By: Roy Douglas Malonson
After months of pretending he knew little to nothing about “Project 2025,” President Donald Trump has now made his intentions crystal clear. This week, he openly confirmed he is meeting with Russ Vought, former Office of Management and Budget Director and one of the chief architects of the controversial conservative playbook. The two men are strategizing on where to slash federal spending while the government remains paralyzed by shutdown.
What Trump once brushed off as a distant plan is now front and center in his administration’s agenda. In his own words on Truth Social, Trump bragged about the meeting, writing: “I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
For critics who long warned that Trump was biding his time before embracing Project 2025, this is the proof they feared. The plan itself is not some minor policy suggestion—it is a sweeping, nearly 900- page document outlining how to dismantle federal programs, strip agencies of independence, and consolidate power in the presidency. Civil rights protections, public education, housing, healthcare, and even environmental safeguards are all in the crosshairs. And now, with a government shutdown giving him the cover to act, Trump appears eager to treat federal agencies as pawns in a political game.
The implications for Black America cannot be overstated. Programs that serve as lifelines—Head Start, Title I education funding, housing and transit grants, health access for low-income communities—are at risk of being gutted under the guise of “cutting Democrat agencies.” If history has taught us anything, it is that when America catches a cold, Black America catches pneumonia. A sweeping slash to public programs will not fall evenly; it will hit hardest in the neighborhoods where resources are already scarce.
Observers are already raising alarm bells. Legal experts say Trump’s talk of firing federal workers during a shutdown may violate existing law, and unions are preparing lawsuits. But even as the courts deliberate, damage could be done. When an administration begins labeling agencies as scams and plots their elimination, what does that mean for institutions charged with enforcing civil rights, monitoring discrimination, or funding historically Black schools and neighborhoods?
Trump’s defenders argue that the cuts are about efficiency and reducing waste. But the language of Project 2025 makes clear its deeper ambition: a radical reshaping of government that erases protections for marginalized communities and tilts power away from the people who rely on public services the most. Critics warn that this is not just about dollars and cents—it is about whose voices matter in America’s democracy.
For African Americans, the warning lights are flashing. The same playbook that Trump once dismissed is now the roadmap he is embracing. The same government programs that have provided pathways to stability and progress are now labeled as “political scams.” And the same communities that have always borne the brunt of economic experiments are the ones once again staring down the consequences.
The question is not whether Trump is serious about Project 2025. He has shown us that he is. The real question is whether Black America—and the nation as a whole—will recognize what is at stake before it’s too late.
