Thỏa thuận khai thác mỏ quặng: Kiev “đưa” Mỹ vào Ukraina ?

Tổng thống Volodymyr Zelensky có thể đến Washington ngày 28/02/2025, để ký với nguyên thủ Mỹ Donald Trump thỏa thuận khai thác khoáng sản ở Ukraina. Dù không có điều kiện nào về «bảo đảm an ninh» như mong muốn nhưng vô hình chung, Kiev «đưa» Mỹ vào giúp «bảo vệ» lãnh thổ thông qua điều khoản «một nền hòa bình lâu dài, ủng hộ các nỗ lực bảo đảm an ninh cho Ukraina» và Mỹ sẽ phải bảo vệ công ty và lợi ích kinh tế của mình trên thực địa.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy shows Reuters journalists a map of strategic resources and objects during an interview, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine February 7, 2025. REUTERS - Valentyn Ogirenko

Khoáng sản Ukraina giúp Mỹ « thoát » Trung Quốc

Đối với tổng thống Trump, đạt được thỏa thuận khai thác khoáng sản ở Ukraina là một « thắng lợi lớn ». Là nước giàu khoáng sản nhưng lại ít được khai thác do chiến tranh từ ba năm qua, Ukraina trở thành giải pháp giúp Mỹ giảm phụ thuộc vào Trung Quốc, nhà sản xuất đất hiếm lớn nhất thế giới với trữ lượng 75% thế giới và là đối thủ địa chính trị của tổng thống Trump. Tháng 12/2024, Bắc Kinh đã cấm xuất khẩu nhiều loại đất hiếm sang Mỹ, thay cho việc hạn chế được ban hành năm 2023.

Thực ra, theo AP, cả Mỹ và châu Âu đều tìm cách giảm phụ thuộc vào Trung Quốc. Theo thẩm định của Mỹ, Ukraina có thể cung cấp đến 50 loại khoáng sản quan trọng, với tổng trữ lượng được báo Washington Post thẩm định vào tháng 08/2022 lên đến 26.000 tỉ đô la.

Ủy Ban Châu Âu xác định Ukraina là nhà cung cấp tiềm năng hơn 20 loại nhiên liệu quan trọng và sẽ giúp tăng cường cho nền kinh tế Liên Âu nếu Ukraina gia nhập khối. Theo nghiên cứu của Viện Nguyên liệu thô quan trọng của Liên Âu (AEI), được trang Conflits trích dẫn ngày 26/02, Ukraina giữ khoảng 7% trữ lượng thế giới về than chì - graphit, 20% trữ lượng của châu Âu về titan, ngoài ra phải kể đến lithium, magan… Tất cả đều quan trọng cho pin điện, linh kiện bán dẫn, quá trình chuyển đổi năng lượng… Ukraina cũng có nhiều mỏ đất hiếm lớn, gồm 17 loại quan trọng được sử đụng sản xuất vũ khí, tua bin gió, linh kiện điện tử…

Nếu một thỏa thuận khai thác khoáng sản được ký tại Washington ngày 28/02, đây cũng có thể coi là một thành công của chính quyền Kiev. Ukraina đã thuyết phục được Mỹ bỏ điều khoản về 500 tỉ đô la mà tổng thống Trump «đòi» trong dự thảo ban đầu vì như vậy « người Ukraina trả nợ đến 10 đời». Tiếp theo, vô hình chung Kiev «đường đường chính chính » đưa Mỹ vào lãnh thổ Ukraina thông qua thỏa thuận được chính cố vấn an ninh Nhà Trắng Mike Waltz đánh giá «kết nối Mỹ với Ukraina trong tương lai».

Mỹ sẽ phải bảo đảm an ninh cho doanh nghiệp khai thác khoáng sản ở Ukraina ?

Thực vậy, đa số nguồn đất hiếm, nhiều mỏ titan và kẽm nằm ở miền đông và miền nam Ukraina, tại những khu vực bị Nga chiếm đóng. Kiev gián tiếp để tổng thống Trump hiểu rằng Washington chẳng có lợi khi để nguồn tài nguyên dồi dào và chưa được khai thác như vậy rơi vào tay Matxcơva, chưa kể đến nguồn uranium, nếu Nga tiếp tục tiến trên chiến trường.

Trả lời BBC ngày 25/02, bà Iryna Suprun, tổng giám đốc công ty tư vấn mỏ Geological Investment Group tại Kiev đánh giá việc khai thác khoáng sản vô cùng khó khăn và tốn kém. Các nguồn đầu tư của Mỹ «giúp (Ukraina) tiếp cận được những công nghệ cần cho ngành công nghiệp khai thác mỏ, được cấp vốn. Điều này còn có nghĩa là sẽ có thêm việc làm, nguồn thu thuế và Ukraina sẽ có được thu nhập từ khai thác mỏ». Cựu thủ tướng Anh Boris Johnson, được BBC trích dẫn, cũng bác cáo buộc thỏa thuận khai thác khoáng sản ở Ukraina là một «trò lừa đảo» của Mỹ vì «điều mà Ukraina nhận được, đó là cam kết của Mỹ dưới thời tổng thống Trump ủng hộ một Ukraina tự do, chủ quyền và an ninh».

Cho dù điều kiện Washington «bảo đảm an ninh» được cho là không có trong thỏa thuận nhưng việc các công ty Mỹ, các nhà đầu tư Mỹ có mặt tại Ukraina đã là một bảo đảm an ninh đất nước bị Nga xâm chiếm từ hơn ba năm qua. Washington sẽ không bỏ rơi doanh nghiệp và bảo vệ lợi ích kinh tế của mình trong trường hợp bị tấn công. Và đối với Ukraina, một thỏa thuận như vậy với Mỹ có thể bảo đảm rằng đồng minh quan trọng nhất sẽ không đóng băng hỗ trợ quân sự.

Tuy nhiên, hiện vẫn chưa rõ các điều khoản về an ninh cho các doanh nghiệp Mỹ tham gia khai thác để đối phó với nguy cơ làm việc ở Ukraina, kể cả trong trường hợp ngừng bắn, cũng như thỏa thuận tài chính nào sẽ được thông qua giữa Ukraina và các doanh nghiệp Mỹ. Và cho dù nếu được ký kết, hoạt động khai thác cũng chưa được tiến hành ngay vì Ukraina không có nhiều dữ liệu địa chất do các mỏ nằm rải rác trên khắp lãnh thổ, trong khi các nghiên cứu hiện tại lại không đầy đủ và hiệu quả. Năm 2021, ngành công nghiệp khai khoáng chiếm khoảng 6,1% GDP của Ukraina và 30% hàng xuất khẩu. 

Toàn văn thỏa thuận khoáng sản giữa Hoa Kỳ và Ukraine
 
XÉT RẰNG Hoa Kỳ đã cung cấp hỗ trợ tài chính và vật chất đáng kể cho Ukraine kể từ khi Nga xâm lược toàn diện Ukraine vào tháng 2 năm 2022;
XÉT RẰNG người dân Hoa Kỳ mong muốn đầu tư cùng với Ukraine trong một đất nước Ukraine tự do, có chủ quyền và an toàn;
XÉT RẰNG Hoa Kỳ và Ukraine mong muốn có một nền hòa bình lâu dài tại Ukraine và một mối quan hệ đối tác bền chặt giữa nhân dân và chính phủ hai nước;
XÉT RẰNG Hoa Kỳ và Ukraine công nhận những đóng góp của Ukraine trong việc củng cố hòa bình và an ninh quốc tế bằng cách tự nguyện từ bỏ kho vũ khí hạt nhân lớn thứ ba thế giới;
XÉT RẰNG Hoa Kỳ và Ukraine mong muốn đảm bảo rằng các quốc gia và cá nhân khác đã hành động bất lợi cho Ukraine trong cuộc xung đột sẽ không được hưởng lợi từ việc tái thiết Ukraine sau một nền hòa bình lâu dài;
DO ĐÓ, BÂY GIỜ, Chính phủ Hoa Kỳ và Chính phủ Ukraine (mỗi bên được gọi là “Bên tham gia”) ký kết Thỏa thuận song phương này Thiết lập các Điều khoản và Điều kiện cho Quỹ đầu tư tái thiết nhằm tăng cường quan hệ đối tác giữa Hoa Kỳ và Ukraine, như được nêu tại đây.
1. Chính phủ Ukraine và Hoa Kỳ, với mục tiêu đạt được hòa bình lâu dài tại Ukraine, có ý định thành lập Quỹ đầu tư tái thiết (Quỹ), hợp tác trong Quỹ thông qua quyền sở hữu chung, sẽ được định nghĩa rõ hơn trong Thỏa thuận quỹ. Quyền sở hữu chung sẽ xem xét các khoản đóng góp thực tế của những Người tham gia như được định nghĩa trong Mục 3 và 4. Quỹ sẽ được quản lý chung bởi các đại diện của Chính phủ Ukraine và Chính phủ Hoa Kỳ. Các điều khoản chi tiết hơn liên quan đến việc quản lý và hoạt động của Quỹ sẽ được nêu trong một thỏa thuận tiếp theo (Thỏa thuận quỹ) sẽ được đàm phán ngay sau khi kết thúc Thỏa thuận song phương này. Tỷ lệ sở hữu tối đa của vốn chủ sở hữu và quyền lợi tài chính của Quỹ do Chính phủ Hoa Kỳ nắm giữ và thẩm quyền ra quyết định của các đại diện của Chính phủ Hoa Kỳ sẽ ở mức độ cho phép theo luật hiện hành của Hoa Kỳ.
Không Bên tham gia nào được bán, chuyển nhượng hoặc xử lý theo cách khác, trực tiếp hoặc gián tiếp, bất kỳ phần nào quyền lợi của mình trong Quỹ mà không có sự đồng ý trước bằng văn bản của Bên tham gia kia.
2. Quỹ sẽ thu thập và tái đầu tư các khoản thu nhập đóng góp cho Quỹ, trừ đi các khoản chi phí mà Quỹ phải chịu, và sẽ kiếm được thu nhập từ việc kiếm tiền trong tương lai từ tất cả các tài sản tài nguyên thiên nhiên có liên quan do Chính phủ Ukraine sở hữu (cho dù do Chính phủ Ukraine sở hữu trực tiếp hay gián tiếp), như được định nghĩa trong Mục 3
`3. Chính phủ Ukraine sẽ đóng góp vào Quỹ 50 phần trăm tổng doanh thu kiếm được từ việc tiền tệ hóa trong tương lai của tất cả các tài sản tài nguyên thiên nhiên có liên quan do Chính phủ Ukraine sở hữu (cho dù do Chính phủ Ukraine sở hữu trực tiếp hay gián tiếp), được định nghĩa là các mỏ khoáng sản, hydrocarbon, dầu, khí đốt tự nhiên và các vật liệu khai thác khác, và cơ sở hạ tầng khác có liên quan đến tài sản tài nguyên thiên nhiên (như các nhà ga khí đốt tự nhiên hóa lỏng và cơ sở hạ tầng cảng) theo thỏa thuận của cả hai Bên tham gia, như có thể được mô tả thêm trong Thỏa thuận Quỹ. Để tránh nghi ngờ, các nguồn doanh thu trong tương lai như vậy không bao gồm các nguồn doanh thu hiện tại vốn đã là một phần của doanh thu ngân sách chung của Ukraine. Mốc thời gian, phạm vi và tính bền vững của các khoản đóng góp sẽ được xác định thêm trong Thỏa thuận Quỹ.
Quỹ có thể, theo quyết định riêng của mình, ghi có hoặc trả lại cho Chính phủ Ukraine các khoản chi phí thực tế phát sinh từ các dự án mới phát triển mà Quỹ nhận được doanh thu.
Các khoản đóng góp vào Quỹ sẽ được tái đầu tư ít nhất hàng năm tại Ukraine để thúc đẩy sự an toàn, an ninh và thịnh vượng của Ukraine, sẽ được xác định rõ hơn trong Thỏa thuận Quỹ. Thỏa thuận Quỹ cũng sẽ quy định về các khoản phân phối trong tương lai.
4. Theo luật pháp Hoa Kỳ hiện hành, Chính phủ Hoa Kỳ sẽ duy trì cam kết tài chính dài hạn cho sự phát triển của một Ukraine ổn định và thịnh vượng về kinh tế. Các đóng góp tiếp theo có thể bao gồm các quỹ, công cụ tài chính và các tài sản hữu hình và vô hình khác quan trọng cho việc tái thiết Ukraine.
5. Quy trình đầu tư của Quỹ sẽ được thiết kế để đầu tư vào các dự án tại Ukraine và thu hút đầu tư nhằm tăng cường phát triển, chế biến và tiền tệ hóa tất cả các tài sản công và tư của Ukraine bao gồm nhưng không giới hạn ở các mỏ khoáng sản, hydrocarbon, dầu, khí đốt tự nhiên và các vật liệu khai thác khác, cơ sở hạ tầng, cảng và doanh nghiệp nhà nước như có thể được mô tả thêm trong Thỏa thuận Quỹ. Chính phủ Hoa Kỳ và Chính phủ Ukraine dự định rằng quy trình đầu tư sẽ dẫn đến các cơ hội phân phối thêm tiền và tái đầu tư nhiều hơn, để đảm bảo cung cấp đủ vốn cho việc tái thiết Ukraine như đã nêu trong Thỏa thuận Quỹ.
Những người tham gia có quyền thực hiện các hành động cần thiết để bảo vệ và tối đa hóa giá trị lợi ích kinh tế của họ trong Quỹ.
6. Thỏa thuận Quỹ sẽ bao gồm các tuyên bố và bảo đảm phù hợp, bao gồm cả những tuyên bố và bảo đảm cần thiết để đảm bảo rằng bất kỳ nghĩa vụ nào mà Chính phủ Ukraine có thể có đối với bên thứ ba, hoặc các nghĩa vụ mà Chính phủ có thể thực hiện trong tương lai, không bán, chuyển nhượng, thế chấp hoặc gây cản trở cho các đóng góp của Chính phủ Ukraine vào Quỹ hoặc các tài sản mà các đóng góp đó có nguồn gốc, hoặc việc Quỹ xử lý các quỹ.
Khi soạn thảo Thỏa thuận Quỹ, các Bên tham gia sẽ nỗ lực tránh xung đột với các nghĩa vụ của Ukraine theo thỏa thuận gia nhập Liên minh Châu Âu hoặc các nghĩa vụ theo thỏa thuận với các tổ chức tài chính quốc tế và các chủ nợ chính thức khác.
7. Thỏa thuận Quỹ sẽ cung cấp, trong số những điều khác, một xác nhận rằng cả Thỏa thuận Quỹ và các hoạt động được quy định trong đó đều mang tính chất thương mại.
Thỏa thuận Quỹ sẽ được Quốc hội Ukraine phê chuẩn theo Luật Ukraine "Về các điều ước quốc tế của Ukraine".
8. Thỏa thuận Quỹ sẽ đặc biệt chú ý đến các cơ chế kiểm soát khiến việc làm suy yếu, vi phạm hoặc lách luật trừng phạt và các biện pháp hạn chế khác trở nên bất khả thi.
9. Văn bản của Thỏa thuận Quỹ sẽ được các nhóm làm việc do đại diện có thẩm quyền của Chính phủ Ukraine và Chính phủ Hoa Kỳ chủ trì phát triển mà không chậm trễ. Những người liên hệ chịu trách nhiệm soạn thảo Thỏa thuận Quỹ trên cơ sở Thỏa thuận Song phương này là: từ Chính phủ Hoa Kỳ: Bộ Tài chính; từ Chính phủ Ukraine: Bộ Tài chính và Bộ Kinh tế.
10. Thỏa thuận song phương này và Thỏa thuận quỹ sẽ cấu thành những yếu tố không thể tách rời của cấu trúc các thỏa thuận song phương và đa phương, cũng như các bước cụ thể để thiết lập hòa bình lâu dài, tăng cường khả năng phục hồi an ninh kinh tế và phản ánh các mục tiêu nêu trong phần mở đầu của Thỏa thuận song phương này.
Chính phủ Hoa Kỳ ủng hộ những nỗ lực của Ukraine nhằm đạt được các đảm bảo an ninh cần thiết để thiết lập hòa bình lâu dài. Những người tham gia sẽ tìm cách xác định bất kỳ bước cần thiết nào để bảo vệ các khoản đầu tư chung, như được định nghĩa trong Thỏa thuận Quỹ.
11. Thỏa thuận song phương này có tính ràng buộc và sẽ được mỗi Bên tham gia thực hiện theo các thủ tục trong nước của mình. Chính phủ Hoa Kỳ và Chính phủ Ukraine cam kết sẽ tiến hành đàm phán ngay Thỏa thuận Quỹ.

