Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
If you frequent Black Twitter, visited a barbershop recently or could hear the BET Awards over your uncle yelling: “If God made something finer than Taraji P. Henson, he must’ve kept it in heaven,” then you know about Project 2025.
According to my cousin’s beautician who does hair in her kitchen, on Jan. 20, 2025, shortly after the inauguration ceremony concludes, President Donald J. Trump will send jack-booted thugs door-to-door to murder anyone who voted for Biden. He will issue an executive order eliminating the letters C, R, T, D, E and I from the English alphabet. At the same time, newly appointed Labor Secretary Marjorie Taylor Greene implements the Bureau of Bound Laborers, Agricultural Careers and Kitchen Jobs Only for Blacks. Volunteers in the mandatory BLACK JOB program will generously donate their labor to help create the greatest economy since 1865.
No, Project 2025 is not the name of the upcoming Jordan Peele film. It is an actual, real-life script that’s been in development for years. Although it has terrified more people than the recently released horror movie about the president who turned into a zombie during a debate (the lead actor was compelling), few people have read it in its entirety.
I did.
To address the rumors, fears and anxiety over the GOP’s latest project, I read all 922 pages of Project 2025 and all the Agenda47 transcripts, the official policy agenda for Trump 2024. Instead of summarizing the entire blueprint for an America with less “economic anxiety,” we specifically looked at the policies and plans that would affect Black Americans.
Here’s what we found:
What is Project 2025?
Project 2025 is Donald Trump’s blueprint for how to make the conservative culture wars a permanent part of the federal government.
Officially, Donald Trump has nothing to do with the 900-plus page “mandate for leadership” known as Project 2025. Technically, the “Conservative Promise” is the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation, a 50-year-old think tank known for engineering bright ideas like the enduring myth of “welfare queens,” Reagan’s CIA crack cocaine project, and George H.W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But the Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts is a pro-Trump culture warrior whose only goal is “institutionalizing Trumpism.” To achieve his objective, he assembled policymakers and MAGA extremists from the first Trump administration. The advisory board is comprised of right-wing organizations like the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council, the “anti-woke” 1792 Exchange and Liberty University, “the most conservative college in America.”
The Trump-approved architects divided the Trumpian document into 30 different chapters. They used Trump-affiliated experts to address every part of the federal government and strategize what a Trump presidency would look like. But, to be clear, the 200 Trump-connected policymakers’ blueprint for a Trump presidency has nothing to do with Donald Trump.
If Project 2025 is not Trump’s agenda, does he have one?
Technically, he has some videos.
Because Trump is not a fan of reading or writing, he filmed a series of videos outlining his official plans for a second term. While Trump’s “Agenda47” is a remedial Cliffs Notes version of Project 2025, there are some minor differences.
Project 2025 is a MAGA employee guide for people who will work in the alleged Trump administration. Agenda47, on the other hand, is a political platform aimed at people who will vote for Trump. The former is a policy agenda; the latter is a campaign document for people who get their politics off YouTube.
Think of Project 2025 as the instruction manual for Trump’s Agenda47.
Here are the top 10 scariest things Trump has planned for Black America:
Make the government white again.
Every Black person has a cousin or aunt who works in the federal government. While the civilian federal workforce is disproportionately white at the highest levels, in March 2021, nearly half (46.7%) of low-level government employees were non-white. In fact, African-American government workers are overrepresented in the federal government.
This is the “swamp” that Trump wants to drain.
The “fundamental principle” guiding this pro-white project is a plan to embed conservative-minded political appointees (pronounced “white pee pull”) throughout the federal government. However, it is illegal to discriminate based on race, ethnicity or political affiliation. Trump’s deputy secretaries can’t ask prospective workers if they have accepted Donald J. Christ as their lord and savior. So, how do they plan to draft a minion of MAGA workers into the federal workforce?