What is Project 2025?
The threat that Project 2025 poses to America is especially sinister for LGBTQ+ people and our rights.
The ‘Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,’ more commonly known as “Project 2025,” is a dangerous, 922-page Trump-Vance agenda written by Donald Trump’s loyalists that would dismantle essential policies protecting civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights, health care access, voting rights, and the environment. It is the blueprint for a second Trump presidency, and If enacted, it would be a takeover of our government by the most conservative and radical wings of the country, threatening our rights, our freedoms, and our democracy. For LGBTQ+ people, the agenda would roll back the gains we’ve made toward full equality in nearly every area of our lives – from marriage, to health care, to education, and the workplace.
Led by two former Trump administration officials Paul Dans and Spencer Chretien, Project 2025 is spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and includes an advisory board consisting of conservative and extremist hate groups, including anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups Alliance Defending Freedom, American Family Association, Family Research Council, and Moms for Liberty. Authors and contributors to the plans include notable former Trump administration officials including Jonathan Berry, Ben Carson, Ken Cuccinelli, Rick Dearborn, Chris Miller, Roger Severino, and John McEntee.
Below is a summary of the biggest threats to the LGBTQ+ community included in the Trump-Vance Project 2025. Here’s what you need to know and how it will impact you and those around you, and what you can do to help stop this from becoming our reality.
Marriage Equality
Project 2025 undermines marriage equality by trying to privilege different-sex marriage in defiance of Obergefell v. Hodges, making same-sex marriages inherently unequal by doing so. They’d like to make it more difficult for LGBTQ+ people to adopt children, access fertility services, and create families (see Adoption/Foster Care). They’d allow businesses to deny services to same-sex couples or customers they perceive to be LGBTQ+ (see Civil Rights). And it advocates for the promotion of nuclear families led by different-sex parents who are biologically related to their children. This effectively excludes step-parents, divorced parents, parents who have relied on certain fertility services, grandparents parenting grandchildren, and single parents as well as families led by same-sex couples or LGBTQ+ people.
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“maintain a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family.”
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“The next secretary should also reverse the Biden Administration’s 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”
Civil Rights and Discrimination in the Workplace
Project 2025 would remove non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people from every federal regulation, including health care and education nondiscrimination requirements.
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“Rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics. The President should direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc”
Project 2025 would permit religious employees to refuse to work with LGBTQ+ colleagues and to refuse to serve LGBTQ+ customers and clients
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RELIGION l Provide robust protections for religious employers. America’s religious diversity means that workplaces include people of many faiths and that many employers are faith-based. Nevertheless, the Biden Administration has been hostile to people of faith, especially those with traditional beliefs about marriage, gender, and sexuality. The new Administration should enact policies with robust respect for religious exercise in the workplace, including under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA),8 Title VII, and federal conscience protection laws. l Issue an executive order protecting religious employers and employees. The President should make clear via executive order that religious employers are free to run their businesses according to their religious beliefs, general nondiscrimination laws notwithstanding, and support participation of religious employees and employers as federal contractors and in federal activities and programs. l Clarify Title VII’s religious organization exemptions. Congress should clarify Title VII’s religious organization exemptions to make it more explicit that those employers may make employment decisions based on religion regardless of nondiscrimination laws. l Provide Robust Accommodations for Religious Employees. Title VII requires reasonable accommodations for an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs, observances, or practices unless it poses an undue hardship on the employer’s business. These accommodation protections also apply to issues related to marriage, gender, and sexuality
Project 2025 directs federal agencies to deprioritize or drop investigations into claims of discrimination by LGBTQ+ employees.
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“Direct agencies to refocus enforcement of sex discrimination laws. The President should direct agencies to focus their enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of “sex.””
Project 2025 would allow religious employers to violate existing civil rights laws.