Ai được lợi nhất trong cuộc chiến Ukraine ; Tại sao VL không ủng hộ Ukraine ;Tại sao Châu Âu ghét Trump; Nguyên Nhân Nga tấn công; Nhìn lại Ukraine vào thế kỷ 13; Biden làm gì khi Ukraine bị Nga đánh vào 2022? Feb 23,2025

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Trước khi đi xa hơn, kẻ này phải 'thành thật khai báo' ngay là tất nhiên không thể nào chấp nhận cuộc chiến xâm lăng thô bạo của Putin đánh Ukraine, nhưng đồng thời kẻ này cũng không thể ủng hộ Ukraine khi nhớ lại trong cuộc chiến của miền Nam ta chống xâm lăng của CSBV, cả ngàn cả vạn dân quân miền Nam ta đã chết/bị thương phế tật vì bom đạn, súng ống do Ukraine sản xuất khi Ukraine còn trong Liên Bang Xô Viết, viện trợ cho VC. Sau khi chiến tranh miền Nam chấm dứt, và cả sau khi Ukraine độc lập, tách ra khỏi Nga, thì Ukraine vẫn là một trong những đồng minh quan trọng nhất của Hà Nội.

Cũng phải nói thêm, Ukraine trước khi bị Nga tấn công và được truyền thông cấp tiến tung hô lên chín chục tầng mây xanh, đã nổi tiếng về hai chuyện:

 Ukraine là một trong những xứ tham nhũng thối nát nhất thế giới; điển hình là đại công ty dầu khí Burisma khi bị công tố Ukraine mở cuộc điều tra thì bổ nhiệm ngay quý tử Hunter Biden con của phó tổng thống Mỹ làm thành viên hội đồng quản trị để chặn điều tra; và y như rằng, PTT Biden đích thân bay qua tận Ukraine để bắt chẹt chính quyền Ukraine phải sa thải công tố đó, chấm dứt mọi điều tra về tham nhũng trong Burisma, đổi lấy một tỷ đô viện trợ của Mỹ.

Trích ChatGPT

Ukraine là ổ của khai thác trấn lột lao công đến từ các nước chậm tiến, trong đó có VN, điển hình là Phạm Nhật Vượng đã từng là lao công xuất khẩu của CSVN làm việc tại Ukraine, suốt ngày chỉ ăn mì gói nên mới có 'sáng kiến' mở hãng sản xuất mì gói, để rồi làm giàu nhờ mì gói.

Bây giờ, ai muốn ủng hộ Ukraine là quyền của họ, chỉ là không có VL này thôi.

Hoàng Lan Chi viết: Tôi đồng ý với bác Vũ Linh. Tôi không ủng hộ Ukraine và cả không thích “Tổng Thống Áo Thun” (chôm của một netter)

Vũ Linh-BẠN CÓ BIẾT BIDEN LÀM GÌ KHI NGA TẤN CÔNG UKRAINE VÀO 2022?

Ngày 24/2/2022, Putin xua quân qua công khai tấn công Ukraine. Không ai ngạc nhiên vì Nga đã công khai đe dọa và chuẩn bị cả mấy tháng trước. Tổng thống Mỹ Biden trước đó, đã công khai cảnh cáo Nga là Mỹ sẽ nhẩy vào cuộc, sẽ gửi lính Mỹ qua giúp Ukraine chống Nga. Với hy vọng Nga sẽ sợ và không dám đánh. Nhưng Putin hiểu rõ Biden hơn ai hết, cười ruồi, rồi tung cả trăm ngàn quân chính quy Nga tràn qua biên giới, tấn công thẳng vào thủ đô Kyiv của Ukraine.

Phản ứng của Biden? Không, Biden không gửi một anh lính TQLC hay lính dù nào như đã hùng hổ đe dọa, mà mau mắn điện thoại cho tổng thống Ukraine, Zelensky, cho biết trực thăng Mỹ đã được lệnh sẵn sàng bay từ Đức tới chở ông và gia đình ra khỏi xứ đi tị nạn ngay. Nghĩa là Biden mau mắn khuyến khích Zelensky tháo chạy, chấp nhận cho Nga chiếm toàn thể Ukraine ngay, bỏ cả nước lại cho Putin nuốt không tốn một viên đạn. Không phản kháng, chống đối gì ráo.

Trong bất ngờ của Biden, TT Zelensky trả lời "Không, tôi không cần trực thăng của Mỹ cứu tôi, tôi không đi đâu hết, và sẽ ở lại chiến đấu chống Nga tới cùng". Biden ngỡ ngàng, bối rối, ngẩn mặt không biết phải làm gì nữa.

Sau khi các đồng minh NATO trong khối Tây Âu ào ạt ủng hộ Zelensky và cho biết sẽ quân viện khẩn cấp cho Ukraine, thì Biden sực tỉnh, ... cuốn theo chiều gió, hấp tấp đổi giọng, tung hô tinh thần bất khuất của Zelensky, nhẩy vào yểm trợ Ukraine qua quân viện mà Biden hùng hổ đấm ngực khoe vô giới hạn về số lượng cũng như về thời gian.

Hoàng Lan Chi viết: Cứ lật lại trang tin cũ: đúng là như thế nhé, quý ông bà ủng hộ Dân Chủ thổ tả !

Vũ Linh-QUAN HỆ NGA-UKRAINE Ở THẾ KỶ THỨ 13

Cho tới thế kỷ thứ 13, Nga và Ukraine là một nước. Sau đó, dân Nga dần dần chiếm thế thượng phong. Ukraine bất mãn, tách ra riêng, gia nhập vào liên bang Ba Lan-Lithuania, nhưng rồi tách ra và sát nhập lại vào Đại Đế Quốc Russian Empire.

Năm 1922, Ukraine chính thức trở thành một 'tiểu bang' của Liên Bang Xô Viết. Và Nga vẽ lại bản đồ Ukraine, chuyển nhiều vùng với đại đa số dân là gốc Nga, theo văn hóa Nga, nói tiếng Nga, ủng hộ Nga, qua Ukraine, dĩ nhiên trong mưu đồ 'Nga hóa' cả xứ Ukraine.

Sau khi Liên Bang Xô Viết sụp đổ thì Ukraine dành lại được độc lập năm 1991. Trước đó, Ukraine là kho vũ khí nguyên tử của LBXV. Sau khi dành được độc lập, Ukraine đồng ý phá gỡ các trung tâm sản xuất bom nguyên tử, chuyển hết các cơ sở này và các kho bom nguyên tử về Nga, đổi lấy cam kết của Nga sẽ không xâm chiếm Ukraine và bảo vệ Ukraine nếu Ukraine bị tấn công.

Vũ Linh- NGUYÊN NHÂN SÂU XA NGA TẤN CÔNG UKRAINE

Từ sau khi Liên Bang Xô Viết sụp đổ, NATO trên nguyên tắc không còn lý do tồn tại, vì NATO thực sự là liên minh quân sự chống Liên Bang Xô Viết trong khi LBXV đã tiêu tan. Thế nhưng thực tế lại cho ta chứng kiến NATO bành trướng như chưa bao giờ thấy.

NATO vẫn giữ mục tiêu là một liên minh quân sự nhưng không chống Liên Bang Xô Viết mà là chống Nga, đã bành trướng mạnh về phiá đông, GOM CẢ LÔ QUỐC GIA trước đây trung lập hay chư hầu của LBXV, gồm có: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Hungaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Macedonia, Poland, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, tức là thêm 17 xứ thành viên (chưa kể Đông Đức đã sát nhập tới Tây Đức), BAO VÂY NGA TỪ BẮC ÂU XUỐNG TỚI NAM ÂU.

Nga chỉ còn hai xứ 'trái độn' là Belarus và Ukraine.

Bây giờ NATO toan tính bao gồm luôn cả Ukraine, tiến tới sát nách Nga, khiến NATO trở thành mối đe dọa trực tiếp cho an ninh quốc gia của Nga. Nhất là trong khi TT Mỹ lại ồn ào đòi hỏi các xứ NATO phải gia tăng ngân sách quốc phòng.

Ukraine gia nhập NATO sẽ thu ngắn được nửa đường từ biên giới NATO tới Moscow. Dù không thể đồng ý với việc xâm lăng Ukraine -tiên hạ thủ vi cường- của Putin, ta cũng phải tự đặt mình vào vị trí của Putin, có trách nhiệm với nước Nga và dân Nga là phải lo cho an ninh quốc gia của Nga. Nếu Clinton, Bush con, Obama, Biden hay Trump làm tổng thống Nga, họ sẽ có thể ngồi yên nhìn xứ mình bị bao vây và đe dọa trực tiếp như vậy không?

CÔNG BẰNG MÀ NÓI, THẬT SỰ LÀ NATO ĐÃ KHƠI MÀO RA CUỘC CHIẾN UKRAINE KHI KHIÊU KHÍCH, DỒN NGA VÀO CHÂN TƯỜNG.

Từ phiá Ukraine, sau cuộc cách mạng lật đổ TT Viktor Yanukovich thân Nga năm 2014 (có bàn tay lông lá của Xịa không?), Ukraine công khai đứng về phiá đồng minh Mỹ và NATO, còn muốn gia nhập NATO luôn, công khai chống Nga và trực tiếp đe dọa an ninh lãnh thổ Nga.

Nghĩa là việc đánh Ukraine đối với Nga có mục đích công để bành trướng lãnh thổ và ảnh hưởng, nhưng cũng là thế thủ để chặn mối đe dọa trực tiếp của NATO.

Ngoài ra, Ukraine cũng là một nước lớn (bằng Pháp), có rất nhiều tài nguyên quan trọng như canh nông (vựa lúa của Âu Châu), mỏ than và dầu khí, đất hiếm,... mà cả Nga lẫn Mỹ đều dòm ngó.

 Hoàng Lan Chi viết: tôi đồng ý với lý luận của bác Vũ Linh. Chính vì Ukraine gia nhập Nato nên Nga mới tấn công. Hậu quả hứa hẹn của Biden-NATO là sau 3 năm: bao nhiêu người Ukraine đã chết? Mặt khác, tôi không ưa Ukraine như bác Vũ Linh (Ukraine sản xuất vũ khí tấn công VNCH khi vc xâm lăng miền Nam; Ukraine thân thiện Hà Nội thời trước 75; Ukraine là 1 ổ tham nhũng ..). Bọn NATO tung nhiều tin giả như Nga không có vũ khí hiện đại (!!)...

Vũ Linh- AI ĐƯỢC LỢI NHẤT TRONG CUỘC CHIẾN UKRAINE NHỈ?

Về phía Nga:

vì thiệt hại lính quá nhiều, nên đã phải động viên tối đa, kể cả giảm tuổi động viên, và lôi các tù ra bắt đi lính;

khó khăn kinh tế lớn vì cấm vận của Liên Âu và Mỹ;

chống đối trong nội bộ, từ dân Nga tới các nhóm đối lập chính trị;

không đạt được thắng lợi gì trên chiến trường;

ngược lại, chiến tranh kéo dài sẽ bảo đảm chính Nga không bị NATO tấn công.

Về phía Ukraine:

thiệt hại nhân sự -dân và lính- quá cao;

thiệt hại vật chất như nhà cửa, hãng xưởng, hạ tầng cơ sở như đường xá, cầu cống, đê đập,... quá lớn, sẽ di hại lâu dài;

cả chục triệu dân di tản, mất nhà, mất việc, mất lợi tức, mà chính quyền phải nuôi;

cuộc phản công bị tắc nghẽn, không có kết quả đáng kể;

ngược lại, chiến tranh kéo dài, Zelensky vẫn ngồi ghế tổng thống vô hạn trong khi Ukraine nhận được cả trăm tỷ viện trợ.

Đi vào thực tế, việc tái tạo hòa bình không dễ chút nào.

Mỹ bắt đầu nói chuyện với Nga tuần rồi tại Ả Rập Saoud, trên căn bản để tìm hiểu quan điểm của Nga, sẽ có thể nhượng bộ hay đòi hỏi tới đâu, trước khi nói chuyện riêng với Ukraine để tìm hiểu chuyện tương tự, để cuối cùng tìm giải pháp cả hai bên có thể chấp nhận. Tuần tới TT Trump sẽ thảo luận riêng với thủ tướng Anh và TT Pháp tại Tòa Bạch Ốc.

