Trump's Antisocial State

ABSTRACT: Just a few months in, any doubts about the tenor of Trump's second presidency have been dispelled. The Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise by Project 2025 has produced a much more focused Trump than we saw the first time around. It has found a way to convert the president's flare-ups into a constant source of energy and to arrange his thought bubbles into a sequential narrative. Project 2025, as the report has come to be known, contains a plan for reconstructing the American state from the ground up. To get there, however, it first has to overcome obstacles created by the existing state and its workforce of civil servants. One refrain beats consistently throughout: abolish the administrative state. The report whispers in the president's ear at every turn, explaining how he can use executive power to "fire supposedly 'un-fireable' federal bureaucrats; shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices; muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government; restore the American people's constitutional authority over the Administrative State; and save untold taxpayer dollars in the process."