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“The President should make clear via executive order that religious employers are free to run their businesses according to their religious beliefs, general nondiscrimination laws notwithstanding, and support participation of religious employees and employers as federal contractors and in federal activities and programs…Clarify Title VII’s religious organization exemptions. Congress should clarify Title VII’s religious organization exemptions to make it more explicit that those employers may make employment decisions based on religion regardless of nondiscrimination laws.”
Project 2025 restricts implementation of the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision – allowing for harassment, demotions, unequal pay, and unequal benefits for LGBTQ+ employees – and directs the federal government to rescind regulations protecting LGBTQ+ people from discrimination.
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“Sex Discrimination. The Biden Administration, LGBT advocates, and some federal courts have attempted to expand the scope and definition of sex discrimination, based in part on the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. Bostock held that “an employer who fires someone simply for being homosexual or transgender” violates Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination. The Court explicitly limited its holding to the hiring/firing context in Title VII and did not purport to address other Title VII issues, such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes, or other laws prohibiting sex discrimination. Notably, the Court focused on the status of the employees and used the term “transgender status” rather than the broader and amorphous term “gender identity.”
Restrict the application of Bostock. The new Administration should restrict Bostock’s application of sex discrimination protections to sexual orientation and transgender status in the context of hiring and firing.
Withdraw unlawful “notices” and “guidances.” The President should direct agencies to withdraw unlawful “notices” and “guidances” purporting to apply Bostock’s reasoning broadly outside hiring and firing.
Rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics. The President should direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc”
Direct agencies to refocus enforcement of sex discrimination laws. The President should direct agencies to focus their enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of “sex.”
Project 2025 would eliminate federal non-discrimination requirements protecting LGBTQ+ people in federal civil service and federal contracts, and would eliminate the office in charge of enforcement of them, because of what it calls a “DEI revolution.”
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“Reverse the DEI Revolution in Labor Policy. Under the Obama and Biden Administrations, labor policy was yet another target of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) revolution. Under this managerialist left-wing race and gender ideology, every aspect of labor policy became a vehicle with which to advance race, sex, and other classifications and discriminate against conservative and religious viewpoints on these subjects and others, including pro-life views. The next Administration should eliminate every one of these wrongful and burdensome ideological projects.”
”Eliminate OFCCP. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) exists to enforce Executive Order (EO) 11246.2 That order was originally signed in 1965 to require federal contractors (and subcontractors) to commit to nondiscrimination. It gave enforcement authority to the Department of Labor, up to and including debarment from federal contracting. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has since grown, often making OFCCP’s authority redundant and imposing a second regulatory agency under whose rules businesses must operate. In addition, under EO 11246, the President and DOL can force a huge swath of American employers to comply with rules and regulations based on novel antidiscrimination theories (such as sexual orientation and gender identity theories) that Congress had never imposed by statute.”
Adoption/Foster Care
Project 2025 would make it harder for LGBTQ+ people to adopt children and create families. It would reverse current policy and allow federally funded adoption and foster care providers to refuse to work with same-sex couples or LGBTQ+ people, even though they’re providing services funded by taxpayers. In fact, LGBTQ+ people are among the people most likely to be interested in foster care or adoption, and this artificially limits the number of potential families available to children in need of homes.
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“HHS, through ACF and the Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources (ASFR), should repeal the unnecessary 2016 regulation61 that imposes nonstatutory sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination conditions on agency grants and return to the policy of maximizing the options for placing vulnerable children in their forever homes. ACF and OCR should also survey their programs to consider whether additional waivers of HHS grant conditions—waivers the Biden Administration revoked in 2021—are needed for faith-based agencies.”
“Additionally, Congress should pass the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act62 to ensure that providers and organizations cannot be subjected to discrimination for providing adoption and foster care services based on their beliefs about marriage.”
