Why Trump Can’t Disavow His Support for Project 2025
Ex-president Donald Trump disavow Project 2025, which is questionable for American nation. While his stated in July that he had never heard of Project 25, which is the policy guide to the Heritage Foundation on what the former president could accomplish if he pursued a second term. But by July of the same year, reports emerged that the 2025 Project is ostensibly shut down because of Trump’s ‘ongoing criticism.’ Despite the performance’s seeming purpose to create distance between Trump and his more extreme supporters, Trump’s entourage and key advisors, as well as J.D. Vance, his running mate have clear links to Project 2025 masterminds. Indeed, it can be assumed that this kind of “disavowal” is mostly about branding and not as much about separation.
The policies of Project 2025 are gradually being implemented in thes states including Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Florida to mention but a few. Killed (and criminalized) in the education section of the plan is teachers and librarians, alongside a call to dismantle public education and replace it with for-profit schools, homeschools, and a curriculum informed by Christian nationalism.
Book Bans and Targeting LGBTQ+ and Inclusive Literature
Forces associated with the Project 25 document, including Moms for Liberty, have been trying to have books with content on the LGBTQ+ community and more diverse representation of the History removed from the schools. Project 2025 goes even further by calling for the arrest of educators and librarians.
In the project’s forward, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts calls for stringent actions: There are good reasons why it is free speech because pornography should be banned. Anyone who produces or distributes it should be in jail. They should be listed and treated as sex offenders of the worst kind: Educators and public librarians who purvey it. However, the term “pornography,” in this context simply means something very different and more substantiated by ideology.
Andra Watkins, a writer who has studied Christian nationalists, says that the phrase in question covers all forms of material that do not fit certain conservative religious angles. For example, some politicians stigmatize any text, containing the topics of LGBTQ+ or progressive gender discussions, as pornographic. This is also why a Florida school board recently tried to ban Alan Gratz’s book, Ban This Book, while there was no inappropriate content; the book only discusses censorship, which is racy.
A recent study conducted by the Washington Post on book challenges observed in the current 2021-2022 academic year noted that about one half of the books cited were either containing themes or characters that are of the LGBTQ+ group. As PEN America found, there was an impressive increase in book bans in the USA during 2022-2023, with the complaints referring to ‘indecency’ even though the books mentioned have not been obscene by the legal definition. It’s possible that a teacher can be prosecuted for offering any book as part of the curriculum under Project 2025, including Maus or And Tango Makes Three, the story of two male penguins who adopted a chick. These two titles have, in the past, been blocked by reactionary organizations.
While Project 2025 claims to defend “parents’ rights”, the truth is that a handful of people decide what all children are to read or to watch, with minimal oversight. Of nearly one thousand, five hundred reported cases of book challenges, latest statistics indicate that the incidence is largely fueled by fifteen, fewer to eleven people, as identified by The Washington Post. A woman in Wisconsin was able to get 444 books removed from one district alone.
Legal Consequences for Educators: Already a Reality
Is the criminalization of teachers and librarians just demagoguery? Evidence suggests otherwise. Recently in Massachusetts police went to the eighth grade class to look for a book Gender Queer written by Maia Kobabe. Outright, Arkansas has legalized the criminalization of librarians who put into action materials that are considered as ‘harmful’ or ‘obscene’ with potential prison term for six years at the minimum. No less than eight states have similar laws with 17 more states contemplating such laws by April, 2024.
Project 2025’s Vision for “School Choice”: Redefining Public Education
School choice of Project 2025 is not about increasing options but paints a picture of doing away with public school education system altogether. In a memo from the Council for National Policy, (2017) which is a conservative policy-making organization, proposed the abolition of public schools, picturing the future with “private schools ofSorts, religious schools and home schools. Project 2025 in sync with this vision, would have parents depend on expensive private schools, churches or home-schooling.
The CNP has also championed religious imagery particularly the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments in school. alaho’s state superintendent has recently taken this direction, ordering that the Bible be taught as a subject in the 5th through the 12th grades in public schools. Trump has also supported an idea of placing the Ten Commandments in all schools.
Voter Pushback Against Project 2025’s Agenda:
Even though the authorities have been rather fast in implementing the general guidelines of Project 2025, people seem to be rather indifferent towards measures promoted under this initiative. For instance, in November’s 2023 school board elections, there were winners against anti-voice book banning and restrictive curriculum movements. Moms for Liberty campaigned against several candidates, and in most cases, the targets lost by garneringthe least votes.
In Virginia, the incumbent, a high school teacher and Democratic candidate named Schuyler VanValkenburg, unseated a state senator who backed book bans favoured by Republicans. He made constant use of books as the means of influencing young people, which is particularly appealing to the voters who wish to have their children meet as many views as possible.
Trump Disavow Project 2025 and the Reality Behind Project2025
Trump’s recent statement that he has no idea about the background of the Document known as Project 2025 does not stem the truth. The Heritage Foundation and its kindred spirits, well entrenched in his corner of the politics, keep pushing this agenda forward aggressively. Transitioning seamlessly into their goals for Project 2025 is already happening in American schools, dictating changes with the aid of “parents’ rights” and eliminating liberties while doing so.
As seen by Project 2025, its impact brings America’s push for the broader meaning of learning and the social justice narrative of censored stories for children ever closer to its doom. Grown-ups might see this struggle as partisan games; children, or at least their caring parents, educators and communities, might see it as an attempt to determine who gets to shape the source codes that future generations will be allowed to read, learn—imagine.
