America Broke Something When It Gave Trump a Second Chance - Jamelle Bouie @ NYT

[In It to Win It]

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NYT

The Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” — popularly known as Project 2025 — was much more than a wish list of conservative policy preferences. It was much more, even, than a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Project 2025 was, above all, a statement of values and a theory of governance. Its authors did not simply want to move national policymaking to the right. They wanted to use the authority of the executive branch to impose a new regime on the United States.

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution,” declared Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the summer before the 2024 election. This revolution, he added, “will remain bloodless if the left allows it.” Russell Vought, who leads the Office of Management and Budget and was, like Roberts, a key architect of Project 2025, also spoke publicly about the need for a “radical constitutionalism” and a tribune-like president who would dismantle the New Deal state, sell the scrap and return the nation to the status quo ante of the 19th century.

Much of the disruption and destruction of the past year and change is downstream of the revolutionary orientation of Roberts, Vought and the other alumni of Project 2025 who have taken up places in and around the Trump administration. To observe the aggrandizement of power in the executive, the decimation of the federal bureaucracy, the destruction of much of the nation’s medical, scientific and public health infrastructure and the broad attack on racial and gender equality is to see the many faces of a furious effort to restructure the existing nation to match the one envisioned by these far-right ideologues.

If this is all true, and it is, then any plausible response to Project 2025 must include a larger vision for the future of the American Republic. A Project 2029 cannot be a collection of Democratic Party agenda items. It must articulate a broad new conception of the nation’s political order — one that will guide the way a future Democratic-led government might wield power. Above all, Democrats must have a plan for reconstruction — for building something new on the wreckage of what President Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party have wrought — not restoration of what was.

[dalton99a]

1. The Trump toxin must be purged from our government

All Trump appointees must be fired. Every damn one.

Rescind his bullshit executive orders

It is a Day One priority

[nuxvomica]

7. If we can get Trump out of power, we should try a complete rollback

Let's not forget that in Trump v Anderson, the Supreme Court never really settled whether Trump's presidency would be constitutional. It settled that states couldn't keep him off the ballot and suggested that Congress needed to create a statute to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. They didn't reverse a finding of fact that he had engaged in an insurrection. There remains a strong case that his presidency is, in-fact, unconstitutional, just as if he were under 35 years of age or of foreign birth. How ironic it would be to reverse all the policies of a golf-cheat with such a mulligan!

[UpInArms]

2. Expand the USSC

Impeach the felonious six

Burn everything with tfg’s prints on it and forge a Bill of Rights that is impenetrable

[ITAL]

3. Impeaching the Supreme Court feels like a fool's errand

You'll never get the conviction votes, so it's just political theater to make us feel better for a few days. It won't do anything otherwise.

Expanding the court, yeah that can be done.

[Joinfortmill]

6. I'm for both. You may be right or you may not be

We'll never know unless we try.

[ITAL]

12. It's just math

In a best case scenario you'd have to get 15 or so Republicans to flip. That's not ever gonna happen.

[LT Barclay]

28. What about the next democratic president using this unlimited executive power and give the fascist 6 a week to resign.

If they don’t the president should make a show of having federal marshals drag them from their chambers and take their robes away from them.

[ITAL]

30. I wouldn't joke about that

Republicans will eventually get back into power after all. I'd be absolutely terrified once that happened of what would come after if we were the ones that took away all guardrails like that.

[LT Barclay]

33. With a new court and congress better guardrails could be established. Right now, we are in a post-constitutional state

with a demented excutive and a rubber stamp court. It's maddening, mostly because they pretend to be preserving some perverted image of the US while destroying every good and decent principal it was founded on.

[ITAL]

34. I'm not saying many haven't broken already

But even Trump hasn't started throwing politicians or judges he dislikes into jail en masse. Threaten, absolutely.

If you're just gonna round up Supreme Court Justices, trust me there will be retribution when they get back into power...and it'll be severe. Talk about a post constitutional state! And any "guardrails" are attempted to be put up after we "cleaned house" at that point won't be listened to or followed. The next Republican president would just do the same thing -- and they always play much crueler and dirtier in ways it's hard for Democrats to imagine.

[Biophilic]

4. Definitely not a "restoration of what was".

If nothing else trump and the gop has shown us the deep weaknesses in the Constitution as well as the dark corners of our national soul.
We can no longer pretend that our nation was moving towards that Arc of Justice. We know better now and we must face racism as well as the major faults of capitalism. Otherwise our children have no future except hate and misery.

[Joinfortmill]

5. And I'll go to my grave believing he/they cheated.

[3catwoman3]

14. As will I. All the swing states going for Trump by very narrow margins...

...is very suspicious, IMO. IIRC, the margins were quite similar in all those states.

[YodaMom2]

20. Narrow, but just enough

to avoid automatic recount. Suspicious as hell….

[3catwoman3]

26. Precisely.

[Farmer-Rick]

17. I'm with you

They will certainly attempt to rig the election again....