Education and LGBTQ+ Students
Project 2025 would allow – even encourage – discrimination against LGBTQ+ students in school. It does this by rescinding LGBTQ+ Title IX protections from discrimination in education for LGBTQ+ students and educators, and dropping all ongoing investigations. Title IX is a pivotal civil rights law that ensures that all children have equal opportunity to an education – one of the most profound civil rights that children have. Federal courts have long held that LGBTQ+ students (and educators) should not be denied that opportunity because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
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“At the same time, there is no scientific or legal basis for redefining “sex” to “sexual orientation and gender identity” in Title IX. Such a change misrepresents the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Bostock, threatens the American system of federalism, removes important due process protections for students in higher education, and puts girls and women in danger of physical harm. Facilitating social gender transition without parental consent increases the likelihood that children will seek hormone treatments, such as puberty blockers, which are experimental medical interventions. Research has not demonstrated positive effects and longterm outcomes of these treatments, and the unintended side effects are still not fully understood.”
“The next Administration should abandon this change redefining “sex” to mean “sexual orientation and gender identity” in Title IX immediately across all departments. l On its first day in office, the next Administration should signal its intent to enter the rulemaking process to restore the Trump Administration’s Title IX regulation, with the additional insistence that “sex” is properly understood as a fixed biological fact. Official notice-and-comment should be posted immediately. l At the same time, the political appointees in the Office for Civil Rights should begin a full review of all Title IX investigations that were conducted on the understanding that “sex” referred to gender identity and/or sexual orientation. l All ongoing investigations should be dropped, and all school districts affected should be given notice that they are free to drop any policy changes pursued under pressure from the Biden Administration.”
Project 2025 proposes adopting a federal “Don’t Say Trans” law or policy – meaning that districts and educators who recognize and respect a student’s gender identity by, for example, using their name and pronouns, would be denied federal education funding.
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“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists. Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered. In our schools, the question of parental authority over their children’s education is a simple one: Schools serve parents, not the other way around. That is, of course, the best argument for universal school choice—a goal all conservatives and conservative Presidents must pursue. But even before we achieve that long-term goal, parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators should be non-negotiable in American schools. States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, principals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds. The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status while on the other they are taught to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being human and consists in accepting the givenness of our nature as men or women. Allowing parents or physicians to “reassign” the sex of a minor is child abuse and must end. For public institutions to use taxpayer dollars to declare the superiority or inferiority of certain races, sexes, and religions is a violation of the Constitution and civil rights law and cannot be tolerated by any government anywhere in the country.
Project 2025 would imprison teachers or school librarians who allow students access to books, movies, and other materials on LGBTQ+ people, classifying them as sex offenders by making the false claim that any depiction of LGBTQ+ people is inherently pornography.
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“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists. Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered. In our schools, the question of parental authority over their children’s education is a simple one: Schools serve parents, not the other way around. That is, of course, the best argument for universal school choice—a goal all conservatives and conservative Presidents must pursue. But even before we achieve that long-term goal, parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators should be non-negotiable in American schools. States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, principals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds. The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from
Project 2025 would allow schools K-12 to refuse free breakfast and lunch services to LGBTQ+ students from low-income families.
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“Provide School Meals to Children in Need; Do Not Use Federal Meals to Support Radical Ideology In May 2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) tried to advance a radical political agenda using the federal school meal program. Nearly a century ago, federal lawmakers adopted the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP) and other services that provide meals for K–12 students to give children from low-income families access to food while at school. Since the 1940s, federal lawmakers have greatly expanded these meal programs, creating an entitlement for nearly all students, regardless of family income levels, and have turned the meal programs into some of the most wasteful federal programs in Washington. Now, the USDA is threatening to withhold federal taxpayer spending for these meals from schools that do not implement Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 so that the term “sex” is replaced with “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SOGI). l The next Administration should prohibit the USDA or any other federal agency from withholding services from federal or state agencies—including but not limited to K–12 schools—that choose not to replace “sex” with “SOGI” in that agency’s administration of Title IX.”
