Why Women & Everyone Else Should Care about Project 2025

Led by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a terrible plan that seems to be working.

Jul 09, 2024

During the last Presidential debate, I waited for either candidate, President Biden or Donald Trump, to offer a vision for the future that I could see, believe in, or march toward. Golf strokes, alley cats, and Black Jobs aside, I turned off the television, feeling unsatisfied and left hanging.

I have spent the past week pouring over Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, all 922 pages. Although there were moments of rage, eye-rolling, and dread, I must admit I was impressed by its depth and breadth. The Mandate provides a precise diagnosis of the problems facing America from the point of view of conservatives, a sweeping vision for change underpinned by consistent and relatable right-wing values, and a road map for how to make it happen.

Project 2025 doesn’t seek to hide its agenda or ambition—it leads with both.

For them, Immigrants, the decline in marriage, big government, the woke mob, DEI, abortion, independent and saucy women, students saddled with loan debt, regulation, critical race theory, the Gays, poor people, and gender are the problems. The perceived loss of power and status of white men, given impending demographic shifts, are also high on the list of grievances to address. There’s something in Project 2025 for everyone! In my Kendrick Lamar voice, they are the biggest haters.

The Mandate mentions abortion 198 times, some variation of woke 64 times, and gender 97 times.

It’s clear: an overarching goal of Project 2025 is to continue chipping away at women’s progress and gains in the workforce and society. For some reason, they want women at home rearing children, churning milk, and kneading dough. Even if we were, the economy would come to a screeching halt. But not all of us, though. They’d want poor women and women of color to continue to work.

If Project 2025 had its druthers, the only people with rights and protections would be cisgender white men, their trad wives, and their children (unless they come out as LGBTQIA). Everyone else, who cares?

Is it extreme? Is it bigoted? Is it over the top? Is it fear-based and mongering? YES!

Project 2025 is strategically and intentionally working to send America back to a time when people of color and women had fewer rights, no power, and no real say.

For progressives and feminists, having the conservative playbook should be a good thing. Instead, it feels scary and paralyzing, or like one more thing, we don’t have an answer to or a strategy to address (at least it does to me). It doesn’t have to be this way.

It’s time to get our heads in the game. We need to lock in and get to work laying out a vision, creating a strategy, and articulating goals that will move the country in the direction we all believe it should be going. It’s not the time for handwringing, grandstanding, or purity politics. We have work to do.

In this article, I provide an overview of Project 2025 and what it seeks to do (which is a lot). I also share my thoughts on its impact on women, gender rights, and families—what I know best and what I believe we should do.

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 is a broad coalition organized by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. It comprises more than 50 conservative organizations and more than 400 scholars and policy experts who have come together to articulate their vision and plans for the future of America, the Federal Government, and society once a new conservative Administration is sworn into office. Paul Dans leads it.

The Project includes a book, The Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, a Presidential Transition Project, a personnel pipeline, training for potential political appointees, and a Playbook for the first 180 days.

Project 2025 includes a handful of conservative women’s and family-centered organizations. They include the Independent Women’s Forum, the Center for Family & Human Rights, Concerned Women for America, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, the Family Policy Alliance, and the Family Research Council.

What is the Mandate for Leadership?

The Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise is a playbook that continues to execute a robust conservative agenda that has taken flight and accelerated over the last six years. A conservative Supreme Court, federal and state-level judge appointments, right-leaning and ideologically driven elected officials, and an odious and infectious culture war have coalesced into a moment that, at times, feels unstoppable.

It’s not new. In the Winter of 1981, the Heritage Foundation issued a similar mandate and policy recommendations to incoming President Ronald Reagan. The book put the conservative movement and Reagan on the same page. By the end of that year, more than 60 percent of its recommendations had become policy. The Foundation releases the Mandate every four years.

After Donald Trump’s first year in office, the Administration had implemented 64 percent of the Heritage Foundation’s policy recommendations.

Project 2025 has been around for decades; what makes it a five-alarm fire now?

They’re succeeding. Conservatives are working the plan, and the plan is working.

