Imagine the comments section of your most problematic relative’s Facebook posts. Now imagine if those comments were turned into an 887-page book that a powerful, extremist presidential candidate wants to turn into the law of the land — and you’ve got a pretty good grasp of Project 2025.
Unlike Facebook comments, Project 2025 has the potential to harm our society at every level, further concentrating power in the hands of the few while stripping rights and protections from the many. It makes you want to stick your head in the sand, but we need to get informed and know what we’re up against in order to build a better future.
Published by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 lays out the MAGA world’s plan to dismantle our democratic institutions and enact extreme right-wing social policies if Trump is re-elected. The laundry list of proposals is so weird — from killing wild horses and deregulating baby formula, to ending student loan forgiveness programs and criminalizing porn — that it can be hard to see the broad outlines. I took psychic damage reading the whole thing so you don’t have to. Here are some of the key policies:
Privatization and Deregulation: Defund public services, such as public transportation, Medicaid, public schools, child care, and food assistance. Cut federal jobs, weaken unions, and abolish entire governmental agencies. Weaken workplace safety standards and child labor laws. Cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations. These policies would result in a massive wealth transfer from the poor to the rich, increasing poverty in the US and making daily life more dangerous in all our communities.
Fascist rules for society: Limit or ban abortion, contraception, and gender-affirming care nationwide; legalize discrimination based on gender, sexuality, religion, and marital status; empower ICE to enact mass deportations (even within sanctuary jurisdictions) and cut legal immigration & refugee programs; increase use of the death penalty; make voting harder. These policies would target women, people of color, immigrants, poor people, and LGBTQ+ people for harassment, incarceration, and death.
Undo years of progress on climate change and international cooperation: repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act; withdraw from international climate agreements and treaties; eliminate the Clean Energy Corps; expand the nuclear arsenal and increase international arms sales. These policies would set us even further backward in an unstable era, when what we desperately need are bold changes to address climate change and end global wars.
As a queer person with many loved ones who rely on government programs like Medicaid, Head Start, income-based student loan payment plans, and DACA, Project 2025 represents a lethal attack on my community. I want my friend’s children to grow up in a world where it is safe to love who they love and breathe the air outside. I don’t want to wait around and see if Republicans will actually go through with kicking my sibling off their health insurance for being trans, deporting my undocumented neighbor, or arresting my friend for using birth control.
The authors of Project 2025 know that it’s easier to force unpopular, authoritarian policies during a catastrophe. There is no shortage of crises in the U.S. — gun violence, COVID, loneliness, hurricanes, and opioids come to mind. But times of crisis can also be opportunities for communities to unite and take care of each other. To build, not destroy.
There are as many ways to fight fascism and build community as there are people. Whether participating in a local mutual aid group or community garden, pushing back against racist or anti-trans comments at a PTA meeting, joining a protest, supporting a picket line, donating to your local abortion fund, turning out the vote, buying food for your unhoused neighbor, or asking for help when you need it, we can all find ways to organize where we are.
Project 2025 draws on the worst policies of the past to intensify the crises of the present, all so that a few people can hoard resources. But the future isn’t yet determined. And one thing you can do right now is to share your ideas on where you can plug in to fight back.