It’s nearly four years into the Biden administration, but the Christian nationalists who backed former President Donald Trump were never content to accept defeat. They worked too hard for too long to give up just because they hit a few democratic roadblocks—and in case you haven’t noticed, Trump’s recent reelection rhetoric very transparently communicates his authoritarian end goal. The attempted coup was unsuccessful; so was the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Trump’s powerful backers know that the only way they’re going to win is by circumventing the American democratic institution and forcing their will through bureaucracy.
Don’t believe it? There’s an actual game plan.
The players
Before diving into the plan of Christian dominionists to bring America “back to Christ” and implement an evangelical theocracy across the U.S., it’s important to get clear on the ideology of those who are working to usurp democracy.
According to senior research analyst Frederick Clarkson at the social justice research and strategy center Political Research Associates, dominionism “is the theocratic idea that regardless of theological view, means, or timetable, Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.” These efforts are well underway by well-established organizations that have made a great deal of headway toward their theocratic goals.
You might have heard of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the Christian right legal advocacy group that led the successful campaign to overturn the constitutional right to abortion. The group is now behind the Supreme Court case that seeks to ban the abortion medication mifepristone. In 2013, Michael Farris, who would later serve as ADF president from 2017 to 2022, created Convention of States with Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler. The group’s longstanding goal is to demolish the Constitution as we’ve known it since Reconstruction.
In May of last year, Texas Rep. Chip Roy and Florida Sen. Rick Scott introduced the Public Service Reform Act, which aims to make federal executive branch employees “at-will,” giving the president unilateral power to fire them for any reason. In April 2022, the Heritage Foundation—one of the oldest Christian conservative think tanks—released the first part of its four-pronged “Presidential Transition Project” known as Project 2025 for short.
When combined, these efforts paint a startling picture of the Christian right’s plan to usurp democracy.
Project 2025
Let’s start with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which the organization describes as a follow-up to their 1980 “Mandate for Leadership” given to former President Ronald Reagan when he entered office. Project 2025 consists of a four-part plan that includes a manifesto, a conservative network of people who want to enact the plan, certified training courses on how to get through red tape, and a playbook that outlines how conservative operatives can accomplish their designated goals.
The overarching goal of Project 2025 is to get rid of the “three-letter acronyms that have infested our federal agencies” and that conservatives have waged war on for decades: the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Health and Human Services, to name a few. In practice, this means an agency like the Food and Drug Administration would have to roll back its approval of abortion medication and maybe even birth control based on Christian dominionist ideology. Our nation’s educational standards, health care system, worker protections, and environmental policies would vary wildly by state. The white Christian nationalists behind these plans envision an America where they can legislate their way to having Christian states. Theoretically, everyone who doesn’t like it can pack up and move. But we know this will leave low-income, marginalized residents trapped in dangerous states they can’t afford to leave, states where their rights as Black, Indigenous, and people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, women, and disabled people will be systemically stripped away.
In the crosshairs of these efforts are programs that Republicans have defunded over the years without successfully eliminating, like the Affordable Care Act and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp Program. These programs predominantly help communities of color, women, children, queer, poor, and disabled people.
Nowhere does the organization say this outright. Rather, here’s how the Heritage Foundation describes the project:
“For decades, as the left has continued its march through America’s institutions, conservatives have been outgunned and outmatched when it comes to the art of government. One reason is because the Republican establishment never moved on from the 1980s. Beltway conservatives still prioritize supply-side economics and a bellicose foreign policy above all else. Belief in small government, strangely enough, has manifested itself in a belief among some conservatives that we should lead by example and not fill all political appointments. Belief in the primacy of the national security state has caused conservative administrations to defer political decisions to the generals and the intelligence community. The result has been decades of disappointment.”
The purported need for Project 2025 is not based on prior successes. Rather, the Heritage Foundation argues it’s a necessary program because they have not yet succeeded. The Christian dominionist playbook didn’t end with overturning Roe v. Wade; that’s where it started. In other words, the Christian nationalist organizing we’ve seen since the 1970s is merely a precursor for what’s next.
More than 100 Christian nationalist organizations and leaders have signed on to Project 2025 with the intention of implementing their plan on a national scale. In reality, Project 2025 is about allowing Republicans to bypass every democratic obstacle to their agenda that may arise in the first 180 days of a conservative presidency.
To do this, Project 2025 would enshrine the leadership of all agencies for the president-elect to partisanly manage. In an October 2023 podcast interview, Project 2025 Associate Director Spencer Chretien talked about this explicitly, saying:
“Our view is that you can’t take the politics out of politics, that the management of the bureaucracy is a task that is inherently political, and that we actually don’t need more nonpartisan experts. What we need is robust political control of the bureaucracy. That people vote for a president, [and] the president is entitled to a supportive staff.”
Under the Reagan administration, the Heritage Foundation successfully implemented its political playbook, but the landscape today is vastly different. Leaders of the Christian nationalist movement know they can’t put all their eggs in one basket, which is why the Convention of States is crucial.
Convention of States
Convention of States is centered on the idea that federal departments and programs that assist Americans nationwide run roughshod over the Constitution because these responsibilities should be decided and handled by individual states. On the organization’s website, this conversation is framed as everyday American citizens taking their power back by standing up to the big, bad, bureaucratic federal government:
“Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. shouldn’t be allowed to make sweeping decisions that impact millions of Americans. But right now, they do. So it all boils down to one question: Who do you think should decide what’s best for you and your family? You, or the feds? We’d vote for the American people every single time.”
In their view, the only way to save America is by bringing the government back in line with the “original intent” of the framers of the Constitution. In practice, this means Convention of States organizers push state legislatures to pass resolutions for an “Article V Convention.”
