What’s Project 2025 and Why Is It So Freaking Terrifying?

If you’ve been around any queer⁠ (queer: In the context of sexuality, a broad term for sexual orientation that can describe any number of orientations which are not heterosexual. People who identify as queer may be bisexual or pansexual, gay or lesbian, questioning, asexual or more.) , feminist, or politically engaged communities lately, you’ve likely heard people talking about something called Project 2025, and often in a tone usually reserved for asteroids heading for earth, wildfires, and other disastrous scenarios, and that’s for good reason. What the heck is Project 2025? Why should you care? Is there anything that can be done to stop it (hint: there is)? This guide is here to help you understand what the project is and what’s at stake.

What is it?

Project 2025 is a step-by-step plan that outlines exactly how the United States political system can be gutted, taken over and repurposed to reshape society in the most extreme and violent ways. Unlike offensive tweets or hateful campaign speeches, it isn't just opinion or rhetoric, it's something far more dangerous: a clear and detailed plan, backed by rich and powerful groups. The ACLU summed Project 2025 up as “a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with The Heritage Foundation, a longstanding conservative think tank that opposes abortion⁠ (abortion: A procedure to intentionally end a pregnancy before a birth. Miscarriage is also sometimes called "spontaneous abortion," even though it is usually not intended.) and reproductive rights⁠ (reproductive rights: Legal or practical rights and freedoms relating to sex, reproduction, and reproductive health. The right to choose when and if to become a parent for ourselves or to become or remain pregnant or not are some kinds of reproductive rights.) , LGBTQ⁠ (LGBTQ: L = lesbian, G = gay, B = bisexual, T = transgender, Q = queer or questioning. Additional letters sometimes added include U = unsure, I = intersex, P = pansexual, A= asexual, S = straight allies.) rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity. Project 2025’s largest publication, “Mandate For Leadership,” is a 900-page manual for reorganizing the entire federal government agency by agency to serve a conservative agenda.” The project is a blueprint that will most certainly be used if Trump wins the election in November, no matter how much the Trump campaign currently claims to be completely ignorant of it.

“Mandate for Leadership” is 900+ pages of the most nightmarish policy imaginable if you’re queer, trans, a woman, a person of color, a young person, and/or someone who cares even the tiniest bit about living in a democracy.

Its plans include:

• Outlawing what it calls “ transgender⁠ (transgender: Describes people who find that the gender applied to them because of the sex they were assigned at birth is incorrect.) ideology.” By this, the authors of the project simply means trans people existing in the world. Based on the language in the proposal, there’s a very good chance this would make being trans in public illegal. Even if it never reached that point, the project proposes to remove all access to affirming health care, safe schools, and any of the dozens of things trans people need and deserve simply to survive.
• Removal of all legal recognition and protection of queer (LGBTQA+) people and families, including in the areas of marriage, adoption, education, and employment.
• Resurrection of the Comstock Act to restrict access to medical abortion and some kinds of contraception⁠ (contraception: Devices, medications or behaviors used to intentionally aim to prevent pregnancy, including the condom, the cervical barrier, the implant, the patch, the pill, the rhythm method, the ring, the shot, the IUD, spermicide and withdrawal.) , as well as access to information about things like abortion and contraception.
• Renaming The Department of Health and Human Services the, “Department of Life” and ordering it to use, “every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.” This would very likely be used to target individuals who get abortions and the providers who offer them, as well as act as yet another deterrent and barrier for people seeking reproductive care.
• Limiting student loan forgiveness.
• Relaxing existing restrictions on child labor.

Does that worry you? Because it sure as heck worries us.

What about sex education?

Project 2025 would have disastrous consequences for Scarleteen, the work we do, the young people we serve and for other organizations and services like us.

I spoke with author, longtime friend of Scarleteen, and head of EducateUS, Jaclyn Friedman, about what Project 2025 means for sex⁠ (sex: Different things people choose to do to actively express or enact sexuality and sexual feelings; often this involves genitals, but not always. ) education. She said that the project, “will give individual parents the right to sue schools (and possibly teachers) for teaching their kids anything they don't want their kids to hear, and then they're giving parents "strict scrutiny" status, which means it would be very easy for parents to win those lawsuits. This will make it a huge financial risk for schools to teach sex ed, to the point that most schools just won't take that risk.”

Additionally, a major goal of Project 2025 is to redefine anything concerning sexuality and gender⁠ (gender: Characteristics that are seen or presented as distinguishing between male and female in a society. Gender may or may not include assigned or chosen: social roles, feelings, behaviors and/or presentation or appearance.) that they say is harmful to children as pornography⁠ (pornography: Written, visual or other kinds of media either expressly designed to elicit feelings of sexual desire and/or which people use to elicit those feelings.) . In other words, if they were to consider a basic anatomical guide to one’s own body parts harmful to children, as groups like this often do when they include sexual⁠ (sexual: About or relating in some way to sex or sexuality.) and reproductive anatomy⁠ (anatomy: The body, parts of the body, or physical structure of organisms like people, animals or plants.) , that guide would then be defined and treated as pornography. Given that these are the same people who treat any representation of queer and trans people, no matter how innocuous, as harmful, we can assume this means any material featuring those topics will be considered porn.

