Decoding Project 2025: Fight Back Against this Anti-LGBTQ+ Agenda

by Center for Education, Research, and Advocacy

This election year there has been much discussion around Project 2025, a political transition plan being pushed by a coalition of conservative extremists. Project 2025 is comprised of numerous harmful policy proposals that would harm access to healthcare, economic security, and social services support, especially for already vulnerable and marginalized communities. Project 2025’s goal is for extreme conservative ideals to be enacted across multiple Federal agencies, to inform state legislation, and to train appointees in its conservative tenets through an online “education academy.” Project 2025 specifically targets LGBTQ+ people and lays out a clear plan to erode or eliminate non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people. It is imperative to understand what Project 2025 is so that we can take action to prevent this threat from taking hold!

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 is a 900-page document published by the Heritage Foundation that is meant to serve as a road map for a conservative extremist federal government. Project 2025 contains a 180-day playbook of regulations and executive orders that could be signed and implemented by the next conservative president upon taking office. It also includes a database of potential presidential appointees and information on the kinds of bills conservatives in Congress and state legislatures should attempt to enact. Project 2025 contains plans for enacting long-standing extreme conservative idealsthat impact all aspects of everyday life, including reducing federal spending on social services for low-income people, eliminating efforts to fight climate change, increasing military spending, and impeding reproductive and sexual healthcare access, to name a few.

Project 2025 was created by the Heritage Foundation. Founded in 1973, the Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank whose mission is “to formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.” As part of furthering their mission, the Heritage Foundation has a long history of anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy. For example, the Heritage Foundation has fought against out LGBTQ+ military service, LGBTQ+ Boy Scouts and leaders, marriage equality, protections against discrimination for LGBTQ+ workers, rights of LGBTQ+ parents, bans on conversion therapy,  evidence-based healthcare for trans youth, and LGBTQ+ inclusive curricula. The Heritage Foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement in the 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose policies were informed by the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership. The Mandate for Leadership would continue to be released every Presidential election year as a way for the Heritage Foundation to instill conservative and traditional ideals into the federal government. Project 2025 is the name for this year’s iteration of the Mandate for Leadership.

The main difference between Project 2025 and past Mandate for Leadership editions is the massive coalition of conservative and far-right groups that have contributed to Project 2025, uniting under this singular vision. Some high-profile organizations that have contributed to Project 2025 alongside the Heritage Foundation include the Family Research Council (FRC), Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). All these organizations have a long history of being powerful lobbyists on behalf of conservative causes. Many of these organizations are designated hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center due to their goals and activities being based on a shared antipathy towards people based on race, religion, ethnicity/nationalities/national origin, gender and/or sexual identity.  The goal of many of these groups is to reduce or eliminate LGBTQ+ rights using legislative advocacy. Project 2025 is a consolidation of these groups’ decades-long campaigns to erode or eliminate many non-discrimination protections for the LGBTQ+ community.

How does Project 2025 affect the LGBTQ+ community?

Given the anti-LGBTQ+ work of many of the groups behind Project 2025, it is not surprising that one of Project 2025’s main goals is to drastically roll back rights for the LGBTQ+ community to promote “life and strengthening the family.” Many of these policy changes would be enacted by the President through executive orders and presidential appointments. Just a few of these actions would include:

  • Department of Justice (DOJ): Project 2025 would encourage the DOJ to pursue litigation that is consistent with the agenda of the President. This means litigators with the DOJ would be encouraged to prosecute someone performing abortion care or providing gender-affirming care (GAC) to someone traveling from another state where that care is banned, or where the language on how and when these procedures can be given is vague. This would cause providers of services like abortion and GAC to refuse to provide these services out of fear of prosecution. This would put the physical and mental health of LGBTQ+ patients at risk.
  • Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): Project 2025 recommends that the future HHS secretary reverse focus on LGBTQ+ equity, and instead enact policies that encourage “marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.”  Project 2025 urges for policies that protect adoption and foster agencies that refuse to work with LGBTQ+ couples, as well as bans on in-vitro fertilization (IVF)—preventing many LGBTQ+ people from becoming parents. Project 2025 also would eliminate free birth control access and enact a national abortion ban.
  • Medicaid: Project 2025 calls for imposing targeted time limits or lifetime caps on Medicaid benefits. Similar policies have previously been introduced, including a proposal to impose a 36-month lifetime maximum for Medicaid coverage. It also proposes introducing a work requirement to be eligible for Medicaid coverage, even though work requirements for Medicaid have been shown to reduce insurance coverage for patients while not increasing employment. These proposals would greatly limit and restrict access to Medicaid, and this would disproportionately impact LGBTQ+ communities. LGBTQ+ people utilize Medicaid at higher rates than non-LGBTQ+ with around 21% of LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. accessing Medicaid every year. This would put millions of LGBTQ+ patients at risk of losing their healthcare coverage immediately as Project 2025 may retroactively impose these limits.
  • Supreme Court: Project 2025 calls for not only limiting the application of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County,which held that Title VII’s sex discrimination protections applied to LGBTQ+ Americans, but also threatens to prevent the ruling from extending to other sexual and gender minority communities, such as two-spirit, intersex, an asexual Americans.
  • Department of Defense: Project 2025 threatens to reverse policies allowing trans individuals to serve in the military.
  • Department of Education (DOE): Project 2025 calls for eliminating the DOE. This would eliminate most of the mechanisms to enforce non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students and put their lives and well-being at risk.

How can we fight back against Project 2025?

Project 2025 is just the beginning of a long-term plan to eliminate protections for LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people. First, it’s important that you learn more about what Project 2025 is. You can read more info about what Project 2025 is and how extensive Project 2025 goals are. You can also read our blog on the state of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.

With the Presidential election coming up in November, it is important to vote for candidates that support the civil rights and equity of everyone. Be sure you are registered to vote. To register to vote, receive information on voting by mail, find a polling location, or get updates on the upcoming election you can visit your local election boards for more information.

To learn more about how Howard Brown Health contributes to vital advocacy work and has an impact on local, state, and federal policymaking, please visit our Advocacy webpage. 

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