What Is Project 2025?
Project 2025 outlines a comprehensive blueprint for policy, personnel, training and operational planning to revitalize a conservative agenda across various federal agencies. It has 30 chapters dedicated to creating a roadmap for limited government and implementing conservative legislative values.
The manifesto is broken up into five sections: Taking the Reigns of Government, The Common Defense, The General Welfare, The Economy, and Independent Regulatory Agencies.
There are proposals to end birthright citizenship, change voting rights, and reverse the legality of the abortion pill mifepristone.
The blueprint operates along the idea of the Unitary Executive Theory, meaning the president should have total control of the executive branch of the federal government.
Unitary Executive Theory
The power needed to fully carry out the proposals in Project 2025 stems from the idea of the Unitary Executive Theory, the notion that "the independence of any senior or inferior officers of the government really is notional, and that really the President gets to control everything," explained Olinsky.
"Even if, for example, you have secretaries that have been confirmed by the Senate and should have some independence to make certain judgments. Ultimately...whatever the president wants, anyone in the executive branch should do," said Olinsky.
"We've seen a wholesale grabbing of control of the Department of Justice to implement the President's program and, frankly, carry out his grievances and grudges and retaliate against folks and also use the threat of prosecution in order to be able to make deals with folks," he added.
One example of this, said Olinsky, occurred with New York Mayor Eric Adams' bribery indictment.
Adams was indicted in 2024 on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, wire fraud, soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals, and soliciting and accepting a bribe. The mayor pleaded not guilty to all charges and consistently denied any wrongdoing.Trump's DOJ has now decided to drop charges, but in a way that allows it to reinstate the charges at any time, says Olinsky, who believes this is intended to make Adams a partner in the president's immigration agenda.
Another form of the Trump administration directly aligning with the unitary executive theory is its explicit push to relitigate Humphrey's Executor, the 1953 Supreme Court ruling that granted protection to federal workers from political persecution.
As Olinsky puts it: "The view is the president is the elected leader of the executive branch, the one, literally, the one elected leader, along with the vice president of the executive branch. And so really [he should] dictate the entire direction of the executive branch."
"President Trump has gone beyond what was even in Project 2025," said Olinsky, referencing his targeting of universities and law firms who have represented people he does not like.
"It will be very hard to undo," said Olinsky. "Because some of this damage means that people have left the federal government and they're not going to come back...you've lost a lot of talent. You've lost a lot of respect and trust."
Representative Huffman agreed that the Trump administration has gone beyond the scope of the Unitary Executive Theory.
He told Newsweek that, as extreme as Project 2025 is, its authors still expected its agenda to be carried out through acts of Congress and the courts.
"None of those assumed checks along the way seem to be taken seriously by this administration," Huffman told Newsweek. "They're just blasting past almost all of it. They're not bothering to ask permission from anyone."
"It's surreal and dystopic. We've never seen a presidential administration behave this way...We are so far down the slippery slope towards totalitarianism and dictatorship."
Congressman Huffman has asked his Republican colleagues why they are not standing up to Trump's attempts to undermine Congress but says all he has heard from them is the idea that the Trump administration can "go right ahead, do whatever you want."
He said it is "a crazy place to be in in our republic when you think about any other moment in our history, and when you think about all the stuff that our founders worried about and tried to build safeguards against this is the scenario I don't think they ever thought would occur, because they, in their own words, they said, 'Ambition will counter ambition.'
"These safeguards were very carefully constructed to enable people to do that. But what happens when the branch with the most power, the most primacy is absolutely has kind of unilaterally subordinated itself because of fear or corruption or whatever weird mix of motivations has caused them to do this? It's a very dark place, and we don't have a good answer for it."