Project 2025 would REQUIRE teachers to use a student’s name and pronouns based on birth certificates (not on gender identity) unless they have written permission from parents. While that would have a particular impact on transgender students, it would impact any child who wants to be called by a nickname or middle name – a teacher couldn’t call Daniel “Dan”, “Danny” or any other nickname that Daniel may prefer. This anti-transgender agenda tramples over many of our social norms.
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“The next Administration should take particular note of how radical gender ideology is having a devastating effect on school-aged children today—especially young girls. School officials in some states are requiring teachers and other school employees to accept a minor child’s decision to assume a different “gender” while at school—without notifying parents. In California, New Jersey, and certain districts in Kansas and elsewhere, educators are prohibited from informing parents about children’s confusion over their sex if the children do not want their parents to know. Such policies allow schools to drive a wedge between parents and children. The next Administration should work with Congress to provide an example to state lawmakers by requiring K–12 districts under federal jurisdiction, including Washington, D.C., public schools, Bureau of Indian Education schools, and Department of Defense schools, with legislation stating that:
No public education employee or contractor shall use a name to address a student other than the name listed on a student’s birth certificate, without the written permission of a student’s parents or guardians.”
Health Care (Including Reproductive Health Care)
Project 2025 would withdraw financial support for medically necessary health care for transgender Americans through multiple funding streams, impacting HIV/AIDS programs, public health research, health benefits for servicemembers and their families, and more.
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“Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended.”
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“NIH has been at the forefront in pushing junk gender science. Instead, it should fund studies into the short-term and long-term negative effects of crosssex interventions, including “affirmation,” puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, and the likelihood of desistence if young people are given counseling that does not include medical or social interventions”
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“Reissue a stronger transgender national coverage determination. CMS should repromulgate its 2016 decision that CMS could not issue a National Coverage Determination (NCD) regarding “gender reassignment surgery” for Medicare beneficiaries. In doing so, CMS should acknowledge the growing body of evidence that such interventions are dangerous and acknowledge that there is insufficient scientific evidence to support such coverage in state plans”
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“Withdraw Ryan White guidance allowing funds to pay for cross-sex transition support. HRSA should withdraw all guidance encouraging Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program service providers to provide controversial “gender transition” procedures or “gender-affirming care,” which cause irreversible physical and mental harm to those who receive them”
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“The OASH should withdraw all recommendations of and support for cross-sex medical interventions and “gender-affirming care.” (Office of Assistant Secretary of Health/Office of Surgeon General)
Project 2025 pushes states to end Medicaid and Medicare coverage of gender-affirming surgeries for all trans people
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“Reissue a stronger transgender national coverage determination. CMS should repromulgate its 2016 decision that CMS could not issue a National Coverage Determination (NCD) regarding “gender reassignment surgery” for Medicare beneficiaries. In doing so, CMS should acknowledge the growing body of evidence that such interventions are dangerous and acknowledge that there is insufficient scientific evidence to support such coverage in state plans.”
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The redefinition of sex to cover gender identity and sexual orientation and pregnancy to cover abortion should be reversed in all HHS and CMS programs as was done under the Trump Administration.
Project 2025 would prohibit federal agencies like the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) from conducting research or collecting data on transgender people unless that research supports the unsubstantiated, discriminatory idea that being transgender is false.
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“NIH has been at the forefront in pushing junk gender science. Instead, it should fund studies into the short-term and long-term negative effects of crosssex interventions, including “affirmation,” puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, and the likelihood of desistence if young people are given counseling that does not include medical or social interventions.”
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“The CDC should immediately end its collection of data on gender identity, which legitimizes the unscientific notion that men can become women (and vice versa) and encourages the phenomenon of ever-multiplying subjective identities”
Project 2025 would repeal important protections for LGBTQ+ people against discrimination by health care providers. Unfortunately, discrimination in health care is an extremely common experience for transgender people across the country.
