From the Harris-Walz campaign site:
Trump’s plan to take your power, your control, and your money.
What is the Project 2025 Agenda?
Donald Trump’s plans for total control over our daily lives have been exposed. Scroll down to see what’s in it for yourself — and tell your friends.
His Project 2025 agenda would strip away our freedoms – by forcing states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions, cutting Social Security and Medicare, and eliminating the Department of Education.
It includes a plan hatched by people who used to work for Donald Trump that focuses on the first 180 days.
(Project 2025 Website)
The plan begins with a sweeping takeover of the federal government to consolidate power under Donald Trump. Inside pages of dense policy proposals, their intentions become clear.
“Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.”
(New York Times, July 17, 2023)
Project 2025 is a plan to seize power within the federal government.
First: They’d make it easier to fire non-partisan government employees, like they attempted to do at the end of Trump’s administration.
Reissue Trump’s schedule F executive order to permit discharge of nonperforming employees. (Project 2025, a Mandate for Leadership, p. 535)
Then, they’d replace them with politically appointed Trump Loyalists.
“The modern conservative President’s task is to limit, control, and direct the executive branch….The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch.… Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will”. (p. 43-44)
They’d end the independence of the Department of Justice and FBI…
“Conservatives have long believed in either ending law enforcement activities of independent agencies or ending their independent status. (p. 873)
…and turn them into enforcement arms of the White House.
The next conservative Administration must make every effort to obtain the resources to support a vast expansion of the number of appointees in every office and component across the department—especially in the Civil Rights Division, the FBI, and the EOIR.” (p. 569)
“[This] would also place the FBI under a politically accountable leader.” (p. 549)
Some of Donald Trump’s allies are assembling proposals to curtail the Justice Department’s independence and turn the nation’s top law enforcement body into an attack dog for conservative causes, nine people involved in the effort told Reuters.
(Reuters, May 17, 2024)
All while Trump has immunity from crimes committed in office thanks to a ruling from his Supreme Court picks.
Project 2025 is a plan to give MAGA extremists control over your life.
Trump and his Project 2025 allies overturned Roe v. Wade and unleashed extreme abortion bans across the country. Now, they’ll go even further.
They’ll implement a 50-state “backdoor ban” on abortion — without Congress — and jail health care providers.
“Announcing a Campaign to Enforce the Criminal Prohibitions in 18 U.S. Code §§ 1461 and 1462.” (p. 562)
Project 2025 would resurrect a law from the 1800s called the Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide and jail health care providers. (p. 459)
Don’t take our word for it. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation: A literal interpretation of the [Comstock] Act could potentially also apply to materials used to produce all abortions, not just medication abortions; would not have exceptions; and could affect other medical care, such as miscarriage management.
(Kaiser Family Foundation, 4/15/24)
And they’ll ban abortion medication, which is also used in a range of ways to protect women’s health.
“Abortion pills pose the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post-Roe world…. The FDA should reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs.” (p. 457)
They’ll force states to report women’s miscarriages and abortions to Trump’s Federal Government.
Project 2025 would “use every available tool, including the cutting of funds” to force states to report miscarriages and “exactly how many abortions take place within its borders,” including the “reason” for every abortion. (p. 455)
They’ll put limits on contraception access.
The President should “[e]liminate the week-after-pill from the contraceptive mandate as a potential abortifacient.” (p. 485)
Allows employers to deny workers access to birth control coverage. (p. 483-85)
It also calls for defunding Planned Parenthood, which provides access to contraception for over 2 million women each year. (p. 471)
And then rip away President Biden’s protections for a woman’s right to life-saving medical care.
The President should “reverse distorted pro-abortion ‘interpretations’ added to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. (p. 473)
They’ll enable discrimination against LGBTQ+ Americans.
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. (p. 584)
Project 2025 is a plan to make Trump and his rich friends even richer.
It will cut taxes for Trump and his rich friends and pad their profits.
“The corporate income tax should be reduced to 18 percent.” (p. 696)
And cut taxes for wealthy families — offset by tax hikes on middle class families.
Project 2025 would restructure the tax code to benefit wealthy families. (p. 696)
Millions of low- and middle-class households would likely face significantly higher taxes under the Project 2025’s proposals. [Center for American Progress senior director for economic policy Brendan Duke] estimated that a middle-class family with two children and an annual income of $100,000 would pay $2,600 in additional federal income tax if they faced a 15% flat tax on their income due to the loss of the 10% and 12% tax brackets. If the Child Tax Credit were also eliminated, they would pay an additional $6,600 compared with today’s tax system, Duke said. By comparison, a married couple with two children and earnings of $5 million a year would enjoy a $325,000 tax cut, he estimated.
(CBS News, 7/12/24)
They’d line Big Pharma’s pockets by ending prescription drug price caps for seniors, and banning Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices.
“Repeal harmful health policies enacted under the Obama and Biden Administrations such as… the Inflation Reduction Act.” (p. 465)
“This ‘negotiation’ program should be repealed.” (p. 465)
All while Trump’s administration guts Medicare and Social Security.
When asked about cuts to entitlements like Medicare and Social Security, Trump said: “Oh we’ll be cutting,” and later doubled down, saying, “There’s a lot you can do…in terms of cutting.”
Trump has also called Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme,” supported raising the age for eligibility, and has been open to privatizing it.
They’d let employers drastically cut overtime — or eliminate it outright.
- Return to Trump’s overtime rule, meaning 4 million middle class workers will lose overtime protections because of the salary they make.
- Make remote employees work 10, instead of 8, hours in a day before they can earn overtime.
- Prevent benefits from counting as part of workers’ overtime calculations
- Allow employers to calculate overtime over four weeks instead of one. (pp. 587, 589, 592)
And they’d reinstate crippling student debt payments.
“The new Administration must end abuses in the loan forgiveness programs. Borrowers should be expected to repay their loans” (p. 322).
“The Secretary should phase out all existing [income-driven repayment] plans by making new loans (including consolidation loans) ineligible…. If new legislation is possible, there should be no loan forgiveness, but if not, existing law would require forgiving any remaining balance after 25 years.” (pp. 337-38).
