Project 2025 Is Slowing
But why?
I knew that a lot of progress had been made extremely early on, but I recently checked and didn’t see a lot of movement. I came across a graph that spells it out:
So far from month to month the progression has gone: 60, 20, 13, 4 — slower and slower and slower. Looking at some of the goals that have yet to be put in motion we can see they are pretty wild. Splitting up the CDC, cutting funds to states that do not provide detailed abortion reports, weakening regulations on baby formula, and lessening regulations that protect marine life are a few of them. They seemingly want everything to die, except for unborn children. What a world that would be, a country with no president because the median age of Americans is 5, 30 years short of being qualified.
It’s hard to say what’s going on, but I have a hunch based on some figures that AP is tracking:
It seems right now that the Trump administration has to spend a lot of time prepping for these cases. 71 pending (so far!) is a lot to juggle, even for someone with the experience of being part of over 3,500 suits.
Trump has spent a lot of time signing off on executive orders and he makes a spectacle out of it. Someone tells him vaguely what it’s about and he signs them live on TV. He wants the attention all of this brings, but more importantly while being able to put his spin on the orders. When EOs are summarized so broadly it makes him look like he’s working for the people, but we all know there are inhumane motives behind many of them.
The president doesn’t have the power to change policies directly for most of the agencies he appoints people to run, but he does appoint them… so he does maintain some level of influence, since he can replace them at any moment. He can keep swapping in new parts until the machine works to his liking.
That being said, for a lot of these it’s hard to argue it can be done with executive action alone, like splitting up the CDC. Others clearly fall under the jurisdiction of appointees, such as weakening regulations on baby formula. Marty Makary, the head of the FDA recently had a press conference joint the HHS and the face of it, none other than the man with brain worms, RFK. They were focused on setting a mandate that artificial food coloring is no longer to be used by 2026, because it is messing with the brains of children, potentially blaming it multiple epidemics:
“We have a new epidemic of childhood diabetes, obesity, depression, and ADHD. Given the growing concerns of doctors and parents about the potential role of petroleum-based food dyes, we should not be taking risks and do everything possible to safeguard the health of our children.”
Although, the sole goal set out by Project 2025 for the FDA is to ban mifepristone, an abortion pill. The Department of Health and Human Services on the other hand has 22 objectives, yet none of them have to do with food coloring. So it seems RFK’s brain worms are directing him to take on challenges outside of the Project 2025 objectives. It’s all a bit strange. Some agencies are lock step with Trump in sending the message that he is America’s first king, but others are off playing in their sandboxes. I think this could explain some of the slowing in speed as well.
RFK was vocal about addressing health concerns during his run, so it’s not surprising he is taking them on, but perhaps Trump isn’t pressuring him as much as other department heads or RFK is immune somehow. It’s probably worth listening closely to how Trump talks about RFK to try and understand what their relationship is like. He loves to praise those who fall in line, giving them the that’s a good boy publicly. Trump is holding his cards close to his chest about relationships however. Early on there were reports that Elon was not getting along with others and Trump was quick to sweep it under the rug.
If we borrow a few more charts from project2025.observer we might gain some more insight:
The graph while only showing us the top 10 agencies has an interesting data point — The USDA is the furthest behind out of the bunch. Digging into the data a bit more I found the FDA and CMS haven’t completed any of their goals and the department of Agriculture is very far behind others. Is it possible that the health of people is not in this administration’s top priorities?
The word cloud is a bit more difficult to parse, but possibly we can make some inferences from it. Attacks on the environment (possibly to combat the forced manufacturing crisis via tariffs) and wokeness have some significance, while things like increasing presidential power are being executed on. Things like accountability are rarely a topic and yet to be acted on, shocking…
It also seems as if the topics that affect Trump and co. the most are being prioritized. Elon doesn’t want the EPA breathing down his neck since he is responsible for a good amount of domestic manufacturing as an example. All of Trump and his friends don’t want to worry about things like DEI hires or being nice to trans folks for their companies, which is inline with their hatred filled rhetorics.
All in all, it seems like there are a few reasons for the slow downs. Trump is being overwhelmed by the courts from people pushing back on his overreach. A lot of the low hanging fruit that can be addressed with executive power alone was acted upon in the first few days. The initiatives that are near and dear to the hearts of the administration and their friends were clearly motivating. And we have people like RFK standing in the outfield staring at the sun, thinking it’s the ball headed his way.
It’s a positive thing they are slowing their efforts of course, it allows us focus our energy on fighting each issue more effectively. It was clear they are drawing inspiration from the fascism handbook in many ways, but specifically to overwhelm people and the courts. With just over half of Project 2025’s objectives being completed or in progress, their all out blitz is losing steam. In the coming days and months we might just find they have run out of bright ideas and century old laws to abuse.