THE SUPER RICH DONORS BEHIND PROJECT 2025

View Project 2025 Mandate For Leadership

WHAT IS PROJECT 2025?

PROJECT 2025 ADVISORY BOARD

• Alabama Policy Institute
• Alliance Defending Freedom
• American Compass
• The American Conservative
• America First Legal Foundation
• American Accountability Foundation
• American Center for Law and Justice
• American Cornerstone Institute
• American Council of Trustees and Alumni
• American Legislative Exchange Council
• The American Main Street Initiative
• American Moment
• American Principles Project
• Center for Equal Opportunity
• Center for Family and Human Rights
• Center for Immigration Studies
• Center for Renewing America
• Claremont Institute
• Coalition for a Prosperous America
• Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Conservative Partnership Institute
• Concerned Women for America
• Defense of Freedom Institute
• Ethics and Public Policy Center
• Family Policy Alliance
• Family Research Council
• First Liberty Institute

• Forge Leadership Network
• Foundation for Government Accountability
• FreedomWorks
• The Heritage Foundation
• Hillsdale College
• Honest Elections Project
• Independent Women’s Forum
• Institute for the American Worker
• Institute for Energy Research
• Institute for Women’s Health
• Intercollegiate Studies
• Institute James Madison
• Institute Keystone Policy
• The Leadership Institute
• Liberty University
• National Association of Scholars
• National Center for Public Policy Research
• Pacific Research Institute
• Patrick Henry College
• Personnel Policy Operations
• Recovery for America Now Foundation
• 1792 Exchange
• Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America
• Texas Public Policy Foundation
• Teneo Network
• Young America’s Foundation

ANTI-SCIENCE

Project 2025 would jeopardize federal scientists’ independence and undermine their influence. Aside from healthcare and education which is covered in greater detail below, Project 2025 would sabotage science-based policies that address climate change, the environment, technology and education. It would impose religious right ideology on the federal civil service.

“The independence of science is being attacked across the board in this document,” says Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Climate and Energy program at the nonpartisan Union of Concerned Scientists. “The importance of this science is that’s how we can ensure people’s health and the environment are being safeguarded.” (Cleetus notes that her comments address the policy agenda’s contents, not the upcoming presidential election.)

Career scientists who are now employed by the federal government are “terrified and polishing up their résumés,” says Jacqueline Simon, policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, a union that represents workers at the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the CDC and other agencies. If Project 2025 becomes reality, she says, “the very idea of scientific integrity will be flushed down the toilet.”

Project 2025 claims that the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other scientific institutions are “vulnerable to obstructionism” unless appointees at these agencies are “wholly in sync” with presidential policy. To that end, it would reclassify tens of thousands of civil service jobs as political positions that answer to the president.

Project 2025 tears down policies to curb climate change, even though a majority of Americans endorse climate action.

Across multiple departments and agencies, including the EPA, the Department of Energy and NOAA, the project would jettison much of the federal government’s climate science apparatus; it dismissively refers to such programs as “climate alarmism.” This move would significantly hinder researchers’ ability to understand climate change’s many impacts on our daily lives. It would stifle information on how to adapt society and infrastructure to threats such as increased flooding and more frequent and extreme heat waves, all of which have been conclusively linked to rising global temperatures. Cutting DOE research into renewable energy, battery storage and other technology—while increasing fossil fuel extraction on federal lands—would make reining in greenhouse gas emissions enough to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord all but impossible.

“Any attempt to reverse policies, any attempt to slow down this transition to clean energy, is putting us at greater risk” from climate change’s severe impacts, Cleetus says. She notes that the 2025 scheme targets the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding—a bedrock of climate policy that identifies heat-trapping pollutants as a public health threat. But distorting or burying science does not change the reality of the climate crisis. “Science will not bend to political will,” Cleetus adds, “but what will happen is that people will suffer.”

To oversee and reform research at the EPA, Project 2025 would install a “science adviser” who would report directly to the presidential administration, as well as multiple new senior political appointees. “It’s pretty alarming, and it would be completely new for us,” says Joyce Howell, a Philadelphia-based EPA attorney speaking in her capacity as executive vice president of AFGE Council 238, a union of employees of the agency.

The plan would eliminate the National Weather Service’s role as a forecaster, relegating the agency to only collecting data—which private companies could use to create their own forecasts. This has been a goal in some conservative circles for many years; in 2005 then senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania introduced a bill to codify such a change into law. John Morales, a former NWS meteorologist who now works as a consultant, expressed his “alarm” at such proposals. “The U.S. economy grows as a result of our robust research, innovation, forecasts and warnings” from the NWS and NOAA, he says. These proposals “just make absolutely no sense.”

A key function of the NWS is to provide ample warnings about tornadoes, floods, heat waves and other hazardous weather—notifications that, Morales notes, protect lives and property. As a result, under Project 2025, this single, authoritative warning system would likely be replaced with a patchwork of alerts from weather stations and private apps.

