Project 2026

Patrick Koske-McBride
8 min readSep 19, 2024

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Project 2025 is the ghoulish, penultimate act of Reactionaries to finish Starving the Beast, and ending federal governance, as we know it. It’s a nightmarish policy wishlist written by people who never read Ayn Rand critically, only effusively. That sort of adverb shift is exactly the sort of governance shift P2025 promises: Moving federal government away from “abusive negligence,” to simply, “abusive.”

To give everyone an idea of how nightmarish this could get, their “Intermediary” tax reform calls for the institution of a flat-rate tax. That was also the cornerstone of Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan’s presidential bids, and they polled at 6%.

Nowadays, these freaks make up 30–40% of the electorate. Orwell didn’t dream of Democracy putting itself on the ballot.

Okay, most of us have looked into P2025 and appropriately dry-heaved. That is why we must vote against Donald Trump. Given Trump’s ongoing inability to campaign, JD Vance’s ongoing verbal assaults on women, there’s an increasing probability that Harris wins the presidency by default.

Folks, let us drop acid together, and imagine a world in which the Dems sweep all of their races this year, and are heading into the next mid-term. In this universe, it’s not a case of “K. Harris wins, the DNC sweeps the House and Senate; everything is magically delicious,” it’s, “K. Harris wins, the DNC sweeps the House and Senate, and forge a more-permanent detente with moderate Republicans, and build in-roads with Zoomers and disaffected Millennials, shifting the Overton Window Left.” I give you

Project 2026

  1. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act — This is a rather dramatic overhaul of a bill that outlines how states are to change voting laws. The LSD is kicking in, folx, let’s dream a little bigger and imagine the ultimate wet-dream of democracy: automatic, universal enfranchisement. This is the concept of a plan; but, imagine a system in which, on your 18th birthday, you receive a voting ID card, courtesy of the FEC, just like in civilized countries, good for voting once per election. None of those idiotic local laws that specify how many people are allowed to vote in a Congressional District per election — which is what states like Georgia have historically attempted by throttling down the number of polling places and operating hours. A popular trope I’ve seen amongst the pundit class is that this election is about the economy. I would love for that to be the case, but any chance at an economic message got tossed aside in favor of questioning where Haitians come from, exactly:

Yeah; an economic message from those guys is really going to tie that campaign together. As the race increasingly shifts away from coherent messaging around jobs, I suspect that we’ll start discussing the need for greater investment in civic participation, if only to force politicians to pick up an almanac once in their lives. A natural secondary question/issue to that is voting rights, which will become critical to any successful coalition that brings Harris and Walz into the White House. The throughline here is that the Haley supporters who are now terrified of The Donald (first rule in politics: Never vote for someone you wouldn’t trust your pets and children with) are all very clear that their plan is to live to vote another day. The counter to authoritarianism is more democracy, and I think we’re all looking for ways to make America dictator-proof. The Harris-Walz Coalition is an odd hodge-podge of groups ranging from the Cheney Family to teh Obamas, all of whom seem united only by their belief that American Democracy is fragile, and needs strengthening. Step 1 is universal enfranchisement and encouraging all Americans to vote. As I said, although I can’t imagine the Cheney family eagerly embracing the Black Panthers, I can readily imagine a post-Trump GOP endorsing expanded voting access so JD Vance’s first cousins once-removed in West Virginia can get to the polls just as easily as any coastal elite. And that is a good thing; democracy requires participation to work.

2. Expand the ACA — Trump’s “concepts of a plan” are going to be a naked attempt to end the ACA. Don’t fool yourself for a second; the GOP tried to repeal it dozens of times. This is a much harder sell to the Adam Kinzingers of the world who might cross party lines to preserve the American Experiment, but might not be as interested in a fully-funded domestic policy, but if the GOP can fantasize about a flat-rate tax as an “intermediary reform” (yes, that is the phrasing from P2025), we can fantasize about a world in which the politics of healthcare is no longer, “Should the serfs be allowed to see a physician,” to, “How much out-of-pocket is acceptable for dental and vision?”

3. Expanded Empire — Sorry, leftists, but a Harris-Walz Administration might discuss forcing Israeli compliance for arms, but a top priority will be granting Puerto Rico and DC some form of statehood, effectively expanding federal borders. Additionally, a Biden-Walz Administration would probably effectively push back against Russian and Chinese expansion, cutting Cuba off from its traditional state sponsors. As a result, Cuba is increasingly domestically pressured to normalize trade relations with the US, leading to Republican-affiliated large-scale Latin import firms, probably in bright red Florida and increasingly purple Puerto Rico. We can go on and on about how this is good or bad, but I honestly don’t see the moderate Republicans in the coalition ending their traditional cries for greater US presence in the Global South, and a 51st state in the Caribbean guarantees that (as I’ve suggested, based on my Cuban-American friends’ politics and the fact that Puerto Rico would be a border state on all sides, I can’t imagine it becoming a DNC strong-hold, despite what M. McConnell might claim). I don’t see any major political movement to return to US foreign intervention like we had in Afghanistan, but giving American Samoa statehood — for bette or worse — elevates their voices in the body politic, and provides direct incentives for coherent trade treaties in the Pacific.

