress passed a national abortion ban, we know Trump will sign it given he has repeatedly told us “I’m the one that got rid of Roe v. Wade” and how “honored” he was to do so.

4.     Rolling back protections for LGBTQ people: Project 2025 wants to end LGBTQ workplace discrimination protections so that bigots can more easily fire people from that community. In addition, they are calling for reinstating a transgender military ban as well stopping what it considers the “toxic normalization of transgenderism” across American society. As a reminder, in Trump’s first term, he “initiated a sustained, years-long effort to erase protections for LGBTQ people” as the ACLU detailed.  And Trump has vowed to do exactly what Project 2025 is calling for by rolling back Biden protections for the LGBTQ community.

5.     Climate change: The plan’s proposals include ending existing climate programs and increasing reliance on fossil fuels. Project 2025 also advocates disbanding various bureaucratic offices related to renewable energy and climate science. Trump--who has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax”--as president rolled back Obama era regulations to address the issue. And if elected, he has pledged to do exactly what Project 2025 laid out—even recently telling oil executives that point blank in exchange for donations.

There are also detailed policies that line up perfectly with Trump’s other proposals from extreme anti-immigration proposals intended to keep America white to ending diversity and equity programs to shutting down the Department of Education so that GOP states can they implement education that is literally political and religious indoctrination to tax cuts for the wealthy. This is exactly what Trump has championed and is literally on his website as “Agenda 47.”

You name a part of your life and Project 2025 wants to control it. What happens if we oppose this agenda? Well Heritage president Kevin Roberts earlier this week offered a not so subtle threat in an interview on Trump’s close ally Steve Bannon’s show.  Roberts declared about their goals: We are “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

We have been warned: If Trump wins and we dare oppose the Project 2025 agenda, there will be blood.

After reading about the Project 2025 agenda, it’s in no way hyperbolic to equate it to Mein Kampf. Both are the blueprints of dangerous wannabe dictators working to end a democratic Republic while inflicting a hate-filled, dangerously extreme agenda. We know what happened with Hitler. It’s up to us to prevent Trump and his Project 2025 from replacing the United States of America with a Trump Reich.

Wanted to share I was on MSNBC Tuesday on Joy Reid's show and made some of this very points about Project 2025 being the GOP’s Mein Kampf: