Americans were tricked! We don't want Project 2025.

On the campaign trail last year, Donald Trump swore he knew "nothing" about Project 2025. As a candidate, he said he didn't even know who had written the far-right blueprint for his second term, called some of its ideas "absolutely ridiculous" and "abysmal" and argued it was "pure disinformation" for Democrats to try to link him to that plan. In case it wasn't clear at the time, Trump was lying like always. Journalists tried to make that as clear as possible during the campaign, noting the ties that Trump had with its authors, the track record the Heritage Foundation had on getting his support for its ideas and his own previous remarks — as well as the fact that he had declined to say specifically which ideas in Project 2025's 900 pages he considered so ridiculous. When he won a second term, Trump dropped the pretense and began enacting Project 2025's proposals, in some cases to the letter. In the eight months since inauguration, he has checked off most of its major proposals: • launching a mass deportation program • purging civil servants and replacing them with partisan loyalists • defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting • reducing the Federal Emergency Management Agency's role in disaster response • eliminating federal "diversity, equity and inclusion" efforts • banning transgender troops in the military It's bad enough that Trump lied about his agenda, enacted deeply unpopular policies after he was sworn in and appointed a loyalist to the FCC who is seeking to punish everyone from local news reporters to late-night comics for exercising their First Amendment rights. But this just makes it worse. Some of the 77 million Americans who voted for Trump really believed him when he said he had nothing to do with Project 2025. Some of them really thought that a presidential candidate would live up to his word or follow through on his promises to lower the price of eggs. And everyone from conservative podcasters to Republican senators — sources that they trust — encouraged them in that belief, even when they knew better. Americans were tricked and our best defense against this farce is supposed to be our elected officials who are shirking their duty.