Implementing Project 2025: Day One and After

I won’t be a dictator, “except on day one” – Donald Trump

Axios (Basu & Davis, 2024) holds that President Trump promised to make 59 major policy changes the first day of his second term. The president’s declaration about limiting dictatorship to “day one” may lack veracity, but he has followed through on many of his other proposals made that day. In Trump’s first ten months in office, he implemented numerous policies proposed in the Heritage Foundation’s nearly 900-page, Mandate for Leadership (2023), which provided a detailed blueprint for governance in a Trump second term. More than 100 hard-right organizations advised Heritage about the Mandate and other facets of Project 2025 (i.e., personnel database, training videos, and 180-day transition playbook). They were designed to facilitate a rapid transition to a second Trump term and immediate appointment of loyal staff to avert problems that plagued his first term (i.e., inadequate advanced preparation and planning and selections of cabinet members and other advisors who sometimes opposed publicly his policies and persona).

More than half of the 312 writers of the Mandate’s thirty chapters had served faithfully in the first Trump Administration. Available on the Heritage website nearly nine months before the election, the Mandate was excoriated by Democrats in attack ads and was highly unpopular with the public. On the campaign trail, Trump said he “knew nothing about” Project 2025 and that he disagreed with much of what it was rumored to advocate. In his second term, he instituted many of the Mandate proposals and made its goal of destroying the administrative state an ongoing project. He refashioned some of its core policy recommendations to extremes far beyond what was originally proposed. I address below some of the Mandate’s most important policies and assess the Trump Administration’s efforts to implement them during the first ten months in his second term.

The Imperial Presidency

The demolition of the East Wing of the White House and plan to build the grandiose “Trump Ballroom” was not proposed in the Mandate. However, this renovation manifests the document’s call for concentrated executive power. Trump began the project without public review or consideration of historical preservation standards. Nearly twice the size of the rest of White House complex and reminiscent of Gilded Age mansions, it has been described by critics as a monument to Trump’s enormous ego and symbol of the drift toward authoritarian governance he has animated. The Washington Post’s (2025) editorial, “In Defense of the White House Ballroom,” by a compliant Editorial Board, echoing views of their billionaire boss Jeff Bezos and major contributor to the boondoggle project, sparked the outrage of the vast majority of more than seven-thousand commenters who decried the desecration of “the people’s house.” Despite the uproar over the ballroom, Trump proudly unveiled his gaudy renovation of the Lincoln Bathroom (i.e., all Italian marble with golden fixtures). The coup de grace – Trump fired all members of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the federal agency that oversees public sector construction and major built environment renovations in the nation’s capital and replaced them with loyalists the president expects will rubber stamp the destruction of the East-Wing and construction of the massive “Trump Ballroom” after the fact and approve any other renovations. The project arguably is a consequence of Trump exercising imperial power proposed and planned in the Mandate, facilitated by the Supreme Court “immunity decision” (Trump vs U.S. [07/01/2024]), and supported by loyalist advisors, appointees, and followers in the president’s second term.

Trump sets general political directions of his Administration, but he expresses little interest in policy particulars, which he leaves to his Cabinet and other appointees and confidants. Major contributor to Project 2025 and author of the Mandate chapter on the Executive Office of the President, Russell Vought now serves as Trump’s Director of Office of Management and Budget (OMB). A most trusted advisor, conservative Christian Vought bitterly opposes abortion, affirmative care for transexuals, and all “woke gender ideology” and embraces traditional family values and Christian nationalism. His Mandate chapter portrays the OMB Director as “keeper of the commander’s intent,” and stresses concentrating presidential power capable of imposing this reactionary agenda.