Over the last few years, women’s rights, especially reproductive health and rights, have experienced several setbacks and attacks. These setbacks, coupled with the rise in extremism, a conservative Supreme Court committed to unraveling years of progress and precedence on voting and civil rights, a raging culture war, and a precarious election cycle, make Project 2025 an acute threat to democracy, and our social, cultural and economic well-being.

What would happen to the White House Gender Policy Council Under Project 2025?

Under Project 2025, the White House Gender Policy Council would be dismantled. The Gender Policy (GPC) Council, established by President Biden to advance gender equity and equality in domestic and foreign policy development and implementation, would be dismantled immediately, and its work, including its landmark National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality, would be halted.

Project 2025 calls for the immediate revocation of Executive Order 14020 and every policy, including sub-regulatory guidance documents, produced on behalf of or related to establishing or promoting the Gender Policy Council and its subsidiary issues.

What does Project 2025 say about Reproductive Health & Rights?

A lot, and it’s not good.

Project 2025 states that overturning Roe v. Wade was just the beginning. The Mandate says Congress and the next conservative Administration should pursue pro-life policies and work to enact robust laws, policies, and regulations that will limit access to the full range of reproductive health care for women, including abortion. Project 2025 also states protecting life should be among the core objectives of United States Foreign Assistance.

Here’s what else Project 2025 calls for related to reproductive health and rights:

Project 2025 calls for defunding critical reproductive healthcare services and organizations in the U.S. and globally. It would also reinstate the Global Gag Order, rescind FDA approval for mifepristone, and compel the CDC and other agencies to adopt pro-life policies and positions.

Defund Planned Parenthood. Prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds by issuing guidance that allows states to defund Planned Parenthood in their state Medicaid plans and/or propose rulemaking to interpret the Medicaid statute to disqualify providers of elective abortion from the Medicaid program.
Passage of the Protecting Life and Taxpayers Act, 50, which would defund abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood.
No travel funding for abortion care. Project 2025 advises the next Administration to withdraw and prohibit travel funding for abortion care.
Reinstate the Global Gag Order, prohibiting support to organizations that provide women with access to the full range of reproductive health care options, including abortion care.
Add new language to PLGHA policy (the global gag rule) that would ban foreign assistance, including humanitarian aid, if an organization provides abortion care or support to women and families.
Rescind the 2021 Protecting Women’s Health at Home and Abroad Memorandum, which restored funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and required adequate funds to be directed to support women’s health needs globally.
Declare new goals for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including pursuing a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life in all HHS programs and activities.
The CDC should eliminate funding and programs to organizations, institutions, or entities that support the full range of women’s reproductive health care choices, including abortion care.
The FDA should revisit and rescind its initial approval of abortion pills and require an in-person visit with a physician before obtaining medication.
The federal government should withdraw Medicaid funds from states that require abortion insurance or that violate the Weldon Amendment.
Rewrite the Affordable Care Act (ACA) abortion separate payment regulation to require consumers to pay separately for charges associated with abortion care.
Codify the Hyde and Weldon Amendments. Permanently codify the Hyde family of amendments and the protections provided by the Weldon Amendment by passing the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act56 (Hyde) and the Conscience Protection Act57 (Weldon).

What does Project 2025 say about Sex and Gender?

Project 2025 is anti-LGBTQIA rights and protections in society, in the military, and in the workforce. The Project also wants to rescind civil rights protections for transgender people in the workplace, prevent inclusive data collection, and allow government agencies, schools, and employers to discriminate against LGBTQIA without consequence or penalty.

Related to sex and gender, Project 2025 proposes:

Rescind Collection of Data on Non-Binary Individuals: Project 2025 would rescind the Office of Civil Rights notice on Mandatory Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), which proposed to create and collect data on a new “nonbinary” sex category, in addition to the current “male” or “female” sex categories.
Rescind the current Title IX regulations regarding the definition of sex and define it under Title IX to mean only biological sex recognized at birth and as a fixed biological fact across all departments and agencies. It should also work to strengthen protections for faith-based educational institutions, programs, and activities related to this matter.
Prohibit the USDA or any other federal agency from withholding services from federal or state agencies—including but not limited to K–12 schools—that choose not to replace “sex” with “Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity (SOGI)” in that agency’s administration of Title IX.
Gender-Affirming Names or Pronouns: Project 2025 would work with Congress and states to ensure that no public education employee or contractor can address a student using a name other than the name listed on a student’s birth certificate without a parent or guardian’s permission.
Project 2025 would allow discrimination against transgender people in hiring and firing and loosen civil rights protections.
Rescind regulations that prohibit sex discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.
Military Service: Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military.

