Forget ‘Project 2025.’ Trump’s executive power blueprint came out in 1988.

The Washington Post ^ | May 11, 2025 | Jason Willick

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Trump’s presidential blitz is realizing the dreams of conservative intellectuals in the Reagan-Bush era.

Imagine a populist president who set out to create, “in the first weeks of his administration, a radically different perception of the presidency.” He could use “far-reaching executive orders” to “give various constituencies throughout the country the immediate conviction that this president, for a change, looks out for them.” The burst of presidential edicts would serve visceral as much as practical purposes: “The nation as a whole needs to be jarred by this newcomer’s determination to protect the country’s vital interests, perhaps by ordering, on national security grounds, the immediate expulsion of dangerous aliens.”

This passage wasn’t written ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration, but George H.W. Bush’s. “The Imperial Congress,” a book of essays published by the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute in 1988, is a snapshot of conservative frustration as Ronald Reagan’s presidency wound down. Unlike Heritage’s “Project 2025,” the document did not offer a comprehensive policy agenda or become a campaign flash point. It argued narrowly that Congress was too strong and the presidency too weak, triggering a “crisis in the separation of powers.” The solution, as editor Gordon S. Jones put it, was “to wield the weapon of a reinvigorated executive.”

Whatever its constitutional merits, the argument had a partisan logic. Reagan’s 1984 win was a landslide. At the end of his presidency, Republicans had held the White House for 16 of the past 20 years and were about to hold it for four more. Yet GOP presidents were often thwarted by partisan opposition in Congress. In particular, Democrats had what seemed like a permanent majority in the House of Representatives, which they had controlled consecutively since the 1950s. That historic run wouldn’t end until the...

[God luvs America]

when the left whines about Project 2025 i always respond the same way- i’ll see your Project 2025 and raise you a New Green Deal and 1619 project....

[nwrep]

But old Globalist Bush did none of that.

[Wuli]

And it was passed on to GWBush, but he only managed a limited edition of it - on narrow national security grounds only.

[Steely Tom]

Trump’s executive power blueprint came out in 1988.

Uh oh, the WP has finally figured it out.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

And it was passed on to GWBush, but he only managed a limited edition of it - on narrow national security grounds only.

He was more interested in telling the US our day was over and there was a New World Government in town.

[OrangeHoof]

In the year 2025
If Trump is still alive
If straight men can survive
They may fiiiiiiind...

[ProgressingAmerica]

I think left wing journalists will never run out of new conspiracy theories to promote.