The Future Of Project 2025: Law Or Fiction?

Project 2025 is a 900-page-920 page policy wish list or blueprint authored by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, detailing a roadmap for a second Trump administration. The project, which was published in April 2022, outlines a series of proposals to expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision.

The project's proposals include increasing government control over independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, replacing thousands of government employees with political appointees, and reversing abortion access.

While Donald Trump has repeatedly disavowed the project, dozens of former officials from his administration contributed to the proposals, and many are expected to be appointed to leadership roles in a future Trump administration.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has vowed to fight back against the project, stating that it threatens civil rights and civil liberties.

Project 2025's impact on abortion access

Project 2025 is a 900-page federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch of the U.S. government. It was authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Project 2025 includes a long list of extreme policy recommendations that would impact Americans' constitutional freedoms and civil liberties. One of its key proposals is to severely limit abortion access. This would be achieved through a number of strategies, including:

• Reversing the FDA's approval of mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortions. Mifepristone is extremely safe and effective and is used in the most common regimen for medication abortion in the United States. Nearly two-thirds of all abortions provided by clinicians are medication abortions.
• Reinstating medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone that require in-person dispensing and limit who can prescribe and receive the medication. This would limit access for anyone who faces barriers to reaching a physical clinic, including individuals receiving telehealth care in states where abortion is banned.
• Revoking mifepristone's FDA approval, which would remove the drug from the market entirely.
• Reviving the 19th-century Comstock Act to ban any abortion medications, equipment, or materials from being sent through the U.S. Postal Service.
• Dismantling abortion protections provided under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal policy that outlines requirements for emergency departments that receive Medicare funds.
• Eliminating coverage of emergency contraception and using the Comstock Act to prosecute those who send and receive contraceptives and abortion pills.
• Requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to be renamed the Department of Life, with an anti-abortion task force to replace the existing Reproductive Healthcare Task Force.
• Removing all terms related to reproductive health, reproductive rights, and abortion from all legislation, federal rules, agency regulations, contracts, agency websites, and grants.
• Implementing a broad anti-sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda across the government, including by changing the mandate of key agencies and rewording policies to stigmatize and delegitimize sexual and reproductive health terms and concepts.
• Encouraging the use of U.S. influence at the United Nations to remove language "promoting abortion" from UN documents, policy statements, and technical literature.
• Increasing pregnancy and abortion surveillance at the federal level by mandating the reporting of abortions, miscarriages, and stillbirths by all states.
• Redefining basic sexual health education as "pornography" and making pornography illegal.
• Replacing comprehensive sex education with abstinence-only curricula.
• Eliminating all Planned Parenthood facilities from state Medicaid programs and creating a new regulation that would disqualify abortion providers nationwide.
• Severely undermining Title X, the national publicly funded family planning program, and the federal contraceptive coverage guarantee of the Affordable Care Act.
• Reinstating the harmful "domestic gag rule," which would prohibit healthcare providers who receive Title X funding from providing abortion referrals or counselling.
• Legislating that Title X funding cannot go to entities that perform or help fund abortion care, making it harder to reverse this policy in the future.
• Broadening the contraceptive coverage guarantee's existing religious and moral exemptions to make it easier for employers to exclude contraceptive coverage from their employees' health plans.
• Requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to "maintain a biblically-based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family".
• Using existing but little-enforced laws to stop abortion pills from being sent through the post.
• Collecting data on every unsuccessful pregnancy, including the cause and the mother's state of residence.
• Deprecating the promotion of abortion and high-risk sexual behaviors among adolescents.
• Removing the role of the Department of Health and Human Services in shaping sex education in the United States, arguing that this amounts to creating a monopoly.

Project 2025's threat to LGBTQ+ rights

Project 2025 is a 900-plus-page policy "wish list" of proposals that would expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision. It was authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with The Heritage Foundation, a longstanding conservative think tank. The project includes a long list of extreme policy recommendations that touch on almost every aspect of American life, including LGBTQ+ rights.

Removing Legal Protections for the LGBTQ+ Community

Project 2025 calls for the removal of the terms "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" from "federal rules, agency regulations, contracts, grants, legislation, and pieces of legislation that exist". This is not merely symbolic; it is part of a systematic effort to strip the LGBTQ+ community of legal protection from persecution, discrimination, and violence.

Reversing Title IX Protections

The project would reverse the 2024 Title IX rule, depriving LGBTQ+ students—and all students, especially women and girls—of nondiscrimination protections in K–12 schools, colleges, and universities that receive federal funding.

Gutting Workplace Discrimination Protections

Project 2025 would gut LGBTQ+ workplace discrimination protections under Title VII, limiting them to hiring and firing decisions.

Outlawing Pornography and Criminalizing Teachers and Librarians

The project calls for the outlawing of pornography, equating it with materials that acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people. It states that pornography is "manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children". It recommends that people who make such materials available should be imprisoned, and that teachers and libraries that share them should be forced to register as sex offenders.

Restricting Gender-Affirming Care

The project would create draconian restrictions on gender-affirming care, casting supportive parents and health providers as engaging in "mutilation" and "child abuse".

Promoting Heterosexual Nuclear Families

Project 2025 promotes families "comprised of a married mother, father, and their children" and treats other families as threats to a "healthy society".