Vought has impounded funds allocated for programs that Trump dislikes and consequently usurped the power to spend provided to Congress by the Constitution. He supports Trump’s Schedule F (now “Schedule Policy/Career”) – the executive order to strip up to 50,000 nonpartisan federal civil service workers of their job protections and replace them with political loyalists or eliminate their positions. The Mandate claims that the rules, benefits, protections, and political climate of the civil service were shaped by New Deal era reforms and that officeholders consequently favor socially liberal Democratic Party policies. It claims that the civil service is unaccountable to elected officials and the voting public. After Elon Musk left the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Vought took over the lead in the effort to dismantle the “deep state” by firing civil service workers and eliminating or cutting the budgets of offices Trump opposes. Vought was encouraged by Trump to use the government shutdown to shutter bureaucracy. However, the expected mass release of federal workers was stymied by court decisions and pressure from office managers to relieve problems of understaffing and threats to vital governmental services.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is part of the executive branch and advises the president on legal issues, but normatively the office and the Attorney General are expected to be independent and serve the Constitution rather than act as the president’s personal lawyer. The Mandate stresses restoring independence, honesty, impartiality, integrity, and legitimacy to the DOJ, which was supposedly politicized and thereby degraded by Biden and his Attorney General Merrick Garland. The subtext is that the various investigations of Trump during his first term were entirely politically motivated, and indicative of DOJ corruption. By contrast, Garland has been accused by Democrats for operating too slowly and timidly with too much concern for the appearance of political neutrality in dealing with massive Trump and MAGA wrongdoing. Conversely, the Mandate holds that the Biden DOJ abandoned the office’s core responsibilities of fighting crime and maintaining rule of law and stressed “woke” agendas of unaccountable bureaucrats and leftwing ideologues.

The Mandate charges that fanatic emphasis on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) by the Biden DOJ resulted in widespread “affirmative discrimination.”  Trump supporters hold DEI injustices to be especially pervasive in higher educational admissions and minority inclusion practices, which they see as discriminating against white people and to some degree against Asians. The president and his DOJ have used accusations about DEI injustices as a lever in his battles against universities, K-12 schools, city administrations, and corporations they considers too liberal or “woke.” The Mandate advises a thorough assessment and “complete overhaul” of DOJ, especially of its Civil Rights Division, which has focused on minority rights since the Warren Court. Throughout the document, different chapters demand eliminating all offices and positions that formulate or enforce DEI rules supposedly intended to advance minority equal opportunity and citizenship rights or even collect data about alleged violations of these rules. The Mandate treats DEI policies as the heart of “wokeness,” which it urges Trump to extirpate.

After avid Trump supporter Matt Gaetz’s nomination for Attorney General failed, Pam Bondi, also a Trump loyalist and 2020 election denier, was nominated and narrowly approved by the Senate. In the confirmation hearing, Bondi testified in response to intense Democratic questioning that she would act independently from the president, keep politics out of the office, and defend rule of law. Shortly after her appointment, she sent a memo to DOJ career attorneys and officials decrying Biden’s weaponizing the office and announcing establishment of a DOJ “Weaponizing Working Group” to investigate Trump enemies and, paradoxically, to restore the tarnished integrity and credibility of the office. She issued another memo that ordered all DOJ appointees to “zealously” protect the president and strive to advance his political agenda or suffer serious penalties and even termination. Since Trump became president, more than half of the ten-thousand DOJ employees have quit, been fired, or took buyouts, and the vast majority of Civil Rights Division lawyers and officials have left their positions. DOJ has a shortage of experienced prosecutors. Applications for positions in DOJ and the numbers of elite candidates from top law schools have declined sharply. Tacit expectations that appointees must be loyal to Trump have contributed to politicization of DOJ and weakened its reputation (Stein, 2025).

