The year 2024 could decide the fate of American democracy. I know, it’s a cliché that gets beaten to death every four years, but hear me out: this year is different. In June, we were faced with bleak presidential prospects: an 81-year-old who couldn’t finish a sentence and always seemed like he could use a nap, and a 78-year-old using conspiracy theories in a bid to advance himself. Now, 81-year-old Joe Biden has been replaced by a much younger candidate, 60-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris, who saw a huge polling and donation boost for the Democratic party almost as soon as she announced her candidacy and received Biden’s endorsement. While Harris is undoubtedly a much stronger candidate, the specter of Donald Trump still looms large. How did America get to this point? How can we tear our backs from the wall and secure our cherished freedoms for centuries to come?

To understand our current situation, we must look back briefly at the history of the United States. The French and Indian War landed Great Britain in deep debt doo-doo. Their response? Taxes, tariffs, and more fun fees. Needless to say, the colonies didn’t like that too much. The colonial assemblies had gotten used to a) existing and b) having jurisdiction over their respective colonies in the previous century. The British reasserting control didn’t go over too well in a lot of places, culminating in the American Revolution. There was a period of instability until the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which set up the document that still sets the rules for our government today. In most states. Some states like to ignore it sometimes.

The ideal of forming a more perfect union, as articulated in the preamble to the Constitution, has been strived for and often achieved consistently throughout American history. The Constitution, along with its several amendments, laid the foundations for the civil liberties many people today take for granted despite them being ignored in some states. Those liberties include universal suffrage for all people 18 and over and the right to freedom of expression, for example. Of course, the Constitution is subject to interpretation. It is the job of the United States Supreme Court to do that, and recently, their decisions have been a little worrisome. More on that later.

In short, Americans have been fighting for freedom for nearly three centuries. However, there are those who are resistant to any change. These people are known as conservatives, and are generally members of the Republican Party. In the last couple of decades, Republicans have gotten more and more hard-line, especially since the candidacy of Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016. His campaign mercilessly and baselessly insulted all of his opponents with all manner of ridiculous and often awful things, such as calling Hillary Clinton “Crazy Hillary.” That trend has continued as Trump and the Republican Party found a scapegoat for basically everything they don’t like: immigrants. Trump’s racist, xenophobic rhetoric goes back to the 2016 campaign, when he promised to build a wall along the Mexican border and ban immigration from certain Muslim countries. He partially delivered on both of those promises, beginning construction on the wall and briefly instituting the Muslim immigration ban. During the pandemic, he consistently blamed China and Chinese people for the existence of COVID, which he often called the “Chinese virus” or the “kung flu.” More recently, he spread a rumor that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.

Trump essentially got away with an attempted coup (January 6, 2021) and falsely accused several states of falsifying electors and votes during the 2020 election cycle (even when there is virtually no proven voter fraud and there were only cases of false pro-Trump electors documented). Additionally, there are many, many Republicans in Congress who have not committed to certifying the election results if Trump loses, and many of the same people still deny that Trump lost in 2020. If that doesn’t scream existential danger to democracy, I don’t know what does, short of another civil war. And now Trump is running again.

The Heritage Foundation—a conservative think tank—recently published the latest installment of the “Mandate for Leadership,” colloquially known as Project 2025. It lays out how the next conservative president should run the country. Though they have created one for every election since 1981, it is getting much more attention this year than usual due to its deeply concerning and controversial contents. I’ll start with their vision for replacing what they estimate to be 5000 government jobs (but what could be many times more) that are currently appointed on merit with political appointees. This plan is called Schedule F, and could dismantle many jobs in government that are actually based on competence. The Heritage Foundation has already compiled a database of 20000 Trump loyalists to fill some of these positions. If Schedule F were to go through, it would significantly increase the network of people who are ideologically aligned with Trump. 

Additionally, Project 2025 doesn’t consider abortion as a form of healthcare. From that I take that it wants a national abortion ban without exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother. It’s no coincidence that after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, voters all across the country started voting bluer, since most Trump-backed Republican candidates openly supported abortion bans. In deep-red Ohio, for example, voters resoundingly rejected a referendum that would have required future referendums to be approved by a 60% vote. The aim of that referendum was clearly to make it harder to protect abortion rights. In Florida, a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights was approved by the voters by a large margin. Governor Ron DeSantis, of “Don’t Say Gay” bill fame, is still trying to fight the passage of the referendum. Abortion is not the only thing that Project 2025 wants to ban. It also intends to ban not only gender transition surgery, but also the very mention of sexuality and gender identity in schools and legislation. Project 2025 claims that the “woke gender ideology” has a “principal tenet” of gender-affirming care and sex-change surgeries on minors. They clearly haven’t looked at a dictionary, since a tenet is a principle or idea, not an action. On top of that, the so-called “woke gender ideology” is merely empathetic people trying to help others be who they want to be. Trump claimed that Harris wants to give prisoners sex change surgeries, implying that these would be forced. There is no evidence to support this claim.

Essentially, Project 2025 is a vision for the conservative movement to take over the government, which this year would mean a Trump presidency becoming a Trump dictatorship. Trump himself has said he wants to be a dictator on day 1. Americans can do a few things to prevent a dictatorship and preserve our democracy. Go out and vote, if you can, on November 5. Inform yourself about the candidates first. There is a clear choice, in my mind, of which candidate will preserve democracy. If you can’t vote yet, become politically active in other ways: peacefully protest or write. Raising awareness for a cause is one of the best ways to make change. (The other one is to pay with a twenty for something that costs $12.99.)