A conversation with Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward 

There have been many headlines recently about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a 922 page document that sets forth numerous policy proposals for the next Republican administration. People from both sides of the political aisle agree that many of the policies in Project 2025 are so extremely far right that they threaten to upend the fabric of American government and democracy. 

Donald Trump, for his part, has tried to disavow Project 2025, claiming he knows nothing about it, and from what he does know, he doesn’t like it. However, concerned citizens aren’t buying it. In a recent speech, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said he wants Trump to take credit for Project 2025 and newly published slate of articles note that Trump’s vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, wrote a foreword to Roberts’ forthcoming book that heralds “the arrival of a New Conservative Movement” 

So what are the alarming policies that Project 2025 envisions? How do they differ from the ideas conservatives have traditionally advocated? And what’s the likelihood of these proposals coming to fruition? 

I recently discussed these questions with Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, a legal organization that fights anti-democratic efforts nationwide.  The organization has created a 48-page guide that outlines some of the most dangerous proposals in Project 2025. What follows is a condensed transcript of our conversation. 

What are the most concerning aspects of Project 2025?

Perryman: Project 2025 is a plan to drastically remake life in this country in a way that it will be harder for people to make ends meet, more difficult for people to use their voices and the political process, and devastating for people’s ability to do everything from accessing healthcare to ensuring that they’re getting a quality education to being able to really grow and thrive in our society.

For example, Project 2025 seeks to politicize our Department of Justice, making it an enforcer of an agenda that seeks to penalize people for perceived political disloyalty. It would reverse our civil rights enforcement and open the door for more people to become discriminated against. One of the proposals is for the Justice Department to enforce a Victorian era law known as The Comstock Act which potentially criminalizes the shipment of abortion medications.

We also see a number of proposals that would make it harder for people to obtain overtime pay. Some estimate more than four million people could lose their overtime pay as a result of the regressive labor policies in this document. Economists have warned its proposals would be terrible for business and industry. It envisions America’s leadership in the world and a national security agenda that would not promote our ideals of democracy and that would seek to close America off from the world.

How are these proposals different from the policies conservatives have traditionally advocated? 

Perryman: There are a number of policies in Project 2025 that represent an incredibly far right perspective in the society, which we have seen gain momentum over the past few years. We know that this is not just one candidate or one particular individual but a movement where far right organizations have done everything from attempting to overturn elections to seeking to roll back basic rights like abortion. Project 2025 contains proposals that would make it harder to vote, that would threaten some of our underlying democratic systems and structures like purging the civil service. There may have been in the past disputes between conservatives and liberals, if you want to use those labels, or the left and the right, over the size of government or a particular policy, but what we see here is a very concerning move to the very far right that seeks to dismantle our government and the way it works for people. We’ve seen McCarthyism in prior generations, and Project 2025 is this kind of a far right philosophy that we’ve seen in darker parts of American history.

What is the Unitary Executive Theory in which Project 2025 is grounded? 

Perryman: This is a very controversial fringe legal theory that is unfortunately gaining more traction among certain groups, including groups on the far right. It espouses an inherent authority of the president to act without Congress and without checks and balances in a number of areas. It is based on a strained and incorrect reading of Article II of our Constitution which provides for executive power. This theory has been backed by far right interests, including the same interests that have constructed Project 2025, the same interests that funded litigation to overturn Roe v. Wade, the same interests that have funded efforts to undermine the right to vote. 

What we know is that the United States is a constitutional democracy that is of and by the people and the people elect representatives, but we have a system of checks and balances in this country to ensure that we do not have dictatorial or other autocratic sort of forces rise into extreme power. Unfortunately, there is an effort that we’ve seen recently, including the Supreme Court’s recent immunity decision, Trump v. United States, where legal theories like the Unitary Executive Theory is rearing its head again. These discredited theories seek to make the presidency more powerful than it should be and that’s really the theory that Project 2025 embodies.

What is Schedule F? How does Project 2025 seek to turn career civil service positions into politically appointed roles? And why is that worrisome?

Perryman: The Trump Administration previously sought to implement Schedule F, which would reclassify a number of positions that are career civil service positions. So these are positions that one holds regardless of their political ideology. They serve presidents and executive offices of all types. These jobs would be reclassified to politically appointed jobs. The intent of the prior administration’s implementation of Schedule F was to engage in a purging of our public servants who work on behalf of the American people because of a perception that those people did not support the Administration’s agenda. We see this proposal again coming up in Project 2025. The Biden Administration did propose and finalize regulations to try to help protect the independence of our civil service, but we do know, based on what happened in the prior Administration, and what we see in Project 2025, that the civil service is very much under threat. 

The problem with this reclassification is that it seeks to politicize the basic functioning of our government. We want public servants in this country that swear oaths of office to the Constitution and that do not have an allegiance to a particular political ideology, but to the American people. These are employees who work in the Environmental Protection Agency, in the Department of Education, in Health and Human Services. They’re the types of employees that we rely on to make sure the American people have the services and protections that they need, and so attempts to undermine those individuals are quite Draconian and will be deeply harmful. 

Would legislation be required to implement most of the proposals in Project 2025 or can it be done through executive orders?

Perryman: So the groups behind Project 2025 say many of the proposals that have been made public could be implemented in 180 days without Congressional approval. There are a number of proposals that even the authors of Project 2025 admit would require Congressional approval. But there are a number of them – whether it’s politicizing our federal funding, rolling back certain regulations, redefining the priorities of the Department of Justice to make it an enforcer of a retributive anti-democratic agenda – the authors of Project 2025 take the position that the president can do without the checks and balances we typically would see. So we view the threats of Project 2025 as imminent if you have a presidential Administration that is hospitable to them.

I will also note that there are a number of things in Project 2025 that are already happening in states across the country with far right leadership like Texas, Florida, and other states across the country where we work.

How might the current Supreme Court rule on the legal issues that would arise if Project 2025 policies are implemented? 

Perryman: The problem that we have right now in the United States is the majority of our Supreme Court justices are not reliably protecting the rights and interests of people. We have a Supreme Court that has overturned decades of precedent, not just with respect to abortion rights, but with respect to labor protections, with respect to the mechanics of our federal government when it overturned what is known as Chevron deference and so, I don’t purport to have a crystal ball about how courts would rule and certainly believe that many of the proposals in Project 2025 are unlawful, but we do believe that the courts will have a key role to play. However, we cannot count out that many of these policies could come to fruition quickly and we cannot rely on the majority of our Supreme Court to interpret the law consistent with how it’s been interpreted for decades.

Why shouldn’t we take Trump at his word when he disavows Project 2025? 

Perryman: You have people now seeing the need to disavow themselves from these policies. What we know about these policies is that there is no mandate for them. The vast majority of the American people do not support this brand of extremism. What I can also say is that the Heritage Foundation itself brags about having had presidential administrations implement nearly two-thirds of all of its proposals. And if you look at the authors of Project 2025, and the personnel from the Trump Administration, you find that the vast majority of the authors have some tie to the former administration or to the groups that supported Trump. The main thing the American people need to know is that if Project 2025 does not represent them and does not represent their views, they need to be very clear about that. It is important that extremists aren’t able to gain power over our federal system and that the American people use the tools that our constitution provides to make that clear.