The EPA’s role beyond climate-change-related programs would be stymied, too. Project 2025 would increase the extent to which environmental policymakers have to consider costs to industry. It also argues for lessening the consideration of “co-benefits”—instances when, for example, regulating one pollutant coincidentally reduces emissions of another. This calculus flies in the face of the intent behind the Clean Air Act of 1970; the authors of that law, who wanted to spur industrial innovation, emphasized that human health was more important than company profits. The Project 2025 recommendations would also limit what is considered a pollutant or a hazardous chemical—in particular, they make the call to “revisit the designation” of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) as hazardous chemicals. “If anything should be listed as a hazardous chemical, it should be PFAS,” says Maria Doa, senior director for chemicals policy at the Environmental Defense Fund and a former EPA employee, who worked at the agency during the Trump administration. These compounds, found in many products from firefighting foam to cosmetics, are prevalent in U.S. drinking water and soils. They can take hundreds, even thousands, of years to break down in the environment, earning them the common name “forever chemicals.” And PFASs have been linked to numerous ailments, including various cancers, hypertension and immune dysfunction.

“Across the board, [the authors of the project are] looking at undermining things,” Doa says, especially “the expertise to properly characterize the risk presented by chemicals.” Project 2025 would cease funding for the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), a database of chemical health hazards that is considered a gold standard: in addition to the EPA, state governments use it to set regulations. The plan also seeks to undermine the agency’s ability to assess people’s cumulative exposure to chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). For example, under Project 2025, if a given chemical was regulated under the Clean Water Act, its route of exposure couldn’t also be considered under TSCA—meaning the latter program would have an incomplete measure of the chemical’s cumulative impact. PFASs are “a perfect example” of where this becomes a problem, Doa says, because people are exposed to multiple types of these substances through water, soil and consumer products. Overall, the project is “trying to give the industry preeminence in this rather than looking at all of us,” she adds.

HEALTHCARE

From unraveling the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to curtailing fertility care, Project 2025 fails to prioritize the health and well-being of all Americans, according to a new viewpoint in JAMA by researchers at the School of Public Health’s Center for Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights.

Instead, the wide-ranging, blueprint for the next Republican administration presents an “antiscience, antidata, and antimedicine agenda” that would have serious consequences for healthcare and public health, write Nicole Huberfeld, Edward R. Utley Professor of Health Law; Elizabeth McCuskey, professor of health law, policy & management; and Michael Ulrich, associate professor of health law, policy & management.

The blueprint calls for a massive overhaul of the federal government, including health reforms that would deregulate health care, weaken the ACA, defund and privatize federal safety-net programs, and allow discrimination within (and beyond) healthcare settings, the authors write.

“The playbook is built on numerous falsehoods about government, including how Medicare and Medicaid work, how federal law preempts conflicting state laws, and how law interacts with healthcare more broadly,” the authors write. “Although many of the proposals are unlawful, this would not be likely to deter a second Trump administration from implementing such policies.”

The commentary identifies several priorities outlined in Project 2025, as well as the health consequences that would ensue if this vision becomes policy or law.

One major goal is to “return to the untenable pre-ACA status,” the authors write. The playbook details plans to achieve Republicans’ years-long goal to repeal the ACA, which would limit or remove health insurance coverage for millions of people and be replaced with insurance plans that lack many of the ACA’s signature protections, such as requiring coverage for essential health benefits, prohibiting exclusion based on preexisting conditions, and reducing prescription drug costs. 

The authors also discuss how the playbook would privatize and defund aspects of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Project 2025 proposes to deregulate Medicare Advantage—but also make it the default enrollment option—while also imposing block grants and work requirements for Medicaid, which would result in loss of coverage for many patients.

Consequently, “low-income people predictably would become uninsured, meaning they wait longer to receive care or seek none, their health deteriorates and thus becomes harder and more expensive to treat, they cannot afford necessary healthcare, and any costs accrued are passed on to insured patients through higher premiums,” the authors write.

Huberfeld, McCuskey, and Ulrich also emphasize the harms that Project 2025 could inflict on both patients and their healthcare providers with regard to sexual, gender, and reproductive healthcare. The playbook describes multiple antiabortion efforts that would allow states to exclude abortion providers from Medicaid participation, withdraw federal Medicaid funding for states that include abortion coverage in private insurance plans, and limit covering other contraceptive measures, such as condoms.

The authors note a number of proposals in Project 2025 that specifically threaten the health and rights of LGBTQ+ patients and their physicians, including scaling back laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, proposing a federal ban on care related to gender identity, and prioritizing religion-based objections to treating sexual and gender minority patients. The playbook also promotes heterosexual marriages and ends support for single parenthood or LGBTQ+ families, which it states would create a “right of children to be raised by the biological fathers and mothers who conceive them.” This move would deny single people and same-sex couples access to assisted reproductive technologies (ART), such as in vitro fertilization—and it also implies that the federal government would intervene in family law, “a traditionally state-regulated area of law,” the authors note.

In regards to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the national public health agency of the United States, Project 2025 proposes prohibiting the CDC from issuing prescriptive guidance on vaccines and masks, leaving such decisions entirely to parents and medical providers (p. 454). It also advocates for limiting the CDC's role to evaluating only health-related costs and benefits of interventions, without considering any social impacts (p. 453). Citing a petty grievance holding the CDC in part responsible 'for the irrational, destructive, un-American mask and vaccine mandates that were imposed upon an ostensibly free people during the COVID-19 pandemic.' Yet, the CDC weren't responsible for imposing or enforcing anything during the COVID-19 pandemic. The CDC however did make many mistakes during the pandemic from testing to data to communications. Areas in which improvement is needed to have a better response in future emergencies. Project 2025 doesn't seem address any of those vital issues for protecting fellow Americans. Instead Project 2025 promotes misinformation surrounding COVID-19, CDC, NIH, vaccine manufacturers and vaccinations and uses it as inspiration for their proposed changes to the government.

