Four years ago, in early fall, Daniel Ellsberg thought a lot about the state where he grew up. Michigan loomed large in the presidential election, and the renowned Pentagon Papers whistleblower was eager to communicate with voters in this key swing state. He asked me to contact Metro Times.
Days later, on October 13, 2020, this newspaper published an article that Dan wrote. After mentioning that he “attended public grade school in Highland Park and was a scholarship student in high school in Bloomfield Hills,” he went on to sound an alarm about Donald Trump: “It’s now of transcendent importance to prevent him from gaining a second term.”
Daniel Ellsberg passed away 16 months ago. If he could write a piece for Metro Times now, I’m sure his message would be similar: As president, Donald Trump “assaulted not only the First Amendment but also virtually every other aspect and institution of our country that preserves us as a republic.” And “we’re facing an authoritarian threat to our democratic system of a kind we’ve never seen before.”
In recent weeks, the blueprint for former President Trump’s possible second term has come into focus — Project 2025. Assembled by many former top officials in his administration, the 900-page document is ominous.
Project 2025 was authored “in partnership with the Heritage Foundation, a longstanding conservative think tank that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) explains. The former director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, recently denounced what he called the “violent rhetoric” from the current president of the Heritage Foundation.
The repressive scope and magnitude of the Trumpist right-wing agenda is stunning. And it underscores the importance of preventing a Trump victory this fall.
“Project 2025 includes a long list of extreme policy recommendations touching on nearly every aspect of American life,” the ACLU explains. Here are just a few of them:
• Gutting abortion access: “Severely limiting abortion access nationwide by reversing the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortion, and reviving a 19th century law, the Comstock Act, to ban any abortion medications, equipment, or materials from being sent through the U.S. Postal Service.”
• Mass deportations: “Targeting immigrant communities through mass deportations and raids, ending birthright citizenship, separating families, and dismantling our nation’s asylum system.”
• Abusing warrantless surveillance: “Exploiting the executive branch’s vast and unprecedented powers to spy on Americans’ lives with warrantless surveillance of our data.”
• Unleashing undue force on protestors: “Violating the First Amendment by using federal law enforcement to target journalists and protestors.”
• Censoring critical discussions in classrooms: “Censoring academic discussions about race, gender, and systemic oppression, in violation of the First Amendment, and promising to cut federal funding for schools with curricula that touch on these subjects.”
• Rolling back trans rights: “Weaponizing federal law to require states and private actors to discriminate against transgender people by threatening to sue schools that protect the rights of trans students or telling hospitals that they would lose their Medicaid funding if they provide gender-affirming medical care to trans adolescents.”
Trump has tried to run away from the rotten smell of Project 2025 by claiming that he hasn’t even read it. But CNN found that “at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025” — including “more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to ‘Mandate for Leadership,’ the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch.” Project 2025 may not be Trump’s plan, but a second Trump term is a crucial part of executing it.
Whether that manifesto becomes reality in the federal government could depend on whether Donald Trump wins in Michigan.
As a progressive, Dan Ellsberg was sharply critical of many aspects of Democratic Party leadership. He was a champion of Palestinian rights and Middle East peace. At the same time, he was emphatic about not equating the two major parties at election time, especially with Trump on the ballot. Dan warned that Trump represented an unprecedented “authoritarian threat” to democracy in the United States.
Dan understood that efforts like Green Party presidential campaigns are misguided and even dangerous. But, he said dryly, he did favor third parties — on the right (“the more the better”). He knew what some progressives have failed to recognize as the usual reality of the U.S. electoral system: right-wing third parties help progressives and Democrats, while left-wing third parties help Republicans and the far right.
Bad as current realities were, Dan Ellsberg told me, it was definitely untrue that things couldn’t get worse. He deeply understood that the forces propelling Donald Trump could bring fascism to the United States — a fully adequate reason for swing-state voters to cast ballots for Joe Biden then, and for Kamala Harris now.