Đây là những cuộc 'nói chuyện' chuẩn bị cho điều đình thật sự. Chuyện hợp lý bình thường, thế nhưng vài con vẹt u mê hùng hổ tố cáo Trump điều đình ngưng chiến tại Ukraine với Putin mà cấm cửa không cho Zelensky tham gia, muốn giúp Nga áp đặt ý của Putin lên đầu Zelensky. Dốt mà thích bàn sảng, chửi nhảm, là vậy.

Dĩ nhiên cả hai bên Nga và Ukraine đều áp dụng sách lược vừa đàm vừa đánh, đánh không ngừng trên mặt trận quân sự, mà cũng đánh trên mặt trận chính trị. Trong sách lược này, kể cả đánh nhau bằng chiến tranh chính trị võ miệng, khi Mỹ bắt đầu nói chuyện với Nga, thì TT Zelensky nhẩy nhổm lên tố cáo 'Trump đang bị Putin sai khiến' (tin này New York Times hay Washington Post hay CNN ém nhẹm!). Khi Zelensky công khai khai chiến bằng cách tố Trump là tay sai của Putin, thì cả thế giới phải chờ đợi phản ứng của Trump. TT Trump chưa bao giờ là người chấp nhận để người khác tát vào mặt mà ngồi yên. TT Trump công khai tố cáo ngược Zelensky là "một nhà độc tài không ai bầu". Tố cáo của TT Trump thật ra không sai. TT Zelensky đắc cử TT năm 2019 với nhiệm kỳ 5 năm, mãn nhiệm tháng 5/2024. Tuy nhiên, viện cớ chiến tranh, TT Zelensky không cho tổ chức bầu cử, và tự cho quyền tiếp tục làm tổng thống vô hạn định cho tới khi hòa bình được tái lập.

Đưa đến vấn đề lớn: nếu muốn ngồi làm tổng thống, Zelensky chỉ cần nhất quyết không chấp nhận bất cứ giải pháp hòa bình nào, cứ kiên trì đánh thì vẫn có quyền ngồi làm tổng thống. Với việc chưa chi đã đánh phủ đầu Trump để gây khó cho điều đình hòa bình, 

CÂU HỎI LÀ TT ZELENSKY CÓ THẬT SỰ MUỐN HÒA BÌNH KHÔNG? HAY MUỐN DUY TRÌ CHIẾN TRANH VĨNH VIỄN ĐỂ LÀM TỔNG THỐNG MUÔN NĂM?

Nhắc lại, trong khi CSVN xâm lăng miền Nam, thì VNCH ta vẫn có tổ chức bầu quốc hội và bầu tổng thống 2 lần, năm 1967 và 1971. Ông Thiệu có nhân danh chiến tranh để tự phong mình làm lãnh đạo muôn năm không?

Thẳng thừng mà nói, việc Zelensky công kích Trump là việc làm ngu xuẩn khi Mỹ là xứ viện trợ quân sự lớn nhất cho Ukraine. Chửi ông Trump có thể khiến ông này nổi điên cắt hết quân viện cho Ukraine thì ai chết? Do đó, cuộc khẩu chiến Trump-Zelensky có vẻ như hai bên đang đóng tuồng cho dư luận trước khi bắt tay nhau, nhiều hơn là cãi nhau thật.

Vũ Linh-Lý do Châu Âu Thù Ghét Trump

Cái nhức răng khiến các quốc gia Âu Châu thù ghét Trump chính là việc Trump không muốn tiếp tục làm cái dù che chở Âu Châu trong khi chính các xứ này hoàn toàn lơ là việc quốc phòng, bảo vệ chính mình. Âu Châu tặng tiền trợ cấp đủ kiểu cho dân, tặng dân giáo dục và y tế 'miễn phí', trong khi tháo khoán việc bảo vệ Âu Châu cho nước Mỹ lo, dân Mỹ trả tiền, và lính Mỹ chết thế. Ta nhìn qua vài con số về ngân sách quốc phòng:

. Mỹ: 916 tỷ đô; hay 3,4% GDP Mỹ;

. Đức: 67 tỷ đô; hay 1,5% GDP Đức;

. Anh: 75 tỷ đô; hay 2,3% GDP Anh:

. Pháp: 61 tỷ đô; hay 2,0% GDP Pháp.

🌺 Hoàng Lan Chi viết: mấy con vẹt cuồng chống Trump hay nói “ngu” lắm. Sorry. Ngu cực kỳ, ngu dã man mà cứ thích nói là “ một thằng ngu ở Đức”, “vài mụ ngu ở Mỹ và Pháp”.  

 Ukraine Is Not Vietnam

What is the class character of the war in Ukraine? Some socialists see it as a war of national liberation against Russian “imperialism,” and so they support the Ukrainian side. But this leads them to align with Western imperialism. Socialists need an independent position.

Nathaniel Flakin 

July 1, 2023 

The war in Ukraine has divided the Left more than any event in decades. While Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are facing off in the trenches, the international Left is waging its own battle: a war of analogies.

Is the Ukraine War comparable to the Vietnam War? Is Ukraine’s fight like that of China during World War II? Or do Belgium and Serbia in World War I offer a better analogy? Comparison is how everybody makes sense of the world — Marxists are no exception. As Leon Trotsky said,

Not to resort to analogies with … past epochs would mean simply to reject the historical experience of mankind. The present day is always different from the day that has passed. Yet it is impossible to learn from yesterday in any other way except by the method of analogy.

From the beginning, Left Voice has opposed Putin’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine while also opposing the NATO bloc. This is a war between capitalists, with U.S. imperialists on one side and Russian oligarchs on the other. They are willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers to increase their profits and geopolitical influence. The working class has nothing to win in that war. On the contrary: it’s only by opposing all capitalist governments that the working class can put an end to the bloodshed with a revolutionary struggle. As Trotsky put it back in 1938, when Ukraine was being crushed by Stalinist oppression, a free and independent Ukraine can only be won with “complete independence of the proletarian party as the vanguard of the toilers!”

While we say “Neither Putin nor NATO!,” a different sector of the Left argues that Ukraine is waging a war of national liberation against an imperialist aggressor, similar to the anti-colonial struggles that took place throughout the 20th century. This is the position of groups including Tempest and Workers Voice. And there is broad agreement that socialists should support wars of national liberation. Ever since the founding of the Communist International in 1919, socialists have been very clear that unconditional support should be offered to all struggles against imperialism, even when these are led by reactionary forces.

From Hanoi and Saigon …

There have been certain historical examples in which an anti-colonial movement has gotten arms from a competing imperialist power. In the leadup to the Easter Rising of 1916, for example, Irish Republicans attempted to get arms from Germany for their struggle against the British Empire. V. I. Lenin defended this uprising as completely legitimate, despite its links to the kaiser. We can find many other examples of Marxists defending the right of a people fighting imperialism to get arms from anywhere they can. ¹

In the last year, the U.S. government has sent tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Kiev. Now, weapons shipments from NATO would not, by themselves, preclude socialists from supporting Ukraine’s war effort. But the crucial question remains: Are these arms being provided for a just war of liberation?

Writing in Tempest, Nate Moore argues that “U.S. based socialists should not be opposing arms to Ukraine despite the inter-imperialist dynamics unleashed by the Russian invasion.” Moore lists several cases in which anti-colonial movements got weapons from foreign powers, including the Vietnam War:

During the Vietnam War, the USSR and China, in competition with one another and with U.S. imperialism, delivered arms to the Vietnamese to fight the U.S. Although these were oppressive societies, third camp socialists did not advocate preventing arms from being sent to the Vietnamese resistance.

And this is true: socialists around the world called for “weapons for the Viet Cong,” i.e., the National Liberation Front fighting the pro-imperialist puppet government in South Vietnam. Even socialists who opposed the Stalinist leaders of the Soviet Union and China cheered on the Vietnamese liberation fighters.

The analogy, however, has some very serious limitations. The Viet Cong was a mass movement of peasants and workers under the leadership of a Stalinist party aligned with Moscow. These Stalinists had already expropriated the big landlords and capitalists in the northern part of their country. The war against the U.S. occupation forces in the South enjoyed huge popular support because it was not just a fight for formal independence. (South Vietnam, after all, was technically an independent country.) They were fighting for liberation from imperialist exploitation. This overwhelming moral force is why an army of peasants could defeat the world’s largest imperialist military apparatus.

Vietnam’s war effort was supported by the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent by the People’s Republic of China. Moore writes that these were “oppressive societies,” which is true but also very imprecise. The Soviet Union had been created by the workers’ revolution of 1917. Because the new workers’ state was isolated, a bureaucracy under Stalin had politically expropriated the working class in a bloody counterrevolution. But the economic foundations of a socialist society — a planned economy, a monopoly on foreign trade, etc. — remained in place. The People’s Republic of China, in contrast, had emerged from a peasant-based revolutionary struggle. In China, Stalinists established a bureaucratically planned economy from the outset. The resulting society was similar to that of the Soviet Union, but there were no workers’ councils for the Stalinists to crush.

To understand these contradictory social formations, we say that the USSR and the PRC were degenerate and deformed workers’ states. Throughout their histories, these states did carry out wars of conquest. But this was not “imperialism” in the Marxist sense of the word. Imperialism is not just warmongering — rather, it is a form of international exploitation based on finance capital’s need to constantly expand. The USSR and the PRC had no finance capital. Wars conducted by these states were about protecting the interests of the ruling bureaucracies, who were dependent on the planned economies. This is why they offered support to the Vietnamese struggle to expel imperialism and expropriate big landowners.

… to Kiev and Donetsk

Is anything comparable happening in Ukraine today? The Zelenskyy government is not fighting to free Ukraine from imperialist domination. Quite the opposite: its stated goal is to integrate the country into imperialist alliances like NATO and the EU. The right-wing government is abolishing laws that protect workers and farmers so that imperialist corporations can better suck the country dry.

The contrast could not be greater: the Viet Cong were fighting for the expropriation of big landlords in the interest of peasants. Zelenskyy’s government is fighting to expropriate small farmers in the interest of land-grabbing multinational agribusinesses.

It is no coincidence that the Soviet Union supported the Vietcong, while U.S. imperialism supports Zelenskyy. It has to do with the class character of these societies.

The Vietnamese were fighting against imperialism. The Ukrainian army is fighting for imperialism. This is why the political dynamics of the two wars are vastly different. In Vietnam, masses of people became communists (unfortunately of the Stalinist variety). In Ukraine, in contrast, Nazi forces have grown substantially, while most leftist parties have been banned. Victories by the Vietnamese weakened imperialism for the following decade; partial victories by Ukrainian forces have strengthened NATO and massively increased in Western military budgets.

If comrade Moore applied his logic to Vietnam, he would likely have found himself in solidarity not with the Stalinist-led government in the North, but rather with the pro-imperialist government of South Vietnam. The puppet state in the South was claiming to defend “democracy” against “totalitarianism,” in alliance with U.S. imperialism. Zelenskyy has much more in common with Ngo Dinh Diem than with Ho Chi Minh. ²

An Anti-imperialist or a Pro-imperialist War?

In more than a year of the Ukraine war, we have seen how imperialist support has strengthened Zelenskyy’s right-wing government and allowed it to carry out neoliberal attacks against workers and peasants. Ukraine today is nothing more than a protectorate of U.S. imperialism, and even if it could secure a resounding victory against Russia, the country’s budget would be controlled by Washington via the foreign debt, the IMF, and similar instruments. Moore does not dispute that this has been the dynamic of the last year. Yet he maintains that this war to subordinate Ukraine to Western imperialism can somehow be transformed into a war of liberation:

An implicit assumption of the “stop U.S. arms” position is that Ukraine will not be able to confront U.S. imperialism because the aid received heretofore has overly strengthened the U.S. imperialist position and control over the Ukrainian state. This not only projects a future that is unknowable, but worse, expresses little confidence in the Ukrainian people to struggle — a patronizing and condescending position directed at a nation that has reversed Russian military success since the invasion.

This is totally wrong. We have enormous faith in the power of the Ukrainian working class to struggle. We think Ukraine’s proletariat can lead a struggle for genuine independence — which would mean not only repelling the Russian invasion forces but also breaking with NATO and its lackey to nationalize imperialist capital. Moore, in contrast, seems to think that Ukraine as a formally independent, semicolonial vassal state of NATO is a goal worth fighting for. True “self-determination” will never come at the hands of a capitalist state.

Throughout his article, comrade Moore reduces all classes in Ukraine with their antagonistic interests and all national groups to a single “Ukrainian people.” An oligarch who is hoping to scrape up billions in trade deals with the EU, it would seem, is the same as a poor pensioner who wants the bombing to end. A Nazi paramilitary armed with rocket launchers made in the United States is the same as a trans person who would like to flee the country. Moore has nothing at all to say about a significant minority in Ukraine who prefer Russia — they are presumably excluded from the “Ukrainian people” whom he claims to speak for.

Weapons or No Weapons?

In this war, Left Voice has been sticking to long-standing socialist principles: “Not one person and not one cent for militarism!” This means we also oppose weapons shipments from NATO countries to the Ukrainian government, just like we oppose Putin’s reactionary invasion. We have shown that workers can stop the war machine, highlighting actions by workers in Greece and Belarus.

The Biden administration is not spending billions on weapons out of concern for democracy. This is part of an imperialist strategy intended to weaken Russia and ultimately China. Imperialism, as understood by Marxists, is not limited to military maneuvers. U.S. imperialism controls Ukraine via political and financial means. On this question, we have no differences with comrade Moore:

The U.S. naturally has imperial interests in this conflict. Through arms and aid to Ukraine, it hopes to strengthen its position against Russia over the long term.

Moore nonetheless writes that since “the U.S. and NATO have not invaded Ukraine,” this is not (yet) an inter-imperialist conflict. His conclusion is that we do not need to oppose our “own” government. Instead, he argues we should “not oppose” the Biden administration’s policy of ever-growing arms shipments. Moore continues:

Does supporting U.S. arms to Ukraine mean that we should explicitly call on the U.S. state to send arms? No. We are leaving that to the Ukrainians. Our role is to not get in the way of their legitimate self-defense.

So we should not call for arms shipments — but we shouldn’t oppose them either. We should be neutral (passively supportive?) of White House policy. But if Moore is serious about supporting the demands of the “Ukrainian people,” then he must see that most Ukrainians are in favor of NATO weapons shipments. Plenty of self-described socialists in Ukraine are asking people like Moore to pressure NATO governments to send more weapons. Why would he refuse such a request? If he thinks these weapons are playing a progressive role, he should be agitating for them openly.

