By Cindi Branham
Voting Rights may be one of the more critical targets of Trump’s Project 2025 and those intent on implementing that blueprint for taking down our democracy.
Make no mistake: the White, mainly evangelical Christian nationalists behind this plan will do just about anything to keep from losing their grip on power, including inciting a second insurrection and even Civil War. They know that once they lose it, it’s gone for them forever.
We know that as soon as they win and begin to implement their blueprint for America, our voting rights and just about every other right we enjoy – will be gone. Forever.
Trump came into office with little knowledge on how government works. He didn’t care. He appointed people to run agencies who would do his bidding. Not many lasted, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Along the way, he made it clear that agencies and departments were there to do his bidding.
If Trump is re-elected, a man convicted of 34 felonies will call the shots concerning the actions of the branch tasked with independently and impartially upholding the rule of law. He’s also promised retribution and revenge against his personal enemies.
Voting rights and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are intertwined, which will become apparent to us once Trump turns it into his private law firm, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, which is under the DOJ) into his personal police force.
Human rights organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU.org) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC.org) have made it their business this election year to analyze and inform the public about Project 2025.
Also very active in this fight is civil rights attorney Marc Elias. His organization, DemocracyDocket.com, has won over 60 cases (lost a very few), and has dozens of active cases related mainly to voting rights.
They won’t all be settled before the election. As we’ve observed this year with Trump’s cases, Justice can be made to be exceedingly slow.
Elias points out that under a Trump administration, the DOJ – will be routed early on, no longer a non-partisan, independent agency, but one designed to be completely aligned with the president’s agenda. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will be stripped.
This takes away enforcement of any voting rights safety nets like the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). When you experience any unfair practices at the polls, no one will do anything about it on a federal level. (Local and state officials will also be doing the president’s bidding.)
Your name got removed from the voter rolls and you weren’t informed?
Your voting precinct was changed, and you can’t stand in the line again because you have to get to work?
Tough.
Your vote won’t count, and there likely won’t be a provisional ballot option for you because…your vote isn’t wanted.
Right now, the FBI is charged with investigating and exposing corruption, looking at political interference and holding wealthy law breakers accountable. Can you imagine the very wealthy and politically influential being placed above the law if the president wants to grant that favor?
Once the new Republican administration is in place, we know they already have 10’s of thousands of MAGA loyalists recruited and trained to begin the process of routing every government agency and using these loyalists to replace leadership within the agencies.
In the civil rights arena, what happens to our families, our friends and our colleagues who fit outside the definition of “desirable individuals?” Persons of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, non-Christians, women, immigrants – the list goes on – will be subjected to discriminations they haven’t experienced in decades thanks to many federal protections.
What level of discrimination? I can only imagine, but my imagination takes me to Jim Crow and the Holocaust on steroids.
A bit extreme? I don’t think so, but if you do, I encourage you to read a bit more about Project 2025. If Trump is elected, the FBI wouldn’t investigate police misconduct. What does that mean for communities that are historically plagued by police misconduct?
Every consent decree – especially related to voting rights, minority representation, and civil rights, will be terminated.
The new Republican president will use the DOJ, including the FBI, to go after his real and perceived enemies. He’s already told us so, and no one will be safe from his whims.
Every dictator from Trump forward will have unlimited power to do what they like to the rest of us, including using the FBI and Military to quash peaceful (or otherwise) protests. We will not only lose the rights we’ve gained over the last 100 years, but we will lose all our rights.
Once Trump wins this election – legally or not – we will never take it back. I want us all to take this seriously, because not many of us will rank in the favored few.
As Keenan Thompson said on Project 2025 at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as he held the massive printed and bound document in his arm, “You ever seen a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time? Here it is.”
That’s not all it will kill.
Do what you can in a swing state. Send money. Phone bank. Write postcards. Travel to one of those states to knock on doors. And vote in Alabama…for the sheer joy of letting Republicans know that we’re here, that we will be heard, and that we’re growing in number.
