Vae Victis
The cost of defeat will be so much worse in 2028 than 2020
They’re calling it Project 2029.
At this stage, the Democrats don’t have a detailed policy document like Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation boogieman that stalked the 2024 election, eliciting hysterical claims about the imminent banning of pornography, the abolition of women’s “reproductive rights,” and the creation of immense forced-breeding farms overseen by Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Donald Trump Jr. and Catturd.
Oh my God, it’s like LITERALLY The Handmaiden’s Tale!
But the absence of a detailed policy document doesn’t mean the Democrats don’t know what to do if they win the 2028 election. They do. It’s what they always do, and what conservatives, bless them, have struggled for so long to do themselves: reward your friends, punish your enemies.
The jurist Carl Schmitt called it the “friend-enemy distinction,” the elementary form of political decision-making.
This time, even more than in 2021, the emphasis will be on punishment. Trump has gone much further than his opponents expected, even though Project 2025 was there for us all to read and Trump said he had levelled up and learned from his mistakes; a “retribution presidency” was promised by a man who survived endless lawfare, impeachments, smears, character-destruction and two assassination attempts.
Not only has Trump bucked the conservative trend—he actually has gone after his enemies like James Comey and Fani Willis, and he issued blanket pardons and commutations to the Jan 6th prisoners—but he’s also done things that were simply unthinkable to the liberal mind, lulled into a false sense of security by decades of conservative impotence and self-sabotage.
Trump has closed and militarised the southern border, launched deportation raids deep inside Democrat territory, attempted to overturn birthright citizenship, dismantled DEI, declared war on the cartels and started blowing up their boats at sea, deposed a sitting Latin American dictator, and plenty more besides.
For all these things, Trump, his allies and supporters must be punished. Even if Trump fails to achieve a conservative revolution—and so far the jury’s out—it’s crime enough that he gave Americans the hope one could actually, finally, take place.
Never again.
In a New York Times interview last weekend, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker laid out his stall for Project 2029.
Pritzker and President Trump have clashed directly over Operation Midway Blitz, the headline-grabbing surge of law enforcement, immigration officers and federal troops to the Chicago area.
Pritzker accused federal agents of “acting like jackbooted thugs” and “waging war on our people,” and did his best to tie the Trump admin up in lawsuits. He was largely successful.
Here are the bits from the interview that matter.
Interviewer: “Are there lessons to be taken from the frustration of voters and the way that Trump’s managed to do it?”
Pritzker: “If there’s a lesson, it’s that there should be a Project 2029 for Democrats. Now, remember: Project 2025 also included taking away people’s rights and freedoms. It included tearing down the safety net that holds up our working families and that stands up for the most vulnerable in our society. So there are things about the agenda that I think are reprehensible and anti-democratic. But yes, the speed of the agenda—and it’s not shock and awe so much as when you run and win on an agenda, you can accomplish that agenda and need to do it as soon as possible.”
Interviewer: “What does a Project 2029 agenda look like for you?”
Pritzker: “I don’t think you can speak of it in shorthand, but we’ve got to restore the rule of law, and that means holding people accountable who’ve broken the law. I’m talking about the people in this administration who’ve broken the law and federal agents who’ve broken the law.”
Interviewer: “That means criminally prosecuted?”
Pritzker: “Criminally prosecuted, civilly prosecuted. Whatever it is that we can do. Right? It may be that you can’t criminally prosecute somebody, but that you can go after them civilly.”
After the interview, Fox News contacted Pritzker’s office to ask exactly who the Governor had in mind. Pritzker’s office responded with a press release from January naming Greg Bovino, Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Kristi Noem, Tricia McLaughlin, Tom Lyons, Rodney Scott and Corey Lewandowski as individuals who “led to the escalation of aggressive enforcement tactics” during Operation Midway Blitz and should be held accountable.
So there you have it. A list, or the beginnings of one.