If these accusations were true (they're not), the solution would be to nationalize the ownership of the COVID-19 vaccine - the taxpayers have already paid for it's development and distribution - yet they do not own it. That would eliminate any conspiracy theories such as a 'incestuous relationship between the NIH, CDC, and vaccine makers'. While Roger Severino's claims within Project 2025 are false. The Biden Administration provided the opportunity for some conspiracy theories to be created.

The idea that people can profit financially from medicines or vaccinations that have been developed with taxpayer money is just wrong. Making profits off the back of others' health misfortunes doesn't sit right with many people with moral integrity. Around the developed world we have seen the development of well functioning socialized medical systems. The United States have move in that direction in recent times but Project 2025 plan to reverse that.

Medicaid and Medicare

Under the guise of claiming 'states should be the primary regulators of the medical profession' Project 2025 plan to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid. Project 2025 argues 'the federal government should not restrict providers’ ability to discharge their responsibilities or limit their ability to innovate through government pricing controls or irrational Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement schemes.' They do not cite a case in which this has happened, because it hasn't occurred.

Even when the private option Medicare Advantage program was established, private insurers were expected to deliver health care more efficiently than government-run Medicare does, in theory saving money and improving quality. Yet, Medicare Advantage does not save money and, in fact, has been associated with significant wasteful spending. The reality is the success of the Medicare and Medicaid programs have exposed the failures of private medicine and the profiteers from privatized medicine want the programs dismantled or privatized.

One way of doing this is proposed by Project 2025 - making Medicare Advantage, the bundled alternative to Original Medicare. Medicare Advantage plans are built on contracts between the federal government and private insurance companies, in which the federal government gives money to the insurance company to “manage” patient care. Because insurance companies charge the federal government for patient care, Medicare Advantage winds up costing the government and taxpayers more than Original Medicare. Essentially Project 2025 want to rip-off taxpayers and gift their money to private insurers.

Project 2025 also proposes adding a work requirement, 'similar to what is required in other welfare programs,' as well as raising premiums for higher-income beneficiaries, calling to 'eliminate middle-income to upper-income Medicaid recipients."

One recent attempt to impose a Medicaid work requirement led to thousands of beneficiaries losing coverage. Arkansas added a Medicaid work requirement in 2018 and removed it in 2019. During the nine-month period the requirement was active, roughly 18,000 enrollees lost coverage, according to The Commonwealth Fund, a health care policy think tank.

The Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, said lifetime caps on Medicaid benefits could cause “devastating coverage losses.” Specifically, the approximately 18.5 million beneficiaries who qualify for Medicaid based on income alone — around 20% of those receiving Medicaid — would be particularly at risk of losing their coverage.

“Although the document has no formal legal value, it is a blueprint that would aid a Republican administration in starting the work of shifting policy priorities quickly,” the authors write. “…In other words, a to-do list is ready, and it is not far-fetched to understand that it could quickly become a political reality that would upend medical practice.”

After the 2024 election, Donald Trump decided he would appoint Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. History suggests Oz will seek to boost the use of Medicare Advantage, further privatizing the program - inline with suggestions made by Project 2025. Oz is a snake oil salesman who has promoted quack cures on television and hawked bogus weight loss products. He has zero experience leading a large bureaucracy, never mind a large health care one like CMS.

A key wedge issue has been created by well financed rightist media and mega church outlets focused on the medical health operation known as abortion, flooding their audiences with misinformation from voices with no medical expertise on the subject matter. Project 2025 continues in the same vein,

'finally, conservatives should gratefully celebrate the greatest pro-family win in a generation: overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that for five decades made a mockery of our Constitution and facilitated the deaths of tens of millions of unborn children.'

The claim that overturning Roe v. Wade is 'the greatest pro-family win in a generation', while being a bold claim, says more about the pathetic state of United States, who UNICEF ranks last on family-friendly policy. The concept of being family-friendly is so lost on the people who put together Project 2025 that they avoid expounding on their use of the 'pro-family' phrase. The mothers who have died after being denied abortions are a massive inconvenience to those pushing this 'pro-family' narrative.

There isn't a good argument as to why conservatives would want Roe v. Wade overturned when you consider the Constitution (In 1973, the Court concluded in Roe v. Wade that the US Constitution protects a woman's decision to terminate her pregnancy) and the realities of the consequences. Looking at the data, the most significant drops in the percentage of abortions per 1000 females have come during the presidencies of Barrack Obama and Bill Clinton.

Another inconvenient fact that has emerged since the overturning of Roe v. Wade is the number of abortions has increased, they are just harder to get. That is hardly a reason for the anti-abortion folks to celebrate.

You would've thought that focusing on the socio-economic issues that contribute to women deciding to terminate their pregnancy would be of interest to the anti-abortionists. Reading Project 2025, that doesn't seem to be the case at all.

A study in the United Kingdom found that the cost of living crisis has driven record abortion rates. With an ever increasing inequality gap, corporate price gouging and government imposed austerity there seems to be little relief or assistance in the near future for those who become pregnant. Rather than address these pressing public concerns, Project 2025 are more focused on legally alleviating businesses of any financial obligations regarding employees having abortions.