According to Article V, there are two potential processes for amending the Constitution. The first would require a two-thirds majority of each house of Congress to vote on amendments that are then ratified by at least 38 state legislatures. The U.S. has amended the Constitution in this way 27 times.
The second way is to call a Convention of States, meaning 34 state legislatures call for a convention in which commissioners from all 50 states agree to amendments that at least 38 states vote to ratify. The U.S. has never amended the Constitution in this way.
This second approach is all the more alarming when you factor in the voter suppression and gerrymandering already experienced by communities of color—not to mention the ways the state and local governments wield power to actively silence BIPOC voters. In fact, if you compare a map of states that enacted restrictive voting laws in 2023 and a map from the Convention of States that tracks the organization’s progress passing Article V proposals, the overlap is horrifying.
In a state-led convention, it’s much easier to control which amendments pass because it will be almost impossible for non-white, disabled, and low-income people to vote in local and state elections. Amending the Constitution by bypassing the federal Congress is the least democratic option possible, which is why this method was never previously used—and it’s also why Christian nationalists are eagerly embracing the option to obtain power. Nineteen states have passed a resolution calling for an Article V convention. Currently, there are 17 states with pending legislation, including Massachusetts.
Convention of States organizers claim they only want to address amendments to the Constitution that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for federal officials and members of Congress.
However, it’s important to understand what Convention of States means when it says it wants to “limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.” This isn’t just about the power of Congress; it’s about institutions like public schools and health care that allow society to function. The organization often refers to these institutions as “the administrative state,” and they are in the crosshairs of Project 2025.
In a May 2023 interview, Convention of States co-founder Meckler described the approach in detail:
“We take off a lot of the heat, cool a lot of the pressure, out of the system by just saying New York’s New York, California’s California, and the conservative states are whatever they want to be. That’s the solution. And the only way back to that, that I’m aware of, is to call a Convention of States, rejigger the jurisdiction, bring the power back to the states, and let them be who they are.”
At a time when efforts are being made to ban interstate travel for abortion care and prosecute people for their pregnancy outcomes, Meckler’s statement is chilling—and it’s the future he and many other conservatives are fighting for.
Creating the scaffolding
The last piece of the puzzle that dovetails with the agendas of both Project 2025 and Convention of States is House Resolution 3115, otherwise known as the Public Service Reform Act.
Introduced in May 2023, the bill purports to enable the government to get rid of federal workers who aren’t productive to cut bureaucratic red tape. This legislation has received little fanfare. In fact, the only real news hits for the bill are an op-ed written by Scott and articles on federal employee news websites.
Roy and Scott, the sponsors of the legislation, are noted Convention of States allies who are also closely affiliated with the Heritage Foundation. HR 3115 conveniently lays the groundwork for enforcing the hiring and management goals of Project 2025 and the Convention of States.
The bill is likely dead, but its overarching goal is not. HR 3115 or future copycats would recategorize federal employees as at-will.
Many federal workers are members of unions, protecting them from being fired without cause and allowing them to collectively bargain. Effectively, this means that no matter the political party in the White House, federal employees have job security. Laws like HR 3115 strike at the heart of these protections, giving a president like Trump ultimate authority to gut entire federal agencies, departments, and programs. Imagine the loyalty that would ensure if each federal employee’s job was at stake.
The rhetoric around unproductive workers effectively distracts from the real reasons Republicans are trying to push this kind of legislation prior to the 2024 election, which is to create the scaffolding for their much larger agenda.
Convention of States and Project 2025 are two sides of the same ideological coin, and a bill like HR 3115 provides the legal mechanism to destroy the federal agencies that help our society function.
These schemes work in tandem to ensure that the Christian nationalist agenda succeeds regardless of who wins the 2024 election—by either packing the administration with political appointees and firing everyone who disagrees or amending the Constitution by bypassing Congress and our nation’s established system of checks and balances.
If these efforts are successful, we will see the systematic dismantling and elimination of essential federal agencies and programs that have existed for decades. The leaders behind these movements insist their efforts redirect power to the American people. They simply don’t mention that the American people they envision holding the power are white Christian nationalists.
Foil the plan
Looking at this larger game plan can feel depressing for those of us who like to breathe clean air and drink clean water, need help making ends meet, or need medical care. The important thing to remember is that the Christian nationalists haven’t won. There’s still hope.
In April, the Biden administration implemented a rule that would make reclassifying federal employees more difficult. The effort is part of a larger worker protection plan that would also make it harder to implement a piece of legislation like HR 3115.
And don’t forget, the Convention of States depends on 38 state legislatures to succeed, and Project 2025 hinges on a Republican president. Their literal playbook for the dystopian future they are fighting for is online for anyone to read and learn from. We have a major advantage: We know exactly what they are planning, and we still have time to prevent it.
Christian nationalists are banking on the fact that we don’t take them seriously. We often don’t—and it’s been to our own detriment. Now is the time to start paying attention because there is still time to foil their plans.
You can use the tools that we have access to today: Tell your elected officials not to participate in a Convention of States. Consider running for local office, and resisting in all the ways you can think of. Read the white Christian nationalist playbook, educate, mobilize, and organize your friends. You can also donate to or volunteer at your local social justice organizations, boycott companies and organizations that support the Christian nationalist agenda, and participate in local mutual aid collectives.
Most importantly: Build the world you wish to be part of. This work starts in your community, online and offline. Helping your friends and neighbors improve the living conditions of your town, libraries, parks, streets, and shelters is empowering and meaningful. No matter what happens in the coming months, community support is something you can always count on.
