Project 2025: Trump’s Plan to Dismantle Democracy
Summary: Project 2025 is a 900-page blueprint for Trump’s agenda if reelected. Crafted by dozens of top MAGA Republican organizations, including Christian nationalist groups, the document comprises detailed plans for unprecedented attacks on nearly every aspect of Americans’ lives, including restrictions on health care, cuts to critical social services, and rollbacks of basic freedoms. Project 2025 is a direct threat to the Jewish community by fundamentally changing the longstanding freedom of religion Jews have enjoyed in this country and imposing Christian nationalist values at every level of society while dismantling the civil rights protections that keep Jews and other minority communities safe.
A Danger to the Jewish Community:
Project 2025 removes key safeguards for religious freedom that Jews have relied on to practice Judaism openly and safely. It calls for the elimination of the Department of Education, which oversees reports of civil rights violations, including allegations of antisemitism. The Office of Civil Rights, currently housed in the Department of Education, has been a critical service for Jewish students, especially as antisemitism spiked following October 7.
Project 2025 also significantly weakens the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, which serve as a necessary resource against antisemitic attacks. The 922-page document never once mentions antisemitism. Instead, Project 2025 focuses on dismantling separations between church and state and dismantling civil rights protections that keep Jews safe, all while targeting the top priorities for Jewish voters by stripping reproductive freedom, prohibiting measures to combat climate change, enforcing inhumane immigration policies, and implementing anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
Key Issues:
- Abortion: Project 2025 calls for extreme restrictions to reproductive care, including emergency contraceptives and FDA-approved abortion pills. Under Project 2025, the government would track women’s pregnancies, opening the door for potential prosecutions in the event of a miscarriage or abortion. Project 2025 states that “the Dobbs decision is just the beginning …” Project 2025 would institute a “backdoor” abortion ban by enforcing and reinterpreting 1800s era laws and create a national abortion ban by executive fiat.
- Separation of Church and State: Project 2025 erodes the separation of church and state by supporting Christian-based policies, including implementing a “biblically based” definition of marriage and incentivizing employers to enforce a Christian calendar for workers. It instills conservative Christian nationalist values into government agencies and public institutions, including schools and workplaces.
- Climate change: Project 2025 weakens the EPA and dismantles the National Weather Service, which oversees the management of extreme weather events such as floods, heat waves, and wildfires. Project 2025 also rolls back environmental regulations that keep dangerous chemicals out of our cities and eliminates offices that improve renewable energy technology. It rolls back funding for green infrastructure and industries, cutting thousands of jobs created during the Biden administration.
- Democracy: Project 2025 encourages the president to unilaterally weaponize their power through the Department of Justice and FBI to prosecute political opponents. By making these agencies totally subservient to the President, they will be prohibited from doing their jobs of investigating misconduct, and will instead be directed against anyone the President chooses. Project 2025 supports the firing of thousands of federal employees to make room for January 6th insurrectionists to fill those positions. Project 2025 undermines our elections; it bans critical systems used to combat foreign interference in elections. It also erodes voting rights by politicizing the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which enforces the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act. The Civil Rights Division also deals with hate crimes against the Jewish community and other minority communities.
- Education: Project 2025 eliminates the Department of Education, ends the Head Start program and cuts access to early education programs, disproportionately impacting children of low-income families. It is a direct threat to public education and prioritizes private education programs with little oversight to ensure quality, equitable education. By promoting privatization and ending federal supervision and moving funds from public to private schools, Project 2025 opens the door to Christian religious education in schools around America.
- LGBTQ+ Rights: Project 2025 guts civil rights programs and implements discriminatory policies that roll back protections for the LGBTQ+ community. Under Project 2025, government agencies would abolish the Gender Policy Council, which advances health equity and combats gender-based violence, dismantle DEI programs, remove terms including “sexual orientation and gender identity,” “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and “gender equality” from federal rules and regulations, and eliminate transgender health care in Medicare and Medicaid.
- Social Security, Healthcare, and Food Assistance: Project 2025 guts Medicaid funding and benefits and would force 18.5 million Americans off Medicaid. It proposes ending health care protections for people with pre-existing conditions, eliminating the $35 monthly cap on the price of insulin for seniors, and adding a tax for health insurance through employers. Project 2025 also raises the retirement age to cut Social Security benefits. In New York alone, nearly 27% of Jews were below the poverty line, and 15% received SNAP and benefits threatened by Project 2025. A disproportionate share of those in poverty are among the Orthodox Haredi communities with very large families, amongst whom 43% nationally earn a household income below $50,000.
- Workers’ Rights: Project 2025 would dismantle unions and workers’ right to organize and overhaul workers’ pay programs and benefits including by allowing employers to stop paying hourly workers overtime. It calls for the elimination of DEI programs in the workforce and the weakening of anti-discrimination policies.