The plan is hellbent on the Trump Administration implementing draconian measures forcing pregnant women to carry to term, urging HHS to combat "abortion tourism" by cutting funds and mandating detailed abortion reporting by states (p. 455). Presumably to track down woman who have traveled out of state for an abortion and prosecute them. Project 2025’s proposed federal mandate directly conflicts with strong legal protections for patient privacy in individual states.

Their blueprint also suggests limiting access to drugs like Mifepristone. Mifepristone is a drug that blocks a hormone called progesterone that is needed for a pregnancy to continue. Mifepristone, when used together with another medicine called misoprostol, is used to end a pregnancy through ten weeks gestation (70 days or less since the first day of the last menstrual period).  But earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled unanimously to dismiss a case that challenged the FDA’s approval of mifepristone on these grounds (though the conservative-majority Court did leave the door open to future challenges). The Heritage Foundation’s plan seeks to have the FDA “stop promoting or approving mail-order abortions in violation of long-standing federal laws,” citing laws enacted as part of the Comstock Act, despite the fact that the U.S. Department of Justice has said such legislation does not apply to drugs that can be used to lawfully produce abortions.

The reality is just over 1% of pregnancies of 15-44 year old have ended in abortion over the past decade in the United States. The facts are that the practice of safe sex and the affordable access to birth control medication have reduced the number of abortions. Yet, many of those religiously motivated anti-abortion activists oppose the use of contraception and birth control medication. Therefore, one could argue they aren't really anti-abortion at all. Taking into consideration the points made thus far, a valid case can be made that the attacks on reproductive rights is just part of a larger war on reality, facts, healthcare and science.

Another erroneous view is that outlawing abortion will just stop abortions from taking place. Before abortions were last made legal in the United States and allowed for medical professionals to carry them out and provide the necessary care in hygienic surroundings, unsafe abortions were carried out largely by pregnant women themselves., In the 1940s, records show that more than 1,000 women died each year from abortions that were labeled as unsafe. Many of these abortions were self-induced. Unsafe abortion practices were such a concern in the United States that nearly every large hospital had some type of "septic abortion ward" that was responsible for dealing with the complications that accompanied an incomplete abortion. Incomplete abortions were the leading cause for OB-GYN services across the United States.

The idea of throwing well trained highly skilled professionals such as gynecologists in prison for life for carrying out an abortion is moronic. Professionals in the obstetrics and gynaecology field do far more than just carry out abortions, in fact, they are responsible for reproductive care. Placing a risk to the freedom over medical professionals who already work in highly intense situations adds even more stress to already stressful situations. Especially in emergencies when decisions need to made quickly. The added weight of legal consequences on well-meaning doctors leading a medical team is just unnecessary. The uncertainty surrounding legalities in the field could lead to doctors leaving the profession and to a decline in people pursuing a career in the OB-GYN field. This could result in a significant decline in reproductive health in the long term. especially if we see a return to circumstances similar to  the 1940s with a dramatic rise in unsafe abortions.

ProPublica have reported multiple women have died in recent years after being unable to access abortion legally or having her medical care delayed. Doctors across the United States have said that the laws are worded so vaguely that they don’t know when they can legally intervene. Instead, many physicians say they have been forced to wait until a patient is on the brink of death – then attempt to pull them back.

Even more disturbing is the fact that Project 2025 proposes a law that should 'clarify that no employer is required to provide any accommodations or benefits for abortion' wishing to overrule 'the longstanding doctrine of Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA)' so that individual states’ can 'prohibit employers from helping employees procure abortions via offering various kinds of coverage under employee-sponsored benefit plans.'

Project 2025 uses the abortion issue to suggest dramatic cuts in federal healthcare funding to seven states including California. Furthermore, the document issues an ultimatum for California: track and report abortion data to the federal government or risk losing billions in Medicaid funding for reproductive health. California is one of only three states that do not report abortion data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The project also calls for further punishment to Californians for the states violation of the Weldon Amendment contradicting the whole 'states will decide on abortion' argument presented by the same entities who are part of the advisory group of Project 2025 supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

As one would expect, Project 2025 is riddled with misunderstandings and misinformation surrounding the issues, terminology and medical procedures classified as abortions. There is a vengeful tone consistent throughout the document in regards to abortion. Project 2025 wishes to use the issue of abortion to punish their political enemies.

Undoubtedly, there has been and will be more negative consequences from the fallout of the overturning Roe v. Wade. This will result in the issue of abortion taking more attention politically which was one of the intentions of the powers behind the scenes.

The larger agenda at play by promoting abortion as a wedge issue is to cause as much division as possible between the sexes and ultimately convince voters to vote against their own interests. It is unfortunate that this medical procedure has been given so much focus in the political sphere but it is by design, moving focus away from more pertinent political issues that we deal with everyday and taking attention away from those who are responsible for those problems.

JUST GETTING STARTED ON TAKING AWAY WOMEN'S RIGHTS

After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Project 2025 lays out the blueprint for the next phase of what they have planned in regards women's rights:

Project 2025 eviscerates women’s long-held rights to sex equality in the workplace. It calls for the next president to rescind executive orders signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the mid-1960s that prohibited federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of race and sex, and it would weaken Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination in employment.

