Protesters of Project 2025, like those seen here, are sounding an alarm. We should heed their warning. (Credit: Elvert Barnes, Flickr)

Let’s talk about Project 2025.

You’ve likely seen several news items mention it the past few days. Over the weekend, former President Donald Trump – currently the presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s presidential election – tried to distance himself from it in an online post. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden and his supporters have been hammering Project 2025, with the likes of Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas calling it “terrifying,” adding in a recent campaign email that it’s a proposal “that puts women’s lives at risk, that puts our country at risk, that puts our future at risk.”

Or, perhaps you’ve just seen the deluge of memes and TikToks that encourage progressive voters to be more concerned about Project 2025 than Biden’s decidedly lacking debate performance. (I’ve seen a fair few of those posts in my own social media feeds.)

So … what is it? If you’re unsure, you’re not alone – as of now, most Americans don’t know. 

Here’s the short answer: Project 2025 is a collection of policy proposals and more, crafted by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing political research center that has maintained significant influence over conservative politicians and politics since the 1980s, when former President Ronald Reagan’s administration first adopted many of its proposals and ideologies. Project 2025, if enacted, would herald radical changes to many of the social and economic policies presently on the books – as well as to the very structure of our federal government.

But there’s more to it than that, including dire implications for women’s rights and wellness – everyone’s rights and wellness – should the roadmap laid out by Project 2025 be followed. 

What May Come

For starters, reproductive rights would be eradicated under Project 2025, as it calls for the government to “institutionalize the post-Dobbs environment” through executive orders and regulations that further roll back abortion access, as well as the reversal of FDA approval for abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. It also wants to stop the Department of Health and Human Services from assisting with sex education, to keep lessons on abortions out of schools.

And, it suggests that states should be individually encouraged to defund Planned Parenthood under their respective Medicaid plans. “This isn’t about protecting life,” Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono said at a press conference on Project 2025’s implications for women’s health. “This is about power … and the Republicans’ obsession with controlling women’s bodies.”

The sweeping proposal also takes aim at diversity, equity and inclusion efforts here and abroad, and within a host of government entities, including the U.S. Agency for International Development. “[T]he Biden Administration has deformed the agency by treating it as a global platform to pursue, overseas, a divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systemic racism,” it reads, before calling for the next POTUS to “issue a directive to cease promotion of the DEI agenda.”

Project 2025 additionally suggests the elimination of the Department of Education, as well as any federal funding or oversights provided to schools; it calls for withholding federal disaster-relief dollars from states that fail to comply with its proposed immigration laws and mandates around sharing citizens’ information; and it calls for the next president to “make the case to the American people that nuclear weapons are the ultimate guarantor of their freedom and prosperity.”

If this is starting to sound like a lot – that’s because it is. In truth, it’s hard to effectively summarize Project 2025, as its creators’ overarching desire is to upend almost every policy and every department. There are suggestions that would nullify efforts to mitigate climate change, place additional burdens on low-income individuals and immigrants seeking asylum, and mandate efforts to curb what drafters of the plan refer to as “anti-white racism.” I could go on. And on.

It’s a metaphorical blitzkrieg. And one could be forgiven for thinking the overwhelming nature of its intended scope and reach is strategic – after all, the harder it is for Project 2025 opponents to focus their efforts, the easier it is for supporters to pull off its aims.

But confusion wouldn’t be necessary for effectiveness if Election Day goes their way, as Project 2025 also goes after the country’s purported core values, and the very structure of our political apparatus. Not in pursuit of radical liberation, but rather, to circumvent the standards and norms that keep leaders in check by simply eradicating them entirely.

Specifically, it seeks to demolish tenets like the separation of church and state, a value that is quite literally enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. And, Project 2025 proposes a reorganization of the government itself: First, with amendments that place the entire executive branch under the president’s direct purview; then, by reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as appointees. 

Meaning the president could replace vetted employees with loyal followers, as he sees fit. 

The ‘Why’ 

What’s this all about, in a word? Once again, it’s control, as Sen. Hirono said.

In more words? Well, Project 2025 lists four main objectives: “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life” with an emphasis on heterosexual marriage and children as defining familial characteristics; “dismantle the administrative state;” “defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats;” and “secure our God-given individual rights to live freely.”

“Freely” by the specific and quantifiably harmful parameters set forth by its white, male, conservative leadership, that is.

Revoking our reproductive rights and prioritizing fetuses over human beings, restructuring our government around a single figurehead, further bolstering our already-swollen military industrial complex while fiscal aid for schools falls by the wayside, eliminating efforts to make our nation and world more supportive and inclusive for all – these are not the moves of freedom fighters. 

Let’s instead call them what they are: Modern-day conquistadors. Columbuses in gray suits and red ties weaponizing stale bits of language from America’s past, rather than ships and guns, so that they might relegate all women to “tradwife” status, reverse progress and hard wins for people of color, revoke what little institutional support we do receive, and overall reconfigure the U.S. into a nation that’s equal parts early 1960s and Hell.

And let’s be clear: If Trump is at the helm, Project 2025 – and all of this – could become our reality. Because despite his attempts at putting space between himself and the proposal, at least 140 former Trump staffers were involved in its creation. And, the Heritage Foundation had outsized influence on both the staffing and policy calls made by Trump during his first term, including breaking from the Paris Climate Accord, increasing military spending and hiring 70 foundation picks for his transitional and administrative teams – all of that just within his first year.

Part of what also makes Project 2025 so potent is that it’s not just a policy agenda or “wish list” – it also includes detailed plans for hiring and training personnel, and a 180-day playbook to guide a new leader forward. Or in this case, decades backward.

The individuals behind Project 2025 say their aim is to “rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left.” Lofty, vapid language that does little to blanket the actual aim of instituting a autocracy that subjugates citizens, robs us of once-inalienable rights, and punishes resisters.

Those memes in our feeds may be on to something.◼