We are versed in Project 2025, but what about Agenda 47?
Alison Durkee writing for Forbes details Drumpf's plans if elected
Drumpf’s “Agenda47” is an attempt to distance himself from the despicable Project 2025. Over the campaign season between December 2022 and December 2023 an accumulation of proposals began appearing on the campaign’s website. It’s an interesting collection of pie-in-the-sky nonsense proposals ― many of which will require congressional action. Some could possibly be enacted by Executive Order. The whole mess appears to parallel Project 2025, and like that abomination, the whole thing was cobbled together by third-party operatives, many of whom are long time Drumpf staff or associates.
As Durkee writes, “While [Drumpf’s] Agenda47 proposals and videos were long linked on his campaign website, his website’s homepage now only links to a shorter set of proposals and includes a separate link to the Republican National Committee’s broader platform—but the links to his more detailed Agenda47 proposals remain active, offering more insight about the ex-president’s priorities than what’s listed on his website now.”
So, let’s recap that mess into a hopefully cogent:
Education: Trump’s proposals for K-12 schools include having parents elect school principals, cutting federal funding to any school teaching “critical race theory,” ending teacher tenure, creating a new credentialing body to only certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values,” encouraging prayer in schools, making it easier to kick “out-of-control troublemakers” out of school, supporting school districts that allow teachers to carry concealed firearms and pushing “school choice” policies.
Universities: Trump has proposed getting rid of existing accreditors for colleges and universities and creating new ones who impose his party’s values on institutions, along with levying significant fines on colleges and universities that he believes “discriminate” against students—with a plan to use those fines to create a free online “American Academy” that “cover[s] the full spectrum of human knowledge and skills.”
Climate Change: The U.S. would again leave the Paris Climate Accord, and the ex-president has proposed getting rid of President Joe Biden’s policies restricting emissions and targeting 67% of new vehicles to be electric by 2032 and massively scaling up oil and gas production.
Justice Department: Trump has pledged to appoint 100 U.S. attorneys who would be aligned with his policies and investigate some left-leaning local district attorneys, also pledging to establish a DOJ task force on “protecting the right to self-defense” and fight purported anti-conservative bias at law schools and law firms.
Crime: Trump has vowed to invest in hiring and retaining police officers (and increase their protections from legal liability), push policies like “stop and frisk,” direct the DOJ “to dismantle every gang, street crew, and drug network in America,” deploy federal troops including the National Guard “to restore law and order” when local officers “refuse to act” and impose the death penalty for drug dealers, drug cartels and human traffickers.
Immigration: Trump plans to prohibit undocumented immigrants from receiving any benefits, end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, reinstitute a “travel ban” from certain countries, pause refugee admissions, mandate “extreme vetting of foreign nationals,” block federal grants to sanctuary cities, end the “catch-and-release” practice of releasing migrants while they await immigration hearings, close the southern border to asylum seekers and suspend visa programs including the visa lottery and family visas.
Economy: Trump proposes cutting taxes and slashing federal regulations, also proposing baseline tariffs on foreign goods in hopes of spurring American manufacturing, which will go up for countries who have “unfair trade practices.”
Healthcare: Trump has proposed requiring federal agencies to buy medicines and medical devices manufactured in the U.S. and barring federal agencies from other countries from purchasing “essential” drugs; he also has plans for an executive order saying the government will only pay pharmaceutical companies the “best price they offer to foreign nations.”
Foreign Policy and Defense: Trump wants European allies to pay back the U.S. for depleting its military stockpiles sending weapons to Ukraine; he has also taken a hardline stance on China, calling for new restrictions on Chinese-owned infrastructure in the U.S., and wants to build a missile defense shield.
Social Security: In a shift from some pre-Trump GOP politicians’ views, Trump has said there should be no cuts to Social Security or Medicare “under any circumstances.”
Homelessness: Trump plans to work with states to ban “public camping” by homeless people and instead give them the choice of receiving treatment or being arrested, and calls for creating large “tent cities” where homeless people would be relocated, which would have doctors and social workers on site, along with expanding mental institutions.
Transgender Rights: Trump takes a hard stance against transgender rights, calling for any healthcare provider providing gender-affirming care for youth to be terminated from Medicare and Medicaid, stripping federal funding from any school where an official or teacher suggests a child could be “trapped in the wrong body,” and encouraging Congress to pass legislation saying “the only genders recognized by the U.S. government are male and female—and they are assigned at birth.”
Big Tech: In line with conservatives’ claims that social media platforms are biased against them, Trump said he’ll pass an executive order barring any federal department from working with other entities to “censor” Americans and prohibit federal money being used to combat misinformation, also announcing steps like altering Section 230 to open up social media platforms to more legal liability.
So, there you have it. To me it looks like P-25 boiled down to the grounds. Both take for the poor and give to the rich, diminish non-whites while promoting supremacy, institutionalize Christian nationalism, and worst of all, they both spell an end to the Great Experiment of democracy. If American democracy fall, it will be only a matter of time before the other great democracies fail.