First, it would narrow the meaning of the word sex in Title VII to mean the “biological binary meaning of ‘sex,’” allowing employment decisions based on gender stereotypes. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that an accounting firm violated Title VII when it denied a woman partnership based on partners’ comments that she needed “a course in charm school” and should “walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry.”

Project 2025 would reverse this interpretation—which would also exclude LGBTQ+ people from Title VII protections in defiance of the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision, penned by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, in Bostock v. Clayton County.

The plan calls for the next president to eliminate Title VII coverage of disparate impact discrimination, where an employer practice appears to be sex-neutral but falls more harshly on women than men and cannot be justified by business necessity. That would mean, for example, that employers could disproportionately screen out female job candidates by using unnecessary strength, aerobic capacity and endurance tests or height requirements unrelated to the job.

Project 2025 directs the next president to issue an executive order exempting religious employers from laws prohibiting sex discrimination, allowing them to discriminate against employees who have abortions or are parents.

The plan calls for weakening the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces Title VII. It would end the agency’s long-standing power to issue guidance, technical assistance and policy positions interpreting Title VII, and it would block the agency from entering into consent decrees with employers to resolve discrimination cases. This would mean that women would have to file expensive and time-consuming lawsuits to defend their Title VII rights. Project 2025 also demands a reorientation of EEOC enforcement priorities away from sex and race discrimination to focus instead on claims of religious discrimination.

The plan also proposes to explain away the gender wage gap by directing the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau to “rededicate its research budget towards open inquiry, especially to disentangle the influences on women’s workforce participation and to understand the true causes of earnings gaps between men and women.” 

Contrary to decades of peer-reviewed research, conservatives argue that the pay gap is the result of women’s choices to work in lower-paid occupations rather than sex discrimination. Women’s salaries are currently 84 percent of men’s salaries, but when benefits such as health insurance and pension plans are included in the calculation, women workers receive a mere 57 percent of men’s earnings, according to the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.

Finally, Project 2025 calls for the end of all programs designed to eliminate discrimination against women and people of color at the federal, state, local and private-sector levels and directs the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to investigate and criminally prosecute state and local governments that have these programs. 

Framing DEI as discriminatory toward white men, it calls for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to immediately use “the full force of federal prosecutorial resources to investigate and prosecute all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers who are engaged in discrimination in violation of constitutional and legal requirements.” In other words, it would work to advance white men in the workforce, at the expense of all women and men of color.

Rolling Back Women's Education Equality

The Heritage Foundation’s plan calls for the elimination of the Department of Education, which enforces Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. It would allow Title IX enforcement only through litigation filed by the Department of Justice—a costly, time-consuming and inefficient way to enforce the law.

The authors call for rescinding the Biden administration’s new Title IX regulations that strengthen protections against sexual harassment and assault in schools. Instead, it would reinstitute the Trump administration’s regulations that provided extraordinary “due process” rights to those accused of sexual harassment and assault while requiring victims to submit to cross-examination by the accused.

As with employment, Project 2025 recommends ending disparate impact discrimination claims under Title IX and narrowing the meaning of sex in Title IX to “biological sex recognized at birth,” which would allow the use of gender stereotypes in education and remove protections for LGBTQ+ students. It also would prohibit public school teachers from using a student’s chosen name and pronouns.

The plan would increase public funding for religious education through expansion of “school choice” policies, and give federal education funds to states as block grants with no strings attached.

On student debt, it would end Biden’s loan forgiveness program, and it proposes student loan repayment programs that would multiply costs for borrowers, increase defaults and end existing programs that allow borrowers to earn cancellation, according to a report from the Center for American Progress. It’s worth noting that women hold 64 percent of all student loan debt.

These proposals and more would devastate the educational opportunities of women and girls, harming their careers and earning power. 

EDUCATION 

Project 2025 calls for federal education policy to 'be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.' They also state 'families and students should be free to choose' when it comes to their education. They call for federal 'red tape' to be lifted so the options of 'career schools, military academies, and lifelong learning programs can be an chosen for post secondary education.

The document also calls for 'elementary and secondary education policy should follow the path outlined by Milton Friedman in 1955, wherein education is publicly funded but education decisions are made by families.'

The original 'school choice' position was first adopted by pro-segregationists. Neo-liberal economist Milton Friedman has been dubbed the “father” of vouchers. He called mandatory desegregation an “evil” as “coercive” as segregation itself (Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice). Friedman's 1955 essay “The Role of Government in Education” bears close reading. “School choice” proponents universally regard Friedman as the “father” of vouchers, and cite this essay as the movement’s charter. The late Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute, author of Market Education: The Unknown History, declared that Friedman “launched the modern school-choice movement.” University of Arkansas professor Jay Greene, a fierce advocate of school choice and laissez-faire economics, has described Friedman’s essay as “the seminal work that started the school choice movement.”

Writing a year after the Brown decision, with segregationist defiance in full bloom, Friedman’s essay explicitly addresses the question of vouchers and school segregation in a lengthy footnote. Readers may be aware that the voucher proposal “has recently been suggested in several southern states as a means of evading the Supreme Court ruling against segregation” and conclude that this is a reason to oppose them, Friedman begins. But having reflected on this subject, he has decided otherwise.