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“Radical Redefinition of Sex. On August 4, 2022, HHS published a proposed rule entitled “Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities.”58 This rule addresses nondiscrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act, known as Section 1557, which is enforced by the Office for Civil Rights and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Section 1557 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and sex in covered health programs or activities.
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Under the proposed rule, sex is redefined: “Discrimination on the basis of sex includes, but is not limited to, discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes; sex characteristics, including intersex traits; pregnancy or related conditions; sexual orientation; and gender identity.”59 In other words, the department proposes to interpret Section 1557 as if it created special privileges for new classes of people, defined in ways that are highly ideological and unscientific. The redefinition of sex to cover gender identity and sexual orientation and pregnancy to cover abortion should be reversed in all HHS and CMS programs as was done under the Trump Administration. This includes the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Low-income families who rely on CHIP should not be coerced, pressured, or otherwise encouraged to embrace this ideologically motivated sexualization of their children.”
Project 2025 would revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, one of the most important medications to treat miscarriages and provide abortions. While decrying the FDA’s scientific review of this medication as “political”, Trump appointee Roger Severino uses Project 2025 to again elevate the will of politicians over the expertise of scientists and doctors.
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HHS also pushes abortion as a form of “health care,” skirting and sometimes blatantly defying the Hyde Amendment in the process. Severino writes that the “FDA should…reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs because the politicized approval process was illegal from the start.” In addition, HHS programs often violate the spirit, and sometimes the letter, of conscience-protection laws. Severino writes that the HHS “Secretary should pursue a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect conscience rights, and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology.”
Military and Veterans
Project 2025 would restore the Trump administration’s discriminatory ban on transgender people serving in the military and would prevent people who are HIV positive from serving as well.
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“Restore standards of lethality and excellence. Entrance criteria for military service and specific occupational career fields should be based on the needs of those positions. Exceptions for individuals who are already predisposed to require medical treatment (for example, HIV positive or suffering from gender dysphoria) should be removed, and those with gender dysphoria should be expelled from military service. Physical fitness requirements should be based on the occupational field without consideration of gender, race, ethnicity, or orientation.”
“Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for service members should be ended”
Project 2025 would prevent veterans’ health coverage from covering gendering affirming surgeries or abortion care
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“Rescind all departmental clinical policy directives that are contrary to principles of conservative governance starting with abortion services and gender reassignment surgery.”
Foreign Affairs
Project 2025 ends support for LGBTQ+ rights abroad
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“Primorac asserts that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) must be reformed, writing, “The Biden Administration has deformed the agency by treating it as a global platform to pursue overseas a divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systematic racism.”
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“Focus on core diplomatic activities, and stop promoting policies birthed in the American culture wars. African nations are particularly (and reasonably) non-receptive to the U.S. social policies such as abortion and pro-LGBT initiatives being imposed on them. The United States should focus on core security, economic, and human rights engagement with African partners and reject the promotion of divisive policies that hurt the deepening of shared goals between the U.S. and its African partners”
Project 2025 prevents embassies from doing work on pro-equality projects or even flying the Pride flag.
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“In Africa, Skinner writes, the U.S. “should focus on core security,
economic, and human rights” rather than impose radical abortion and pro-LGBT
initiatives. Divisive symbols such as the rainbow flag or the Black Lives Matter flag
have no place next to the Stars and Stripes at our embassies.”
Take Action
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Intersectional Impact
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Exposing The Chilling Reality of Trump’s Dangerous Project 2025
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Project 2025 Would Increase Gun Violence, Reversing Historic Declines
Gun Safety
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Trump’s ‘Project 2025’ would take away many of our hard-won rights and freedoms
Labor Right and Worker Protections
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Gutting Abortion Access Under Project 2025
Abortion Access
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Project 2025: Immigration
Immigration, Mass Deportation & Family Separation
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Project 2025: What It Is and What It Means for K-12 If Trump Wins
K-12 Education
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Environment