Socialists and Weapons

The International Workers League (LIT-CI), the international tendency of the U.S. group Workers Voice, is at least consistent here: their support for the “Ukrainian resistance” does not know any such limits. They openly call on U.S. imperialism to increase weapons shipments — besides modern tanks, they demand fighter jets as well. One wonders: Why not nuclear weapons, comrades of the LIT-CI? That would certainly put a brake on the Russian invasion.

The LIT-CI acts as if fundamental opposition to NATO could be combined with support for NATO’s central policy for the last year — as if they could cheer for increased military spending for Ukraine’s army (which hopes to join NATO as soon as possible), while somehow opposing NATO. While we have always criticized Bernie Sanders and other “socialists” in the Democratic Party for voting in favor of U.S. military spending, a hypothetical LIT-CI representative in Congress would need to be voting alongside Democrats and Republicans for billions more to go to U.S. arms manufacturers.

These comrades pretend that they are supporting not the Zelenskyy government but rather some mythical “Ukrainian resistance” that is independent of Zelenskyy and NATO. In several statements, they have failed to say who might make up such a “resistance.” The only forces on the ground are the Ukrainian army and militias under strict government control — the only groups that have any kind of autonomy are the Nazis!

In a different statement — polemicizing with Gilbert Achcar, who has similar reservations as Moore about campaigning for ever larger weapons shipments — the LIT-CI wrote:

We believe that it is absolutely correct to mobilize to demand that all governments (including those of NATO member countries) deliver to the Ukrainian resistance arms.

Mobilizing for more weapons shipments? We note that Workers’ Voice, the sympathizing section of the LIT-CI in the U.S., has not taken up such a campaign. They generally don’t publish many of the LIT-CI’s articles on Ukraine on their website and seem embarrassed by the idea of campaigning in support of Biden’s policies. It’s positive that Workers’ Voice is ignoring the LIT-CI’s positions here. As internationalists, however, this blushing silence about their international organization is diplomatic and depoliticizing. Workers’ Voice should say openly why the LIT-CI is wrong here and that they will not carry out any such campaign to encourage the White House to continue and intensify its policies.

Totality

In his 1967 postscript to his study of Lenin’s thought, Georg Lukács highlighted the category of the “totality” as key to Leninism:

It is the totality which correctly points the way to the class-consciousness directed towards revolutionary practice. Without orientation towards totality there can be no historically true practice.

None of the socialists who support Ukraine’s war effort are considering the totality. They want us to see this war as a conflict between two unequal states — not as part of growing tensions between the Great Powers in a time of declining U.S. hegemony. In other words, they want us to look at an arbitrarily defined part of the war, separate from the totality of global imperialism.

Empirically, this is humbug. The Pentagon leaks confirmed that all major imperialist powers are very active in Ukraine, including with their own military personnel. Ukraine’s offensives are being planned in Washington.

Here, the LIT-CI has a particularly strange position. They ask what would happen “if NATO attacks Russia,” and answer as follows:

In this situation, Russia would have to be defended, because it would mean the aggression of the imperialist NATO against a weaker and more dependent country (Russia). In other words, we would be for the defeat of NATO.

Thus, if U.S. troops were to fire on Russian forces, the LIT-CI would turn 180 degrees: They would stop supporting Zelenskyy and immediately align themselves with Russian forces. The problem, of course, is that there is no clear line between imperialist “support” for Ukraine or direct imperialist intervention. Both of the LIT-CI’s positions, support for Ukraine or hypothetical support for Russia, are wrong. They are the result of extremely mechanical thinking that fails to understand the totality of the global situation.

Serbia

Like the Ukraine war, the First World War led to historic debates on the Marxist Left. In 1914, there was a legitimate war of national liberation by the Belgian people against an unprovoked German attack and occupation. Serbia was also waging a war of national defense against an imperialist power, Austria-Hungry, that wanted to devour it. Had Lenin and other Marxists attempted to look at either of these partial conflicts in isolation, they would have needed to give full support to the Belgians and Serbians. But they recognized this would have meant placing themselves on the side of the imperialist Allies.

As most socialists would agree today, World War I was not a series of isolated wars of national liberation — it was a global conflict among imperialist powers. Socialists needed to fight for the defeat of their “own” bourgeoisie. This included the socialists in Serbia, who bravely opposed “national defense” even when the “fatherland” was threatened with destruction. Rosa Luxemburg praised the Serb socialists for voting against war credits. This position makes sense only if we look at the totality.

Today, socialists in the NATO countries need to oppose their “own” imperialist power. As the tensions between the Great Powers increase, we will see new conflicts and wars — and each imperialist power will try to present their aggression in the name of “democracy” and “self-determination.” That has always been the language of war propaganda.

Socialists need to fight for an independent position. This applies to Ukraine as well, where socialists need to fight for the working class to become an independent political factor, with a perspective of liberating the country from both NATO and Russian imperialism. This is the only way to put an end to reactionary wars.

We encourage comrades in Tempest and Workers Voice who are unhappy with their groups’ positions — and we respect these comrades enough to know that many of them feel deeply uncomfortable with the official line — to carry out this debate.

Notes

Notes

↑1

We analyzed Trotsky’s essay “Learn to Think” in one article and looked at the Trotskyists’ positions on the Chinese war of liberation against Japan in another. We will not repeat those arguments there.

↑2

On a side note: Moore refers to a tradition of “third camp socialists” supporting the liberation struggle in Vietnam. This term refers to socialists who broke with Trotsky’s analysis of Stalinism, which we sketched above, and instead argued that the Soviet Union represented “state capitalism” or some kind of new class society. It is, unfortunately, not true that “third camp socialists” supported Vietnam. Max Shachtman by that time had become a defender of “democracy” against Stalinism, so he was a virulent supporter of U.S. imperialism and its barbaric crimes in Vietnam. Hal Draper recoiled from Shachtman’s reactionary views and developed extremely muddled positions. The tendency led by Tony Cliff, the International Socialists, did support the Viet Cong but never came up with a theoretical justification for their position. Cliff had refused to support the Stalinist-led national liberation movements in Korea or in Cuba, claiming that these were “state capitalist.” How would that logic apply to Vietnam? If Vietnam was divided between two “capitalist” governments, each backed by an “imperialist” power, why support one over the other? Cliff’s sudden shift regarding Vietnam can only be explained by opportunism: the Vietnamese cause was extremely popular in the student movement at the time. This is an important example of how the theory of “state capitalism” leads socialists to bad positions — but that is a topic for a different article.

Imperialism

NATO

Russia

War in Ukraine

Nathaniel Flakin

Nathaniel is a freelance journalist and historian from Berlin. He is on the editorial board of Left Voice and our German sister site Klasse Gegen Klasse. Nathaniel, also known by the nickname Wladek, has written a biography of Martin Monath, a Trotskyist resistance fighter in France during World War II, which has appeared in German, in English, and in French, and in Spanish. He has also written an anticapitalist guide book called Revolutionary Berlin. He is on the autism spectrum.

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Project 2025

 
Project 2025 (also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project)^[3] is a political initiative to reshape the federal government of the United States and consolidate executive power in favor of right-wing policies. The plan was published in April 2023 by The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, in anticipation of Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election.^[4][5]

The ninth iteration of the Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership series, Project 2025 is based on a controversial interpretation of the unitary executive theory that states that the entire executive branch is under the complete control of the president.^[6][7] Proponents of Project 25 say it would dismantle a government bureaucracy which they say is unaccountable and mostly liberal.^[8] Critics have characterized it as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan^[9][10][11] that would steer the U.S. toward autocracy.^[12] Legal experts say it would undermine the rule of law,^[13] separation of powers,^[5] separation of church and state,^[12] and civil liberties.^[5][13][14]

The project calls for merit-based federal civil service workers to be replaced with people loyal to Trump to take partisan control of key government agencies, like the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Commerce (DOC), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC).^[15] Other agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Education (ED), would be dismantled or abolished.^[16] The president would then be free to implement the Project 25 agenda, including reducing taxes on corporations and capital gains, instituting a flat income tax on individuals,^[17] cutting Medicare and Medicaid,^[18][19] and reversing former president Joe Biden's policies.^[20][21] Project 25 calls for reducing environmental regulations to favor fossil fuels and proposes making the National Institutes of Health (NIH) less independent, and defunding its stem cell research.^[22] It proposes criminalizing pornography,^[23] removing legal protections against anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination,^[24][25] and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs^[5][25] while having the DOJ prosecute anti-white racism instead.^[26] The project recommends the arrest, detention, and mass deportation of illegal immigrants,^[27][28] and deploying the military for domestic law enforcement.^[29] The plan also proposes enacting laws supported by the Christian right,^[9][30] such as criminalizing those who send and receive abortion and birth control medications,^[31][32][33] and eliminating coverage of emergency contraception.^[18]

Most of Project 2025's writers and contributors either worked within Trump's last administration or his election campaign.^[a] Trump campaign officials maintained contact with Project 2025, seeing its goals as aligned with their Agenda 47 program.^{[8][39][40][41]} Trump later attempted to distance himself from the plan.^[b] After Trump won the 2024 election, he nominated several of the plan's architects and supporters to positions in his administration.^[49][50] Four days into his second term, analysis by Time found that nearly two-thirds of Trump's executive actions "mirror or partially mirror" proposals from Project 2025.^[51]

Background

Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, established Project 2025 with the goal of "building a governing agenda, not just for next January but long into the future".^[52]

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank founded in 1973, has had significant influence in U.S. public policy making. In 2019, it ranked among the most influential public policy organizations in the United States.^[53][54] It coordinates with many conservative groups to build a network of allies.^[9]

Heritage president Kevin Roberts sees the organization's current role as "institutionalizing Trumpism."^[55] The Heritage Foundation is closely aligned with Trump.^[37] At a 2022 Heritage Foundation dinner, Trump endorsed the organization, saying it was "going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do ... when the American people give us a colossal mandate."^[48] Roberts said in April 2024 that he had talked to Trump about Project 2025; the Trump campaign denied this.^[56]

Vice President JD Vance wrote the foreword to Roberts's book Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America.^[57] Some have claimed that Vance is connected to Project 2025 through shared views on policy matters.^{[58][59][60][61]}

Project 2025 was established in 2022 with Paul Dans as director to provide the 2024 Republican presidential nominee with a personnel database and ideological framework.^[62][40] According to the Johnson Amendment, 501c3 organizations like Heritage cannot explicitly promote a particular election candidate.^[63] The Heritage Foundation spent $22 million preparing staffing recommendations for a conservative government in 2025. This was much more than what the group typically does for its staffing recommendations because President Trump said he had terrible staff during his first term.^[62] Citing the Reagan-era maxim that "personnel is policy", some political commentators have argued that personnel is the most important aspect of Project 2025.^[64][65]

Many contributors of the Project have close ties to Donald Trump and his 2024 presidential campaign.^[c]

The Mandate for Leadership series has had updated editions released in parallel with United States presidential elections since 1981.^[67] Heritage calls its Mandate a "policy bible",^[67] claiming that the implementation of almost two-thirds of the policies in its 1981 Mandate was attempted by Ronald Reagan,^[68] and similarly, the implementation of nearly two-thirds of the policies of its 2015 Mandate was attempted by Trump.^[68][69]

In April 2023, the Heritage Foundation published the 920-page Mandate, written by hundreds of conservatives.^[20] Nearly half of the project's collaborating organizations have received dark money contributions from a network of fundraising groups linked to Leonard Leo, a major conservative donor and key figure in guiding the selection of Trump's federal judicial nominees.^[70]

President Trump meeting with Edwin Feulner (left front) co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, and other conservative group leaders in 2017

The 2024 Trump campaign said no outside group speaks for Trump and that Agenda 47 is the only official plan for a second Trump presidency.^{[71][72][73][71]} Policy suggestions from groups in Project 2025 reflected Trump's own words. His campaign said it appreciated these groups' policy suggestions.^[74][68] On July 5, 2024, Trump denied any knowledge of Project 2025.^[75] Political commentators including Robert Reich, Michael Steele, and Olivia Troye dismissed Trump's denial.^[76][77][78]

Heritage briefed other 2024 Republican presidential primaries candidates on the project, but focused on policies Trump could implement.

