Washington, D.C. — Today, the Center for American Progress released a new report that explores several ways Project 2025 proposes to gut America’s 250-year-old system of checks and balances in order to consolidate power in an imperial president. The ways Project 2025 and its authors propose demolishing critical governing guardrails include:
- Weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice for political purposes
- Ending the long-standing independence of federal agencies
- Replacing expert civil servants with political loyalists
- Bypassing the will of Congress by illegally using impoundment power to decide how federal funds are spent
- Weakening the independent media and news reporting
- Misusing the Insurrection Act against Americans to stifle dissent
- Neutralizing the Senate’s role of confirming executive branch nominees
The report also details how other countries have faced similar democratic backsliding when authoritarians have come into power and have utilized these steps to seize control. For example, under Victor Orbán, Hungary—once a democracy—hobbled its independent judiciary, dismantled its civil service, weakened the country’s independent media so that it now resembles “state media under Communism,” and more. The report finds that when well-accepted norms are shattered, democracy can backslide, and that authoritarianism can happen in the United States, just as it has in countries such as Hungary, Poland, and Venezuela.
“Project 2025 and its vision for an imperial presidency are anathema to the very founding idea of our country,” said Ben Olinsky, senior vice president of Structural Reform and Governance at the Center for American Progress and co-author of the report. “As governments that have experienced democratic dismantling all over the world have shown us, autocracy can happen here. By gutting our system of checks and balances, Project 2025 would give the president unprecedented authority to wield government power against Americans, enact a radical, unpopular agenda that harms the middle class, and rip away people’s freedoms.”
Additional resources:
Click here to read the report: “Project 2025 Would Destroy the U.S. System of Checks and Balances and Create an Imperial Presidency” by Michael Sozan and Ben Olinsky
For more information or to speak with an expert, please contact Sam Hananel at [email protected].