Project 2025 offers a vision of a government led by a president with unprecedented powers, surrounded by hand-picked loyalists guided by its Christian nationalist policy blueprint for radically reshaping the government. It also advances an agenda of retribution, calling for “day one” firing and targeting of tens of thousands of federal workers – and anyone deemed an obstructionist to its extremist Christian conservative agenda. In a word, Project 2025 wants to take the gloves off by changing the rules and levers of power in government so the future president – Trump is their candidate – can do what he wants, with limited restraint by the courts or Congress. The recent Supreme Court decision giving Trump presidential immunity for his past actions while in office – still being litigated – sets the stage for what critics call a future autocracy if he is elected and Project 2025 is set into motion (see related story).

Critics warn that Trump would also have the power to use the judicial system to punish anyone who disagrees with him, courtesy of a corps of 500 hand-picked loyalist lawyers who are actively being recruited by The Heritage Foundation to take up posts in the next government, including the General Counsel’s office. Their job? To defend the president’s actions, which will test the limits of current law – and are slated to breach it. For his part, Trump has promised to punish members of the Biden administration whom he accuses of organizing a “witch hunt” against him, including prosecutors of myriad lawsuits Trump faces.

In recent months, a slew of media articles have predicted the purge of political enemies that will mark Trump 2.0 and Project 2025’s implementation. Critics warn against the weaponization of the Department of Justice, FBI, IRS, State Department, HHS, CDC, and other agencies. Heads will roll is the conservative promise. Any dissent or opposition – expressed in any way – could result in investigation, firing, or criminal charges. Trump has already pledged to pardon any participants among hundreds convicted or now in jail for their part in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. That has sent a clear message of impunity to those who might seek to impede or challenge the coming November elections. As it stands, the current scenario is a frightening parallel to the McCarthy years.

“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again [referring to supposed election fraud]. Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.” — Donald Trump 

The witch hunt. The revenge agenda is already in play, with help and funding from The Heritage Foundation and other allies among Project 2025’s advisory groups and beneficiaries. In May 2024, Tom Jones, a far-right political operative at the Kentucky-based American Accountability Foundation (AAF) launched a fresh public volley, announcing “Project Sovereignty 2025,” funded by a $100,000 Innovation Grant from Heritage. The right-wing project is aimed at researching and building a database of current federal employees across the government viewed as enemies of Trump and Project 2025, starting with the Department of Homeland Security, where the AAF is going after architects and advocates of “the Biden administration’s disastrous open-borders policies.” At Project 2025, director Kevin Roberts, also head of The Heritage Foundation, praised AAF for rooting out “anti-American bad actors,” while progressives called it a dangerous step backward.

Jones now oversees a small team of six that is busy combing the internet and social media posts as well as seeking ally right-wing moles in the government to root out prospective candidates. They’re targeting higher-level political appointees who deal with policy, including those in the GS-13, GS-14, and GS-15 category of the federal government’s General Services system. AAF says it plans to publish online a list of 100 federal employees, because “shining a light on these individuals is vitally important, as, if allowed to remain in their positions operating in the shadows, they can be expected to obstruct any future president’s effort to fix the problem and secure the border.” In short, the real witch hunt is on.

"We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States." – Donald Trump, 2022

Is it legal? That depends on whether the outing flouts any existing libel or other rules that can be proven. Already, dozens of federal lawyers, heads of key departments, and progressive nonprofit groups have formed anti-Project 2025 working groups to fight against the weaponization of government and plan defense strategies and proactive steps to protect the federal workforce. At Democracy Forward, a working group member, CEO Skye Perryman, sharply criticized the AAF plan as a return to “the darker parts of American history.”

The soft coup. Project 2025 has made it clear they plan to make full use of Executive Orders to fire and replace apolitical federal workers and put a conservative policy army in place. Step one involves resurrecting Schedule F, a Trump Executive Order rescinded by Biden, in order to mass-fire some 50,000 federal workers, including top-level political appointees. The first to go will be AAF targets and anyone else deemed insufficiently loyal to the president’s agenda. They will be replaced by 20,000-plus hand-picked Christian loyalists already recruited and vetted by Project 2025 and put through an online administrative course (see our Special Report on Labor for more on Schedule F and federal employees).

Russell Vought, who has led the recruitment and training effort with the now-departed Paul Dans, was unwittingly caught on a recorded video boasting that Project 2025 has recruited its army-in-waiting and has prepared “hundreds” of Executive Orders, directives and other instructions for a “day one” execution of the radical plan.