“In tonight’s debate you are going to hear the same thing as always, a lot of lies, grievances and insults. What you are going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president Donald Trump intends to put into practice if he were elected again.
These words, spoken in the electoral debate by the vice president of the United States and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris They made reference to what has been called in the United States the MAGA Plan or Project 2025.
But what is the MAGA Plan?
Chocolate bars with the faces of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Reuters
MAGA refers to the acronym of the political slogan with which the New York magnate rose to fame in 2016: “Make America Great Again.” And the MAGA Plan is a plan to “make America great again” in 2025 in case the Oval Office is occupied by Trump after this Tuesday’s elections.
Far from embracing this conservative movement that contains almost nine hundred pages of proposals for the United States, Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from this plan.
“I have nothing to do with it, as you know and as she (Kamala Harris) knows better than anyone, I have nothing to do with Project 2025. That’s out there. I haven’t read it. And I don’t want to read it, by the way. I’m not going to read it. It’s about a group of people who got together and came up with some ideas. I guess some good, some bad. But it doesn’t matter,” said former President Trump in front of Kamala Harris.
The debate, then, is served. Is the MAGA Plan an extension of the Republican electoral program? Or is it simply a series of radical proposals from a think tank conservative that has nothing to do with the Republican Party?
In 2023, a dozen organizations close to the Republican Party (coordinated by the think tank conservative The Heritage Foundation) published this Project 2025 with the main reforms that, in its opinion, should be carried out in the United States.
“The MAGA Plan proposes outlawing abortion pills, severely punishing pornography or eliminating the Department of Education”
The project is based on four main objectives.
1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life.
2. Dismantle excessive bureaucracy.
3. Defend sovereignty and borders.
4. Guarantee “God-given” individual rights to live freely.
His primary goal is to “begin to undo the damage the left has caused and build a better country for all Americans in 2025.”
Among its main measures, this project proposes outlawing abortion pills, severely punishing pornography or eliminate the Department of Education due to its inability to meet the objectives entrusted to it.
The plan also advocates the elimination of environmental regulations and the elimination of programs to promote diversity in the workplace.
Likewise, the MAGA Plan defends an expansion of the power of the president of the United States, increasing his power over departments such as Justice.
By mid-2023, MAGA’s tough talk was beginning to become popular. The Democrats (much more active on this issue than many others during the election campaign) tried to take political advantage of it. “Project 2025 is proof that Trump will adopt a series of authoritarian and far-right policies if elected,” he said. Joe Biden on their social networks.
And the truth is that many of its measures, such as the proposal to concentrate political power, or the elimination of environmental regulations, are in line with what Donald Trump has defended in his now historic rallies.
It is also true that The Heritage Foundation has been a source of political inspiration for Donald Trump (something the institution itself boasted about in 2018).
There is so much certainty that even a survey of Tezanos It would be impossible to err in the number of signatories of the MAGA Plan who will vote for Trump this Tuesday, November 5: 100% of the subscribers.
“What are the chances that a conservative party will have sympathy for a conservative electoral program?”
However, the reality is that Trump has publicly positioned himself against some of the measures of Project 2025, such as the introduction of restrictions on women’s access to abortion pills.
Trump has also repeatedly insisted that his plan for the United States has nothing to do with this Project 2025. Or yes, but not because of a conscious and voluntary alignment.
Which begs the question What does the president gain by fervently opposing a plan that, to a large extent, aligns with the thinking of his voters?but also with that of many republican organizations and donors that finance his million-dollar electoral campaign.
Let everyone make their own assumptions.
What are the chances that a conservative party will have sympathy for a conservative electoral program?
Would you develop a think tank friend of the Republican Party a program that is not going to be taken into account by said party?
The Spanish proverb, which is very wise, already says it: if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck.
However, whether Trump adopts that program as his own is something we will not confirm until he wins the election, if he wins it.
It may take us even longer to find out. At least, until we know the configuration of Parliament and the majorities that each party has in the Chambers.
Thus, it seems more than likely that this question will join all the other unanswered questions of this surreal presidential campaign.
Why did it take the Democratic Party months to replace a candidate who led them to electoral cataclysm?
Why haven’t Donald Trump’s advisors prepared him better during the campaign to say something other than that in Springfield immigrants are eating Americans’ pets?
This November 5, Americans will elect the forty-seventh president of the United States of America.
Project 2025 in hand or not, it is convenient for the owner of the Oval Office to succeed in his goal of making America great. For your good and for everyone’s.
*** Gabriel Rodríguez is a lawyer and deputy of the Illustrious Bar Association of Madrid.