If former President Donald Trump succeeds in his third bid for the presidency this fall, it could mean checkmate for the far right’s decades-long plan to take over the entire federal government.

That’s according to columnist David Sirota, who recently wrote in the Guardian about how the authoritarian Project 2025 initiative could become a reality if Trump wins the election in November. He specifically pointed out that Project 2025 essentially marks “the final phase of the grand plan (of the conservatives) laid out over half a century to destroy the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society.”

Sirota — a former speechwriter for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) — is editor of LeverNews.com, which has taken an in-depth look at the 1971 Powell memo in its “Master Plan” series. He noted that the memo, written by Nixon-appointed Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, “laid the foundation for Citizens United and the modern era of corporate politics.”

READ MORE: Trump hopes that the “close partnership” with Project 2025 will not be noticed: former labor secretary

As Sirota wrote, the Heritage Foundation, the main organization behind Project 2025, has “carved out a special role for itself” in the wake of the Powell Memorandum: it is the political arm of the far-right’s plan to merge corporate power with conservative politics.

“(Within a few years of its founding, (Heritage) was focused on influencing presidential administrations with the original version of Project 2025 – Mandate for Leadership, which was described in the press at the time as ‘a blueprint for grabbing the government by the frayed lapels of the New Deal and shaking off 48 years of liberal policies,'” Sirota wrote. “(Former President Ronald) Reagan gave a speech at Heritage praising ‘the importance of the Heritage Foundation … to the political revolution in Washington.'”

Now, in Trump’s second run for a second term in the White House, he is trying to distance himself from Heritage and Project 2025, insisting on the campaign trail, “I don’t know what the hell that is.” That’s hard to take at face value, considering that some 140 of his former staffers and advisers helped craft Project 2025 and that his running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio), wrote the foreword to a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts.

Sirota also cautioned readers not to trust Trump when it comes to his downplaying of Project 2025. He noted that Heritage “bragged” about how Trump implemented about two-thirds of his policy proposals during Trump’s first year in the White House. He also cited Vance’s foreword to Roberts’ book to illustrate how Republicans privately view the group behind Project 2025.

READ MORE: Trump: “I know nothing” about Project 2025, although numerous former officials were involved

“The Heritage Foundation is not just an outpost on Capitol Hill,” Vance wrote. “It is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.”

Democrats are using Project 2025 to show what their Republican opponents would do if they were returned to power. As People magazine wrote in July, the document lays out a detailed plan to “establish a far-right, Christian nationalist vision for America that undermines the separation of church and state, replaces nonpartisan government employees with Trump loyalists and strengthens the president’s authority over independent agencies.”

Click here to read Sirota’s column in full.

READ MORE: ‘Toxic’: Experts mock Trump’s sudden and strident rejection of Project 2025