Now that Donald Trump is back in office, will he enforce Project 2025? This project is commonly described as an ideological agenda designed to push the United States towards autocracy. Legal experts warn that it would erode the rule of law, weaken the separation of powers, blur the lines between church and state, and threaten civil liberties. As a result reproductive, immigrant, and LGBTQIA+ rights, children across the country, and Black communities would be put at risk. Project 2025 offers hundreds of executive and congressional actions to roll back civil rights protections for marginalized communities. Throughout the report, the authors of Project 2025 dehumanized and demonized Chinese and other immigrant communities, referring to them as “illegal aliens” who “infiltrate” the United States and “commit crimes.”
If the project is put into practice, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents could claim the right to enter private homes, school grounds, places of business, and houses of worship in the pursuit of undocumented immigrants, without getting a warrant from a judge. Project 2025 also supports the termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program which offers relief from deportation for children who were brought to the United States without documentation. Another one of the document’s proposals is to shut down the Department of Education, an institution created in 1867, not long after the end of the Civil War. The theory, according to the blueprint, is to eliminate the red tape so that families will be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments. The plan would also wipe out the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, a sub-agency that enforces civil rights laws and investigates schools accused of engaging in discrimination.
Project 2025 would destroy abortion rights in four different ways. It would end medically induced abortions and enable hospitals to deny emergency for life saving abortion care to pregnant patients in crisis. It also would prosecute people for shipping and transporting abortion pills and supplies and permit extremists to harass abortion clinic staff and patients without consequence. The Human Rights Commission (HRC) warned that Project 2025 constituted an existential threat to the LGBTQIA+ community because it would take a wrecking ball to queer rights. Project 2025’s anti-queer proposals are largely based on a single simple and destructive idea, that the LGBTQIA+ community is dangerous to children. Whether or not Project 2025 is put into practice, the framework and rhetoric it uses are said to likely fan the flames of racism and xenophobia. Therefore encouraging discrimination in housing, workplaces, and the halls of government. Essentially, creating a political climate in which individuals will feel safe or welcome.
