Project 2025 Isn’t the Threat—The Unconstitutional Status Quo Is

If bringing power back under the Constitution feels dangerous, maybe the real danger is what we've accepted as "normal."

The outrage over Project 2025 says a lot—not about the project, but about how far we've let our government drift from the Constitution. Because if returning power to elected officials and dismantling unelected bureaucracies feels "authoritarian," maybe the system we've accepted isn't as democratic as we think.

Project 2025 is being framed as a right-wing coup. A blueprint for tyranny. A plan to politicize government and undo progress. But step back and look closely: its core proposals read less like an authoritarian power grab and more like a civics lesson in constitutional restoration. The real controversy? It doesn't expand power—it redirects it back where it was meant to be.

Here's the hard truth: Most of what governs your life doesn't come from Congress, the President, or the Supreme Court. It came from unelected agencies. The alphabet soup of the federal government—EPA, CDC, ATF, FCC, OSHA—creates rules that act like laws, enforce those rules, and punish violations. That means they legislate, execute, and adjudicate.

That's not just unconstitutional. That's everything the Founders warned us about.

James Madison wrote, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." Today, that's not a warning—it's our reality.

The Constitution created three co-equal branches: the Legislative branch (makes laws), the Executive branch (enforces rules), and the Judicial branch (interprets laws). There is no fourth branch. And yet today, federal agencies have become a shadow government—answerable to no one, immune from elections, and growing in power with every crisis.

Project 2025 calls that what it is: a constitutional crisis. And it proposes to do something radical about it—bring those agencies back under the control of elected officials.

The administrative state we know today didn't explode overnight. It grew during moments of crisis. The New Deal era introduced sweeping federal powers in response to economic collapse. After 9/11, homeland security ballooned. With COVID-19, the CDC made housing policy, and the FDA dictated how schools reopened. Each time, Congress handed more authority to agencies it could later disavow.

Critics often argue that Project 2025 gives the President too much power. But what it really does is restore the President's Article II authority over the executive branch. Currently, entire federal departments operate independently, resisting oversight and pursuing their own agendas. That's not balance. That's dysfunction.

Congress, too, is complicit. Instead of writing clear laws, lawmakers outsource responsibility to agencies and then blame those agencies when things go wrong. Courts defer to those same agencies through doctrines like Chevron deference, effectively saying, "We trust the bureaucracy to define its own limits."

This doctrine has allowed agencies to expand their power with little judicial oversight. Ending it—as Project 2025 proposes—would return that responsibility to the courts, where it belongs.

Look no further than the CDC's eviction moratorium during the pandemic. It wasn't passed by Congress. It wasn't signed by the President. Yet millions of property owners were legally barred from enforcing their contracts based on one agency's declaration. That's not representative government. That's the unilateral rule.

Or take the ATF's constant shifting of firearm classifications—regulating millions of gun owners into potential felons with no new law passed by Congress. The agency redefined pistol braces overnight, creating criminals not through legislation but bureaucratic whim.

Another favorite attack? Project 2025 is pushing "Christian nationalism" by expanding religious liberty protections.

Here's the reality: restoring Trump-era conscience protections and faith-based exemptions doesn't impose religion on anyone. It protects Americans from being forced to violate their beliefs. That's not theocracy—that's the First Amendment.

The Constitution says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Project 2025 leans into the second half of that sentence, which many on the left have conveniently forgotten exists.

This includes restoring protections for groups like Little Sisters of the Poor, who were forced to fight the federal government just to avoid violating their religious convictions. That case wasn't about imposing faith. It was about protecting freedom.

It also means shielding faith-based schools and ministries from mandates that would force them to compromise their beliefs just to stay open. That's not a privilege—it's constitutional protection.

If defending someone's right to decline participation in something that violates their faith is considered controversial, then the controversy isn't with Project 2025—it's with the Constitution itself.

Let's talk about the so-called "unconstitutional" proposal requiring a three-fifths majority in Congress to raise taxes. Is it radical? Maybe. But unconstitutional? Hardly.

Congress already uses supermajority rules in both chambers for everything from treaties to veto overrides. There's nothing in the Constitution that bans Congress from adopting stricter thresholds for specific actions. In fact, it reflects a commitment to tax restraint that mirrors the Founders' suspicion of unchecked government spending.

If anything, Project 2025 is asking lawmakers to exercise more discipline—not less.

So why the panic?

Because Project 2025 threatens to shake the permanent Washington bureaucracy. It threatens to put decision-making power back into the hands of voters by holding elected officials accountable for their actions. It threatens to fire people who thought their job was to outlast every election.

And maybe that's the real issue: Project 2025 doesn't threaten democracy. It threatens the ruling class that's been running things without your consent.

Opponents say it's dangerous. But to whom? Bureaucrats who've grown comfortable legislating from behind a desk? Activists who know they can pressure unelected regulators more easily than a voting public?

Government by consent doesn't mean rule by consultants, lobbyists, and unelected career administrators. It means laws come from those you elect—and can remove. Project 2025 seeks to restore that line of accountability.

Alexander Hamilton once warned that "a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government." In other words, beware of those who speak for the people while building systems the people never voted for.

This isn't just a debate about structure—it's about consequences. Bureaucratic rule doesn't just subvert the Constitution—it hurts real people. It locks down small businesses without legislative authority. It weaponizes tax policy to punish political opponents. It rewrites education standards to promote ideology instead of academics. And worst of all, it convinces people this is normal.

Project 2025 is far from perfect—but it has one aim that should unite every American who still believes in self-government: restoring power to where the Constitution says it belongs.

You can scream "authoritarianism" all you want. But if your idea of democracy requires unelected agencies, weaponized regulation, and censorship of dissenting voices—then maybe it's not Project 2025 that's un-American. Perhaps it's you.

Project 2025 doesn't destroy the Constitution. It remembers it. It doesn't seek control. It seeks accountability.

So the next time someone says Project 2025 is dangerous, ask them this: Dangerous to whom?

Because if the Constitution scares you more than the bureaucracy, maybe the real threat isn't reform—it's everything we've allowed to grow in its absence.

And maybe—just maybe—it's time we start asking not what power should be taken away from the people but what power should be returned to them.