4. A Safer, More Prosperous Working Class — There’s no such thing as the middle class, that’s a grotesque fantasy put forth by the Investor Class to divide the Working Class. If you have to ask which one you belong to, you don’t have to worry about an unrealized gains tax. Given the dramatic uptick in union political power in this election (Quick proving point: Who did the UAW endorse? Who did they endorse in 2016? Did you care, 8 years ago?); I foresee an uptick in the power of the NLRB, despite what tits like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Harlan Crow might try to attempt with their pets on the Supreme Court; all of which would lead to a society in which organized labor is in a political position to demand concessions from politicians, like safer workplaces, guaranteed pensions, and more affordable housing.

5. Judicial Reform — I’ve heard that FDR caught political hell for his reforms of the Supreme Court, which have acted as a deterrent to judicial reform. This is the same argument that it’s better to ignore that grinding noise from the engine, because nobody has time to carpool to the mechanic’s. We have severe, systemic issues with a branch of government that so freely showers legal favors on their perceived benefactors — imagine if a single professional sports team was allowed to hire and train all of the umpires in their specific sport, and one can see why an impartial, fair-minded judicial system whose only established loyalty is to the fair and transparent application of the law might be a good thing to lower the attraction of political violence. Hell, the Supreme Court has already stretched their Secret Service agents beyond what the Secret Service can provide — when they sleep in Maryland, DC, and Virginia, it’s only under the watchful eye of local cops. Why, on Earth, would we trust people so alienated from the general public that they have to be forcibly segregated from said public, 24/7? I despise my local city government, but I trust that they generall have the community’s best interests at heart, and, as such, menacing them is a lower priority than, say, making sure I have fresh mayonnaise in the fridge. Similarly, our dysfunctional court system would no longer be entrusted with the OJ Simpson case, even if they were doing a reboot. A significant priority of any Harris-Walz coalition must be immediate, impartial, nonpartisan judicial reform, because our Court System is the final legal arbiter in society, and that sort of power and trust must not be placed in a group so odious that Clarence Thomas and Brent Kavanaugh are members.

6. An actual civilized, rational discussion on Executive Power — There’s an unfortunate permanence to the Power of the Presidency. FDR decided that government had a role in preventing economic collapse, so, we have market regulations. Nixon decided that bombing Asian civilians was cool, so we regularly invade unwitting Asian nations. Obama decided that Wall Street was worth saving, and now the Investment Banking Industry is the biggest Welfare Queen in history. Trump decided to do a bit of a coup, and the Supreme Court (see above) invented an entirely new form of legal privilege that puts presidents above the law. Because the President was originally intended to be a law enforcement officer and war-time leader, our Constitution left the presidential powers deliberately vague. The time for Rogue Presidents ended with the fall of Saigon, and we must, collectively, come together to determine the exact parameters and limits of presidential power; even if it’s as deliberately vague as, “First, Congress must formally announce a state of national emergency, then a President can kill an innocent person in Times Square, if she so deems it.” Certainly, the historic permanence of presidential powers could be broadly interpreted as a form of legislative power, and that, in and of itself, should be cause for concern.

6. The Emoluments Clause — So, this one is the final, most-fantastical leftist absurdist daydreams, and it’s less-likely than Congress welcoming the first elected representatives from the newly-minted state of Greater DC. Imagine if we collectively decided that no public officials, anywhere in the US, at any level, were allowed to directly profit off of their office, while they still held said office. Imagine a world in which Nancy Pelosi (or her husband, anyway) could not short-sell airline stocks before announcing new FAA regulations. Imagine a world in which federal judges were formally forbidden from accepting lunches from an animal shelter. Imagine a world in which we could accept someone as bizarre as Lauren Boebert actually believed her insane conspiracy theories, rather than that it was all a strange prelude to an attempt at stand-up comedy. Someone pointed out that all of the fun, “Tim Walz is Phil Dunphy memes may or may not be true, but it’s damning of how starved the American people are for kindness in our leadership that we want to believe them.” As someone who has now met an actual candidate for US Senate who comes off as fully-human; I would argue that it’s basic sincerity that we’re all starved for. If we all knew that Bill Clinton was truly an off-putting horn-dog, rather than a possible front to relate to the Silently Randy Majority… well, we might have voted differently in ’96, but we’d also have something like closure on a weird decade. It’s basic earnestness that’s been absent from US politics for far too long, and we can return it to office if we permanently sever profit motive from politics. Does Rex Tillerson genuinely believe Iran is a threat to Western Society? Cut off his Exxon stocks, and we’ll find out.

Again, a Harris-Walz Administration and a DNC-controlled House don’t get us there (and, it’s possible that you find my proposals for statehood to US territories to be frightening in practice); it requires both of those preconditions, AND everyone out there to camp out on every federal official’s lawn holding signs. Ideally, we’d do that, and run for every open office, from City Comptroller to US Senate, because that is the only way toward Project 2026.

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Patrick Koske-McBride

Science journalist, cancer survivor, biomedical consultant, the “Wednesday Addams of travel writers.”