During his presidency, Donald Trump enacted 64 percent of The Heritage Foundation’s 2015 “Mandate for Leadership.” Perhaps some of these policies ring a bell: leaving the Paris Climate Accords, expanding offshore drilling, and increasing the defense budget, which he augmented by $225 billion. The document is not the first of its kind: Reagan implemented the Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership” back in 1981.
Fast forward to 2023—the Heritage Foundation published “Project 2025,” a 922-page presidential transition blueprint with over half of the contributors plucked directly from Trump’s campaign team, transition team, and administration—seriously. This time around, the goal is to give the next conservative president unfettered power to promote radical infringements on personal freedoms and fundamental rights.
This is a brief, terrifying glimpse into what a Trump presidency could mean for this country.
Women
Ban abortion pills. Project 2025 could lead to a ban of the widely used abortion pill mifepristone in the U.S. The document explicitly mentions the dangers of mifepristone and misoprostol, then calls on the government to “reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs because the politicized approval process was illegal from the start” (458).
Mifepristone is the safest and timeliest option for many women who live far from abortion providers and who can also get it through mail delivery if they feel more comfortable at home. Mifepristone has been an FDA-approved method for 24 years, but this agenda calls for the FDA to reverse its approval of the drug.
The Comstock Act. One proposal recommends enforcing the Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law from 1873 that prohibits both mailing of abortion drugs and medicines or instruments, all of which would render abortion clinics unable to ship medication. While the text does not explicitly reference the Comstock Act, which has not been clearly enforced in 100 years, it recommends that the FDA “stop promoting or approving mail-order abortions in violation of long-standing federal laws that prohibit the mailing and interstate carriage of abortion drugs” (459). Such language has led reproductive rights activists to fear that the broad law will be used to justify a backdoor abortion ban.
Surveillance. The CDC currently makes reports called “abortion surveillance” based on collected data, but some states like California have refused to provide such personal data. Project 2025 proposes that the CDC cut funding from states that do not provide the number of abortions taking place within their borders, including information like gestational age of the child, reasons, and methods.
The Family Agenda. Project 2025 includes a segment entitled “The Family Agenda,” a proposal that suggests for the chief of Health and Human Services to proudly proclaim that “married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”
A transgender military ban. In 2017, Trump banned transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. military, claiming their medical costs and “disruption” would distract from decisive victories. President Biden reversed the ban five days into his presidency in 2021, but this conservative mandate calls for a reinstatement of the military ban. The proposal also urges the next president to fully “Ban biological males from competing in women’s sports.”
The Heritage Foundation wishes to curb access to abortion and aspires to grant legal rights to fetuses over mothers, continuing what the Dobbs decision started. In addition to further stripping women of their right to choose, even in cases of rape or incest, Project 2025 also goes against most Americans’ wishes; the majority of Americans identify as “pro-choice,” oppose the Dobbs decision, and think mifepristone should be available as a prescription drug.
Environment
Butchering The Endangered Species Act (ESA). The ESA would be cut and rewritten (524); this act is a legal tool that has been successful in protecting wildlife and endangered species. Environmental experts specifically worry that Trump will remove protections from Yellowstone grizzly bears and gray wolves. In 2017, the Trump administration removed Endangered Species Act protections from grizzly bears within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Luckily, a federal judge declared the decision illegal in 2018. Read more on page 531, which urges Trump to “Revoke National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rules regarding predator control and bear baiting, which are matters for state regulation.”
Repealing the Antiquities Act. Project 2025 proposes a repeal of the Antiquities Act of 1906, which gave presidents the authority to preserve archaeological and historical sites, designating land and water as national monuments. Since the act was created, presidents have set land aside nearly 300 times—we have this act to thank for the preservation of the Grand Canyon National Park in 1908, and Acadia National Park in 1916. When Trump was president, he removed protection from nearly a million acres of the Bears Ear monument in Utah, allowing companies and individuals to apply for leases for mining and energy drilling; protections are currently restored under the Biden administration. Project 2025 mentions the Antiquities Act on page 532: “As has every Democratic President before him beginning with Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden has abused his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906…the new administration must seek repeal of the Antiquities Act of 1906.”
