Project 2025 could have a significant effect on the LGBTQ+ community during Donald Trump‘s second term, if he is reelected in November.
The 900-page document, produced by the Conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, was designed as a road map for a conversative president. It proposes an overhaul of the federal government and includes a plan to fire government workers.
Experts have highlighted a wide range of policies in the project that would affect LGBTQ+ individuals.
Trump has attempted to distance himself from the project, writing on social media in July, “I know nothing about Project 2025.” Earlier this month, he repeated his statement on Lex Fridman’s podcast, adding that he “purposefully” hadn’t read it.
A spokesperson for Project 2025 did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
First lady Jill Biden at a Pride celebration on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., on June 26. Project 2025 includes proposals that would affect LGBTQ+ Americans.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
What Are Project 2025’s Policies, and How Would They Affect the LGBTQ+ Community?
If implemented, Project 2025 would dismantle antidiscrimination protections by removing terms such as “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” from federal laws, allowing for legal discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals.
It also seeks to restrict the Supreme Court‘s decision in Bostock vs. Clayton County, which extended workplace protections to LGBTQ+ employees.
The plan further seeks to block access to health care for transgender individuals, particularly through Medicare and Medicaid, and it would reinstate the ban on transgender people serving in the military. Project 2025 also opposes federal support for LGBTQ+ equality initiatives abroad, advocating for a rollback of policies that promote inclusivity in other nations.
In education, Project 2025 would seek to dismantle the Department of Education. It also outlines measures to remove LGBTQ-inclusive curricula and enforce the use of birth-assigned pronouns, prohibiting students from using names or pronouns that differ from those on their birth certificates.
The document prioritizes traditional family structures and seeks to eliminate inclusive teaching in favor of conservative values, thereby fostering an educational environment that could be hostile to LGBTQ+ students and staff.
Pride flags at the L.A. Pride Parade in Hollywood, California, on June 11, 2023. If implemented, the Project 2025 agenda could have a negative effect on the LGBTQIA community.
ROBYN BECK/Getty Images
What Do Experts Think?
Newsweek spoke with GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis, who said, “Project 2025 is led by the Heritage Foundation, which has long activated against LGBTQ people and equality.”
Ellis continued, “Project 2025 is a vehicle for disinformation against LGBTQ people. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) reports that Project 2025 and its leaders make multiple, demonstrably untrue claims about LGBTQ people, families and our marriages.”
Newsweek also spoke with Cathy Renna, the director of communications of the National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund, who described Project 2025 as being “devastating” for the LGBTQ+ community.
She said, “Since the moment that this manifesto dropped on our desks,” there have been plans, strategies and collaborations “around how to deal with this worst-case scenario.”
“Everything in Project 2025 will impact our community,” Renna continued, adding, “We’re going to be impacted by every single piece of that manifesto that really targets every aspect of our government and really every aspect of our lives.”
“Reproductive justice … is important to queer people, but it’s also very much tied to so much of the bodily autonomy issues … whether that’s trans and nonbinary individuals, whether that’s women and men,” she said.
That Project 2025 would attack “the progress we’ve made with marriage equality … is another concern to so many of us who now have access to both the rights and responsibilities of marriage that we have fought for for decades,” Renna added.
A Pride parade in Solvang, a Danish-themed tourist town in Santa Barbara County, California, on June 22. Experts have expressed concerns about what Project 2025 could mean for marriage equality and other LGBTQ+ rights.
George Rose/Getty Images
Sasha Buchert, the director of the Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project, described Project 2025 as a “detailed and hateful plan that is intended to be weaponized by an administration without a plan of its own. It relentlessly attacks LGBTQ people in a wide range of issue areas.”
Buchert told Newsweek, “Federal law has long protected LGBTQ people and should continue to protect LGBTQ people regardless of whether Project 2025 was implemented by a hostile administration, but Project 2025 frantically and repeatedly urges a future administration to defy federal law in order to impose a regulatory definition of ‘sex’ that would strip LGBTQ people of vital protections in education, health care, housing, and countless other areas under the law.”
Buchert added, “Project 2025 seeks to impose a ‘gender ideology’ that seeks to return us to an era where LGBTQ+ people lived in the shadows, impacting not only LGBTQ+ people but also women, immigrants, people of color and many other populations.”
“This is badly out of step with how Americans live their lives and how Americans view and care about LGBTQ+ people. LGBTQ+ people have always been and always will be a part of the family and fabric of this country,” she continued.
Ellis said, “Project 2025 is a direct assault on America’s middle class and our institutions of government.”
She added, “We’ve seen all too often that LGBTQ people experience disproportionate challenges when it comes to kitchen-table issues like fair wages, affordable health care, and simply getting and keeping a job without fear of discrimination and harassment. It’s critical that our community understands what’s in this plan, how it would hurt them and their families, and how they can stop it.”
Renna said, “The attacks on the trans community and on trans-affirming care … are extraordinary in their scope and devastating in their impact.”
She also spoke about the effect of dismantling the Department of Education, describing it as “truly horrifying.”
Ellis said, “LGBTQ people and our allies should always use their voices and votes to speak up for equality in all forms, and for the human rights of all to be themselves, be safe, and be free to live free from fear and discrimination.”
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