Project 2025 is not the only conservative program with a database of prospective recruits for a potential Republican administration, though these initiatives' leaders all have connections to Trump.^[79][39] In general, these initiatives seek to help Trump avoid the mistakes of his first term, when he arrived at the White House unprepared.^[80] By reclassifying tens of thousands of merit-based federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to replace them with Trump loyalists,^[15][37] some fear they would be willing to bend or break protocol, or in some cases violate laws, to achieve his goals.^[8]

Advisory board and leadership

Partner network

By February 2024, Project 2025 had over 100 partner organizations.^[81] The Southern Poverty Law Center identified seven of these as hate or extremist groups.^[82]

In May 2024, Russell Vought was named policy director of the Republican National Committee platform committee.^[83] The Center for Renewing America (CRA), founded by Vought, is on Project 2025's advisory board.^[84] CRA drafted executive orders, regulations, and memos that could have laid the groundwork for rapid action on Trump's plans when he won.^[85] The CRA identified Christian Nationalism as one of the top priorities for the second Trump term.^[9] Vought claimed that Trump blessed the CRA, and that his effort to distance himself from Project 2025 was just politics.^[85] Vought was Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term.^[9]

In July 2024, Stephen Miller, a former Trump advisor, sought to remove his company, America First Legal, from the Project 2025 list of advisory board members.^[86] Before leaving Project 2025, he appeared in a promotional video for it.^[87] In November 2024, he was appointed as an advisor to the White House for Trump's second term.^[88][89]

Connections to Trump

Project 2025 partners employ over 200 former Trump administration officials.^[90][36][91] Trump was not personally involved in drafting or approving the plan.^[91] Six of his cabinet secretaries are authors or contributors to the 2025 Mandate, and about 20 pages are credited to his first deputy chief of staff.^[36] By summer 2023, the project was seen as a fitting organization for Trump's young and loyal advisors.^[92]

John McEntee, a senior advisor for Project 2025 and former Trump aide, said the project was doing valuable work in anticipation of Trump's second term.^[93][94]

Christopher Miller, who was secretary of defense for the last month of Trump's first term, wrote the Mandate's chapter on the Department of Defense.^{[95]: 91 [96]}

Before his second term, many Project 2025 contributors were expected to have positions in the second Trump administration,^[75] and the administration was expected to use the database of potential federal employees the project recruited and trained.^[97] Peter Navarro, one of Mandate's authors, was appointed Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing.^[98]

Leadership

Associate project director Spencer Chretien, associate director of presidential personnel during Trump's first term,^[99] said it was "past time to lay the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right".^[14]

On July 2, 2024, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts created controversy by saying, "we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."^[75][100] Shortly afterward, the Foundation released a statement adding, "Unfortunately, they have a well established record of instigating the opposite."^[101]

Project 2025 released a statement on July 5 saying the project "does not speak for any candidate or campaign" and that it is up to "the next conservative president" to decide which of its recommendations to implement.^[69] In July 2024, Trump reiterated his disavowal of Project 2025,^{[102][103][104]} but in the same month Project 2025 Director Paul Dans confirmed that his team had ongoing connections with Trump's campaign.^[40] During the week of July 29, Dans told Project staff that he would step down as director in August to focus on the election campaign.^[105][106] Kevin Roberts assumed leadership of the project.^[107]

Roger Severino is vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation. He, Roberts, and Dans wrote much of the Mandate.^{[32][95][108]}

Philosophical outlook

The Mandate for Leadership outlines four main aims: restoring the family as the centerpiece of American life; dismantling the administrative state; defending the nation's sovereignty and borders; and securing God-given individual rights to live freely.^[108] Roberts writes in the Mandate's foreword: "The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before."^{[95]: xiv [109]}

Roberts interprets the phrase "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence as "pursuit of blessedness". According to him, "an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish." The Constitution, he argues, "grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought".^[95]: 13 He highlights family and religious devotion as life's most important principles.^{[citation needed]} Project 2025 plans to infuse every aspect of federal government with Christian nationalism.^[9][110] Roberts writes that the U.S. in 2024 is a place where "inflation is ravaging family budgets, drug overdose deaths continue to escalate, and children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries".^[68] Roberts also expressed concern over crime in the U.S.^[14]

Dans, also an editor of the project's guiding document, described Project 2025 as preparing a staff of conservatives to fight the deep state with their training from partner organizations.^[111][112] He wrote that Project 2025 has four pillars:^[95]: xiv

1. The Mandate for Leadership
2. A personnel database, open to submissions from the public that Heritage can share with Trump's team
3. The Presidential Administration Academy, an online educational system
4. A secret playbook for creating teams and plans to activate in case the president says "so help me God".^[95]: xiv

Policies

The main Project 2025 document, published April 21, 2023^[62]

The plan contains some culture war issues and broad policies that depart from past Republican orthodoxy.^[113] While some proposals might require the support of Republicans in Congress^[8] or favorable rulings from the Supreme Court, much relies on executive power.^{[citation needed]}

Economy

See also: Foreign trade of the United States and United States energy independence

Project 2025 provides a range of options for economic reform that vary in their degree of radicalism. It is critical of the Federal Reserve, which it blames for the business cycle, and proposes abolishing it; it advocates instead that the dollar be backed by a commodity like gold.^[108] It recommends eliminating full employment from the Federal Reserve's mandate, instead focusing solely on targeting inflation.^{[95]: 740 [114]}

The Project envisions eventually moving from an income tax to a consumption tax, such as a national sales tax.^[115] In the interim, the Project seeks to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA).^[116] It further recommends simplifying individual income taxes to two flat tax rates: 15% on incomes up to the Social Security Wage Base ($168,600 in 2024), and 30% above that. An unspecified standard deduction would be included, but most deductions, credits and exclusions would be eliminated.^[115] The proposal would likely increase taxes significantly for millions of low- and middle-income households.^[117]

It aims to reduce the corporate tax rate from 21% to 18% because the Mandate authors see it as the most harmful tax. The 2017 TCJA cut the rate from 35% to 21%.^[17] It proposes reducing the capital gains rate for high earners to 15% from the 2024 level of 20%.^[117] After these reforms are implemented, it recommends that a three-fifths vote threshold be required to pass legislation that increases individual or corporate income tax.^{[95]: 698 [118]} The constitutionality of such "legislative entrenchment" is debated, but most legal scholars agree it is not allowed.^[119]: 28

The project proposes merging the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Census Bureau, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics into a single organization, and aligning its mission with conservative principles. It recommends maximizing the hiring of political appointees in statistical analysis positions.^[115] It also recommends that Congress abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.^[120] It plans to abolish the FTC, which is responsible for enforcing antitrust laws, and shrink the role of the National Labor Relations Board, which protects employees' ability to organize and fight unfair labor practices.^[121] Some of the authors worked for Amazon, Meta, and Bitcoin companies directly or as lobbyists.^[122] One expert claimed inconsistencies in the plan are designed for fund-raising from certain industries or donors that would benefit.^[121]

Project 2025 suggests abolishing the Economic Development Administration (EDA) at the Department of Commerce, and, if that proves impossible, having the EDA instead assist "rural communities destroyed by the Biden administration's attack on domestic energy production".^[95]: 683 Project 2025 also seeks to facilitate innovations in the civilian nuclear industry.^{[27]: 9 [123]}

The project declares that "God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest" and recommends legislation requiring that Americans be paid more for working on Sunday.^[95]: 589 It also aims to institute work requirements for people reliant on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which issues food stamps.^[14] It recommends that OSHA be more lenient on small businesses and that the overtime exception threshold be kept low enough not to burden businesses in rural areas.^[124]

Project 2025 is split on the issue of foreign trade.^[108] Mandate author Peter Navarro advocates what he calls a fair trade policy of reciprocal, higher tariffs on the European Union, China, and India, to achieve a balance of trade, though not all U.S. levies are lower than those of its major trading partners.^[125] On the other hand, Mandate author Kent Lassman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute promotes a free trade policy of lowering or eliminating tariffs to cut costs for consumers, and calls for more free trade agreements.^[125] He argues that Trump's and Biden's tariffs have undermined not just the American economy, but also the nation's international alliances.^[116]

Regarding banking regulation, Mandate recommends combining the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, and parts of the Federal Reserve that perform regulatory and fiscal supervision.^[95]: 705 The document says deposit insurance undermines bank depositors' incentive to monitor their banks' balance sheet.^[95]: 743

Education and research

See also: 2025 United States government data removals, Education in the United States, and Common Core

A major concern of Project 2025 is what it calls "woke propaganda" in public schools.^[108] In response, it envisions a significant reduction of the federal government's role in education, and the elevation of school choice and parental rights.^[16] To achieve that goal, it proposes closing the Department of Education, and giving states control over education funding and policy.^[14] Programs under the Individuals with Disabilities' Education Act (IDEA) would be administered instead by the Department of Health and Human Services. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) would become part of the Census Bureau.^[16]

The federal government, according to Project 2025, should be no more than a statistics-keeping organization when it comes to education. Federal enforcement of civil rights in schools should be significantly curtailed, and such responsibilities should be transferred to the Department of Justice, which would then be able to enforce the law only through litigation. The federal government should no longer investigate schools for signs of disparate impacts of disciplinary measures on the basis of race or ethnicity. Project 2025 blames federal government overreach for schools prioritizing "racial parity in school discipline indicators—such as detentions, suspensions, and expulsions—over student safety".^[16]

Project 2025 further advocates that Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 be allowed to expire, removing $18 billion in federal funds for schools in low-income areas.^[16] Public funds for education should be available as school vouchers with no strings attached, even for parents sending their children to private or religious schools.^[16] Cuts should be made to the funding for free school meals. The Head Start program that provides services to children of low-income families should be ended. Roger Severino claimed the program does not provide value, but never provided evidence for his claims.^[126] For the project's backers, education is a private rather than a public good.^[16] Project 2025 criticizes any programs to forgive student loans.^[127]

Project 2025 encourages the president to ensure that "any research conducted with taxpayer dollars serves the national interest in a concrete way in line with conservative principles".^[95]: 686 For example, research in climatology should receive considerably less funding, in line with Project 2025's views on climate change.^[128]

Environment and climate

See also: Climate change in the United States, Environmental policy of the Donald Trump administration, Greenhouse gas emissions by the United States, and United States offshore drilling debate

Mandate's climate section was written by several people, including Mandy Gunasekara, whom Trump previously chose as the EPA's chief of staff, and Bernard McNamee, whom Trump appointed to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.^[129] Four of the report's top authors have publicly engaged in climate change denial.^[130][20] McNamee dismisses climate change mitigation as progressive policy.^[20] Gunasekara acknowledges the reality of human-made climate change but considers it politicized and overstated.^[131] She claimed to have been an instrumental advocate for the United States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2017. On the other hand, project director Paul Dans accepts only that climate change is real, not that human activity causes it.^[130]

The manifesto advises the president to go further than merely nullifying Biden's executive orders on climate change, to "eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere".^[20][132] It proposes abandoning strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change, including by repealing regulations that curb emissions, and abolishing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which the project calls "one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry".^{[130][133][129][134]} One scientific expert said these policies would endanger lives, are shooting the messenger, and serve the climate change denial movement.^[46][135]

The Inflation Reduction Act increased the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office's loan budget from $40 billion to $400 billion.^[136] Project 2025 supports repealing the Inflation Reduction Act and closing the Loan Programs Office. McNamee advocates that the DOE reorient funding at the national labs it sponsors from climate change and renewable energy research to making energy more affordable.^[130] He advocates entrenching these changes by closing the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations.^[20]

Project 2025 advocates downsizing the EPA.^[129][20] In particular, it seeks to close the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.^{[137][20][138]} Heritage Foundation energy and climate director Diana Furchtgott-Roth has suggested that the EPA support the consumption of more natural gas, despite climatologists' concern that this would increase leaks of methane (CH₄), a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the short term.^[130] Project 2025 wants to reverse a 2009 EPA finding that carbon dioxide emissions are harmful to human health, preventing the federal government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.^[130][20] It also advocates preventing the EPA from using private health data to determine the effects of pollution. Under its blueprint, the expansion of the national electrical grid would be blocked, the transition to renewable energy stymied, and funding for the DOE's Grid Deployment Office curtailed. Nonpartisan experts said renewable energy projects will have to slow down if the electrical grid is not expanded.^[20]

The project further advocates that states be prevented from adopting stricter regulations on vehicular emissions, as the state of California has,^[130] and that regulations on the fossil fuel industry be relaxed.^[128] For example, restrictions on oil drilling imposed by the Bureau of Land Management could be removed.^[129]

Project 2025's manifesto includes eliminating climate change mitigation from the National Security Council's agenda and encouraging allied nations to use fossil fuels.^[130] It declares that the federal government has an "obligation to develop vast oil and gas and coal resources" and supports Arctic drilling.^[130]

Project 2025 recommends incentives for members of the general public "to identify scientific flaws and research misconduct" and to legally challenge climatology research.^[20]

Republican climate advocates have disagreed with Project 2025's climate policy. Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy president Sarah E. Hunt^[139] considered the Inflation Reduction Act crucial, and U.S. Representative (now U.S. Senator) John Curtis said it was vital that Republicans "engage in supporting good energy and climate policy". American Conservation Coalition founder Benji Backer noted growing consensus among younger Republicans that human activity causes climate change, and called the project wrongheaded.^[130]

The project abandons the habitat conservation goal of 30 by 30,^[46] and advocates that the National Flood Insurance Program be replaced by private insurers.^[140] The League of Conservation Voters has criticized this as a giveaway to private industry.^[140]

Expansion of presidential powers

Project 2025 seeks to place the federal government's entire executive branch under direct presidential control, eliminating the independence of the DOJ,^[141] the FBI, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and other agencies.^[4][62] The plan is based on a controversial interpretation of unitary executive theory, "an expansive interpretation of presidential power that aims to centralize greater control over the government in the White House."^{[142][35][143][144][145]} Kevin Roberts said that all federal employees should answer to the president.^[4] Since the Reagan administration, the Supreme Court has embraced a stronger unitary executive led by conservative justices, the Federalist Society, and the Heritage Foundation, and overturned some precedents limiting Project 2025's vision of executive power.^[6][7][146]

Project 2025 proposes that all Department of State employees in leadership roles should be dismissed no later than January 20, 2025. It calls for installing senior State Department leaders in "acting" roles that do not require Senate confirmation.^[147] Kiron Skinner, who wrote the State Department chapter of Project 2025, ran the department's office of policy planning for less than a year during the Trump administration before being forced out of the department. She considers most State Department employees too left-wing and wants them replaced by those more loyal to a conservative president. When asked by Peter Bergen in June 2024 if she could name a time when State Department employees obstructed Trump policy, she said she could not.^[147][148]

If Project 2025 were implemented, Congressional approval would not be required for the sale of military equipment and ammunition to a foreign nation,^[5] unless "unanimous congressional support is guaranteed".^{[citation needed]}

Trump said in 2019 that Article Two of the U.S. Constitution grants him the "right to do whatever as president", a common claim among supporters of the unitary executive theory. Similarly, in 2018, Trump claimed he could fire special counsel Robert Mueller.^[62] Trump is not the first president to consider policies related to the unitary executive theory.^[149][150] The idea has seen a resurgence and popularization within the Republican Party since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.^[151]

In 2023, Stephen Miller proposed immediately mobilizing the military at the start of second Trump administration for domestic law and immigration enforcement under the Insurrection Act of 1807.^[28] Jeffrey Clark, a senior fellow at CRA and Project 2025 contributor, has investigated using the Insurrection Act for other purposes, including suppressing protests like the George Floyd protests.^[29] The Heritage Foundation denied Project 2025 planned to use the Insurrection Act, but Mandate has a single line in which it says it is possible to use the Insurrection Act to secure the southern border.^[152][153] Russell Vought said the CRA was working to keep legal and defense communities from preventing use of the Insurrection Act.^[154]

Clark also promoted making the Department of Justice less independent of the president in order to let Trump prosecute his political rivals.^[141][155] For his alleged acts while working at the DOJ during the end of Trump's term, Clark has become a co-defendant in the Georgia election racketeering prosecution and an unnamed co-conspirator in the federal prosecution of Trump for alleged election obstruction.^[29][156] Heritage said Project 2025 contains no plans to prosecute political enemies.^{[citation needed]}

Media Matters reported that several Project 2025 partners praised the 2024 Supreme Court decision Trump v. United States, which grants broad immunity from prosecution for acts committed in the course of a president's official duties.^{[157][better source needed]}

