Maybe their end goal is just to troll the libs. Or maybe Gaetz is a distraction from someone else, who would do the real work. Always the same question with MAGA: are they evil geniuses or just dumb? 11/
So selection of Matt Gaetz as AG is an odd choice, because he’s not exactly their best: little legal and no administrative experience. You’d be worried if they picked someone like Kris Kobach. 10/
One imagines potential for a constant series of lawsuits over “woke stuff,” but also coordinated attacks on county election officials over interpretation of election law. P 2025 also calls for legal cover of mass deportation, including prosecution of blue state officials who resist 9/
P 2025 calls for centralizing prosecution of voter fraud to DOJ. It calls for going after state and local officials. It classifies DEI as a civil rights violation and pledges to reorganize the DOJ’s Civil Rights division to go after agencies, corporations, and universities over DEI 8/
But P 2025’s section on the DOJ proposes mashing some new buttons. It was written by one of their heavies: the general counsel for steven miller’s think tank. The section proposes cleaning house at DOJ and gutting administrative capacity at the FBI to fully subordinate the latter to the DOJ 7/
But appointing Kennedy JR to head the HHS and fight with the AMA over vaccines rather than spearheading welfare state reform seems consistent with P 2025. 6/
Likewise, the section on the Federal Election Commission takes a strong stance AGAINST politicizing the FEC. My sense is that their goals for a few other federal orgs, like the EPA, are more ambitious—I’m writing about the policy areas I know. 5/
P 2025’s section on HHS contains only one short paragraph on Medicaid financing, which would be key to repeal of the ACA. It’s a word salad consisting of any plan ever floated for reforming Medicaid financing, by folks from the left, right, or center. 4/
E.g., the HHS plan was written by a social conservative lawyer (the least ideologically opposed to welfare of conservative attorneys). Sections on CMS, which administers Medicare and Medicaid, mostly concern not paying for abortion and transgender care—a terrible policy, but not big budget items 3/
You can see from a word count what P 25 is more focused on the law and culture war than welfare programs or the admin state: DOJ (113), FBI (112), abortion (161), gender (110), DEI (36), woke (28), ACA/Obamacare (13), Social Security (10), SNAP (24), CHIP (8), TANF (18) 2/
Interesting to compare cabinet picks against Project 2025. My take: keep your eye on DOJ. Many of P 2025’s agency plans focus on culture war issues peripheral to agency missions. The transformative parts focus on turning DOJ into a monster litigation machine that makes policy through the courts. 1/
Thanks for putting together. Add me if u can, pls.
Electorally, no. That said, maga started out objectively terrible at translating most rhetoric into policy, but they’ll improve each time they win and some of that will be hard to undo. We’ve already seen democrats as good as they want to be, and it’s underwhelming. That’s the downward spiral.