Friedman’s argument stakes out three positions that most readers will find on their face incongruent. First, he declares: “I deplore segregation and racial prejudice.” Second, though, he avows his opposition to the “forced nonsegregation” of public schools, by which he means the desegregation of public schools that has just been mandated by Brown. Striking a strange posture of neutrality in the great historic battle to abolish Jim Crow segregation that was opened with Brown, he proclaims that he is also opposed to “forced segregation.” Rather, he seeks a third way: the privatization of public education through vouchers. And finally, Friedman contends that in this system of vouchers, parents should be free to send their children to any private school they choose, including “exclusively white schools.” Once public funds are put in private hands in the form of vouchers, he argues, it would be wrong to prohibit their use in support of racially segregated education.

This last position is precisely the posture that enabled and protected segregationist defiance of Brown in Prince Edward County and throughout the South. Indeed, in his book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman offers explicit approval of the Virginia law that authorized school vouchers, including those used in Prince Edward County, arguing implausibly that it would have the unintended effect of undermining racial segregation. In fact, the law had precisely the intended effect. For the five years before the Supreme Court ruled that Prince Edward County public schools must be reopened, African-American students were deprived of all education, while white students attended a segregated white academy. After Prince Edward County’s public schools were reopened in 1964, they were underfunded (the county spent twice as much on vouchers as it did on its public schools) and only a handful of white students attended them; the great preponderance of white students used vouchers to attend the segregated Prince Edward Academy. In 1969, the courts finally struck down the Virginia voucher law Friedman supported, ruling that it permitted the continuance of racially segregated education.

Given his actual policy stances on vouchers and segregated schools, one cannot help but wonder how deeply felt Friedman’s professed opposition to segregation and racial prejudice was. But assuming insincerity on his part precludes a full engagement with his thinking. A more fruitful approach is to start by taking Friedman at his word on all three counts, and then examining his attempt to reconcile these different positions. It is in such an analysis of the profound flaws of Friedman’s argument that the full entanglement of libertarian advocacy for vouchers and segregationist opposition to school integration becomes evident.

Friedman also opposed the prohibition of job discrimination against African-Americans, because business must be able to exercise their property rights in whatever ways they choose, even if those ways are discriminatory. A more refined rhetoric is being resurrected today through Project 2025 who use an argument based on non-specific religious grounds. Concerns raised by Project 2025's educational plan refer to 'efforts by many accreditation agencies to leverage their Title IV (student loans and grants) gatekeeper roles to force''faith-based institutions, to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.'

In response Project 2025 calls for the protection of 'faith-based institutions by prohibiting accreditation agencies by requiring standards and criteria that undermine the religious beliefs of, or require policies or conduct that conflict with, the religious mission or religious beliefs of the institution; and Intruding on the governance of colleges and universities controlled by a religious organization.'

One of the ways in avoiding this 'leverage' is through school voucher programs. This will allow institutions the ability to float any federal funding requirements and discriminate if they wish to. There is a huge elephant in the room regarding this subject area and that is the billion of donations from all US foundations spent on education projects, many of those same foundations finance the brain trust behind Project 2025.

Such contributions have come under fire in recent years. The big foundations promote a particular set of K-12 education policies — including increased accountability for teachers, more school choice, and higher-stakes testing — that are profoundly controversial, and that teachers unions and skeptical education researchers have spent years questioning and resisting. The foundations’ use of billions in spending to change public policy on education raises troubling questions about democratic accountability and the role of money in politics especially when a major conservative education funder like Betsy DeVos became US secretary of education during Donald Trump's first administration. Trump has nominated another donor to the post again, this time it is his former Small Business Administrator, Linda McMahon.

Project 2025 use the argument that the amount of government spending on education isn't justified because results haven't improved. Yet in their argument, no scrutiny of the many billions annually given by conservative 'philanthropy' hasn't garnered better results. Any assessment on performance and impact in this area is lacking. (Others have and their assessments are inconvenient to Project 2025's agenda.) At the same time Project 2025 champions programs financed by the same kinds of 'philanthropists' using their money to finance the groups behind Project 2025 and using their money and political backing as leverage to acquire positions of political power.

In regards to student loans, Project 2025 pushes the erroneous notion that the government are 'treating taxpayers like investors in federal student aid.' In reality The President (through the Secretary of Education) can cancel not just some, but all federally owned loans without needing any money from the Treasury. This will also add absolutely nothing to the national debt.

This is in stark contrast to Donald Trump's PPP loans, that added nearly $1 Trillion to the national debt, and required the same amount to be drawn from Treasury, yet required absolutely no repayment from the borrowers.

Project 2025 plans to remove government loans investing in the county's future - offering up students as prey to capitalist vampires. Calling the new Trump Administration to seriously consider 'privatizing all lending programs, including subsidized, unsubsidized, and PLUS loans (both Grad and Parent)' while keeping all existing voucher programs.

On the subject of student loan forgiveness, Project 2025 parrots the same scaremonger narratives that we have heard over the past two years, shrieking that student loan cancellation will be a massive “cost” to the taxpayers. Demanding 'the new Administration must end abuses in the loan forgiveness programs. Borrowers should be expected to repay their loans.

President Biden’s relatively modest $10,000, means-tested loan cancellation plan has sparkled sensationalist claims of the “cost” to the taxpayers of $500 billion to nearly $1 Trillion. Some even claim that this will result in a “tax burden” of $2,500 to the average taxpayer. All of these claims are utterly and completely false.