They want to make anything and everything they define to be pornography illegal and imprison anyone who makes what they consider to be, or define as, pornography. So, if any information about sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation is classed as porn, that means it will be illegal.

What does that mean for the librarian who keeps books like the frequently banned “And Tango Makes Three” or our founder’s “Wait, What?” on the shelf, the teacher who wants to talk about the AIDS⁠ (AIDS: Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a very serious and often deadly disease of the immune system caused by HIV. ) epidemic, and we here at Scarleteen?

The creators of the project have an answer for that: “The people who produce and distribute it [pornography] should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.”

You read that right. Sex offenders.

Look, we’re no strangers to being called any number of nasty things for the work we do. In our 25 years, we’ve probably been called every horrible thing in the book. This proposal is the worst possible version of that trend, in that it puts legal repercussions behind that bigotry and vitriol.

It’s scary and it’s infuriating on so many levels. Many of our staff, writers, and volunteers are ourselves survivors of very real sexual abuse⁠ (abuse: Purposeful harm or mistreatment of another person, which can be verbal, emotional, physical or sexual. An ongoing pattern or cycle of such mistreatment or harm can characterize an abusive relationship.) and assault. To equate giving honest information to young people about topics like bodies or sexual orientation⁠ (sexual orientation: A term -- like homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, queer, straight, lesbian, gay, asexual -- used to describe a person's usual or current pattern of emotional, romantic and/or sexual attraction to other people as it relates to or is about gender.) with that kind of harm is an insulting and intentional distortion of reality. Moreover, data shows over and over that the kind of sex education we provide reduces the risk of assault and abuse for young people. To act as if it’s harmful and, in doing so, replace it with ineffective, narrow-minded, retrograde information about sex, gender, and relationships is setting young people up for real harm.

Scarleteen emerged from a desire⁠ (desire: A feeling of wanting something. In the context of sex or sexuality, desire can be a feeling of a physical and psychological want for any kind of sex or way of being sexual.) to support and inform young people, you all remain the heart of why we do what we do. You deserve a livable planet, a functioning society, and to be able to exist in the world as your true selves. Project 2025 is the antithesis of that.

What can you do?

If you can vote in elections in the United States, including the upcoming Presidential election, vote (and make sure others can, too): Voting is a tool to help keep the people who support, or would not stop, Project 2025 from positions of power. You can register here and check your status here (or double-check; several states have been purging their voter rolls in an attempt at disenfranchisement). If you’re 17, check to see if you can pre-register to vote.

You can also help by making sure everyone who is eligible to vote is able to exercise that right. VoteRiders has a variety of in-person and remote ways to help. If it’s in your capacity, you might consider being a poll worker to help people on election day.

Regardless of where you are a citizen or how old you are, you can spread the word about it: Project 2025 is wildly unpopular, so much so that when it was connected to Trump, his approval rating tanked. Shockingly, when you back a plan that will make life worse for basically everyone, people don’t like that. So, one way to keep this plan from happening is to make sure as many people as possible know what the plan is and how intends to implement it.

For some people, simply pointing out⁠ (out: Short for ‘out of the closet’. When someone’s LGBTQ+ identity is known to other people.) the horror show Project 2025 is for reproductive rights and queer and trans existence will be enough to convince them it needs to be stopped. But we also know that some people see those issues as unimportant, or as not affecting them. While ideally, “this will make life unlivable for multiple groups of people” would be enough to sway them, it could work better to focus on the ways in which Project 2025 will harm them or the issues they care about. 

Some possible plans to highlight include:

• Project 2025 will stop efforts to lower prescription drug prices.
• It will cut the American Rescue Plan (ARP) programs that have created or saved 220,000 jobs.
• It will eliminate the Head Start early education program, which serves over 1 million children annually.
• The authors of Project 2025 think that too many veterans qualify for disability benefits and plan to limit who can receive them.
• Project 2025 thinks that farmers are receiving too much assistance and plan to reduce it.

Those talking points emphasize just how broad the targets of this project are, and that it damages causes that folks on the conservative end of the spectrum supposedly value. If you want more examples, there are links to some other breakdowns of the report at the end of this article.

Think about what you’ll do if these policies are put in place: Ideally, if Kamala Harris wins the presidency, the threat from this version of Project 2025 evaporates. Sadly, depending on who takes power at both the federal and state levels, the people behind this project—or who will go along with it—might still be positioned to implement portions of it (or try to).

Too, depending on where you live, elements of Project 2025 are already in place. Just ask anyone trying to get an abortion in Missouri or trans care in Florida. Those elements will not go away with one election, nor will they stop trying to spread without intervention.

If living through the 2016 election and the aftermath taught us anything, it’s to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. If it’s in your capacity, think about how you might resist; whether that’s staying up to date on how you can help people access abortion, protesting unjust policies, defending your local library or school board from bigots, or finding ways to help trans people get out of unsafe states. And if what you have to focus on if these policies are in place is survival, see if there are ways to connect to resources that can help if your profession or identity⁠ (identity: The defining character or personality of an individual; who we feel like we are as a person.) is targeted by Project 2025.

More like this:

• People’s Guide to Project 2025
• Educate US has a very succinct guide with a focus on the harm to sex education.
• If you have the stomach for it, you can read the whole proposal here.