Since the inauguration, the Trump administration has moved in a blitz to implement the authoritarian Project 2025 agenda, touching on many aspects of American life. Previous reporting has claimed that this was a part of a “flood-the-zone” strategy to overwhelm opponents with as many radical reforms as possible in order to prevent them from mounting an effective defense. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) has previously reported (see here) that many of these initial changes are lifted from authoritarian playbooks in countries such as Russia and Hungary. One underappreciated aspect of this strategy has been the outsourcing of decisions, or really targets, to civilian activists in the broader far-right ecosystem. The administration has taken advice from prominent accounts on billionaire Elon Musk’s X/Twitter, including anti-trans activist Chaya Raichik (Libs of TikTok), the unofficial DOGE-affiliate Jennica Pounds (DataRepublican), and anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) activist Chris Rufo, on where to cut and who to target with administrative actions. Trump has no concerns with relegating critical government decisions affecting Americans to the far-right MAGA movement. As previously reported on by GPAHE, many of the policies being put into place and decisions to hire and fire federal employees originate with the Heritage Foundation (see GPAHE’s reporting here), the organization behind the rights-stripping Project 2025 (see GPAHE’s analysis of Project 2025 here), while the pro-Trump think tank America First Policy Institute (AFPI) was given the opportunity to stack various departments of the administration with their employees (see GPAHE’s reporting here and here). Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Musk, has been another prominent actor in firing thousands of workers and canceling federal contracts. In order to accelerate this process even further, it appears that the Trump administration has made it an unofficial policy to outsource some of these efforts to the online far right, acting on Twitter suggestions on government workers who should be fired and programs to cut.
via globalextremism: Trump Administration Taking its Cue for Firings, Spending Cuts, and Investigations from Far-Right Online Activists