After respected Republican U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia, Erik Siebert refused to prosecute Trump enemy, former FBI Director James Comey because of insufficient evidence of wrongdoing, the president demanded that DOJ still prosecute the case. When no other experienced U.S. Attorney would take the case, DOJ appointed Lindsey Halligan, an assistant to Trump and insurance lawyer who lacked any experience in prosecution or criminal law. She secured an indictment in a split Grand Jury decision. However, she did not meet the qualifications for the position and made “fundamental misstatements of law” that imperiled the case. Comey filed to have the case dismissed because Halligan did not show the final indictment to the entire grand jury. DOJ acted similarly with Laticia James, New York State Attorney General, who had successfully prosecuted Trump in a $500 million decision for inflating assets and financial fraud. DOJ took the James case forward with insufficient evidence. A federal judge dismissed both cases in late November.

In another problematic move, DOJ assigned Todd Blanche, second in command in the office and former Trump personal attorney, to interview Ghislain Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein partner in sordid sexual abuse and trafficking of children. After claiming that long-time Epstein friend Trump had not participated in the wrongdoing, she was moved from a maximum-security to a minimum-security prison, which never houses such serious offenders. Allegedly, she also has been given all sorts of special privileges in “Club Fed,” which are not extended to other prisoners. Democrats and other critics charge that Bondi serves as the president’s personal lawyer rather than as defender of rule of law and the Constitution. They claim that she loyally fulfills Trump’s demands for retribution against his enemies. Trump claims this retribution is justified and that more prosecutions like these will proceed regardless of the chances of conviction. Even when unsuccessful, prosecution is often very costly financially to those charged and can seriously damage their reputation. Moving forward with cases with insufficient evidence of wrongdoing or “finding a crime to fit the person” are serious violations of judicial ethics that undercut rule of law. Bondi has delivered the punishing payback to MAGA enemies desired by Trump.

Pundits have been bemused by Trump’s unwillingness to say whether he would or would not commute the sentence of Maxwell. However, this may be for the president an instrumental decision about timing and the potential political response rather than of the seriousness of the crimes she committed. On day one, he gave a blanket pardon to about 1600 people imprisoned or awaiting trial or sentencing for their actions in the January 6^th insurrection at the Capitol and later pardoned top allies who conspired or were implicated in efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election. For the president, the of practice of justice seems to be motivated by Schmittian friend-enemy politics rather than rule of law.

Culture Wars: Making the U.S. a White Christian Fortress

The anti-pluralist, anti-DEI policies pertaining to race and ethnicity have also been applied to family and sexuality by the Mandate. It supports and recommends that state power be employed in support of the patriarchal family and heterosexual relations and to reduce protections for LGBTQ+ people and women. David Graham (2025: 45-46) holds that these muscular masculine beliefs and intolerance of nonconforming gender identities manifest the influence of White Christian Nationalism on Project 2025 and the MAGA movement. He says these beliefs are the “heart of their agenda” because they are “deeply felt” and have major impacts on everyday life. Emphatically opposed to abortion, the Mandaterecommends using the 1873 Comstock Act to prohibit abortion drugs from being sent by mail, advises funds for Planned Parenthood be slashed, calls for abstinence-only sexual education, and attacks transexual rights and gender affirming care for young people. It advocates recognizing exclusively biological sexuality (i.e., two sexes) and eliminating the conception of gender (i.e. gender ideology”) and protections for nonconforming gender identities. The Mandate affirms Christian fundamentalism’s narrowly scripted, immutable, hierarchical gender roles (i.e., the dominant male and submissive female binary).

Trump issued a sweeping executive order on day one asserting that there are only two sexes, demanding that “gender ideology” be erased, forbidding federal officials from uttering the word gender, rescinding all policies, communications, and rules concerning gender identity, and eliminating Title IX protections for women and LGBTQ+ people. A later Trump executive order provided federal penalties for schools or colleges that allow transexual females to participate in women’s sports. The Mandate recommendations and executive orders about these matters have been consequential. For example, Texas A&M fired a lecturer after a viral video showed a student challenging her views about multiple gender identities. A faculty committee later ruled that the firing was unjustified and reinstated her, but the Texas A&M Board of Regents held that all courses on the twelve campuses in their system that advocate “racial or gender ideology” are banned unless they are approved by the campus president. Also, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump Administration order that biological sex must be listed on passports, and some red states required it be used on drivers’ licenses, birth certificates, and other official documents. Republican run states also passed laws that restrict bathroom use to sex assigned at birth. An early second term Trump executive order required transexual criminals be incarcerated in federal prisons consistent with their biological sex. Also, the culture war motivated a transexual ban in the military and inspired removal woman in military leadership roles.

