The Tufts Federalist Society held a debate on Oct. 24 focusing on whether Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page blueprint for the next Republican president — is a threat to democracy. Jonathan Wolfson, a contributor to Project 2025 and the Chief Legal Officer and Policy Director at the Cicero Institute, and Samuel Gebru, Tufts professor of the practice in the department of political science, argued for and against Project 2025, respectively. The conversation was moderated by senior and Federalist Society co-President Trent Bunker.
Following introductions by Federalist Society co-President João Ribeiro, each debater delivered opening remarks.
In his opening statement, Gebru argued that Project 2025’s plans to centralize executive power, weaken the federal civil service and restrict access to voting all represent threats to democracy.
“There’s an unsettling reality with Project 2025. There’s this desire to centralize power in the hands of a few people in the executive branch, within the presidency. That screams authoritarianism,” Gebru said. “In a democracy, particularly in a democratic republic like ours, we need to have a system of checks and balances.”
Wolfson countered Gebru’s remarks, arguing that Project 2025 does not threaten democracy and pointing out that every one of its proposals will still pass through checks and balances.
“I think it’s really important to recognize that in most of the cases, in most of the things people are pointing out about Project 2025 … the document itself cannot be a challenge to democracy if almost all of the things will have to go through the process that does itself have checks and balances,” Wolfson said.
One of the proposals in Project 2025 has been to turn apolitical, career roles within the federal government into politically-appointed positions. Gebru stressed the need to maintain an apolitical civil service in order to check presidential power within the executive branch.
“We do need a professional civil service that actually carries out the work of the country on a daily basis, that is not loyal to any party or any individual [and] that is loyal to the people of the United States,” Gebru said.
Wolfson disagreed by arguing that civil service offices, although traditionally career roles, fall under the jurisdiction of the president, according to the Constitution. He pushed back on Gebru’s suggestion that the civil service holds an obligation to the public that is independent of the president’s directives.
“That concept doesn’t come from the Constitution,” Wolfson said. “That concept comes, literally, from people who just made that up because they like what the administrative state is doing. I can guarantee you that if the administrative state was out there saying, ‘We’re going to ban abortion drugs because [Americans] don’t like them,’ people like [Gebru] would not be in favor of the administrative state.”
He emphasized that civil service officers lack public accountability, making it democratically problematic to continue granting them unchecked authority.
“The people have chosen the president. The people didn’t elect the ‘Associate Deputy Undersecretary of Transportation,’” Wolfson argued. “There’s no political accountability for those career paths.”
Gebru acknowledged that the president has some power to shape the executive branch, but expressed concerns about the implications of a unilaterally powerful president, particularly in light of former President Donald Trump’s statements about potentially using the Department of Justice to target political opponents.
“We cannot let individual presidents, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, weaponize the federal government and bend it to their political will,” Gebru said. “Yes, the president must set the direction of the executive branch, … but we need to make sure that there are safeguards in place so that we don’t have an authoritarian presidency.”
In refutation of allegations claiming Project 2025 proposes a move towards authoritarianism, Wolfson reminded the room that Congress would still maintain its powerful checks on the president.
“Anything in the voting space that Project 2025 proposes would have to pass in Congress, which I’m pretty sure is a pretty democratic process,” he said.
Gebru argued that Project 2025’s fixation on election security could lead to disenfranchisement of marginalized groups and is founded in a Trump-ian conspiracy.
“[Project 2025] seeks to restrict access to voting by coming up with stumbling blocks like voter ID laws, limiting mail-in ballots [and] certain redistricting reforms,” he said. “President Trump and his supporters have made it seem in the last several years that there is a looming crisis to the integrity of our elections, and that’s just not true.”
Wolfson argued that voter fraud and election insecurity are serious issues in the American consciousness, even if their effects are negligible, making increased security around elections necessary.
Bunker asked a question concerning Trump’s attempt to distance himself from Project 2025. He questioned if these attempts were disingenuous, considering the large overlap between Trump administration members and Project 2025 writers.
Wolfson maintained that said overlap does not indicate that Project 2025 writers will have a monopoly over policy-making power in a second Trump administration.
“The president appoints about 4,000 people, so the fact that a couple hundred of them are part of a process doesn’t mean that that’s the overwhelming majority,” Wolfson argued.
After the event, Bunker and Ribeiro spoke with the Daily about the implications of the discussion and the motivations behind inviting Wolfson to speak.
“Ordinarily, you would think that speakers like him wouldn’t come to campus, but I think they are excited to come if the invite is extended,” Bunker said.
They both drew positive conclusions about the health of bipartisan civic life at Tufts from the event.
“I saw members of both Tufts Democrats and Tufts Republicans in the crowd, and everybody was respectful towards each other,” Bunker said. “I think that’s a positive sign as we head into the presidential election.”