Enabling Discrimination by Weaponizing Religious Refusals and "Free Speech" Rights

The project would make it easier for LGBTQ+ people to be turned away or discriminated against by anyone with a personal objection to their existence, including by weaponizing and contorting religious refusals and "free speech" rights.

Closing the Department of Education

The project proposes closing the Department of Education, which would have a significant impact on LGBTQ+ rights in education.

Disallowing the Use of Correct Pronouns

Project 2025 states that no school employee should be "forced" to use a student's pronoun.

Removing LGBTQ-Inclusive Curriculum and Policies

The project would remove LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum and policies while compelling adherence to strict definitions of gender that exclude transgender students and staff.

Exporting Anti-LGBTQ+ Hatred

Project 2025 would end the Department of State's LGBTQ equality initiatives in Africa, where punishing laws against the community are being proposed or have been enacted, such as Uganda's law that criminalizes same-sex conduct, potentially punishable by death.

Project 2025's stance on immigration

Project 2025 is a 900-page 920-page policy document, authored by former Trump administration officials and published by the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation. It is a roadmap for a second Trump administration, outlining a plan to replace the rule of law with right-wing ideals.

The project's stance on immigration is that it should be demolished. It is designed to drive immigration levels to unprecedented lows and increase the federal government's power over the states. The proposals are specifically engineered to dismantle the foundations of the immigration system in the US.

Some of the most troubling proposals include plans to:

• Block federal financial aid for up to two-thirds of American college students if their state permits certain immigrant groups, including Dreamers with legal status, to access in-state tuition.
• Terminate the legal status of 500,000 Dreamers by eliminating staff time for reviewing and processing renewal applications.
• Bar US citizens from qualifying for federal housing subsidies if they live with anyone who is not a US citizen or legal permanent resident.
• Suspend updates to eligible country lists for temporary worker visas, excluding most populations from filling critical gaps in the agricultural, construction, hospitality, and forestry sectors.
• Force states to share driver's licenses and taxpayer identification information with federal authorities or risk losing critical funding.

These proposals are designed to cripple the existing immigration system without regard for the harmful effects on the health and wealth of the country. They would undermine the nation's prosperity, security, and workforce, with far-reaching consequences for future generations of Americans.

Project 2025 also includes plans to target immigrant communities through mass deportations and raids, ending birthright citizenship, separating families, and dismantling the nation's asylum system.

Project 2025's implications for freedom of speech

Project 2025 is a set of policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The project's largest publication, "Mandate for Leadership", is a 900-922 page set of policy proposals that represents a wish list of policies that it hopes the next conservative presidential administration will implement.

Despite claiming to be pro-free speech, Project 2025 has been criticised for its potential negative impact on free expression and the free flow of information. Here are some of the implications for freedom of speech:

Censorship of Language in Federal Rules

Project 2025 includes a list of forbidden terms that it wants to be removed from federal governing documents, including "sexual orientation", "gender identity", "diversity", "gender", "gender equality", "gender equity", "gender awareness", "gender-sensitive", "abortion", "reproductive health", and "reproductive rights". The list is not exhaustive, as it also includes "any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights". This explicit censorship of language has been criticised as an attempt to impose ideological conformity and control information.

Transformation of Media Outlets

Project 2025 proposes to transform US-funded media outlets into propaganda outlets by gutting their editorial independence or shutting them down. This includes outlets such as Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which provide factual, uncensored news reporting to people in countries with repressive regimes and censorship. The project also seeks to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports independent local media.

Banning of Social Media Platforms

Project 2025 calls for the banning of TikTok, a social media platform used by approximately 120 million Americans, on the grounds of national security concerns. This has been criticised as a violation of the free circulation of information and ideas and as a vast overreach by the government.

Censorship in Education

Project 2025 aims to censor academic discussions about race, gender, and systemic oppression in schools and universities, in violation of the First Amendment. It also seeks to cut federal funding for schools with curricula that include these topics.

Removal of Legal Protections for LGBTQ+ People

Project 2025 proposes removing legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also seeks to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and replace them with efforts to prosecute "anti-white racism".

Project 2025's effect on the separation of church and state

Project 2025 is a 900-page policy document created by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and former Trump staffers. It is a set of proposals that would expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision. The project has four main aims: restoring the family as the centrepiece of American life; dismantling the administrative state; defending the nation's sovereignty and borders; and securing God-given individual rights to live freely.

The project has been criticised for threatening the separation of church and state. It seeks to infuse the government and society with conservative Christian values. It calls for a nationwide system of school vouchers, severe restrictions on reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ rights, and for the federal government to "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family". It also calls for the elimination of the Department of Education, and for the government to "restore its mission statement [...] to include furthering the health and well-being of all Americans 'from conception to natural death'".

The project also proposes eliminating visa categories for victims of crime and human trafficking, increasing fees on immigrants, and allowing fast-tracked applications for migrants who pay a premium. It would also deploy the military for domestic law enforcement, and promote capital punishment.

Project 2025 has been criticised by the ACLU, which states that it "offers a dystopian view of America" and "threatens to erode civil rights and civil liberties". It has also been criticised by Democratic politicians, who have set up a "Stop Project 2025 Task Force" and a tip line to collect insider information on the Heritage Foundation's activities.

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