Immigration has been a major front in the cultural war aimed to make the U.S. white and Christian again. The Mandate recommends mass deportation, aggressive surveillance, intimidation, and apprehension of “illegal aliens,” and “full use of expedited removal.” It suggests using Blackie’s warrants to search work sites for undocumented people, anddemands their incarceration, expansion of detention centers, and usage of tents if more beds are needed. It calls for rescinding limits on enforcing immigration laws and provides Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wide discretion and power to execute these aims. The Mandate not only calls for deporting millions of undocumented immigrants but also advises sharply reducing legal immigration via diverse measures. It closes or makes harder almost every route to attaining legal status to remain in the U.S. For example, the Mandate suggests winding down H2-A and H2-B work visas, eliminating T and U visas for survivors of trafficking, crime, and physical abuse (it declares victimization should not be a rationale for immigration benefits). It calls for reducing student visas and terminating them for students from enemy nations.  The Mandate recommends limiting sharply parole or temporary permission for noncitizens to remain in the U.S. for humanitarian reasons, eliminating temporary protected status, terminating legal status of dreamers, limiting work authorizations, increasing fees across the board for legal immigration applications and related paperwork (e.g., citizenship applications, spousal accommodation, Asylum related fees). The Mandate also suggests generating planned backlogs to justify “pausing” or reducing applications for legal immigration.

The president issued a day-one executive order to restrict immigration, which declared a national emergency at the southern border, advocated expedited removal of undocumented immigrants, called for an end of chain migration, and even attempted to end the Constitutional right to birthright citizenship. He also ordered enforcement of immigration laws virtually everywhere, including in “sensitive zones” (e.g., schools, places of worship, health care facilities, food banks), which had been previously restricted to protect vulnerable adults and children. He implemented most of the Mandate‘sdraconian immigration recommendations and even exceeded their expected harshness. The brutality of masked ICE agents in the streets, workplaces, “sensitive zones,” courthouses, and even offices where immigrants go for interviews or complete paperwork to remain legally in the country. The racial profiling, incarcerating of American citizens, blocking oversight and inspection of detention centers, withholding information from families of the whereabouts and condition of their incarcerated relatives, expediting  removal of immigrants without due process, deporting immigrants to places other than their countries of origin, and telling transparent lies that ICE apprehends almost exclusively dangerous criminals or “worst-of-the-worst” while federal data demonstrates that fewer than 40 percent have had criminal convictions and of these about 8 percent committed violent crimes while 9 percent had traffic violations (Nehamas et al., 2025).

 One of the cruelest Trump Administration moves sent more than two hundred Venezuelans to El Salvadore’s notorious CECOT prison where they were beaten and sexually abused. The intensive operations and brutal methods of ICE, employment of national guard (allegedly to reduce crime) in Democratic run cities, and overall climate of militarization have helped animate widespread charges of fascism even in mainstream media and numerous protests in many cities and towns nationwide (including the massive “No Kings” protests). Symbolizing Trump’s approach to legal immigration, the president signed a proclamation to raise fees for most H1-B visas from a maximum of $5000 to a $100,000 while he issued an executive order to create a golden green card, which foreign nationals could purchase for $5 million to attain a fast lane to legal U.S. residency without the usual long queues, bureaucratic hassles, and red tape.

