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What is Project 2025? And what does it mean for LGBTQ+ Americans?
Far-right activists have put together a series of directives for the next conservative president. Here's what it would mean to the LGBTQ+ community.
So what exactly is Project 2025? You’ve probably been hearing these words, but you may be sketchy on what they mean. We’re here to fill you in on the details thanks to a report by Accountable.US.
Basically, Project 2025 is a blueprint of what far-right activists want from the next conservative president — and Donald Trump is the conservative who just won the 2024 election. It includes plans to fire as many as 50,000 career federal employees and replace them with people who have unquestionable loyalty to the president; restrict access to contraception; possibly implement a national abortion ban; cut federal health care programs; and much more, designed to make the U.S. an authoritarian nation. And LGBTQ+ people are directly in its crosshairs.
“Project 2025 couldn’t make its anti-LGBTQ+ agenda any more clear. With far-right extremists at the helm, the project is a power grab by conservatives attempting to turn back the clock on hard-fought progress and fundamental rights,” Accountable.US President Caroline Ciccone said in a statement to Out’s sister publication The Advocate. “Project 2025 doesn’t just pose an existential threat to our democracy but seriously threatens the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ communities across the country.”
Project 2025 is spearheaded by the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation, with Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, as the project’s director. Several other Trump associates are involved, such as Stephen Miller, was a senior adviser to Trump during his presidency; and Roger Severino, a notoriously anti-LGBTQ+ official in Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services; and Kiron Skinner, who was director of the Office of Policy and Planning in the Trump administration until she was fired for abusive and unprofessional behavior, including homophobic remarks.
Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” is a document taking up 900 pages, but Accountable.US has put together a succinct summary of what Project 2025 would mean to LGBTQ+ Americans, and The Advocate has a first look. Here are the key points.
The project urges the next conservative president to basically ignore the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the court found that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in banning sex discrimination in the workplace, also bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. President Joe Biden, in contrast, had directed all federal agencies to implement the provisions of Bostock not just in the workplace but in health care, education, and other aspects of life.
It calls for barring transgender people from the military and to stop what it considers the “toxic normalization of transgenderism” across the government and American society. It seeks to abolish the president’s Gender Policy Council, “which it views as promoting abortion and the ‘new woke gender ideology,’” Accountable.US notes.
The next Health and Human Services secretary, Project 2025 recommends, should reverse what it calls a focus on “‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage, replacing such policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.”
“The Project 2025 playbook laments the fact that family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are ‘fraught with agenda items focusing on “LGBTQ+ equity,”’ making it clear that they intend to roll those agenda items back,” Accountable.US explains.
It further calls for the Department of Justice “to defend the First Amendment right of those who would discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. It also objects to the DOJ notifying states that their bans on abortion and medical services to transgender persons may violate federal law,” Accountable.US reports.
On foreign policy, Project 2025 says a new conservative president should dismantle and U.S. Agency for International Development programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, such as what it dubs “the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda.”
“Project 2025’s anti-LGBTQ+ policy recommendations are sweeping — affecting agencies throughout the federal government and even past Supreme Court rulings,” the Accountable.US summary concludes. “In no uncertain terms, Project 2025 and its allies intend to slash LGBTQ+ equity advancements in favor of what they claim is ‘life and strengthening the family.’”
