Paul Dans, the author of Project 2025, the grand plan prepared by the Heritage Foundation in anticipation of Trump's victory in the 2024 elections, argues that Trump is the quintessential builder who has to demolish first before he can rebuild.
What needs to be demolished is the present edifice of government. It costs $7 trillion to run it with a budget deficit forecast of $1.9 trillion. More importantly, it delivers little to the people. It is of the bureaucracy and for the bureaucracy, an unelected and unaccountable lot whom Trump is now bringing to heel:
But what exactly does the American citizen get for $7trn? A country falling apart and potentially unable to defend itself.
Supply shocks from covid-19 underscored the strategic danger of a hollowed-out industrial base in the 21st-century global economy. Next came depletion of weapons stocks during the Ukraine war, raising concerns that we might no longer be able to defend ourselves because we lack productive capacity. America may lead in innovation and intellectual property, but what about good old-fashioned gunpowder? We have a single factory in all of America that produces it. And steel and heavy industry? Following a push under Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, America dismantled many of the coal- and nuclear-power plants required to sustain the electric load needed to power that production. How can a country serve as the arsenal of democracy when it takes seven years to restock the stinger missiles sent to Ukraine?
The economy needs to remade with manufacturing being brought back to the US in a big way. The bureacuracy will not do the job, so it has to be demolished first.
That sounds plausible. But Dans takes the argument further. Apart from the bureacuracy, who is coming in Trump's way? Well, it's an activist judiciary:
Historically courts preserved their own legitimacy by abstaining from political questions decided by the other two branches of government. District courts have now crossed this red line and stepped into a constitutional minefield, imposing their political views on issues that are clearly the province of the executive.
The judiciary can afford to be activist because it has the support of the universities and Big Law (which is the big legal firms that fight pro bono for the establishment ranged against Trump).
Now, you begin to understand why Trump has gone after top law firms and why he is swinging his axe at the nation's top universities: they are a threat to his attempt to remake the United States.
The remaking of the US is not just about remaking the economy with pride of place for manufacturing. It's also about remaking the important political institutions of the country, including the judiciary.
You have to give this to Dans: he's pretty clear about what Trump's followers want to accomplish.
1 comment:
That is true! The judiciary and higher institutions have lost their mind. They think they can do anything to protect illegal immigrants and free speech. Unacceptable. Some of the foreign nationals cannot dare to talk freely in their own nation and they say whatever they want once they land in the USA!
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