The Trumpist Economic, Military, and Environmental Gulag

The Mandate calls for balancing the budget by decreasing federal spending – reducing tax brackets to two, cutting taxes of the wealthy, lowering corporate taxes, and overall seeking a flat tax favoring the rich and making poor pay more. The Mandate proposes cutting antipoverty programs and restricting eligibility and creating stricter requirements for them. It recommends deep cuts in the supplemental nutrition plan (SNAP), an antihunger program for 42 million people living on the margin. It suggested reducing funding and benefits, increasing work requirements, and limiting eligibility. The Mandate calls for Medicaid cuts, increased work requirements for beneficiaries, and caps in benefits and privatization of Medicare.

The Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in July provided roughly $4 trillion in tax cuts, which benefit especially the wealthy and ultrarich billionaire class, and cuts Medicaid and Medicare to pay for it. The bill made the greatest cut ever in SNAP. During the government shutdown, Trump used SNAP cuts as leverage in the battle with Democrats – he refused to tap its emergency fund, which is legally required to be used if regular sources of support for the program are unavailable or insufficient to meet recipient needs. When the courts required the funds to be used, Trump said he would provide only half benefits to recipients. When federal courts affirmed that the legal benefits had to be extended, Trump took the matter to the Supreme Court even though the shutdown was about to end. While holding back support for low wage workers and the poor, he found funds for his ballroom, payment of the military, and a $20 billion loan to Argentina to keep its Trumpist leader, Javier Milei, who was behind in the polls for an upcoming election, in power. Manifesting Trump’s America First ideology and his approach to the poor, the president shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which could cause an estimated thirteen million children to lose access to education and ninety-five million people to lose health care (Oxfam America, 2025). USAID had provided basic support to some of the world’s poorest people, and increased the international influence of the U.S.

Trump’s Big Beautiful Tax bill provides a windfall for the ultrawealthy – while the top 0.1 earners will get a $286,940 tax cut, the lower 20 percent will get a $150 and the second quintile $750 (Mattson, 2025). The lower two quintiles will also likely suffer more than higher brackets from the health care and other social protection cuts. Moreover, Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service have been giving tax breaks via nontransparent rule changes to crypto, real estate, insurance industries, and other large companies and multinationals. The Trump Administration is gutting the “corporate alternative minimum tax” instituted by Biden to ensure that big corporations reporting high profits to stockholders and low liabilities to the IRS do not escape taxation (It was supposed to collect over $200 billion in taxes over the next decade).  The Trump Administration rolled back Internal Revenue Service scrutiny of aggressive corporate tax shelters and granted big tax breaks to foreign investors in U.S. real estate (Drucker, 2025). The unlegislated tax favors for the ultrawealthy parallel the exceptional corruption of Trump and his family using the presidency to enrich themselves and their friends (Warren, 2025). He exploited the presidency for self-enrichment more than any of his predecessors – having government pay for regular trips to Mar-a-Lago and his golf courses, accepting large gifts from foreign governments, enriching his family businesses, and demanding $230 million compensation from his own DOJ for the many investigations and efforts to impeach him during his first term. Trump has used his presidency to become a cryptocurrency billionaire – he eliminated multiple layers of financial safeguards, pardoned crypto’s richest man Changpeng Zhao, and received help from industry insiders for favors (Alexander, 2025).

The Mandate recommends reducing U.S. participation in international organizations such as the U.N. and Nato; it advises Europe to take much greater responsibility for its security. It calls for the U.S. to adopt America First Isolationism and protectionism rather than globalist internationalism. The Mandate treats Russia and especially China as security threats and enemies. However, Trump openly admires their leaders and other strongman heads of state. He promised to end the Russia-Ukraine War at the start of his second term, but he has yet to press his friend Putin with severe economic sanctions or provide Ukraine with the advanced military technologies they have asked for. He proposed a twenty-eight-point plan, drafted by Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev and Steve Wikoff, which made no major concessions to Ukraine, required big losses of land, and other measures intended to keep the nation weak and subordinate to Russia. Trump demanded that Zelensky accept the deal almost immediately or risk loss of further American support. Trump’s intervention in Iran and Venezuela, and threats to use force to take back the Panama Canal, take Greenland, make Canada the fifty-first state, defend Christians in Nigeria, defend white farmers in South Africa, institute regime change in Venezuela, and sink drug boats without due process are not mentioned in the Mandate and contradict his isolationist America First agenda.