Diminishing the Clean Air Act. Project 2025 seeks to get rid of the part of the Clean Air Act that enables the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions at power plants and set air quality standards. Experts warn public health will be endangered by a Trump presidency if this occurs; in 2023, air pollution control devices saved nearly $100 billion in health costs and prevented 9,000 deaths, according to the American Journal of Public Health.
“Breaking up” the NOAA. Project 2025 explicitly states a proposal to dismantle or “break up” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The NOAA is a critical federal department that helps predict changes in climate, oceans, and weather patterns, helping support preparedness for severe weather events. To quote the text of the document directly on page 675, they claim the NOAA‘s six offices, including the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Weather Service, “form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
Anti-electric vehicles, (ironically enough). The document urges the next president to end the “unprovoked war on fossil fuels” and to “respect the right of Americans to buy and drive cars of their own choosing, rather than trying to force them into electric vehicles” (286). It may be of note that Tesla sells more electric cars in the United States than any other company combined. In July, Elon Musk pledged to commit $45 million a month to a Super PAC funding Trump.
Promoting climate change denial, slashing resources for the NOAA, and reducing clean air regulations would gravely endanger the American public and the environment. The list of attacks on our environment doesn’t end with these few proposals—read on here.
Education
Dismantling the Department of Education. The Department of Education is described in the document as a “convenient one-stop shop for the woke education cartel, which—as the COVID era showed—is not particularly concerned with children’s education.” Mind you, the Department of Education is the only U.S. federal agency that has a mandate to ensure that there is equal opportunity in education among disabled and low-income students and to fund school districts for both elementary and secondary education. Project 2025 would eliminate this agency entirely.
Eliminating Title I. Project 2025 proposes getting rid of Title I and its funding entirely, stating that it should be administered “as a no-strings-attached formula block grant” and with revenue responsibility falling to states instead of using federal funding (325). Title I provides financial assistance to high-poverty schools and school districts. Instead, states would receive block grants without oversight or regulations on how they are apportioned. 800,000 infants, preschoolers, and toddlers would be stripped of early learning services as a result, according to the National Education Association.
Title IX. Yes, this document rolls back Title IX protections that currently protect from discrimination based on sex. It urges the next leader to “rescind the current Administration’s Title IX regulations” and restore those promoted by former Secretary Betsy DeVos from 2020, defining “sex” under Title IX as biological sex at time of birth. As a refresher, DeVos’s rule offered new rights to students accused of sexual assault, essentially allowing victims of rape to be cross-examined by their rapists. Live cross-examinations can be incredibly traumatic to survivors of sexual violence.
Head Start. The project would nix Head Start, a program that has served almost 40 million children to date, promoting development and support of children in poverty and providing a pathway to parents seeking employment and education. Instead, Project 2025 urges the next administration to use taxpayer dollars to fund private and religious schools, while eradicating Head Start and GEAR UP, a federal program that helps students from low-income backgrounds graduate high school and prepare for college (361).
Trans discrimination. Project 2025, written by Trump aides, proposes legalizing discrimination of people with a transgender status in schools. Just flip to page 334 for reasoning: “On its first day in office, the next Administration should signal its intent to enter the rulemaking process to restore the Trump Administration’s Title IX regulation, with the additional insistence that “sex” is properly understood as a fixed biological fact.”
The imperial presidency. The Heritage Foundation’s plan would forever alter the U.S. system of checks and balances, concentrating power in the hands of the president.
Vote
It should be known that the policies touched upon here are barely scraping the surface of all of the harmful and immoral proposals enumerated in Project 2025. Trump relied on the Heritage foundation’s mandate when he was president, and he will again if given the opportunity.
Know what you are voting for when you show up to cast your ballot.
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