Project 2025 Is January 6’s Attempted Coup Dressed in a Nice Suit | Opinion

Jan. 6, 2021, was my fourth day in Congress. On that day, I was trapped in the House Gallery with my new colleagues, eventually escaping with only 30 seconds separating us from the insurrectionists. Looking back, I didn’t think I’d use my background in conflict prevention, stabilization, and response quite so soon. But my experience provides the framework for how our country can still move forward, especially as we face a second coup attempt that could actually be successful: Project 2025.

When I worked at the State Department and the United Nations, I specialized in post-coup transitions and responses to electoral violence and violent extremism in places like Fiji, Mali, Nigeria, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I’ve seen this movie before and I know what the playbook is. After violence fails, often the next attempt is more insidious and covert—using the institutions and mechanisms of power themselves to subvert the will of the people. That’s exactly what Project 2025 is. It’s a 900-page blueprint, written by hundreds of loyalists, allies, and former employees of former President Donald Trump‘s administration, that would undermine free and fair elections, destroy checks and balances, and stifle any attempts to express dissent.

One of the hallmarks of democracy is free and fair elections, but Project 2025 would endanger election workers, disenfranchise voters, and inhibit our ability to stop disinformation. It eliminates the Department of Homeland Security‘s mandate to combat foreign actors’ disinformation campaigns—like what we’ve already seen this cycle from Iran, Russia, and the People’s Republic of China. Project 2025 requires states and localities to share voter registration databases with the federal government as a pre-condition for federal grants eligibility, allowing the administration to purge voter rolls and disenfranchise voters systematically. And it accelerates sham investigations and prosecutions of voters and election officials, who’ve already reported heightened safety concerns this year, by handing over authority to prosecute election-related offenses from the Department of Justice‘s Civil Rights Division to the Criminal Division.

Project 2025 would make the presidency into a monarchy by removing checks and balances. The FBI and DOJ would no longer operate independently, meaning the president could shield his loyalists from accountability and target political opponents for retribution. Public agencies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission, which have long been independent would no longer be. Their commissioners could be fired without cause and the White House could revise or block agency rules before making them public. The president could supersede Congress’ power of the purse and decide to spend or withhold money from federal agencies and hold them hostage until they enact the president’s political agenda. Public servants would be a relic of the past; instead, the president would replace tens of thousands of civil servants with political loyalists who’ve pledged to enact the president’s political agenda, not the public interest. The legislative and judicial branches of government should be empowered to say “no” to the president—but under Project 2025, that’s impossible.

In the face of this egregious expansion of presidential power and weaponization of our government, the American people and the media would have little recourse to push back and express dissent.By politicizing entities like the FCC and the DOJ, the president could rescind broadcast licenses from major TV networks and seize the phone calls and emails of journalists who criticize the administration. Project 2025 defunds public broadcasting, including PBS and NPR, builds the U.S. Agency for Global Media and Voice of America into propaganda machines, and suggests kicking reporters out of the White House—a critical mechanism for transparency and accountability. It would also empower the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and to crush dissent and peaceful protests. Under Project 2025, criticizing the president could mean losing your job or being thrown in jail.

Jan. 6, 2021, was an unmistakable coup attempt—it was a big, violent attack on the U.S. Capitol that sought to keep Donald Trump in power against the will of the people. Project 2025 is a different tactic but has the same goal. If re-elected as president, Trump would insulate himself from checks on his power while dramatically increasing it. But drawing from my background, I know the antidote to Project 2025.

First, we need to elect Vice President Kamala Harris as president—but truthfully, that’s not enough to repair all the damage done. We need full accountability from the attack on Jan. 6—for everyone who committed, incited, or encouraged violence. I’ve seen that in countries where a first coup attempt wasn’t met with swift actions that held the culprits accountable, subsequent attempts were much more likely to succeed. But even more importantly, we need to prove that our democratic norms and institutions are worth trusting and fighting for by delivering on the big promises we’ve made. This is the most significant thing we can do to build trust with the American people, ensuring people feel seen, heard, and included by our government.

In the long term, we will never fully be unified as a country until we focus on healing the deep divisions and feelings of mistrust and resentment. Addressing these fault lines in our society—especially around race and inequality—will require a systematic, nationwide community dialogue and truth and reconciliation process.

Undoing the damage done from Jan. 6 and Project 2025 won’t be easy, but it is possible—especially with President Kamala Harris leading us forward.

Rep. Sara Jacobs represents California’s 51st district in Congress and seeks re-election this year. She’s also a member of the Harris-Walz National Advisory Board. Attached is a headshot.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.