The Mandate advocated that the U.S. pursue an “energy dominance agenda” based on expanded drilling, domestic usage, and export of fossil fuels and removing all Biden subsidies for renewable energy sources, green technologies, and electronic vehicles (EVs). The Mandate proposals on the environment are too extensive and varied to be elaborated here (for concise summing see Graham, 2025: 105-119; Antonio, 2024; 2025). However, in the first ten months of Trump’s second term, he made eviscerating environmental regulation a major thrust of his policy regime and addressed many of the themes stressed in the Mandate. On day one, he declared a national energy emergency to expedite fossil fuel extraction and production; withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement; eliminated EV subsidies; called for review of auto milage and appliance standards; rescinded 75 Biden era executive orders about environmental justice, sustainability, and climate change; curtailed future offshore wind leasing projects; considered reversal of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warnings about greenhouse gases, and proposed holding back unspent climate funds of the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The Trump Administration later planned for resumption of extensive coastal oil drilling off the Florida and California coasts; opened the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and Gas Drilling; cancelled billions of dollars in grants for clean energy projects; and weakened the Endangered Species Act. The Department of Energy banned usage of climate change related words and released a bogus report denying climate change. The Interior Department weakened search and development standards for offshore mineral extraction, rolled back mining standards, expanded mining areas, and proposed removing coal mining standards. The EPA removed standards on Carbon Pollution from power plants for mercury and other air toxins and proposed stripping wetlands of protection. Trump appointed heads of the EPA, Department of Interior, and Energy Department who are avid supporters of fossil fuel extraction and use and deny or underplay anthropogenic climate change. There are many more facets to his massive anti-environmental, energy dominance agenda that go beyond the ones mentioned here.

Calling climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetuated” and “green scam,” Trump claimed that the predictions by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and scientific organizations have been all wrong – the product of “stupid people” who have damaged the economy. Although, the U.N. now holds that solar and wind are usually the cheapest and fastest means for increasing electricity generation, Trump asserts that such renewables are “pathetic” or too weak, expensive, and ineffective (Walling & Borenstein, 2025). He made major budget cuts, workforce reductions, and eliminated the climate change research arms of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Climate disasters in first half of this year have been the costliest ever in the U.S (Millman, 2025). Deaths in poor countries are expected to rise sharply due to Trump’s increase in fossil fuel production and usage and abandonment of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A Nature survey of 233 IPCC scientists found that over 60 percent believe that global atmospheric temperatures will rise a disastrous three degrees Celsius or more by the end of century (Tollefson: 2023). Earth system scientists hold that seven of eight Earth system boundaries have been crossed and increase substantially the risk of ecological catastrophe (Rockström et al., 2023). Over the next decade Trump’s climate policies could lead to 1.3 million related fatalities (Lerner, 2025).

The Existential Crisis: Democracy or Autocracy

“post-truth is pre-fascism” – Timothy Snyder

Snyder (2017) adds that, “Fascism says disregard the evidence of your senses, disregard observation, embolden deeds that can’t be proven,” which cultivate blind obedience to autocrats and affirm their mythologies. He holds that truth-telling underpins rule of law and democracy. Trump’s anti-science, postfactual style suppresses, diminishes, or denies findings of systematic scientific inquiry that call for increased regulation or otherwise interfere with his policy trajectories. Transparent disregard for facts and truthfulness suffuse his rambling speeches. His base believes what he says or sees it as authentic expression – i.e., “Trump-being-Trump.”  Moreover, the president berates reporters who dare question even his most outrageous claims in his speeches. Snyder is right that Trump’s postfactual ways corrode the guardrails protecting rule of law and democracy and thus opens possibilities for authoritarian rule.