Federal staffing

See also: Spoils system and Schedule F appointment

Project 2025 proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to replace them with Trump loyalists.^[8] It established a personnel database shaped by the ideology of Donald Trump. Throughout his first term, Trump was accused of removing people he considered disloyal, regardless of their ideological conviction, such as former attorney general William Barr. In 2020, White House Presidential Personnel Office employees James Bacon and John McEntee developed a questionnaire to test potential government employees' commitment to Trumpism. Bacon and McEntee joined Project 2025 in May 2023.^[99] The project uses a similar questionnaire to screen potential recruits for adherence to its agenda.^[2][158] For Trump's second term the project recommends that a White House Counsel be selected who is "deeply committed" to the president's "America First" agenda.^[5][62]

In 2020, Trump established the Schedule F job classification by executive order. Biden rescinded this classification at the beginning of his presidency. Russell Vought, who worked on Schedule F during Trump's first term, joined Project 2025.^[62] He said that Trump's second term would destroy the administrative state and fire and traumatize federal workers.^[5][154] He advocated reviving Schedule F during Trump's second term. Kevin Roberts said: "People will lose their jobs. Hopefully their lives are able to flourish in spite of that. Buildings will be shut down. Hopefully they can be repurposed for private industry."^[159] On January 20, 2025, Trump signed an executive order to that effect.^[160]

In response the reinstatement of Schedule F, several unions sued and took other protective measures to prevent Schedule F's full implementation.^{[161][162][better source needed]} At the end of Biden's term, about 4,000 government positions were deemed political appointments.^[5][62] If fully implemented, Schedule F would affect tens of thousands of professional federal civil servants who have spent many years working under both Democratic and Republican administrations.^[5][62] According to Georgetown University professor of public policy Donald Moynihan, while apolitical and meritocratic selection of public servants is vital to administrative functioning, the Republican Party increasingly views them and public sector unions as threats, or resources to be controlled.^[163] Political scientist Francis Fukuyama has said that while the federal bureaucracy is in dire need of reform, Schedule F would "dangerously undermine" the government's functionality.^[164]

The Heritage Foundation planned to have 20,000 personnel in its database by the end of 2024.^{[62][165][better source needed][needs update]}

Project 2025 encourages Congress to require federal contractors to be 70% U.S. citizens, ultimately raising the limit to 95%.^[95]: 612 It also calls for the President to reinstate Executive Orders 13836, 13837 and 13839, which related to how federal agencies address labor unions, grievances and seniority.^[95]: 81

By June 2024, the American Accountability Foundation, a conservative opposition research organization led by former Senate aide Tom Jones, was researching certain key high-ranking federal civil servants' backgrounds. Called Project Sovereignty 2025, the undertaking received a $100,000 grant from Heritage. Its objective was to post online the names of 100 people who might oppose Trump's agenda. Announcing the grant in May 2024, Heritage wrote that the research's purpose was "to alert Congress, a conservative administration, and the American people to the presence of anti-American bad actors burrowed into the administrative state and ensure appropriate action is taken." Some found Project Sovereignty 2025 reminiscent of McCarthyism, when many Americans were persecuted and blacklisted as alleged communists.^{[166][167][168]}

Foreign affairs

See also: Second Cold War and North Atlantic Treaty § Article 3

Project 2025 proposes pressuring NATO member states to increase their military spending, in order to confront threats from Russia.

In Mandate, Christopher Miller derides the Biden administration for letting the USA's military capabilities decay.^[96] Mandate's preface says, "For 30 years, America's political, economic, and cultural leaders embraced and enriched Communist China and its genocidal Communist Party while hollowing out America's industrial base."^[95]: 11 Miller also focuses on China strategy, warning that China is building up its military and its nuclear arms could potentially rival the United States'. He discusses the need to maintain a balance of power that prevents China from becoming a regional hegemon. He suggests that China is a belligerent state best countered by an expanded nuclear arms program and raised expectations of regional allies like South Korea and Japan.^[96]

On the campaign trail, Trump avoided giving specific foreign policy plans,^[169] but Kiron Skinner, who wrote Project 2025's State Department chapter, considers China a major threat, and is critical of any conciliatory move toward it.^[170]

in Mandate, Max Primorac suggests significant changes to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)'s mission^[96] due to "divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systemic racism". Mandate recommends the word gender be purged from all USAID programs and documents.^[96][171] It also mentions specific United Nations agencies the U.S. should cease to support financially and suggests the president be given more power to allocate U.S. foreign aid.^[171]

Project 2025 favors neither interventionism nor isolationism, instead insisting that all decisions related to foreign policy prioritize national interests.^[172]

Nuclear policy

The Mandate argues that the U.S. should maintain its nuclear umbrella only for member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and that these countries should be responsible for deploying their own conventional forces to deter Russian aggression.^{[95]: 94–95} As of June 2024, 24 of the 32 NATO members had allocated at least 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defense.^[173]

Christopher Miller advocates that the U.S. replace all its Cold War nuclear capabilities and infrastructure in addition to development the LGM-35 Sentinel. He also promotes testing more weapons in violation of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.^[96] The Biden administration also promoted the Sentinel's development.^[174]

More specifically, the Mandate calls for a speech shortly after inauguration to "make the case to the American people that nuclear weapons are the ultimate guarantor of their freedom and prosperity". Which should be followed by additional funding for nuclear weapons modernization programs to develop and produce new warheads such as W87-1 Mod and W88 Alt 370 and deploy as-yet-unproven directed-energy and space-based weapons and a "cruise missile defense of the homeland".^[95]: 127 The plan advocates continuing the B61-12 and W80 modernization programs, which began in 2013 and 2014 respectively and have been continued by each administration since.^{[175][174][95]: 127 [176]} It also advocates restarting funding for nuclear armed submarine-launched cruise missiles.^[95]: 127 The Obama administration retired similar missile programs in 2010. Trump restarted funding these SLCM-N in 2018, but the Biden administration canceled the funding in 2022.^[177]

Plans include placing multiple warheads on each Minuteman III ICBM and its Sentinel replacement by 2026, putting nuclear warheads on Army ground-launched missiles, adding nuclear capabilities to hypersonic missile systems, directing the Air Force to investigate a road-mobile ICBM launcher, expanding the pre-positioning of nuclear bombs and weapons in Europe and Asia, and directing the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to "transition to a wartime footing". This would be funded by directing the NNSA to submit monthly briefings to the Oval Office and separate budget requests from the Energy Department, along with directing the Office of Management and Budget to submit a supplemental budget request to Congress.^{[citation needed]}

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists called Project 2025's nuclear policy "the most dramatic buildup of nuclear weapons since the start of the Reagan administration" and the beginning of a new global nuclear arms race. It includes the prioritization of nuclear weapons development and production over other security programs, rejecting Congressional efforts to find cost-effective alternatives for the plans, increasing the number of nuclear weapons above treaty limits, rejecting current arms control treaties, expanding the NNSA's capability and funding, preparing to test new nuclear weapons despite the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and accelerating all missile defense programs.^[90]

Healthcare and public health

Roger Severino wrote Mandate's chapter on health care. He accuses the Biden administration of undermining the traditional nuclear family, and wants to reform the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to promote this household structure.^[18] According to Project 2025, the federal government should prohibit Medicare from negotiating drug prices^[18] and promote the Medicare Advantage program, which consists of private insurance plans.^[178] Federal healthcare providers should deny transgender people gender-affirming care.^[18]

Project 2025 suggests a number of ways to cut funding for Medicaid, such as caps on federal funding, limits on lifetime benefits per capita, and letting state governments impose stricter work requirements on beneficiaries of the program.^[19][179] Other proposals include limiting state use of provider taxes, eliminating preexisting federal beneficiary protections and requirements, increasing eligibility determinations and asset test determinations to make it harder to enroll in, apply for, and renew Medicaid, providing an option to turn Medicaid into a voucher program, and eliminating federal oversight of state Medicaid programs.^[19] The project also advocates cutting funding to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).^[180]

Project 2025 aims to alter the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by making it easier to fire employees and to remove DEI programs. The agency would also be stopped from funding research with embryonic stem cells or promoting equal participation by women.^{[citation needed]} Conservatives consider the NIH corrupt and politically biased.^[181] Severino says the CDC should not publish health advice, because it is inherently political.^[178]

Immigration reforms

See also: Operation Wetback and Birthright citizenship in the United States

Stephen Miller, known for his anti-immigration views, was and remains a key figure in forming Trump's immigration policy.

This Mandate for Leadership suggests abolishing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and replacing it with an immigration agency that incorporates Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and elements of the departments of Health and Human Services and DOJ. Other tasks could be privatized.^[182] The admission of refugees would be curtailed, and processing fees for asylum seekers would increase, something the Project deems "an opportunity for a significant influx of money".^{[citation needed]} Immigrants who wish to have their applications fast-tracked would have to pay even more.^[108]

In April 2024, Heritage said that Project 2025 policy includes "arresting, detaining, and removing immigration violators anywhere in the United States".^[27][183]

Stephen Miller, a key architect of immigration policy during the Trump presidency, is a major figure in Project 2025.^[72] In November 2023, Miller told Project 2025 participant Charlie Kirk that the operation would rival the scale and complexity of "building the Panama Canal". He said it would include deputizing the National Guard in red states as immigration enforcement officers under Trump's command. These forces would then be deployed in blue states.^[184]

Miller considered^[when?] deputizing local police and sheriffs for the undertaking, as well as agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Drug Enforcement Administration. He said these forces would "go around the country arresting illegal immigrants in large-scale raids" who would then be taken to "large-scale staging grounds near the border, most likely in Texas", to be held in internment camps before deportation. Trump has also spoken of rounding up homeless people in blue cities and detaining them in camps.^[184] Funding for the Mexico–United States border wall would increase.^[108]

Project 2025 encourages the president to withhold federal disaster relief funds granted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should state or local governments refuse to abide by federal immigration laws, by, for example, not sharing information with law enforcement.^[182]

Identity

See also: LGBT rights in the United States, Social policy of Donald Trump, and Identity politics

Project 2025 opposes what it calls "radical gender ideology"^[127] and advocates that the government "maintain a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family".^{[citation needed]} To achieve this, it proposes removing protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual or gender identity, and eliminating provisions pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)—which it calls "state-sanctioned racism"—from federal legislation.^{[24][25][185]} Federal employees who have participated in DEI programs or any initiatives involving critical race theory might be fired.^{[citation needed]}

Public school teachers who want to use a transgender student's preferred pronouns would be required to obtain written permission from the student's legal guardian.^[127] Project 2025's backers also want to target the private sector by reversing "the DEI revolution in labor policy" in favor of more "race-neutral" regulations.^[185] Project 2025 is part of a trend of intensifying backlash against DEI in the early 2020s.^[185]

The White House's Gender Policy Council would be disbanded.^{[citation needed]} Government agencies would be forbidden from instituting quotas and collecting statistics on gender, race, or ethnicity.^[185] Project contributor Jonathan Berry explains, "The goal here is to move toward colorblindness and to recognize that we need to have laws and policies that treat people like full human beings not reducible to categories, especially when it comes to race."^[185] The U.S. Census Bureau would be reformed according to conservative principles.^{[citation needed]}

Journalism

Project 2025 proposes reconsidering the accommodations given to journalists who are members of the White House Press Corps.^[5] It proposes defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private, nonprofit corporation that provides funding for the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio, as "good policy and good politics" because it accounts for "half a billion dollars squandered on leftist opinion each year".^{[95]: 246 [186]} It also entertains the idea of revoking NPR stations' noncommercial status, forcing them to relocate outside the 88–92 range on the FM dial, which could then be taken by religious programming.^[187] Brendan Carr, who wrote the article on the Federal Communications Commission in Project 2025,^[95] was appointed by Trump to lead the FCC, and subsequently launched an investigation into NPR and PBS, in accordance with Project 2025.^[188]

The Project also proposes allowing more media consolidation by changing FCC rules that would allow for the converting local news programs into national news programs.^[187]

The project pushes for legislation requiring social media companies to not remove "core political viewpoints" from their platforms and proposes banning TikTok.^[121] It also would prevent the Federal Elections Commission from countering misinformation or disinformation about election integrity.^[187]

Law enforcement

See also: Judicial independence

The DOJ and the FBI are considered problematic by Project 2025, because of the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, former director of the FBI, into Donald Trump.

In the view of Project 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has become "a bloated bureaucracy with a critical core of personnel who are infatuated with the perpetuation of a radical liberal agenda" and has "forfeited the trust" of the American people due to its role in the investigation of alleged Trump–Russia collusion. It must therefore be thoroughly reformed and closely overseen by the White House, and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) must be personally accountable to the president.^{[citation needed]}

A DOJ reformed per Project 2025's recommendations would combat "affirmative discrimination" or "anti-white racism", citing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Former Trump DOJ official Gene Hamilton argues that "advancing the interests of certain segments of American society... comes at the expense of other Americans—and in nearly all cases violates longstanding federal law."^[26] Therefore, the DOJ's Civil Rights Division would "prosecute all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers" with DEI or affirmative action programs.^[179] Hamilton was also general counsel for America First Legal, a Project 2025 partner organization.^[84]

Legal settlements called "consent decrees" between the DOJ and local police departments would be curtailed.^[189] According to Project 2025, if the responsibilities of the FBI and another federal agency, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), overlapped, then the latter should take the lead, leaving the FBI to concentrate on (other) serious crimes and threats to national security.^[189]

Project 2025 acknowledges that capital punishment is a sensitive matter, but nevertheless promotes it to deal with what it considers an ongoing crime wave and for "particularly heinous crimes" such as pedophilia, until the U.S. Congress legislates otherwise.^[190]

Like Trump, Project 2025 believes that the District of Columbia is infested with crime and as such suggests authorizing the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service to enforce the law outside of the White House and the immediate surroundings.^[182]

National security

Project 2025 would require the U.S. Department of Defense to abolish its DEI programs and immediately reinstate all service members discharged for not getting vaccinated against COVID-19.^[5] The United States Armed Forces would not be authorized to take climate change into account in evaluating national security threats.^[128]

Project 2025 identifies all communist and socialist parties and states, including China, as threats to U.S. national security.^[113][172] It also expresses concern over China's influence on American society, and recommends banning the social network TikTok (which it accuses of espionage) and the Confucius Institutes (which it accuses of corrupting American higher education). The Project also expresses concern over Chinese intellectual property theft and accuses Big Tech of acting on the behalf of the Chinese Communist Party to undermine the U.S.^{[113][95]: 9–13} American pension funds would be encouraged to avoid Chinese investments and American companies seeking to invest in sensitive sectors in China would face restrictions or denial of permission.^[113]

