Conservatives prepare for potential Trump presidency

The Center Square | by Casey Harper | February 20, 2024

Source: Conservatives prepare for potential Trump presidency | National | thecentersquare.com

theNational.buzz Summary:

• Project 2025, backed by 100 conservative groups, aims to prepare for Donald Trump’s potential second term by organizing a database of supporters, providing training for appointees, developing a policy agenda, and creating a 180-day playbook.
• Led by the Heritage Foundation, the initiative seeks to counter the influence of the so-called “deep state” by ensuring the federal government is staffed with Trump loyalists and conservatives across various agencies.
• The movement intends to replicate the success of Trump’s Supreme Court nominations by strategically filling approximately 9,000 executive branch positions and implementing immediate reforms upon Trump’s re-election.

Project 2025 | Presidential Transition Project

(The Center Square) – An unprecedented and highly organized conservative effort is underway to help former President Donald Trump make the most of his second term, assuming he wins the White House come November.

The movement, named Project 2025, announced this week it had the backing of 100 conservative groups, including the most established and well-funded institutions inside Washington, D.C.

Project 2025 has four areas of focus:

1. A database of conservatives and Trump loyalists to quickly stock the executive branch.
2. Preemptive training for those appointees so they can immediately take action once they take office.
3. An aggressive policy agenda to begin implementing on day one.
4. A 180-day playbook for Trump’s second term.

The proactive preparation marks a far more organized effort than last time Trump won the White House, where his administration was bogged down by unusually high turnover, infighting, and disorganization within the executive branch.

Read the entire Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise here:

That is in part because few expected Trump to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, even among Trump’s aides and conservative leaders.

“This is a historic moment for the conservative movement,” Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, said in a statement. “From the time we launched this project, we knew it was critical for conservatives to put aside differences and come together if we are to succeed in restoring our federal government to one ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ And reaching 100 members on our advisory board is monumental.”

The Heritage Foundation is helping lead the effort. Notably, for his first term, Trump released a list of potential Supreme Court Justice candidates that was created with help of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.

Trump was able to place three justices in just one term, which has a significant impact on several major court cases, not the least of which was the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which handed the abortion issue back to the states.

Trump has campaigned heavily against what he and other conservatives call the deep state, the apparatus of mid-level bureaucrats who have been delegated broad authority by Congress to make rules regardless of which political party is in charge.

In response, Project 2025 allows interested applicants to preemptively apply for a spot in the potential Trump administration. The aim is to immediately stock the federal government with Trump loyalists and conservatives in an effort to break the largely liberal bloc of employees and leaders in the federal bureaucracy.

The leaders of the movement point specifically to the Plum Book, a 232-page document that lists thousands of jobs in the executive branch that are appointed by the president.

This Plum Book plan essentially applies the Supreme Court playbook to the roughly 9,000 executive branch jobs appointed by the president.

“Americans are tired of their government being used against them,” Dans said. “The administrative state is, at best, completely out of touch with the American people and, at worst, is weaponized against them. We will soon embark on a historic reform of the federal government to get it once again to work for the American people. With our 100-member strong coalition we have the momentum as we begin this critical year.”

The 180-day playbook includes a “transition plan” for each federal agency to be implemented immediately when Trump takes office. The Project 2025 policy agenda, which Trump is certainly not bound by, includes an extremely detailed set of reforms for a litany of agencies, including ones not heard of by most Americans.

Below are the conservative organizations that have backed Project 2025, according to the organization.