We are now in the home stretch of our deep dive into Project 2025 and our attempt to understand, to the fullest extent, the conservative blueprint for the most radical transformation of the United States government in at least the last 100 years, if not our nation’s history. Implementing Project 2025 would fundamentally alter the balance of power from that outlined in the U.S. Constitution and shift it toward the sitting president. The fundamental remaking of the government according to Republican conservative ideals that Project 2025 proposes would have substantial implications in the areas of social and economic equality, public health, and the environment, destabilize national security due to deteriorated international relations, and erode the very principles of democracy.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Why a deep dive? To:

• Increase understanding of what Project 2025 is about
• Understand who’s responsible for putting it together
• Become informed about the biggest and most important goals of Project 2025
• Understand that the implementation of Project 2025 will make big strides in fulfilling Republican conservatives’ big goals and objectives for the United States
• Grasp the substantial ways these policies, should they become a reality, will affect Americans in all aspects of life

As we wrap up, we want to move from the details to a higher altitude and discuss the implications Project 2025 proposals have for the foundational principles of the American government, on which all this stuff rests.

How Might Project 2025 Change the Fundamentals of Our Government?

Project 2025’s supporters frame it as a roadmap for a conservative transformation of governance; therefore, its implementation promises significant and far-reaching implications for American society.

These are not just political policy wonk concerns; we’re talking about transformations in crucial areas of government that affect us all, from individuals’ rights to the overall stability of the nation. We need a pulled-back view to understand what this is all about.

The fundamental transformations could include:

• Concentration of Power in the Executive Branch: We could see a concentration of power between the president and the executive branch that would undermine the checks and balances designed to prevent any branch of the government branch from becoming more powerful than the other two branches. This concentration of power could lead to a more authoritarian style of governance. This should not surprise us, as the dominant view of presidential authority among the conservatives of Project 2025 is expressed in the unitary executive theory and supported by Samuel Alito even before he became a Supreme Court Justice.
• Erosion of Democratic Norms and Checks and Balances: The Project’s proposals would weaken the independence of federal agencies and the judiciary, eroding the fundamental principles safeguarding American democracy.
• Increased Social Inequality and Potential Civil Unrest: The Project pushes policies that may widen economic disparities and roll back civil rights protections, leading to greater division, unrest, and instability within U.S. society.
• Environmental and Public Health Threats: Reducing environmental regulations, a running theme within Project 2025, could lead to increased air and water pollution and related health risks while ignoring climate change, which could exacerbate natural disasters and cause long-term environmental damage.
• Destabilization of International Relations and National Security: The Project advances an isolationist foreign policy with weakened global alliances that could make the world more volatile, increasing the risk of conflicts that could threaten national and international security.

Is your interest piqued yet? It should be if you’ve been paying attention.

Transformation: Concentration of Power in the Executive Branch

One of the most significant risks associated with Project 2025 is the potential for an unprecedented concentration of power in the Executive branch of government. At least two aspects of the Project’s policies make this possible.

1. Politicization of the Civil Service – The proposal to reinstate and expand “Schedule F” would allow the president to reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees as “policymakers,” making them subject to removal at will. This could lead to a scenario where traditionally non-partisan career civil servants are replaced with political loyalists. The result would be a federal workforce potentially more focused on serving the interests of the president and his ruling party’s interests than upholding the law or impartially serving the public interest. The Executive branch would realize an additional concentration of power and newfound influence over tens of thousands of previously independent civil servants.
2. Undermining the Independence of Federal Agencies – By seeking to overturn the long-standing Supreme Court decision in Humphrey’s Executor, Project 2025 aims to remove the independence of agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), allowing the president to exert direct control over regulatory agencies. This could lead to decisions that favor political or corporate interests over the public good. The erosion of agency independence may also undermine public trust in the fairness and objectivity of government institutions.

In both cases, the net result would be a tremendous expansion of the Executive branch’s power due to federal employees’ unprecedented lack of fidelity to our nation’s laws.

Transformation: Erosion of Democratic Norms and Checks and Balances

Project 2025’s push to dismantle the administrative state and reduce the power of federal agencies could erode the democratic norms and systems of checks and balances that have long safeguarded American democracy. We could see this happening through at least two avenues.

1. Judicial Overreach: One of the safest assumptions is that Project 2025 will push the new Republican president to appoint judges and justices who align closely with the administration’s agenda. This creates the risk of judicial overreach, where the courts no longer serve as an independent check on executive power because they are philosophically favorable to the Republican presidential administration’s wishes. This could lead to rulings that consistently favor the executive branch, creating a de facto undermining of the separation of powers outlined in the U.S. Constitution.
2. Weakening of Legislative Oversight: The Project’s emphasis on further concentrating authority within the Executive branch (see previous references to the Unitary Executive theory) could significantly reduce Congress’s ability to oversee it. Without robust legislative (i.e., Congressional) oversight, there is a real risk that the Executive branch could act with impunity, making decisions that would go unchecked by the other branches of government, leading to abuses of power and a decline in governmental accountability.

That’s a lot to take in. How might this decline in legislative oversight that has traditionally been essential to proper checks and balances in government happen?

This decline in oversight would happen through multiple interrelated dynamics. In this potential future, the president would enact Schedule F, allowing him to hire and fire personnel at federal agencies at will or according to his whims. Tens of thousands of civil servants would be more loyal to the Executive than impartial enforcers of laws passed by Congress. In this version of the future, they would answer directly to the president. That diminishes the ability of Congress to oversee those agencies independently.

