Democracy's Chief Executive

Mary McCord, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection(ICAP) and Visiting Professor of Law at theGeorgetown University Law Center, discusses with Peter Project 2025’s dangerous vision of a deeply politicized Justice Department acting in lockstep with a president bent on punishing his adversaries. She also explains why such a president is now likely freed of criminal liability for corruption in supervising the Justice Department (or the IRS or the CIA or . . .), given the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision in Trump v. United States.

Brendan Duke, senior director for economic policy at American Progress, explains to Peter the likely burdens on middle-income and lower-income families if Congress were to enact the near-term and longer-term/fundamental tax reform programs recommended by Project 2025. (As a bonus, he even explains tariffs!)

NYU law professor and labor and employment law expert Cynthia Estlund explores the conflicting impulses evident in Project 2025’s chapteron labor policy—the one chapter that cites the Book of Genesis. For example, it wants to shift the focus away from DEI except for accommodating religious employers and employees; to introduce more flexibility into labor-management relations, except when it comes to worker decisions to unionize; and to cut back on temporary visas for legal non-citizen seasonal workers in agriculture and other sectors, unless that would actually be a bad idea. (The report offers both possibilities!)

Leading DEI consultants Angela Vallot and Mitchell Karp discuss with Peter and Dale what they believe is at the root of Project 2025’s hostility to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, how cutting DEI programs can hurt government performance, and the difference between actual DEI practice and the caricature conjured up by the Heritage Foundation and its collaborators.

Georgetown law professor Lisa Heinzerling, herself a former EPA official and accomplished environmental litigator, explains to Peter and Dale Project 2025’s proposals for disempowering the EPA and creating a “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” attitude towards climate change and environmental protection.

Peter discusses with noted presidential scholar Andrew Rudalevige what policies a new president could institute or reverse with the proverbial stroke of a pen, and why he expects a second TrumpAdministration would be more successfully aggressive than the first.

Yale law professor and prominent immigration scholar Cristina Rodríguez explains to Peter and Dale the President’s central role in implementing immigration policy and why the Project 2025 agenda is both substantively misguided and unrealistic in its goals.

Paul Verkuil, formerly head of the Administrative Conference of the United States, discusses with Peter what is at risk both practically and constitutionally if a president tries to make loyalty to his or her agenda the paramount qualification for government service.

Noted legal historian of American educationDiane Ravitch discusses howProject 2025’s vision for the future of federal education policy would hurt low-income communities and undermine genuine education as the goal of K-12 schooling.

Attorney and long-time women’s rights advocate Lynn Paltrow discusses with Peter and Dale how the overruling ofRoe v. Wade has already worked to the detriment of women and what the Project 2025agenda portends for women’s privacy and health care.