‘It’s more terrifying than anything Edgar Allen Poe or Stephen King ever wrote’: Mark Hamill unpacks Project 2025 and issues a challenge to unregistered voters

Mark Hamill is encouraging every Democrat to vote on November 5, because the reality we’re facing today is more “terrifying than anything Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King ever wrote.”

The legendary actor behind Luke Skywalker has always been a vocal opponent of Trump and his polarizing if not downright authoritarian and ultranationalist policies. Unsurprisingly, Hamill is also advocating Kamala Harris’ campaign now that she is the presumptive Democratic candidate following Biden’s withdrawal. But as the actor explains in the recent high-profile White Dudes for Harris event, this 2024 election is about more than just party politics, especially because it involves such highly controversial initiatives as Project 2025.

“What I tell people is: You don’t have to read all 900 pages, but google Project 2025,” he said. “It’s more terrifying than anything Edgar Allan Poe or Stephen King ever wrote. The idea of firing 50,000 civil servants and putting in loyalists, who, the prerequisite is you have to believe the 2020 election was stolen. It’s just unthinkable that they’re so forthcoming with what they want to do; get rid of the Department of Education completely. They’re going to try and remake what we know is democracy into an autocracy.”

Project 2025 has been proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation, with the aim of reshaping the executive branch should Donald Trump win the election. One of the chief clauses is to reclassify and rehire thousands of federal civil workers and dub them political appointees, allowing the president to pick and choose those loyal to him and his aims. There are also many other concerning suggestions, like raising the tax on the middle class and cutting down the funding for climate research; limiting the use of contraceptives, and rejecting abortion as a health care practice.

Now, all of this wouldn’t have been a cause for alarm, except that most of the people behind this initiative are former Trump appointees and aides.

This must be reminding Hamill of Palpatine’s own bid for power. Remember how the Chancellor slowly rose through the ranks of the Republic Senate and systematically replaced the different offices of the government with his own aides? The whole idea of Project 2025, other than being a manifesto championing a theocracy upholding Christian values, is to consolidate the executive power of the president, allowing him to operate above the strict bounds of the law, not to mention make the United States government an explicit consul of conservative Christian values.

Well, not if Luke Skywalker himself has anything to say on the matter.