What does Project 2025 say about Family Economic Security & Well-Being?

Marriage Promotion and TANF should be Linked. Marriage, healthy family formation, and delaying sex to prevent pregnancy should be stated goals of TANF and should be measured.
Re-implement work Requirements for SNAP (food assistance program). Project 2025 would require non-disabled individuals to work in order to receive SNAP benefits. Today, about a third of Families Who Received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Benefits Had Two or More People Working
Eliminate Broad Eligibility for Support Programs. Project 2025 calls for eliminating assumed eligibility for social benefit programs based on receiving benefits from related programs.
Limit school and school district eligibility for free lunch programs for low-income students. Project 2025 would require the USDA to clarify that only an individual school or a school district as a whole, not a subset of schools within a district, must meet the 40-percent criteria to be eligible for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) to receive free lunch.
Work with lawmakers to eliminate the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows the nation’s highest-poverty schools and districts to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications. Project 2025 wants to prohibit the USDA from providing meals to students during the summer.
Increase Funding for Marriage Promotion and Abstinence Education: Project 2025 would increase Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) Program funding. Grants or funds would provide state-level high school education resources and curricula on healthy marriages, sexual risk avoidance, and healthy relationships. The project also wants to allow child welfare funding to be used for marriage and relationship education.

Race and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Don’t Say ______: Project 2025 proposes to eliminate the following terms from every federal rule, agency, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and legislation: sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other terms that may be deemed (by conservatives) to be inappropriate or offensive.
Elimination of the Collection of Data by Race and Ethnicity: Project 2025 would seek to ban the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from collecting race and ethnicity data.

What Should and Can We Do?

Good question. I believe there are a few things we can do to turn the tide, unify progressives, and inject hope into our democracy.

We need a plan.

The good news is that we also have think tanks, scholars, policy wonks, and organizations with shared values, ideas, and strategies that we should unify and bring together to articulate a big vision. Let’s build a real progressive coalition to create a bold and robust policy agenda and platform that is reflective of our values and rooted in our country’s diversity and richness.

A few weeks ago, some progressives met in St. Louis, Missouri, to begin work on a progressive agenda. The work was derailed over whether we could present a unified front. Many felt we could not. That’s OK as long as we’re on the same page about a few basic things, such as:

Climate change is real, democracy is important, bodily autonomy and integrity are for everyone, racism and sexism exist and should end, family is chosen, no one is above the law, my body, my choice, equal pay for equal work, childcare and healthcare for all, people should have their basic needs met in a wealthy society, work should be dignified, high-quality public education is good, invest in people and communities first, one person, one vote, do good globally, cut carbon emissions, regulations support, not stifle the economy, everyone should pay their fair share in taxes, corporations are not people, checks and balances are good, native land is sovereign land, and Kendrick Lamar won the great rap beef.

We can build from here.

Next, we can all say and do something.

It was both stomach-turning and scary to witness masked white supremacists hop out of U-Haul trucks and parade down the streets of Nashville, Tennessee. It’s all happening on our watch. We can’t let it go down this way. We must keep engaging and call this stuff out when we see it. If not, we normalize it and make it OK. Then it happens again. The line for what we tolerate gets closer and closer.

Say what you’re thinking and feeling.

At times, we all feel sad, fearful, outraged, enraged, scared, indignant, despondent, checked out, nihilistic, cynical, skeptical, or afraid–let’s say so out loud and when it matters. Let’s practice saying what we think and feel in safe and not-so-safe spaces.

You can get involved and engaged.

Find a community group or organization focused on an issue you are passionate about and volunteer your time or give of your resources. Great organizations, think tanks and community-based groups are diligently working to defend against Project 2025’s goals and aims. They include the National Women’s Law Center, the National Partnership for Women and Families, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay Lesbian Taskforce, Mom’s Rising, and many others. We should support them.

Tell me what you think; what should we do about Project 2025? Is it a blip? Does it matter?