It also calls for a crackdown on opponents, which is also being organized. The same group leading Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation, is funding Project Sovereign 2025 (see related story, The Politics of Retribution) that is combing the internet and government files seeking dirt on perceived “enemies” of the president. For his part, Trump has made no secret of his revenge plan to go after political enemies. These are textbook authoritarian regime moves.

Stacking the Courts

Appointing activist judges

Americans like to claim that we live under the rule of law – that there is one set of laws for everybody, applied equally to all. But in practice, laws are interpreted by judges, and judges are appointed by politicians. They are deemed “activist” judges, often by opposing critics, known to interpret laws that support a partisan viewpoint – for example, conservative vs. liberal judges.

A judicial system is only as good as the impartiality of its judges.

Leonard Leo and his allies at Project 2025 have made conservative control of the US courts a top political goal – and his long game. They have funneled billions in dark money and used insider influence to shift the Supreme Court to the right, while placing Christian arch-conservatives on the highest court (see Who’s Who on the Right-Wing Bench). Many media stories have exposed the vacations, questionable lavish gifts, and ties linking Clarence Thomas to Leo and other right-wing billionaire donors that sparked fresh demands for term limits for Supreme Court judges, and an enforceable ethical code of conduct. A similar pattern has unfolded across the federal court system. There, Leo and Co. and right-wing think tanks in Project 2025’s orbit fund and steer lawsuits to activist conservative judges. (see boxes on America First Policy Institute, Center for Renewing America)

In July, SCOTUS conservatives shocked many Americans with a 6-3 majority vote along partisan lines in Trump v. United States that declared a president has “absolute immunity” from actions taken while in that office. It guts the long-held American value and belief that “no man is above the law.” It also reflects Project 2025’s call to give the president and Executive branch unprecedented power. Critics say it opens the door to Trump, if he wins in November, to pardon those involved in the January 6th, 2021 insurrection – and anyone considering a violent opposition to a fair vote in November.

Before that, SCOTUS judges also gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, opening the door for states to pass nearly 100 laws that restrict voting rights. Then there’s Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization, put into law by Justice Samuel Alito and four other friends-of Leonard-Leo picks: Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. It overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal right to abortion and punting the issue to the states. That’s also Project 2025’s political strategy: to transfer authority away from the federal government and its regulatory agencies to the states, where they back conservative legislators and judges primed to restrict abortion and back other aspects of the conservative blueprint.

A quick look at a slew of recent decisions -- immigration, voter rights, deregulation, LGBTQ rights, free speech, DEI, among them -- reveals how activist judges appointed by Trump have done exactly that (see Who’s Who on the Right-Wing Bench). Project 2025 is well underway.

Under Chief Justice Roberts’ tenure through the end of October Term 2017-2018, Republican appointees have delivered partisan rulings not three or four times, not even a dozen or two dozen times, but 73 times.

Even one radical activist judge can have serious impact. Take Mark T. Pittman, a Trump appointee to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. In November 2022, Pittman ruled that the Biden administration lacked the authority to forgive student loan debt through executive action through the HEROES Act. A month later, he ruled that a Texas law banning people 18 to 20 years of age from carrying concealed handguns was unconstitutional. 

Then, in March 2024, Pittman ruled that the Minority Business Development Agency was wrong to consider historic discrimination based on race in its operations, citing Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. In September 2024, the Texas judge ruled against the National Labor Relations Board in a strike against worker’s rights that has repercussions for other NLRB cases.

All mirror Project 2025’s policy proposals on key topics: student debt, gun control, racial equality, and labor. As AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler pointed out, Project 2025 “would put everything we've fought for—good jobs, fair wages, healthcare, retirement security, worker safety – on the chopping block.” Now multiply judge Pittman times a few dozen activist judges and you begin to appreciate the scope of the legal foundation Leo and conservative activists are putting in place to support Project 2025’s radical vision of totally revamping US law and policy.

Even one radical activist judge can have a serious impact.

The go-to conservative court: the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court has now distinguished itself as the most ideologically conservative court in many decades, and right behind it, on the lower courts, is the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has now made a name for itself as the funnel for conservative legal precedents to SCOTUS. It recently sent six groundbreaking conservative cases to the Supreme Court, including Dobbs. The arguments made in recent Fifth Circuit cases reflect an attempt to stretch the law as far as it can go, say critics.

Setting Legal Precedents

Judges can only rule on cases that come before them, so another strategy is needed to advance a partisan agenda. Here, Project 2025’s legal advisory groups have been busy filing lawsuits that offer judges a chance to consider novel legal arguments and establish new legal precedents. In important cases such as Dobbs, outside lawyers and vested parties may put forth additional arguments known as “friends of the court” amicus curiae briefs for a judge to consider. Even when cases fail, the legal arguments they introduce become part of the legal record.

“Next year it’s a safe bet that [the Supreme Court] will overturn the rights to contraception (Griswold), intimacy between queer people (Lawrence), gay marriage (Obergefell), a racially integrated education (Brown), and perhaps even the right of people of different races to marry (Loving), since that right is predicated on the same right-to-privacy basis as contraception and gay marriage.”

Over the past decade, conservatives have introduced ‘originalist’ readings of arcane statutes and legal decisions, arguing for a strict application of the laws as written. That’s how Dobbs came about, a controversial ruling that critics said relied on an incorrect reading of an arcane law. (See the sidebar, Major SCOTUS Rulings, for a selected of major decisions linked to Project 2025’s agenda. See also the Center for American Progress’s summary of recent state laws.)  

— Sally O’Driscoll