Pornography and adult content

See also: Censorship in the United States and Pornography in the United States

In the foreword of Project 2025's Mandate, Kevin Roberts argues that pornography promotes sexual deviance, the sexualization of children, and the exploitation of women; is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution; and should be banned.^[191] He recommends the criminal prosecution of people and companies producing pornography, which he compares to addictive drugs.^[24] Previously, the Supreme Court has ruled against attempts to ban pornography on First Amendment grounds.^[191] Roberts stated that despite Trump's past of appearing in Playboy magazines and having an affair with a pornstar he could still make a powerful advocate against pornography because "our lord works with imperfect instruments".^[191][192] When the Republican Party nominated him for president in 2016, Trump signed a pledge to examine the "public health impact of Internet pornography on youth, families and the American culture". He did not fulfill this promise.^[191] The American Principles Project, part of the Project 2025 advisory board has advocated for state laws which reduce pornography's accessibility.^[191][84]

Transportation infrastructure

See also: Public transportation in the United States, Amtrak, and Infrastructure policy of Donald Trump

Project 2025 recommends curtailing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, which authorizes funding for de-carbonizing transportation infrastructure.^[193] It views the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) unfavorably, calling it a waste of money. It suggests cutting federal funding for transit agencies nationwide in the form of the Capital Investment Grants (CIG) program. It wants the FTA to conduct "rigorous cost–benefit analysis" even though the agency already scrutinizes projects before allocating funding.^[194][195]

Women's reproductive health

See also: Abortion in the United States and United States abortion protests (2022–present)

Demonstrators advocating for abortion rights, which Project 2025 plans to limit

Project 2025's proponents maintain that life begins at conception.^[18] The Mandate says that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should "return to being known as the Department of Life", as Trump HHS secretary Alex Azar nicknamed it in January 2020, voicing his pride in being "part of the most pro-life administration in this country's history". Project 2025 said Trump should align federal organizations with the policy that abortion is not health care and promote American health "from conception to natural death".^{[31][196][197]}

In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that, contrary to Roe v. Wade, state abortion bans are constitutional, but Project 2025 encourages the next president "to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support".^{[citation needed]}

Severino told a Students for Life conference that Project 2025 was developing executive orders and proposing regulations to roll back Biden's abortion policies and solidify a new environment in the wake of Dobbs.^[32] For example, the Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force Biden created would be replaced by a dedicated pro-life agency that would advocate for health of unborn children and women with newfound authority.^{[citation needed]}

The project opposes any initiatives that in its view subsidize single parenthood.^[9] It encourages the next administration to rescind some of the provisions of the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970, enacted as Title X of Public Health Service Act, which offers reproductive healthcare services, and to require participating clinics to emphasize the importance of marriage to potential parents.^[198]

Severino writes in the project's manifesto that the Food and Drug Administration should reverse its approval of the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol on ethical grounds.^{[95]: 458 [108]} Project 2025 proposes eliminating insurance coverage of the morning-after pill Ella, which insurance companies are required to cover under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).^[18] Severino also recommends that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "update its public messaging about the unsurpassed effectiveness of modern fertility awareness-based methods" of contraception, such as smartphone applications that track a woman's menstrual cycle.^{[95]: 455 [198]} He says that the HHS should require states to report the method and motivation of each abortion, the gestational age of the fetus, and the mother's state of residence.^{[95]: 455 [199]}

The project seeks to restore Trump-era "religious and moral exemptions" to contraceptive requirements under the ACA, including emergency contraception (Plan B), which it deems an abortifacient,^[200][18] to defund Planned Parenthood,^[9] and to remove protection of medical records involving abortions from criminal investigations if the records' owners cross state lines.^[18] Project 2025 contributor Emma Waters told Politico, "I've been very concerned with just the emphasis on expanding more and more contraception." According to her, Project 2025's policy recommendations constitute not restrictions but rather "medical safeguards" for women.^[198] Waters said she wanted the NIH to investigate contraception's long-term effects.^[198]

In Project 2025's "Department of Justice" section, Gene Hamilton calls for enforcement of federal law against using the U.S. Postal Service for transportation of medicines that induce abortion.^{[95]: 562 [201]} Project 2025 seeks to revive provisions of the Comstock Act that banned mail delivery of any "instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing" that could be used for an abortion. Congress and the courts have narrowed Comstock laws, allowing contraceptives to be delivered by mail.^[32][33]

Project 2025 aims to enforce Comstock more rigorously at the national level to prohibit sending abortion pills and medical equipment used for abortions through the mail. The project proposes criminal prosecution of senders and receivers of abortion pills.^[32][33] It does not explicitly advocate banning abortion,^[108] but some legal experts and abortion rights advocates said adopting the Project's plan would cut off access to medical equipment used in surgical abortions to create a de facto national abortion ban.^[202][203]

To prevent teenage pregnancy, Project 2025 advises the federal government to deprecate what it considers promotion of abortion and high-risk sexual behaviors among adolescents. It also seeks to remove HHS's role in shaping sex education, arguing that this is tantamount to creating a monopoly.^{[95]: 477 [204]}

Other initiatives

Database

To be admitted to the "Presidential Personnel Database", a recruit must respond to several prompts about their ideologies. One is "name one living public policy figure whom you greatly admire and why". A recruit's social media accounts will be scrutinized. The key people involved with the database are former Trump administration officials, including John McEntee.^[62]

Heritage claims to have nearly 20,000 profiles as of July 2024, though those could simply be empty after someone started the process and did not finish. Staffers have privately questioned how many of the people in the database could actually work in a future administration.^[92]

Once the second Trump presidency began, White House screening teams fanned out to federal agencies to screen job applicants for their loyalty to the president's agenda. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to restore merit-based federal hiring practices and "dedication to our Constitution".^[205][206]

Training modules

The training modules that members in the database had access to were relatively light on substance and heavy on ideology. The database and modules were low-budget productions.^[92] ProPublica has published 23 of the videos Project 2025 created to support the training. According to ProPublica, 29 of the 36 speakers in the videos worked for Donald Trump in some capacity, including on his 2016–2017 transition team, in his administration, or in his 2024 reelection campaign.^[207]

Draft executive orders

Project 2025 and the CRA have also helped draft executive orders that are not public.^[208][209] Draft orders include invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement, which the Heritage Foundation denied.^[208] At least 38 Democratic members of Congress have called on Project 2025 to release the draft executive orders, also known as the "180-Day Playbook", saying it is in the public interest to know what is being planned.^[210] In July 2024, Micah Meadowcroft, the director of research at CRA, said in a secretly recorded interview that the orders would be distributed during the presidential transition in such a way that they would never be made public.^[85]

Dawn's Early Light

On September 24, 2024, Heritage Foundation president and Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts was due to release the book Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, with a foreword by Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance.^[59][57] The book was initially subtitled Burning Down Washington to Save America.^[59][57]

In the book, Roberts "outlines a peaceful 'Second American Revolution' for voters looking to shift the power back into the hands of the people".^[211] In a review of the book, Vance wrote: "We are now all realizing that it's time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon."^[59] Colin Dickey of the New Republic says the book reveals paranoid, Stalinist tactics like using conspiracy theories to violently enforce their vision for the world.^[212] Roberts criticizes birth control and law enforcement (preferring a more heavily armed frontier-like society), while promoting public prayer as a key tool in the competition with China.^[212]

On August 6, 2024, the book's release was postponed until after the November election.^{[213][214][215]}

Roberts held book release events in Manhattan and Washington, D.C. On November 13, 2024, The Guardian published an account of the hostile reception its reporter encountered at one of the events. Although invited to attend the event, the reporter was expelled.^[216]

Implementation

After Trump won the 2024 election, he nominated several Project 2025 contributors to positions in his second administration.^[49] Some nominees need confirmation by the U.S. Senate, as required by the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. His choice to lead the FCC, Brendan Carr, wrote the manifesto's chapter about the agency.^[217] Tom Homan, picked by Trump to act as a "border czar", also contributed to the Project 2025 document.^[218] Trump also nominated Russell Vought to direct the Office of Management and Budget. After these selections, Karoline Leavitt issued a statement saying "President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025";^[219] Leavitt herself is an instructor for Project 2025's "Conservative Governance 101" training program^[220] and was chosen by Trump as White House Press Secretary.^[221]

Other authors or contributors to Project 2025^[95] who have been nominated or appointed to roles in the second Trump administration include Peter Navarro (author, appointed Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing);^[98] Michael Anton (contributor, appointed Director of Policy Planning);^[222] Paul S. Atkins (contributor, nominated for Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission);^[223] Steven G. Bradbury (contributor, nominated for Deputy Secretary of Transportation);^[224] Troy Edgar (contributor, nominated for Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security),^[225] Jon Feere (contributor, appointed Chief of Staff at ICE),^[226] Pete Hoekstra (contributor, nominated for ambassador to Canada),^[227] and Roman Jankowski (contributor, appointed Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Freedom of Information Act Officer for the Department of Homeland Security).^[228]

Aspects of the project implemented in the first days of Trump's second term include executive orders to reopen large areas of Alaska, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to oil drilling,^[229] and the withdrawal of a pending Biden administration ban on PFAS in drinking water.^[230] Trump's executive orders on immigration and federal implementation of the death penalty went further than Project 2025 recommended. His policy on TikTok diverged from Project 2025's call to ban the app.^[231]

Metadata show that United States Office of Personnel Management memos sent to federal workers were written by Peter Noah and James Sherk, both associated with the Heritage Foundation.^[232] Time magazine found that, as of January 24, more than 60% of the executive actions Trump had issued "mirror or partially mirror proposals from Project 2025".^[233]

Trump's early executive actions closely mirrored Project 2025's outline, reinforcing concern that his administration is rapidly enacting a pre-planned right-wing playbook.^[234][235] His executive orders on gender policies, federal hiring, and foreign aid reflect the project's policies, signaling a shift toward more autocratic governance.^[236] Paul Dans has expressed satisfaction that Trump's early executive orders align with the project's Mandate for Leadership.^[231] One executive order diverts funding from public schools to private school vouchers, a move directly aligned with Project 2025’s goal to reshape the education system.^[237] Project 2025 advocated changes to foreign aid, including a foreign aid freeze; in January 2025, Trump initially signed an executive order freezing new foreign aid for 90 days, and later in January the administration sent a notice requiring that stop-work orders be issued for all existing foreign aid.^[238]

Trump's early budget freezes and spending cuts reflected Project 2025’s aggressive push to downsize government programs and shift power to conservative institutions. In addition, his push to weaken FEMA is part of a broader Project 2025 strategy to reduce the federal government's role in disaster relief and shift responsibility to state and private entities.^[239] Trump's policy actions reignited scrutiny of Project 2025, with critics warning that his administration is actively implementing its agenda across multiple sectors.^[240]

On February 7, 2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it would change its maximum indirect cost rate for university research grants from 50% in some cases to 15%, as recommended by Project 2025.^[241]

Reactions and responses

Supporters of Project 25 say it will dismantle government bureaucracy that is, in their view, unaccountable and biased towards liberalism.^[8] Critics of the project have instead characterized it as authoritarian, Christian nationalist^[9][10] and autocratic.^[12] Legal experts say it would undermine the rule of law,^[13] the separation of powers,^[5] the separation of church and state,^[12] and civil liberties.^[5][13][14] The project has also been criticized for its language, which has been described as warlike and apocalyptic—for example, describing the "battle plan" to regain control of the government—which some have interpreted as threatening political violence.^{[5][112][130]}

Critics have also criticized the project's aims and professionalism, with an August 2024 profile in Politico calling it underfunded, disorganized, and "self-hyped".^[92] Some critics have suggested Project 2025 is based on personal vengeance, or that its proposals for "national conservatism" are merely an "attempt to intellectually retrofit a rationale for Trumpism".^[8] Political journalist Michael Hirsh says Project 2025 is anti-intellectual, citing scholar Matthew Continetti, who says it embraces "a furious reaction against elites of all stripes".^[d]

Allegations of authoritarianism

Protester holding a sign reading "Project 2025: Dictatorship for the USA"

Democracy experts, political scholars, and other commentators have described the project as dangerous,^[79] risking authoritarianism,^[242] and apocalyptic.^[127][5] Many legal experts have said it would undermine the rule of law,^[13] the separation of powers,^[5] the separation of church and state,^[12] and civil liberties.^[5][13][14] Snopes says "people across the political spectrum" are worried the plan is a precursor to authoritarianism.^[208]

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of fascism and authoritarian leaders at New York University, wrote in May 2024 that Project 2025 "is a plan for an authoritarian takeover of the United States that goes by a deceptively neutral name". She said the project's intent to abolish federal departments and agencies "is to destroy the legal and governance cultures of liberal democracy and create new bureaucratic structures, staffed by new politically vetted cadres, to support autocratic rule".^[12] She continues:

Appropriating civil rights for white Christians furthers the Trumpist goal of delegitimizing the cause of racial equality while also making Christian nationalism a core value of domestic policy. Doing away with the separation of church and state is the goal of many architects of Trumpism, from Project 2025 contributor Russ Vought to far-right proselytizer Michael Flynn, who uses the idea of "spiritual war" as counterrevolutionary fuel ... Bannon, Roberts, Stephen Miller, and other American incarnations of fascism are convinced that counterrevolution leading to autocracy is the only path to political survival for the far right, given the unpopularity of their positions (especially on abortion) and their leader's boatload of legal troubles.^[12]

Political experts have said Project 2025 represents significant executive aggrandizement,^[79][243] a type of democratic backsliding involving government institutional changes made by elected executives that has been seen in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela.^[244][245] Cornell University political scientist Rachel Beatty Riedl says this global phenomenon represents threats to democratic rule not from violence but rather from using democratic institutions to consolidate executive power. She says, "if Project 2025 is implemented, what it means is a dramatic decrease in American citizens' ability to engage in public life based on the kind of principles of liberty, freedom and representation that are accorded in a democracy."^[243] Phillip Wallach, a senior fellow studying separation of powers at the American Enterprise Institute, characterized the project as visions that bleed into authoritarian fantasies.^[246]