Pervasive falsity and autocratic tendencies also can inspire a powerful democratic backlash, especially if the strong man has not yet imposed military rule. A regime that depends on loyalty of its top appointees absent competence has a fragility that can result in a sudden tipping point or even a regime collapse. Blind faith in the strong man can wane quickly in response to severe economic problems, excessive sociopolitical overreach, or terrible statecraft. Diverse conditions exerted enormous stress on MAGA rule this fall – e.g., inflation, unaffordability, Medicare and Medicaid cuts, business uncertainty from Tariffs, brutal ICE actions, splits between openly racist, anti-Semitic, neofascist hard right factions (e.g., Nick Fuentes) and the less radical MAGA majority, massive No King’s rallies, Trump’s plunging poll numbers, and Democratic Party victories in the off-year elections.

Facing defections of MAGA supporters and possible loss in a congressional vote on opening the Epstein files to the public, Trump suddenly ended his dire opposition to the move and and told Republicans to vote to open them. This “emperor has no clothes” moment suddenly demonstrated unanticipated weakness. Shortly after, avid MAGA and Trump supporter, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene declared she would soon resign her position after the president called her a traitor for supporting opening of the Epstein files, and a surprisingly cordial meeting with democratic socialist Zohran Mandani further confused and divided MAGA supporters. Moreover, six military veteran Democratic lawmakers asserted that armed forces personnel should not follow illegal orders, raising questions about Trump’s using the military in U.S. cities and sinking alleged drug running boats without certainty that only so-called narco-terrorists were aboard and absent due process for them. The issue of illegal orders also likely provided a chilling reminder that when Democrats return to power Trump, his appointees, and diehard MAGA supporters would face serious punishment if they used the military to intimidate urban voters in next year’s elections, attempted another authoritarian coup to keep Trump in power, or committed other serious violations of rule of law. A few weeks earlier, pundits debated the possibility of Trump seeking a third term or employing the military to avert relinquishing his position now discussed his possible relegation to lame duck status (Hulse, 2025).

Trump is a mercurial leader who may change course, and mid-term elections are a long way off so that it is premature to judge how the current fracturing of the MAGA movement will culminate. Whatever Trump’s political fate, his appropriation of concentrated executive power opened way for the illiberal New Right to attain political voice and legitimacy. Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and many other Trump appointees and confidants embrace National Conservatism, which advocates hierarchical authority and inegalitarian rule. Virulently anti-liberal, anti-pluralist Integralist, intellectuals Patrick Deneen, Notre Dame political theorist, and Adrian Vermeule, Harvard law professor advocate instituting top-down hierarchical authority, legislating Christian morality and reversing the trend toward individual moral autonomy. They have enthusiastic support among younger, radical New Right followers, who often have elite academic credentials and confidence that they can overturn liberal democracy and its permissive culture. Vermeule’s advocacy of natural law frees legal interpretation from the Constitution and aims to revolutionize the sociocultural totality not merely the political order. The right-wing Catholic majority dominating the Supreme Court, who often employ the shadow docket and no longer consistently justify their many decisions supporting Trump and executive power via originalist explanation, may be trending toward already in Vermeule’s direction. The reactionary tendencies of these far-right Catholics have affinity for the larger U.S. political tent of Christian nationalism.

There are multiple vibrant New Right intellectuals and organizations seeking power in the U.S. (see Field, 2025 for a mapping). A more politically sophisticated New Right could succeed Trump, whom they always viewed as flawed and have supported mostly for instrumental reasons. As Timothy Synder asserts today and John Dewey  warned in the Great Depression era global hard-right populist surge – to survive the autocratic populist threats democracy must be stronger, more egalitarian, and more participatory in civil society as well as in public administration and social protection, and not limited exclusively to electoral politics. That will likely remain the democratic challenge after Trumpism.

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