[Botany]

22. Musk has admitted to cheating

“I had a special app that let me see the results hours earlier.”

Aka I was into the data.

[Chemical Bill]

37. Read: The Conyers Report.

The cheating is spelled out, you don't have to have any doubts.

[CaptainTruth]

8. America broke itself.

[Martin68]

9. Yes.

[FakeNoose]

10. Isn't it funny that the NYT never said a word about this in 2024 during Chump's campaign

Now that it's too late, they're all "Oh he's destroying the country. How can Americans let this happen?"

Thanks for NOTHING, New York Times!

[In It to Win It]

19. Jamelle Bouie did.

[maxsolomon]

21. How you know the NYT "never said a word"? Do you have a subscription? A print subscription?

It was a while ago, but I recall there were multiple articles on Project 2025 throughout the campaign. I certainly knew about it and that's my main news source outside of DU.

And if they had met your standards of "saying a word" about Project 2025, do you think that would have tipped the scales towards Harris? It wouldn't have. Hardly any Americans read the NYT or any daily newspaper at all. They want to watch TV and not use their brains - it's too hard.

BTW, this is an Op-Ed piece from a regular columnist.

[Wednesdays]

25. Not just the New York Times,

...but much, if not most, of the M$M.

And a big part of the road back to normalcy will be media reform...beginning with the breakup of the colossal media empires.

[Martin Eden]

11. Their "radical constitutionalism" is the destruction of constitutional checks & balances

Giving the executive branch overriding authority is not "constutionalism" -- it is autocracy (a.k.a dictatorship).

This administration routinely flouts constitutional rule of law and court orders, losing ~90% of court cases -- often presided by judges appointed by Republicans, even Trump himself.

The only good result from putting all this power in the hands of a megalomaniacal buffoon would be a public backlash broad and strong enough to kick these criminals and their Republican enablers out of office for a long time.

[dlk]

13. The entitlement and arrogance of the Heritage Foundation is off the charts

Who do they think they are to make these decisions for over 330 million Americans?

[Farmer-Rick]

18. They think they own the world

And you and I living in it is just a useless inconvenience to them.

Capitalism does this. It allows money to own everything.

[dlk]

29. Indeed

Their entire existence is an obscenity

[intheflow]

15. Restoration of what was is the sure way to death o the country.

What was has been broken by Trump, but it also gave rise to Trump. What can be is the left rising like a phoenix from the charred remains to grow into an even more beautiful creature. That's my dream for the future.

[dlk]

16. The arrogance and entitlement of the Heritage Foundation is off the charts

Who do they think they are to make these decisions for nearly 350 million Americans?

[justaprogressive]

23. We have the chance to improve it bigtime!!

" It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Abraham Lincoln

[hamsterjill]

24. American Broke Something when it gave Trump the FIRST chance.

Come on! How many of us didn't know what in the hell his plans were way back then? It was plain as day.

And there's talk here at times about whether we need to "forgive" the MAGA's because some were conned by him. Don't EVER put me anywhere near that category. I knew what he was from day one - as did MANY here on DU. Everyone should have and anyone who didn't needs to be held accountable - whether ordinary citizen or someone servicing in his cabinet or the Republicans who have been accomplices to him.

We've got to address the absolute "stupid" in this country at some point. The smart people need to get back into control and figure out a way to stay there so that this shit never happens again.

[Mysterian]

27. Hopefully, it broke the republican party

The masks are off. I hope there are enough good and decent patriotic Americans who care.

[sakabatou]

32. You have a lot of people who have been stabbed in the back by repukes

but will still vote for repukes anyway.

[Uncle Joe]

31. Kicked and recommended

Thanks for the thread In It to Win It

[Skittles]

35. handing the entire fucking government over to repukes

it was never going to end well

[electric_blue68]

36. Biophiliac...I respectfully partly disagree w you....

Last edited Thu Jun 4, 2026, 10:21 AM - Edit history (2)

We were if slowly, and often times dragged forwards along the Arc of Justice.
I wish I knew what/which the survey/research group etc back in the ?early 00's said that bit by bit that each generation of white kids was less racist, or more white kids were raised to believe in equality for all. (My parents raised me non-racist, I was encouraged by this).

Unfortunately, as we know plenty of racists are still around, entrenched ln various power positions in certain areas [and with drumphf & SCOTUS] the power to undo certain things, in institutional sectors, individual businesses etc.

But I believe there may be relatively less racists - and because of that- those that are are aggravated by this.
Here me out- of course - electing Obama president was never "the end of racism" (a rather ignorant statement in the face of evidence). But re-electing him got to the racists! Imho, the could chalk one term of a black person as President as a "fluke". But twice ?! Uh, oh!
So they have become more loud, relentless, sometimes more violent. Thus they, imho, appear to be more numerous bc drumphf gave them "permission" to crawl out from under the rocks they'd been often driven under.

(Ooops, unintended bold, then ital) Fixed)