Donald B. Ayer, the deputy attorney general under George H. W. Bush, said,

Project 2025 seems to be full of a whole array of ideas that are designed to let Donald Trump function as a dictator, by completely eviscerating many of the restraints built into our system. He really wants to destroy any notion of a rule of law in this country ... The reports about Donald Trump's Project 2025 suggest that he is now preparing to do a bunch of things totally contrary to the basic values we have always lived by. If Trump were to be elected and implement some of the ideas he is apparently considering, no one in this country would be safe.^[13]

Michael Bromwich, who was Justice Department inspector general from 1994 to 1999, remarked,

The plans being developed by members of Trump's cult to turn the DOJ and FBI into instruments of his revenge should send shivers down the spine of anyone who cares about the rule of law. Trump and rightwing media have planted in fertile soil the seed that the current Department of Justice has been politicized, and the myth has flourished. Their attempts to undermine DOJ and the FBI are among the most destructive campaigns they have conducted.^[13]

Max Stier of the Partnership for Public Service is among those who have voiced concern the project would revive the early-American spoils-and-patronage system that awarded government jobs to those loyal to a party or elected official rather than by merit. The Pendleton Act of 1883 mandated that federal jobs be awarded by merit.^[247] Former Trump campaign and presidency senior advisor Steve Bannon has advocated for the plan on his War Room podcast, hosting Jeffrey Clark and others working on the project.^[13]

Spencer Ackerman and John Nichols in The Nation and Chauncey DeVega of Salon.com have called Project 2025 a plan to install Trump as a dictator, warning that Trump could prosecute and imprison enemies or overthrow American democracy altogether.^{[248][249][250]} Longtime Republican academic Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic that Trump "is not bluffing about his plans to jail his opponents and suppress—by force, if necessary—the rights of American citizens".^[251]

In Mother Jones, Washington bureau chief David Corn called Project 2025 "the right-wing infrastructure that is publicly plotting to undermine the checks and balances of our constitutional order and concentrate unprecedented power in the presidency. Its efforts, if successful and coupled with a Trump (or other GOP) victory in 2024, would place the nation on a path to autocracy."^[252]

Peter M. Shane, a law professor who writes about the rule of law and the separation of powers, wrote:

The [New York] Times quotes Vought's impatience with conservative lawyers in the first Trump administration who were unwilling to do Trump's bidding without hesitation. Criticizing the timidity of traditional conservative lawyers, Vought told the Times: "The Federalist Society doesn't know what time it is." As for making the Justice Department an instrument of White House political retribution, Vought would unblinkingly jettison the norm of independence that presidents and attorneys general of both parties have carefully nurtured since Watergate. "You don't need a statutory change at all, you need a mind-set change," Vought told the [Washington] Post. "You need an attorney general and a White House Counsel's Office that don't view themselves as trying to protect the department from the president."^[109]

For his 2023 book The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, Dartmouth College professor Jeff Sharlet spent years traveling to meet Trump supporters. He writes that his initial "objections to describing militant Trumpism as fascist have fallen away".^[253] He says Project 2025 is influenced by the New Apostolic Reformation, a rapidly growing evangelical and charismatic movement aligned with Trump. Sharlet says that the Project's first mandate to "restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children" is "Q-coded—it's 'protect the blood,' it's the 14 words, it's all this stuff".^[254]

In a June 2024 column for the libertarian magazine Reason, Steven Greenhut criticized Project 2025 for increasing governmental power, and risking authoritarianism and abuse, by centralizing control of the executive in the president.^[242]

In July 2024, Donald Moynihan of Georgetown University wrote that:

[Project 2025] would add measurably to the risks of corruption in American government. President Trump talks a lot about the deep state. Again, that is very similar to what authoritarians in other countries have tended to do to justify taking more direct control over civil service systems. So I think there is a dangerous pattern here, where it would not just reduce the quality of government. It would also open the door for abuses of political power.^[255]

In July 2024, Reed Galen said that "Project 2025 is Maga's endorsed blueprint for turning America into an authoritarian state".^[256]

LGBTQ+

Human Rights Campaign national press secretary Brandon Wolf speaking at a rally against Project 2025

LGBTQ+ writers and journalists have criticized Project 2025 for its proposals to remove protections for LGBTQ+ people and to outlaw pornography by claiming it is an "omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children".^[24] Writing for Dame magazine, Brynn Tannehill argued that The Mandate for Leadership in part "makes eradicating LGBTQ people from public life its top priority", while citing passages from the playbook linking pornography to "transgender ideology", arguing that it related to other anti-transgender attacks in 2023.^[257]

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, the author of Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity, criticized Project 2025 for appealing to Christian nationalism. In particular, Graves-Fitzsimmons criticized Severino's chapter on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and his opposition to the Respect for Marriage Act that repealed the Defense of Marriage Act and codified the federal definition of marriage to recognize same-sex and interracial marriage.^[258]

On July 10, 2024, hacktivist group SiegedSec announced it had hacked the Heritage Foundation and acquired 200 gigabytes of user information, citing opposition to Project 2025 and the organization's general opposition to transgender rights as the group's primary motivation.^[259]

Political

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Several conservatives and Republicans have criticized the plan for its stances on climate change and trade.^[130][125] Ron DeSantis had embraced Project 2025 in August 2023.^[260]

In June 2024, Democratic Congressman Jared Huffman announced the formation of The Stop Project 2025 Task Force. He warned that the project would hit "like a Blitzkrieg" and said: "if we're trying to react to it and understand it in real time, it's too late. We need to see it coming well in advance and prepare ourselves accordingly."^[261][262] He and others have called the project "dystopian".^[262][263] The Biden campaign launched a website critical of Project 2025 hours before his June 27 debate with Trump.^[73][264] In August 2024, an oversize copy of The Mandate book was used as a prop during the 2024 Democratic National Convention.^{[265][266][267]}

After Trump won the 2024 United States presidential election, many Republicans, Trump allies, and other right-wing commentators said on social media that Project 2025 was the official plan, including right-wing podcast host Matt Walsh. Former White House advisor Steve Bannon praised Walsh's comment on his podcast, and Texas official Bo French tweeted, "So can we admit now that we are going to implement Project 2025?"^[268][269]

Other reactions and responses

In April 2024, historian Emma Shortis wrote:

The Mandate's veneer of exhausting technocratic detail, focused mostly on the federal bureaucracy, sits easily alongside a Trumpian project of revenge and retribution ... [plans] more broadly aim for nothing less than the total dismantling and restructure of both American life and the world as we know it. ... The Mandate doesn't specify who the next conservative president might be, but it is clearly written with Trump in mind ... Project 2025's Mandate is iconoclastic and dystopian, offering a dark vision of a highly militaristic and unapologetically aggressive America ascendant in 'a world on fire'. Those who wish to understand Trump and the movement behind him, and the active threat they pose to American democracy, are obliged to take it seriously.^[270]

In April 2024, responding to criticism of the project, Heritage released a 13-page document titled "5 Reasons Leftists HATE Project 2025".^[27] Restating many of its previously published objectives, the document said that "the radical Left hates families" and "wants to eliminate the family and replace it with the state"; that Leftist "elites use the 'climate crisis' as a tool for scaring Americans into giving up their freedom"; that the "radical Left wants our country to travel down [the] same dark path" toward becoming the Soviet Union, North Korea, and Cuba; and that "woke propaganda" should be eliminated at every level of government.^[27]

In July 2024, Oren Cass, author of the labor chapter, criticized the project's leadership: "Gaining productive power requires focusing on people's problems and explaining how you are going to solve them, not pounding the table for Christian nationalism or a second American revolution."^[92]

See also

• Conservatism portal
• Politics portal

• America First Policy Institute – U.S. advocacy organization which has a transition project which is viewed as a rival to Project 2025
• Donald Trump and fascism
• Hiring and personnel concerns about Donald Trump
• Human rights inflation – Criticism of human rights expansion
• Neopatriarchy – Modern revival of traditional patriarchal norms
• Southern strategy – 20th century Republican electoral strategy for the Southern US
• Project Esther

Notes

1. 
   

31 of 38 (81%) contributors held positions within Trump's administration or transition team.^{[34][35][36][37][38]}

Trump called some of its proposals "ridiculous and abysmal".^{[37][42][43][44]} Critics dismissed Trump's denials due to the plan's involvement of close allies, his 2022 endorsement of the Heritage Foundation's plans, and the 300 times Trump is mentioned in them.^{[45][46][47][48]}

Skibell (2024):

Many of the authors of the blueprint are former Trump officials, and the Heritage Foundation has spent the past year-plus recruiting people to implement the plans within the administration, Scott said.

"So they don't just have a long, sprawling policy document," he said, "they also have a growing list of staff who are being tested to see if they are loyal to Trump and if they are willing to administer this in his potential administration."

— Scott Waldman

Klawans (2024):

Former Trump staffers involved with Project 2025 include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump's former senior adviser Stephen Miller, the latter of whom has been described as a white nationalist.

However, as New York magazine said,^[66] many of Trump's indicated plans for a second term fall in line with the Project 2025 outline.

— Justin Klawans

Mascaro (2024):

While the Trump campaign has repeatedly said that outside groups do not speak for the former president, Project 2025's 1,000-page proposal was drafted with input from a long list of former Trump administration officials who are poised to fill the top ranks of a potential new administration.

4. Michael Hirsh writes: "As a result, the intellectual conservatism of Buckley and other conservative thinkers has been transmuted into its virtual opposite, and the Project 2025 team has embraced it. As Matthew Continetti writes in his 2022 book The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism: 'What began as an elite-driven defense of the classical liberal principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States ended up, in the first quarter of the 21st century, as a furious reaction against elites of all stripes.'"^[8]

References

1. 
   

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Arnsdorf, Isaac; Dawsey, Josh; LeVine, Marianne (December 6, 2023). "Trump 'Dictator' Comment Reignites Criticism His Camp Has Tried to Curb". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 5, 2023. Retrieved November 5, 2023. The news reports prompted Trump campaign senior adviser Susie Wiles to complain to the project's director, Paul Dans of the Heritage Foundation, saying that the stories were unhelpful and that the organization should stop promoting its work to reporters, according to a person familiar with the call.

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Arnsdorf, Isaac (May 16, 2024). "Trump alumni raising millions for legal defenses while scouting for White House hires". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on May 15, 2024. Retrieved July 8, 2024. Officials from PPO and Project 2025 are in regular contact with Trump campaign advisers, though the groups' activities are officially separate and unsanctioned.

Willacy, Mark; Donaldson, Amy (July 15, 2024). "If all goes to plan this man will make Donald Trump one of the most powerful presidents of all time". ABC News (Australia). Archived from the original on July 22, 2024. Retrieved July 24, 2024. But Dans confirmed his team has ongoing connections with the Trump campaign. 'We have integration with folks on the campaign. The reality is ... we often supply ideas and ultimately we hope to offer personnel suggestions,' Dans says. 'This is really going to be the engine room for the next administration. Many of these folks served and will be called upon to serve again.'

Ibrahim, Nue (July 3, 2024). "What's Project 2025? Unpacking the Pro-Trump Plan to Overhaul US Government". Snopes. Archived from the original on July 4, 2024. Retrieved July 4, 2024. Campaign officials once told Politico Project 2025's goals to restructure government ... indeed align with Trump's campaign promises. But in a November 2023 statement, the Trump campaign said: "The efforts by various non-profit groups are certainly appreciated and can be enormously helpful. However, none of these groups or individuals speak for President Trump or his campaign." Without naming Project 2025, they said all policy statements from "external allies" are just "recommendations".

Gleeson, Cailey (July 5, 2024). "Trump Disavows Project 2025: Calls Some Of Conservative Group's Ideas 'Absolutely Ridiculous And Abysmal'". Forbes. Archived from the original on July 9, 2024. Retrieved July 9, 2024. Former President Donald Trump distanced himself on Friday from Project 2025—a controversial package of conservative policy ideas by the Heritage Foundation

Ensor, Josie (July 9, 2024). "Project 2025: Will Trump follow think tank's ultraconservative agenda?". The Times & The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on July 12, 2024. Retrieved July 10, 2024. While Donald Trump has publicly distanced himself from it

Bahari, Sarah (July 9, 2024). "What is the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025?". The Dallas Morning News. Archived from the original on July 11, 2024. Retrieved July 10, 2024. Trump, meanwhile, has publicly distanced himself from the plan.

Dent, Alec (July 10, 2024). "Trump 2024 vs. Project 2025". Intelligencer. Archived from the original on July 12, 2024. Retrieved July 10, 2024. Of the 37 authors of the project's core agenda, 27 came from Trump's orbit...'It's totally false he doesn't know what P25 is,' one former senior adviser said of Trump's remarks. 'Privately, he is of course talking to Heritage, and [Heritage president] Kevin Roberts has reportedly even met with Trump on P25.'...There is a good chance, though, that he will use at least the project's list of loyalists to staff a second administration.

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Ulatowski, Rachel (June 3, 2024). "The Right-Wing Manifesto Project 2025 Is as Real as It Is Terrifying". The Mary Sue. Archived from the original on June 14, 2024. Retrieved July 12, 2024. Essentially, the dystopian manifesto details how the Republican party will radically change the government and significantly impact the rights and freedom of all Americans to push the conservative agenda in every aspect of the country...One of America's major political parties should not have a highly backed and detailed plan to dismantle the country's government and essentially end democracy if they get into office.

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Cappelletti, Joey; Licon, Adriana Gomez (August 20, 2024). "Throwing the book: Democrats enlarge a copy of the 'Project 2025' blueprint as an anti-GOP prop". The Washington Post.

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Further reading

• Heer, Jeet (February 23, 2024). "Hit Trump on Theocracy, Not Hypocrisy". The Nation. Archived from the original on July 1, 2024. Retrieved June 29, 2024.
• Roberts, Kevin (November 12, 2024). Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America. Foreword by JD Vance. Broadside Books. ISBN 978-0063353503.
• Tony, Mike (June 29, 2024). "'Chilling': Under Trump, Project 2025 Could Undo Climate, Energy Progress in WV". Charleston Gazette-Mail. Archived from the original on June 29, 2024. Retrieved June 29, 2024.
• Van Hagen, John (June 26, 2024). "With Project 2025, US Bishops Can't Stand Silently on the Political Sidelines". National Catholic Reporter. Archived from the original on June 29, 2024. Retrieved June 29, 2024.

External links

• Official website
• "Admin 2025" a presentation of the Project 2025 and its network using their own archives.
• "Top Project 2025 architect talks conservative blueprint for Trump second term" on the MSNBC show The Weekend, an interview of Kevin Roberts
• "Paul Dans discussing the 2025 Presidential Transition Project" on C-SPAN call-in show Washington Journal

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