Congress performs oversight by compelling executive agencies to provide reports, data, and testimonies to Congress. In a Project 2025 reality, we would have fewer independent agencies and increased Executive control, so the presidential administration could more easily limit what information is shared and/or slow down compliance with Congressional inquiries. Without adequate information, Congress becomes ineffective at holding the Executive branch accountable, especially if committees are stonewalled or provided incomplete data by agency staff who are more loyal to the president than they are to congressional checks and balances.

In today’s world, Congress performs oversight through its power of appropriation and investigations. That also changes in the reality of a Project 2025 future. If Congress’s ability to control Executive actions through appropriations bills is undermined — for instance, if budgets are manipulated or agencies are reorganized to bypass oversight — then executive actions can proceed with less scrutiny. Decisions made without full transparency or input from other branches increase the potential for power abuse.

If Congress is sidelined, the weakened legislative oversight cannot restrain the Executive branch’s actions. Combine this with the expected changes in the judiciary, and these could result in fewer checks on executive power, leaving decisions to be made with minimal transparency or accountability and undermining the balance of powers fundamental to the U.S. Constitution and government.

Transformation: Increased Social Inequality and Civil Unrest

The social and economic policies proposed by Project 2025 can potentially increase social inequality, leading to more significant division and possible civil unrest in an already polarized society.

• Rollbacks of Civil Rights Protections: Remember the first Pillar dive where we talked about the movement towards traditional family definitions, which would entail the removal of gender references? Removing federal protections for people currently covered by these references is a real possibility. The removal of federal protections for LGBTQ individuals and the redefinition of marriage could lead to increased discrimination and social exclusion. Marginalized groups would find themselves with fewer legal protections, resulting in a rise in hate crimes, social tensions, and civil rights litigation.
• Making Economic Disparities Worse: Deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and reduced social services could exacerbate economic disparities, leaving low-income Americans with fewer resources and opportunities. As economic inequality widens and more people feel disenfranchised and left behind, the potential for social unrest grows.

The biggest difference I see with this third set of consequences is that a future presidential administration might be amenable to reversing these changes to narrow the civil rights and economic gaps that would form. However, this doesn’t change the fact that Project 2025 would be the catalyst responsible for widening the gaps requiring attention.

Transformation: Increased Environmental and Public Health Risks

Project 2025 focuses heavily on scaling back environmental regulations, and its proposed transformation of rules and agencies responsible for protecting public health would substantially alter the government’s role in that area. The environmental deregulation proposed in Project 2025 could have severe consequences for public health and the environment, threatening the well-being of current and future generations.

• Increased Pollution: By scaling back the regulatory powers of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies, Project 2025 could lead to higher pollution levels, particularly in communities already suffering from environmental degradation. This could increase health problems such as asthma and other respiratory illnesses, water contamination, and chronic diseases like cancer.
• Failure to Address Climate Change: Here, the consequences of not doing something aren’t necessarily reversible. The Project’s dismissal of climate change as a “perceived threat” could halt federal efforts to combat global warming, leading to more severe climate impacts, including more frequent and intense natural disasters, such as hurricanes, wildfires, and floods, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations while straining emergency response systems.

The environmental and public health consequences of Project 2025 could have irreversible and lasting impacts. Weakening or dismantling ecological regulations could lead to long-term damage, such as increased pollution and degraded ecosystems, making it difficult for future administrations to repair the damage. Public health systems will also suffer if regulatory oversight is curtailed, potentially leading to more widespread health issues that burden communities and healthcare systems for years to come. Moreover, the rollback of climate initiatives poses a unique challenge — lost time in addressing climate change is irreversible, with missed opportunities compounding the severity of future disasters. Even if a future administration attempts to reinstate protections, environmental restoration and public trust could take decades to rebuild, making the effects of Project 2025’s policies difficult, if not impossible, to fully undo.

Transformation: Destabilization of International Relations and National Security

Project 2025’s approach to foreign policy and national security, which promotes isolationism, could destabilize domestically and internationally because it advocates weakening existing alliances with other countries.

By reducing U.S. involvement in NATO and other international alliances, Project 2025 could weaken critical global security structures that have been in place since World War II, which have been instrumental in protecting the United States and deterring aggression worldwide. This weakening could embolden adversaries like Russia and China, leading to increased global instability and conflicts that could draw the U.S. into costly and dangerous military engagements. The potential for being drawn into further conflict in response to Russia’s empire-building push after conquering Ukraine (because we would have stopped helping them) would be very real.

If people think things are bad on the international front now, wait to see what happens if international destabilization occurs.

Project 2025: A Bold Vision…With Vast Potentially Negative Consequences

Project 2025 presents a bold vision for reshaping American governance but also carries significant risks that could profoundly alter our country’s social, political, and economic landscape.

While conservative supporters argue that these changes will promote efficiency, liberty, and smaller government, others caution that we may end up with a more divided society, weakened public institutions, and reduced protections for vulnerable communities. Many consequences won’t be easily reversible, even by future administrations.

As the nation contemplates its path forward in the present election, it is essential to weigh Project 2025’s promises against its potential long-term impacts on democracy, public health, and economic equality. The stakes are high, and the outcome will shape the fabric of American life for generations to come.

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This is Part 12 in a Project 2025 deep dive. To jump to the first post in the series, click here: What is Project 2025? And why should you care?

Image: Pamela Reynoso

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