Even Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 as attention has moved toward its distinctly (di)visionary agenda. However, more than half of the project's listed authors, editors, or contributors were once part of his administration -- and no one doubts that his vice-presidential nominee is 100% pro-Project 2025!
The Informal Takeover Already Underway
Perhaps scarier than either Trump's or Vance's connection to this regressive plan, however, is the fact that, despite popular distaste for such policies, it may not take a second Trump presidency to implement significant parts of Project 2025. In this sense, it reflects the ancient world of the Pax Romana. Rather than being dependent on particular emperors, its "peace" was a political and ideological program that punished the poor and marginalized so many, while keeping all its subjects in line.
From its recent rulings, it's clear that the Supreme Court is hastening Project 2025's agenda judicially, both in terms of specific future policies and the executive power grab at the heart of that mandate (and now of that court's rulings). In June, for instance, it ruled in favor of the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, which enacted a law to fine, jail, and ultimately expel its unhoused residents. That precedent will only exacerbate the already hostile terrain confronting unhoused people, seeding firm ground to 2025's plan to eliminate even more housing projects.
Worse yet, as the Nation's Elie Mystal recently made clear, in just a few weeks of rulings, the court "legalized bribery of public officials, declared the president of the United States absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for 'official acts,' and made the power to issue regulations subject to the court's unelected approval." As he warns, "There's no legislative fix for the problems the court has created" [and] they will continue to do all the things Republicans want that nobody elected them to do."
In addition, in the legislative arena, Congressional debates around the Farm Bill echo Project 2025's plan to cut food assistance by limiting updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, the current formula that determines SNAP allocations. For example, at the state level, a Republican supermajority in Kansas voted last year to override the governor's veto and enact work requirements for older recipients of SNAP benefits.
Overall, various Project 2025 priorities are already being implemented at the state and local level, with reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, public education, social welfare programs, and unhoused people under serious threat in Republican-run states across the country. Since the Supreme Court decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, 21 states have enacted full or partial bans on abortion. Meanwhile, far-right groups like Moms of Liberty are seeking to capture local school boards as part of a "war on wokeness."
There is also a multi-state strategy underway to preempt community-led efforts to implement guaranteed income programs. At least 10 states have challenged basic income programs with legislative bans, funding restrictions, constitutional challenges, and court injunctions, while four Republican-led states -- Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, and South Dakota -- have already completely prohibited such programs.
And in lockstep with Project 2025's call for military expansion, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker recently released a report proposing that $55 billion be added to the Pentagon's already humongous budget in fiscal year 2025 while raising military spending by hundreds of billions of dollars in the next five to seven years. The report, "Peace Through Strength," revives the false idea that spending ever more on war preparations makes us safer. Not only is Wicker distorting Cold War history, but his prescriptions ignore our experience of the past 20 years of military buildup and the disastrous Global War on Terror. According to the Costs of War Project and the National Priorities Project, this country's post-9/11 wars have cost at least $8 trillion, taken millions of lives, and displaced tens of millions of people globally, while precipitating climate chaos through their polluting emissions. If implemented, Wicker's plan would only increase the risk of yet more destabilizing conflicts, offering a modern Pax Romana promise for yet more war and death.
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace
While extremist Republican politicians and appointees are leading the way on Project 2025, both major parties align around building up the war economy. Indeed, bipartisan support for military aid to Israel is contributing to what the United Nations has labeled a genocide in Gaza.
Nor is this new. Every year, the Pentagon budget invariably passes with widespread bipartisan support, even if a few representatives vote otherwise. Since the 9/11 attacks, in fact, $21 trillion has been funneled into war, surveillance, policing, border control, and incarceration. In Fiscal Year 2023, nearly two-thirds of the federal discretionary budget funded the military-industrial complex and militarized spending. This year, a Democratic amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act will automatically register every male citizen and resident aged 18-26 in the selective service database. This measure has only passed in the House of Representatives, but it suggests interest across party lines in increasing the number of individuals who could someday be called up for military service. While this is not (yet) a draft, it hints at one -- and it was introduced by Pennsylvania's Democratic Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan.
The state and local counterpart to militarism is support for the police. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers seem intent on adopting "tough on crime" legislation, including hiring more police officers, deploying the National Guard more widely, expanding surveillance measures, and recriminalizing drug possession. Of course, the 1033 program allows local police forces to be armed and trained by the U.S. military.
This remarkably bipartisan consensus for a war economy shouldn't just be considered another "issue," but an approach to governance that relies on force and violence, rather than consent, to establish social control. And as noted above, the nation may have automatic registration for the selective service system before we have automatic registration to vote. After all, the same Congress that supports ever more resources for war has failed to stop voter suppression, expand voting rights, or adequately protect our democracy.
Jobs and Homes, Not Death in the Streets
The greatest violence of the Pax Romana was always borne by the poor, who were often ripped from their families, enslaved in back-breaking labor, and dispossessed of their land and resources. To maintain its authoritarian rule over millions of people, the Roman Empire relied on its military might and the fear inspired by its brutal army. And yet it was from the ranks of the poor that Jesus and his disciples led a non-violent revolution for peace.
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