And he is now saying, I am going to acclimate the American public to the use of military force anywhere I deem it. Appropriate under any circumstances, and I may well, the president may be thinking, I may well have us in a war by the time the elections roll around, which will enable me to say any opposition to me and my party is basically treason and unpatriotic.
This is not speculation. Project 2025, through its 900-page Mandate for Leadership, lays out a framework for using the U.S. military and other federal forces inside the country against its own people. It starts by calling the federal government “a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values” (Foreword, p. xv). From that claim, it argues the next president must “re-forge” the Department of Defense and other agencies to “serve the president” directly (p. 171). That wording removes the wall that separates civilian governance from military command.
Project 2025 proposes that all senior military promotions be reviewed by the White House to ensure loyalty to presidential priorities. That recommendation appears in the section on the Department of Defense (Mandate for Leadership, cited in People’s Guide p. 46-47) where it directs the president to “review all general and flag officer promotions.” Once that happens, the military becomes an arm of political enforcement rather than national defense.
It also outlines the use of federal and possibly military resources to “arrest, detain, and remove immigration violators anywhere in the United States.” That line appears in multiple summaries of the Mandate (People’s Guide p. 3, 41-47). It does not limit that power to the border. It explicitly authorizes “arrest operations anywhere in the United States.” That is domestic deployment by definition.
The Mandate treats the Department of Defense as a political tool, demanding a purge of leadership that resists “social engineering” and replacing them with those who share the president’s “values” (People’s Guide p. 46, citing Mandate pp. 80-81, 213, 524). It also revives Executive Order 13957, also known as Schedule F, to remove non-partisan officials and replace them with “policy-advocating” loyalists (p. 43-44). That structure would put every major department, including Defense, under direct presidential command with no institutional buffer.
Once power is concentrated in this way, the same troops and officers sworn to defend the nation can be ordered to suppress dissent, occupy cities, or enforce political will under executive authority.
In short, Project 2025 is the first open plan in modern American history to outline the conditions under which the military could be used against citizens. It replaces the principle of civilian control with the principle of presidential control. Anyone who reads The People’s Guide to Project 2025, pages 3, 43-47, 80-81, 171, 213, 524, and the Foreword p. xv, will see that it does not prepare for national defense. It prepares for internal enforcement.