Written a mere three months ago, this essay is in need of repetition. This is especially true with the president of the Heritage Foundation crowing to the far-right audience of a the now jailed Steve Bannon about how “they are taking the country back.”

The Heritage Foundation’s widely publicized, in plain view, plan for the replacement of our Democracy with a Trump-led dictatorship is an appalling document. We’ve published a number of pieces about it, the most comprehensive being from Thom Hartmann.

Hartmann stated succinctly:

The merger of billionaire wealth with partisan Republican governance—and their combined efforts to reshape our government in their own corrupt image, the public be damned—threaten the integrity and future of the American experiment.

Yet, despite this plan being well-known, with Republicans and Heritage making no efforts to mask their intent, questions must be raised as to the legality of this entire enterprise.

In short, the intent of Project 2025 is the outright theft of government authority and operations by far-right, Christian Nationalists to remake the government along the lines of Viktor Orbán’s defacto dictatorship in Hungary. If fully enacted it would mean the end of any semblance of representative government and the full demise of fair elections

Of course this couched in delusive, self-justifying terms:

The actions of liberal politicians in Washington have created a desperate need and unique opportunity for conservatives to start undoing the damage the Left has wrought and build a better country for all Americans in 2025.

It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration.

Notice that their use terms like liberal and radical left are slanted to give the impression these folks are trying to “save” the country from impending doom. Actually the more chilling phrasing is “the right people in place.” This of course means people who have given their allegiance to whomever is the Republican occupant of the White House—they assume Trump.

This plan breaks with every tradition and oath of office taken by every office holder since the days of our founding as a nation. That oath of office is one of loyalty to the Constitution and its defense against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It is at this point that the base corruption proposed by the Heritage Foundation separates from any concept of that loyalty.

As American citizens, the people of this country are bound by an unspoken oath—the oath of citizenship.

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

This oath is taken by every naturalized new citizen of our country. But this oath really applies to all of us, even if we don’t recite it in a ceremony. Protecting the Constitution is the job of each and every one of us, not just office holders.

Yet, Heritage and the vast array of right wing organizations associated with it and funding it, even though they purport to be Americans, seem content with overriding this basic concept.

Sedition

The Cambridge Dictionary defines sedition as “language or behavior that is intended to persuade other people to oppose their government.”

According to Findlaw:

…the U.S. Code lays out a definition of sedition. Sedition is a crime involving two or more people in the United States:

• To conspire to overthrow or destroy by force the government of the United States or to level war against it,
• To oppose by force the authority of the United States government,
• To prevent, hinder, or delay by force the execution of any law of the United States, or
• To take, seize, or possess by force any property of the United States.

Since the plans laid out in Project 2025 include the mass firing of government employees and—according to Trump and Steven Miller—the mass roundup of people deemed illegally here or opposed to their rule, it is not a stretch to see that these plans will involve the use violence and force.

Any vocal critic of the far right might properly feel threatened by the impending damage to their lives and freedom by these plans—which ignore Constitutional facts like the First, Fourth, Eight and Fourteenth Amendments at the very least.

Treason

Also according to Findlaw:

Treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution. It is the act of waging war against the United States or materially aiding its enemies.

Article III, Section 3, Clause 1:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Findlaw entry goes further to discuss the concept of “levying war.” The significant phrasing is:

“…if war be actually levied, that is, if a body of men be actually assembled for the purpose of effecting by force a treasonable purpose, all those who perform any part, however minute, or however remote from the scene of action, and who are actually leagued in the general conspiracy, are to be considered as traitors. But there must be an actual assembling of men, for the treasonable purpose, to constitute a levying of war.”

War?

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, there is a constant threat of violence surrounding the movement to re-install Trump in the White House. Some of this threat comes directly from his own words, duly recorded—and of course completely denied and reworded by his mouthpieces who at the same time claim that he always means what he says.

Armed militias like Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and others—some humorously described as “gravy seals”—are waiting for “signals” to begin shooting Democrats—their words.

Office holders who oppose Trump, vote against his agenda or generally don’t “hold the line” receive death threats and are hounded to resign.

The threat and fear of the violence and destruction is also a form of violence that makes people flinch from their lives their duties. Some fight back like the Georgia election workers who successfully sued Rudy Giuliani. But others simply quit out of fear, giving the threat wielders exactly what they want.

Russian Interest

The Heritage Foundation’s plan is a dark stain on the horizon of any future in America. It goes far beyond the ideas of protecting the interests of big business and billionaires and move the country straight into the realm of fascism.

With Trump’s already stated plans to pull the United States out of NATO and to let the Russians do anything they want with Ukraine, Project 2025 directly benefits Vladimir Putin’s designs on Western Europe.

It is in Russia’s direct interest of turn American attention inward toward imagined social warfare and strife. It leaves him free to do whatever he pleases.

According to Elliot Abrams in the National Review, we have been in a new Cold War for some time now. Since the plans of the Heritage Foundation and its allies are demonstrably in the interests of our enemy the question must be posed, are their plans merely seditious or in fact giving aid and comfort to our enemies and thus treason?

In either case, where is our DOJ? Oath of office anyone?