Overview
- Analysts say the administration is pursuing Project 2025 to place political allies across the federal bureaucracy and reshape agency rules so departments follow the president’s priorities.
- Commentators report a steady effort to weaken the civil service by changing hiring and personnel rules in order to reduce career staff independence and increase loyalty to political appointees.
- The legal apparatus is being politicized through the appointment of sympathetic lawyers and new legal theories, and critics say the Supreme Court has been receptive to some of those arguments while lower courts have sometimes pushed back.
- Federal actors are using investigations, regulatory pressure, and public threats to push on universities, media and private businesses, which analysts say chills independent action from those institutions.
- States and voters remain the main structural limits on changes to elections, and experts warn that the approach could shift power over time by changing how agencies enforce rules and by shaping public institutions that monitor elections.