Trump's "Promises Kept" Mantra Rings Hollow as Project 2025 Blueprint Takes Priority Over Kitchen Table Issues

Remember when Trump promised prices would go down? How's that working out for you?

Spoiler alert: It's not. Prices on everything from groceries to utilities have climbed, tariffs have made products either unavailable or unaffordable, and the "promises made, promises kept" slogan has turned out to be one of the more brazen lies of this administration -- which is saying something.

According to Dr. Rebecca Leas, a retired health education specialist and professor emerita writing in Lancaster Online, the only promises Trump has actually kept are the ones nobody voted for: the authoritarian wish list laid out in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's 2023 blueprint for deconstructing American government.

DOGE's Chainsaw Massacre

Enter Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency tech bros, who took a chainsaw to federal agencies with all the care and expertise of a toddler with a blowtorch. The result? Agencies that protect Americans have been eviscerated by people who, under oath, admitted they knew nothing about what they were destroying.

Let that sink in. They gutted agencies they did not understand, looking for "waste, fraud and abuse" they never found. What they did find -- or rather, take -- was Americans' personal information during their supposed efficiency audit.

The damage is staggering. More than a quarter of the National Park Service workforce has vanished through terminations, buyouts, and resignations, leaving America's parks in what Leas describes as "grave danger." Medical research funding has been slashed. Major universities have seen scientific research grants gutted. The Department of Veterans Affairs has been left in chaos -- a particularly cruel irony for an administration that claims to support the troops.

Pennsylvania's Complicit Representatives

Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick and Congressman Lloyd Smucker have gone on record backing DOGE's demolition derby and ICE's enforcement regime. Both voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Now Trump is proposing new cuts to health care spending to help fund a war with Iran -- because apparently the kitchen table issues voters cared about have been replaced with neocon foreign policy adventures.

McCormick is also a major proponent of the SAVE America Act, which critics argue would make voting harder for women, low-income people, and older Americans. Leas characterizes it as "a sneaky move to give the federal government more control over our elections and force states to hand over voter rolls" -- a direct contradiction of the Constitution's assignment of election administration to the states.

The Bait and Switch

This is the classic authoritarian playbook: campaign on economic populism, then use your mandate to consolidate power and dismantle democratic institutions. Voters thought they were getting relief from inflation. Instead, they got Project 2025's systematic destruction of the administrative state.

The tariffs Trump imposed have driven prices higher, not lower. The agencies that ensured food safety, protected workers, conducted medical research, and maintained public lands have been gutted by people who bragged about their ignorance. And the politicians who enabled this chaos -- McCormick, Smucker, and their colleagues -- are now on the record supporting an agenda that makes voting harder and gives the federal government unprecedented control over state election systems.

Leas's conclusion is blunt: "We need new leaders." It's hard to argue with that assessment when the current ones have broken every economic promise they made while keeping every authoritarian one they tried to hide.

The "promises kept" were never about making your life more affordable. They were about making government smaller, weaker, and less able to protect you from the very corporate interests and authoritarian impulses this administration serves. That's not what voters signed up for -- but it's exactly what Project 2025 promised.