You’ve probably heard about Project 2025, but how much do you know about it?
Created by the Heritage Foundation and over 100 other conservative groups, it’s a blueprint for Donald Trump if he wins again. Two-thirds of its contributors were members of his 2020 administration, so why is Trump claiming he “knows nothing about it”?
Simple. Because the more Americans learn about the “secret” 900-page document, the more they distrust it.
Here are a few reasons.
Project 2025 concentrates power in the presidency, skewing the centuries-old balance of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. It would replace thousands of long-term career civil servants with inexperienced Trump cronies he could hire and fire at whim. And place the now-independent Justice Department directly under the President, who says openly he would use it to punish political opponents instead of letting it do its job.
Recent polls like a YouGov survey show that many of the Project’s ultraconservative priorities are wildly unpopular. Take healthcare. Reproductive rights would essentially be eliminated (no exceptions allowed). A politicized FDA would withdraw approval for the medication used in half of U.S. abortions, and anyone who mailed it, even pharmacists, would be prosecuted. No more IVF, and, shockingly, not even legal birth control, leaving American women—and men—powerless to plan their own families. No more subsidies for potentially life-saving stem cell research.
Medicaid? Slashed, leaving more than a million people without healthcare in our state alone. The Biden administration’s recent law protecting us from surprise medical bills? Gone. And all without Congressional approval.
Project 2025 would give the government control over school curriculum and our reading. It would eliminate the Department of Education, removing subsidized school meals—some kids’ only source of real nutrition—and federal funding for low-income schools like ours. Teachers would have even less freedom to teach what they deem necessary. You can bet teacher turnover, already high, would increase.
The Heritage Foundation wants to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), ending federal funding for a long list of library services and threatening the very existence of rural libraries like ours. Censorship? No question. Librarians, from primary school to university, could face arrest for disseminating information offensive to the administration. Project 2025 labels sexual materials, even those used for educational purposes, as pornography, and those who distribute or read them could be prosecuted. Research says that a leading indicator of student success is access to school librarians — but how many would remain if they risked being treated like criminals, not professionals?
The EPA was created by Republican Richard Nixon over 50 years ago to ensure cleaner air and water and reduce pollution, pesticides, carbon emissions, and PFAS — “forever chemicals.” Project 2025 would gut the agency. Why? Because the bottom dollar of big business matters more to them than a safer planet for our children and grandchildren.
Our Founding Fathers, whatever you’ve been told, were not Christians but deists who believed in a supreme being rather than organized religion. Even so, a key bedrock of our republic is their vision of a country where everyone is free to worship as they please. Threatening that freedom, as Project 2025 does, threatens our democracy.
An administration driven by Project 2025 would replace the nation’s religious freedom and diversity with Christian nationalism. Many of us are Christians, but this is not the religion most of us claim. It’s a splinter faction that seeks to “whitewash” our history by claiming it has
never been racist, the way 19th century slaveholders used the Bible to justify their crimes. It would restrict immigration to white European countries. It would militarize our Southern border, rendering it a war zone.
The Project would incarcerate and then deport 100,000 immigrants. What’s the plan to replace their skilled and unskilled labor? Or the estimated $27 billion and at least $6 billion undocumented immigrants pay annually into Social Security and Medicare? Money that supports older citizens, not those who contributed it. How will we keep these funds afloat as our population continues to age and produce fewer children?
Under the Republican Party, Project 2025 would transform our republic into a theocracy, a nation governed by the fundamentalist right — think of countries like Iran — that would, like big brother, impose its values on the rest of us. It seeks to treat us like dependent children and return us to the 50s, which wasn’t all Ozzie and Harriet or Leave it To Beaver. It would be the end of the nation our Founding Fathers designed.
Is it the country you want to live in? If not, do not return Donald Trump and his party to power.
Editor’s note: The views in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of The Laurinburg Exchange.