Days before Hurricane Debby hit Florida on Aug. 4, the head of the campaign to replace the National Hurricane Center resigned.

Paul Dans quit, but Project 2025’s scheme to dump the hurricane center plus the allied National Weather Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (because their research about climate change “is harmful to future U.S. prosperity”) remains alive, an “undead” document somewhere between a zombie and a vampire, able to eat the brains and suck the blood from democracy.

Coordinated by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, the 920-page Project 2025 (“Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”) would upend American life. A whirlwind of hard-right dreams, its proposals range from ousting some 50,000 civil servants and replacing them with Trump loyalists to reversing the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of medications used in abortions.

Project 2025 would severely cut or dismantle parts of the federal government people appreciate, such as help for the needy (making it harder to get food stamps, killing Head Start, limiting funding for states’ Medicaid programs); defund public broadcasting; reverse protections against housing discrimination; eliminate the Department of Education; and defund the Justice Department and limit FBI duties.

Colonel Klink

In July, Trump claimed he knows nothing about it (yet also “disagrees” with some of it), but at least 140 ex-Trump officials contributed to it, according to CNN, including dozens from Trump’s administration, including Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller, Ben Carson and Peter Navarro. And it mirrors the Trump campaign’s “Agenda 47” and the GOP platform.

Trump denying any involvement also was proven false when The New Republic magazine reported a 2022 clip of Trump praising Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts for laying “the groundwork for exactly what our movement will do.”

Meanwhile, a YouGov poll in July showed 39% of U.S. adult citizens oppose Project 2025, but 42% have heard nothing about it.

However, “Americans are starting to learn about this extreme takeover plan for Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans to quickly dismantle checks and balances, amass unprecedented presidential power, and seize total control over our government and our individual freedoms,” said U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, (D-Calif.).

Master plan

Project 2025 director Paul Dans quit after criticism from Trump’s campaign, trying to put distance between the candidate and the plan. But The Associated Press reported Roberts saying, “Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and local — will continue.”

Indeed, Project 2025 is beyond one guy. Its database of about 20,000 Trump followers are ready to implement the plan — or anything Trump wants.

Russell Vought, a Project 2025 adviser and Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, told Politico, “We have to be thinking mechanically about how to take these institutions over.”

Conservatives and progressives are alarmed. Kevin Kosar, senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, has concerns about replacing experts with political appointees.

“These positions have a serious degree of expertise attached. You can’t just plug in a private-sector businessman into the Department of Transportation. It’s going to be a challenge to match the people and the competencies and the expertise.”

Michael Bromwich, a former Department of Justice inspector general, said proposals to turn the departments into “instruments” to fulfill Trump’s political agenda “should send shivers down the spine of anyone who cares about the rule of law.”

Buyer beware

Project 2025’s effects will dramatically impact everyday Americans, from Panama City to Peoria: workers, consumers, farmers, veterans and taxpayers:

WORKERS: Targeting building trades, Project 2025 would get rid of Prevailing Wage pay and Project Labor Agreements on federal projects. Also, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said, “His plan would take power away from working people and give him unprecedented levels of control over our lives” and listed threats including: letting states ban unions in the public sector; making it easier for corporations to fire workers who engage in collective action; allowing employers to get rid of unions even when workers have a signed contract; eliminating workers’ overtime protections; ignoring the federal minimum wage; and eliminating federal rules that protect children from working in dangerous workplaces like mines and meatpacking plants.

AFSCME is partnering with the Alliance for Retired Americans to stop Project 2025’s attacks on Medicare. Also, says AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler, Project 2025 would legalize company-controlled “unions,” weaken Occupational Safety and Health Act enforcement and penalties, drop the mandate for companies to disclose union-busting consultants, and “eliminate protections against discrimination and harassment on the job.”

CONSUMERS: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (set up to ensure consumers have access to fair, transparent and competitive markets) could be killed.

“There is an extensive, well-documented set of plans to overturn post-crisis policies that protect consumers, investors, and the stable functioning of financial markets,” says Madeline Shepherd of the Center for American Progress.

FARMERS: The Conservation Reserve Program (used by more than 300,000 farms) would be eliminated; the percentage of crop-insurance premiums the U.S. government covers would drop, cutting the Agricultural Risk and Price Loss programs.

VETERANS: Even those who’ve served in the military will be affected. (That shouldn’t be surprising coming from Trump — “a person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them’,” said Trump’s longest-serving Chief of Staff, John Kelly, “a person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me,’ a person who rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”)

Project 2025 calls for a 50% reduction of the federal workforce, where veterans make up about 30% of the total; restricting vets’ disability benefits and eliminating overlapping eligibility for retirement and disability benefits for them; and closing “low-priority” VA medical-care enrollment; and privatizing the Pentagon’s TRICARE system, the health-care program for active-duty service members.

TAXPAYERS: Project 2025 would “promote prosperity” by lowering the costs of capital and cutting income taxes, according to Certified Financial Planner Kate Dore, eliminating most deductions, credits and exclusions but creating a consumption tax like a national sales tax.

As expressed by New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” Project 2025 is “a recipe for mass chaos, abuses of power, and dysfunction in government.”