This is what will happen on the first day of Trump's presidency, according to Project 2025 | Daniel Martinez HoSang

IIt is a cold day in Washington DC in late January 2025. Donald Trump may have lost the majority of votes for the third time in a row, but he has secured the presidency with a narrow majority in the Electoral College.

During the campaign, Trump made some symbolic gestures to distance himself from Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led policy plan for the next Republican administration, which was matched to a database of conservative staffers to implement those plans. “Staff is policy,” they explain.

But now the Republicans have a narrow majority in both houses of Congress. Trump has to take tough action. When Trump says the last sentence of his oath of office – “so help me God” – the first phase of what the authors of Project 2025 call the “playbook” begins.

First, there are layoffs. Thousands of nonpartisan federal employees—environmental and food safety officials, agencies coordinating disaster relief, lawyers overseeing antidiscrimination policies in housing, education and employment, medical and scientific researchers—receive immediate layoff notices. Many are not replaced as entire federal programs and agencies are shut down. The new hires who come in come from conservative think tanks or are right-wing activists who applied through Project 2025's application database. Political cronyism is now the official hiring policy of the U.S. federal government.

Next come the raids. Designed by MAGA nativist Stephen Miller, numerous law enforcement agencies, from the National Guard to state and local police, are deployed for a new deportation army. Raids on neighborhoods and businesses target Democratic states and cities, but their real goal is general terror. Detention centers are set up on military bases and federal facilities with quick access to airfields to conduct mass deportations. Nearly a million legally present immigrants are stripped of their legal protections and immediately deported. This is followed by the end of DACA and a return of the Muslim travel ban.

In the months that follow, other aspects of the agenda are taken up. Corporate taxes are cut so generously that they would make even robber barons blush. The end of federal funding for public television and radio, forcing many local stations to close. The end of Head Start programs leaves hundreds of thousands of parents and guardians without preschool or child care. The dismantling of the Department of Education and programs like Title I result in the end of funding and many protections for students with disabilities, English learners, and students from low-income families.

Pornography is criminalized. The same goes for abortion rights, emergency contraception, and many reproductive health programs. Adios also for most public sector unions, union organizing rights, and poverty alleviation programs.

Sometimes it's difficult to distinguish the exaggerations of Trump and the MAGA movement from actual government plans. “Build the Wall” was always more of a campaign rally and fundraising stunt than a political plan. But having attended several right-wing conferences and rallies over the past year for research purposes, I have little reason to doubt their intentions this time.

I heard Miller describe the deportation plans in horrifying detail at CPAC. I heard speaker after speaker at a Turning Point USA conference promising violence and retaliation against political opponents, the destruction of nearly all public goods, and plans to put a strident Christian nationalism at the center of government and civic life. I heard outspoken defenses of eugenics and scientific racism on right-wing media outlets with millions of followers.

And perhaps most frighteningly, I have watched as more and more young people, people of color, and others outside the traditional conservative base join the ranks of MAGA supporters and embrace the cynicism and demonization that are the heartbeat of the contemporary right.

Conservatives often boast about the unity of their philosophy of government, based on small government, entrepreneurship, faith and family. But this policy is neither coherent nor rational. The dominant principle is plunder.

And these ideas are not limited to the Heritage Foundation or Trump. They are being taken up by a network of right-wing groups, some of whom have even more extreme agendas than Project 2025.

This agenda cannot be called populist either. Polls show that large majorities of the US population deeply oppose the Project 2025 agenda. Corporate giveaways, drastic cuts to public services, and legalizing discrimination against queer people will not alleviate any of the very real crises facing masses of people in the US and around the world.

What can be done in the face of this looming catastrophe? Of course, the material consequences of this agenda must be laid bare. MAGA supporters often suggest that Trump should be taken “seriously, but not literally.” Project 2025's 920-page policy paper is not political theater, and its threat to the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people must be laid out in no uncertain terms. These cracks must be exposed.

At the same time, we must not lapse into fatalism. Right-wing tacticians like Christopher Rufo have stated that they publicize their strategies to deliberately demoralize their opponents. If we only warn about the threat of fascism, we risk making people even more fearful and isolated, and more cynical about the prospect of collective change or resistance.

And if the only alternative is to defend a declining liberalism that is itself marked by violence, insecurity and premature death, the reactionary threat is sure to intensify.

Instead, warnings about the authoritarian threat posed by Project 2025 and similar projects must be coupled with the clear goal of rebuilding our emaciated public institutions and protecting people from the predations of a rigged economy. The fascist threat collapses when ordinary people have meaningful opportunities for social contact and purpose—the foundation of human dignity.

• Daniel Martinez HoSang is Professor of American Studies at Yale and a Race and Democracy Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He is co-editor of the forthcoming volume The Politics of the Multiracial Right.