In fact, several decades worth of Department of Education and White House Budget data show that federally owned student loans- unlike all other federally owned or guaranteed loan programs- have been so massively profitable over many decades, that all federally owned student loans could be cancelled by executive order entirely- not just $10,000/per borrower- at little or no actual cost to the taxpayers.

With this information showing how profitable student loans have been, we are given a glimpse at the real agenda of Project 2025. 'Although student loans and grants should ultimately be restored to the private sector (or, at the very least, the federal government should revisit its role as a guarantor, rather than direct lender)' Project 2025 poses to financially cripple students by removing the federal government at a moment in their lives were many need financial support. This will inevitably lead to, ironically, no choice for students but to turn to parasitic capitalist loans or even illegal loan sharks. Not to mention cutting off another source of revenue for the government further crippling it.

Further tying their education plans to the economy, Project 2025 demand that 'taxpayers should expect their investments in higher education to generate economic productivity.' This obsession of tying everything educational to economic productivity is insane. We have record levels of economic productivity. Yet wages are at 1950 levels adjusting for inflation.

The excuses used above attempting to justify abolishing the Department of Education by Project 2025 are part of a coordinated agenda to wrestle control from the federal government into the hands of shadowy 'philanthropists' that seem hellbent on getting 'school choice' privatization of education and getting their grubby hands on those school vouchers that they plan on replacing funding from the Department of Education.

After Trump won the 2025 election he was asked what his plans were on education policy in America once he took office in January. Trump noted that the wants to move education issues back to the states. When pressed on "what does moving back to the states mean?" Trump responded by stating "a virtual closure of the Department of Education in Washington." 



FOOD & AGRICULTURE 

Project 2025 outlines steps that would radically transform food and farming, curtailing recent progress to address the excess of ultra-processed foods in the United States. Among those: weakening the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), ending policies that consider the effects of climate change – and eliminating the US dietary guidelines.

Project 2025 use another one of their go to tactics - claiming the private sector offers everything an individual would ever need

'There is no shortage of private-sector dietary advice for the public, and nutrition and dietary choices are best left to individuals to address their personal needs.'

“This is a deregulatory agenda,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and food policy at New York University. “And what we know historically from deregulation is that it’s really bad for consumers, it’s bad for workers, it’s bad for the environment.”

Project 2025 proposes changes to the country’s food assistance programs, like Snap and the Women, Infants and Children supplemental nutrition program (Wic), that Nestle believes are intended to dismantle such programs.

Today, nearly 42% of adults in the US are obese and about 12% have diabetes. Experts emphasize that those conditions are caused by the ingredients and policies (like aggressively advertising to children) pushed by food companies.

Project 2025’s agricultural provisions are placing public health in jeopardy by removing protections that will financially benefit big business.

“Republicans want to deregulate, and give those food businesses every opportunity to make as much money as they possibly can, regardless of the effects on health and the environment.” Nestle added

Experts also fear the way Project 2025 could undermine the work being done by the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture to limit the flow of ultra-processed foods in the US food supply.

Today, ultra-processed foods make up 73% of the US food supply, according to Northeastern University, and provide the average US adult with more than 60% of their daily calories. While the science is still emerging, researchers are increasingly linking UPFs to a range of health conditions including diabetes, obesity, depression and certain cancers.

At the FDA, work is currently under way to develop a front-of-package label that corporations would be required to print on the fronts of products indicating when an item is high in sugar, fats, sodium or calories (the exact label has not yet been made public). Although the label wouldn’t specifically indicate when a food is ultra-processed, it would likely apply to a high percentage of UPFs in the food system because many contain large quantities of those nutrients.

And at the USDA, members of the US dietary guidelines advisory committee are currently meeting and will give their recommendations for the 2025-30 dietary guidelines later this year. As it considers the advice it will issue to the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services, the committee has been tasked with also evaluating research related to UPFs. It’s unclear what they’ll recommend - and whether that advice will make it into the 2025 dietary guidelines - but it’s a significant development for the committee to even consider ultra processing.

But while Project 2025 makes no specific references to front-of-package nutritional labels like those currently under consideration at the FDA, Lindsey Smith Taillie, a professor of nutrition and co-director of the Global Food Research Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says that eliminating the dietary guidelines will inevitably affect those.

“It’s almost like they’re removing scientific evidence from federal food policy,” she said.

The Department of Agriculture’s current functions are as diverse and wide-reaching as providing loans for rural development and defending U.S. livestock from flesh-eating worms. The department has a crucial role in national nutrition: the USDA has overseen the country’s largest food assistance initiative, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), in its various forms since its World War II–era beginnings and reintroduction in 1961. Project 2025 would cut eligibility for SNAP benefits while moving the program to the HHS.

And even though free school lunches have consistently been found to improve academic performance, the Heritage Foundation’s plan would restrict school meals provided through the USDA and repeal the dietary guidelines that those meals are based on.

Project 2025 plan recommends the narrowing of USDA’s scope to the efficient production of food, undoing the department’s current strategy to promote renewable energy and protect national forests and agricultural land from the climate crisis.



