Project 2025 Update: Recent Examples and Growing Concerns

Project 2025 update may sound far off, but it’s already becoming a gleam in states like Texas and Washington. Project 2025’s initiatives are no longer just ‘speculation’, but ‘trial balloons’ of legislative and judicial ‘small steps’ that hash out constitutional and judicial boundaries. They set a groundwork for future more sweeping changes which may be made. We present here key dimensions of the Project 2025 summary agenda and assess how they are coming to bear on individual rights and democratic structures.

Criminalizing Reproductive Healthcare

Project 25 synopsis imagines reassembling the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as the “Department of Life,” reorienting the Department with a new vision of its mission: dropping abortion as a form of health care and promoting policies that support life “from conception to natural death.” If these measures stick, women across the country may find themselves with tremendous limitations on important healthcare. Policies that limit physicians to acting in their best interests may inadvertently lead to patients dying from life-threatening conditions during pregnancy, for example ectopic pregnancies, sepsis and other complications.

The more troubling part of it is that under Project 2025 update, the Justice Department is in favor of criminalizing people who seek abortion or who provide it, even in a lifesaving situation. The result could be a more critical examination of deaths during miscarriage and stillbirth and could lead to women involved in miscarriage and stillbirth personal losses facing intrusive legal action.

Texas cases, including recent rulings, are types of judicial precedents for which the 2025 Project seeks to be a model. In one example, a federal judge approved revoking FDA approval of mifepristone, an abortion drug. The Supreme Court did dismiss the case, but it shows some of the kinds of legal strategies that Plan 2025 proponents could use to erode reproductive rights in other cases.

Reducing Federal Involvement in Education

The organization’s heritage foundation calls for the decentralization of education through the disbanding of the federal Department of Education and its transfer to the states. Especially in low-income areas, many states today depend on federal funding to provide quality education. As an example, federal aid accounts for nearly 40 percent of Missouri’s educational funding, while only 4 percent of New York State’s. Unless there’s federal support, education would range greatly from place to place, reinforcing economic inequality along regional lines.

Other than defunding, Trump Project 2025 advocates for the selective application of civil rights to educational content. For instance, the recent restrictions on some AP African American Studies courses in places like Florida and Arkansas are a nuance of restricting curricula that spend any time talking about the histories and contributions of any marginalized population. Although we can’t live the world, cultural awareness and critical thinking are eroded by limiting this scope and students don’t become more prepared to engage in the global society that is becoming increasingly more diverse.

Additionally, the proposal for privatization of the student loan system as the initiative proposes would result in higher education costs and hinder middle- and working-class families’ access to education. If these changes continue over time, the U.S. workforce will begin to favor only those who can afford a good education, an education system in which diversity and competitiveness will diminish.

Expanding Immigration Enforcement and Mass Deportations

Transferring the custody of unaccompanied or unlawful immigrant children from HHS to DHS, enforcing rather than child welfare, is a central portion of Project 2025. Any repeal of sections of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act would allow for the expansion of detention practices that create significant human rights problems.

Mass deportation would also have a serious economic impact. Yearly, immigrants pay billions in taxes — sometimes without the benefit of social services — despite removing them would strain local economies, disrupt businesses, and cut back on contributions to social programs. The American Immigration Council Report: The Impact of Individual Deportations on the U.S. National Productivity shows that GDP will drop by $1.7 trillion if 11.1m people were dumped from the country at the same time, illuminating how important immigrants are to the country’s economic health and ingenuity.

Concentrating Power in the Executive Branch

Among the project’s other proposals is a big change in power for the executive branch, like reimplementing Trump’s Schedule F executive order to allow the president to fire certain portions of the federal workforce. It could result in a workforce of political appointees, particularly if soldiers are lumped in with civilians and transferred to the civil service reclassification since that principle has always been the non-politicization of the federal bureaucracy.

It also requires reshaping the federal transition process to give the president more control, even exceeding traditional oversight mechanisms. The centerpiece of Project 2025 is an executive branch being given the power to shape federal institutions without the checks and balances that have historically guaranteed democratic governance. A shift like this could disrupt the continuity of the federal government. It could feature the record breaking government shutdown in 2019, which crippled federal services and affected hundreds of thousands of workers.

Conclusion: Project 2025 Update

Project 2025 identifies a radical reordering of federal priorities that threatens the bedrock of our civil rights, education and governance. Project 2025 proponents are following a path of incremental but careful policy changes leading to a future in which the central executive power is consolidated, essential rights are restricted and educational equality is hollowed out. The expansion of these policies too often also erodes the rights of individuals and threatens the bedrock of American democracy — fairness and inclusion.