Be prepared. This is a long one! Since the beginning of 2026, I have been delving deeper into Trump's first year back in office. I am driven by the notion that the U.S. empire is not just in decline, but in a virtual freefall accelerated by greed, and one man's ego. It has been a painful process filled with shocks and aftershocks, to put it mildly. To do so, I looked beyond the daily barrage of mostly unhinged posts on his personal social media platform. So, here's the very scary bit: Trump’s second term shows many overlaps with the Project 2025 playbook, a pattern of explicit pay‑to‑play politics and economically damaging tariffs. The available record supports these claims unevenly across three areas. Mouthpiece of Project 2025 Project 2025 is a Heritage‑led plan built around the 900‑page Mandate for Leadership, a personnel database, a “Presidential Administration Academy,” and a confidential implementation playbook designed to rapidly reshape the executive branch and conc...