PLANS TO ABOLISH GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

The plan explicitly seeks to “dismantle the administrative state,” explaining: “The solution… is not to tinker with this or that government program, to replace this or that bureaucrat. These are problems not of technocratic efficiency but of national sovereignty and constitutional governance. We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves but by ripping out the trees—root and branch.”

Former Trump Cabinet member Russ Vought, who was key in developing Project 2025, said, “The president Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state.” Trump strategist Steve Bannon has said, “We’re going to rip and shred the federal government apart.”

Below we take a look at the suggested plans to abolish government agencies of Project 2025, aside from The Department of Education that is covered in the section on education.

• Project 2025 calls of the abolition of the Export–Import Bank of the United States. They try justifying this action by citing a 40+ year old incorrect statement by David Stockman, a Reagan era Director of the Office of Management and Budget's critique of export subsidies (just one role the bank carries out). By the end of Stockman's tenure he had doubled the deficit (not that it really matters. Think tanks behind 2025 frequently make a big issue out government debt). After leaving government, Stockman joined the Wall St. investment bank Salomon Brothers and later became a partner of the New York–based parasite, the Blackstone Group.
  The author's shortsightedness completely misses the point of export subsidies by trying to claim that the EXIM 'picks winners and losers', one goal is to encourage competition; in theory anti-monopolistic. The author is pointing out a grievance that contradicts their personal flawed economic philosophy to justify abolishing the entire bank. All without attempting to understanding the political complexities of international trade, loans, diplomacy and the economic flexibility that the EXIM offers.
  But the main issue in the debate is whether the Bank, which provides financing and insurance for US businesses that want to export, substitutes for the private sector or whether—as its advocates argue—it helps US companies compete in markets where private financing opportunities are scarce. A study on the relationship between historical EXIM financing and export volumes and shows that EXIM lending stimulates US exports. In fact, every dollar authorized by EXIM results in $1.35 in greater exports. EXIM is not a substitute for private finance but is additive, helping US companies to be competitive in foreign markets. The Bank expands US exports, reducing the trade deficit, and returns the profits from its business to the US Treasury. Over the period studied, 2007–14, EXIM transferred more than $4 billion to the Treasury. These facts refute Project 2025's claim that EXIM 'risks taxpayer funds as it stymies economic growth.'
  Another stupid point Project 2025 made regarding EXIM is that it is misguided to think the Bank could be used to as a weapon to compete with China. Well The Bank’s charter lapsed from June 30, 2015 through December 4, 2015. During this period, EXIM could not authorize new lending, guarantees, or insurance, and in fiscal year 2016 authorizations fell by more than 50 percent relative to previous periods. When EXIM authority lapsed, General Electric reportedly shifted some production to China and Europe to take advantage of local export credit agencies. EXIM is literally saving US jobs from moving to China.
  As far as the rest of the drivel Project 2025 has produced attacking EXIM, it is politically motivated lies, littered with bad faith twaddle.
  
  
• Project 2025 recommends that the Trump Administration abolishes the Economic Development Administration. After alleging the agency had issues distributing money received via the CARES Act due to their being six region centers, Project 2025 recommends that the agency should be shutdown and its responsibilities taken over by 'overlapping' agencies. What we can take away from this situation is that Project 2025 are looking for any silly excuse to shutdown government agencies will little regard of the agencies functions. We can also conclude that the authors of Project 2025 do not want to the government to invest in the economic development of the United States.
  
  
• Project 2025 recommend the 'new Administration should reevaluate and potentially abolish all non-statutory standing committees within the Census Bureau, including the Census Scientific Advisory Committee. We know how much Project 2025 hates statistics, data and science so it makes sense that the people behind Project 2025 want to get rid of them.
  
  
• Project 2025 plan to 'abolish the National Advisory Committee and reevaluate all other committees' using the pathetic excuse that it has become a 'hotbed for left-wing activists intent upon injecting racial and social-justice theory into the governing philosophy.' In reality NAC is an important channel of communication between the Census Bureau and race, ethnic, and other communities, focusing “on the identification of new strategies for improved census operations, survey and data collection methods, including identifying cost-efficient ways to increase census participation” and reduce the undercount. We can conclude that a goal of Project 2025 is to politically limit or exclude data of people of ethnic minority backgrounds.

PROJECT 2025'S STAGGERING LACK OF SELF AWARENESS

On the subject of 'advisory committees' Project 2025 which is literally a committee advising the second Trump Administration, calls for Donald Trump 'upon entering office', to review all advisory committees and find 'whether they are required by statute and' be 'abolished if they are not.' We have finally come to a consensus, Project 2025 should be abolished!

ENFORCEMENT & COMPLIANCE

Again, we hear Project 2025 whining that E&C aren't 'free market' and would preferably be abolished if it were up to the author. But they acknowledge 'It is exceedingly unlikely that Congress would abolish or limit the activity of E&C.' So, rather than abolish it - Project 2025 suggest it should be used as a political weapon against China, the United States' biggest trade partner. Not sure what happened to their 'free market' principles with that suggestion. They suggest E&C re-establish and expand suspended in-person pandemic-related verifications, particularly regarding the People’s Republic of China. Ensure that verifications are rigorous.'Revive the China-specific non-market economy unit' and 'Develop a new methodology to determine normal values in Chinese antidumping cases because—given China’s size, economic might, and state intervention in the economy—there is no comparable surrogate country to use as a proxy for production costs.'