Project 2025: The Right-Wing’s Playbook, Explained
Written by djfrosty on July 3, 2024
Source: MEGA / Getty
Conservative politicians are openly pushing Project 2025, a plan to dismantle left and progressive policies to be enacted with the potential reelection of Donald Trump.
The fear of former President Donald Trump returning to the White House has been bolstered by the revelation of a plan crafted by the conservative think tank group the Heritage Foundation. The plan, known as Project 2025, got more attention at the 2024 BET Awards thanks to host Taraji P. Henson addressing the recent Supreme Court decisions criminalizing homelessness. “They are attacking our most vulnerable citizens. The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look it up!” she said.
What exactly is Project 2025?
Project 2025 is a four-step plan to remake the United States into a “values-oriented” nation intending to eliminate what Republicans call the “deep state” within the American government. It would be enacted at the beginning of the new administration in January 2025. The entire plan is contained in a 920-page document named Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, which is available for the public to read on its website.
The plan’s first step begins with the document then the assemblage of a database containing personnel loyal to Trump. Trump’s team would then review each candidate before a final selection. The third step involves an online educational system known as the Presidential Administration Academy, which will train those future appointees to hit the ground running to carry out duties. The final step is a playbook covering the first 180 days that is set to empower “a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency,” as described by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who appeared on MSNBC’s The Weekend to talk about it last week.
So what would come next with Project 2025?
To begin with, if Trump regains office, he would reinstate Schedule F, which would then reclassify tens of thousands out of the two million federal employees to be at-will workers that can be fired easily. President Joe Biden rescinded the plan upon taking office in 2021. Another element focuses on the military by severely gutting veterans’ disability and retirement benefits including placing a 10-year limit on claims, as illustrated in a thread by a user on X, formerly Twitter.
Another aim of Project 2025 is to severely limit immigration to the United States through various methods such as ending updates to the lists for H-2A and H-2B temporary worker visas, forcing states to share taxpayer information and driver’s license information, and terminating the legal protected status of 500,000 “Dreamers” or undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. Project 2025 would also see a dismantling of the Department of Justice as an independent agency as well as the elimination of “woke” terms such as “sexual orientation” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” from federal policies.
Lastly, women’s rights would see further erosion with Project 2025 if enacted. According to the Center For American Progress, 48 million American women would lose access to emergency contraception. There would also be nationwide bans on abortion, and those who’ve previously had the procedure would be registered in a database kept by a “Department of Life,” which would withhold Medicaid funding to states still allowing it. In-vitro fertilization would also be banned as well as medical stem cell research in keeping with the conservative principle that “life begins at conception.”