Donald Trump denied any connection to Project 2025, the handbook for a new conservative government written by the Heritage Foundation and several right-wing think tanks, in his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
"I have nothing to do with Project 2025," Trump said in the ABC News Presidential Debate. "I haven't read it. I don't want to read it purposely. I'm not going to read it."
The Senate has officially approved Russell Vought as the White House budget director, appointing a pivotal figure behind Project 2025 to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a crucial agency within the federal government. The 53-47 vote along party lines reinforces Vought’s influence in crafting Trump’s agenda for a potential second term, which aims for significant spending reductions, deregulation, and an increase in presidential powers.
Democrats strongly resisted his nomination, cautioning that Vought’s extreme agenda might jeopardize essential government programs and grant Trump extensive authority over federal expenditures. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer labeled the confirmation a “catastrophe for diligent Americans,” highlighting Vought’s involvement in Project 2025, a strategic plan designed to transform the federal government.
Vought, the former head of the OMB under Trump’s initial term, has been a proponent of reducing discretionary social programs and endorsing “impoundment,” which would enable the president to withhold funds that Congress has already approved. During his confirmation hearings, he notably sidestepped questions about whether he would prevent aid to Ukraine, raising alarms among Democrats about his potential inclination to extend executive authority beyond its legal boundaries.
HOW PROJECT 2025 WILL HARM BLACK COMMUNITIES
From LDF and its Thurgood Marshall Institute analyzed Project 2025 to determine its impact on Black communities
Weakening anti-discrimination laws and cutting essential worker protections
Project 2025 will eliminate key safeguards that protect Black workers6 and bar federal agencies from collecting racial demographic data, making it harder to enforce anti-discrimination laws and combat racial inequities, especially in the workplace.7
Limiting access to quality education for Black students
Project 2025 will exacerbate the education and wealth gap for Black students and workers by dismantling the Department of Education,8 the agency responsible for ensuring civil rights protections in schools, which will allow discriminatory discipline practices to go unchecked.9 Project 2025 will expand the ongoing, coordinated attack on truth in schools and libraries, which will further deny our nation’s shameful legacy of racism. It will also make higher education even more inaccessible for Black students by privatizing student loans,10 and eliminating student loan forgiveness programs and income-based repayment options.11
Undermining Black political power
By overhauling the U.S. Census Bureau and criminalizing election-related offenses, Project 2025 will weaken the political influence of Black communities by undercounting them and suppressing the Black vote through threats and intimidation, destabilizing the key foundations of our multiracial democracy.12
Promoting punitive criminal legal policies
Project 2025 will likely increase the use of the racially discriminatory death penalty13 which is infected with racial bias and rife with wrongful convictions that disproportionately impact Black people.14Additionally, it will endanger Black communities and roll back efforts to address police misconduct that violates the U.S. Constitution by abolishing federal consent decrees15 that hold law enforcementaccountable for civil rights violations.16
Jeopardizing Black families’ access to affordable housing
Project 2025 will transfer control of critical housing programs that expand access to affordable housing, like Section 8, to states—including those with a history of racial discrimination—threatening the housing stability of millions of Black low-income families.17
Threatening reproductive rights and the health of Black people
Black pregnant women, who already face disproportionately high maternal mortality rates,18 will be hit the hardest by Project 2025’s restrictions on reproductive health care,19 which include proposals to ban federal access to abortion care20 and criminalize health care providers.21 Given that forty-two of women seeking abortion care are Black, thesis proposals will have devastating consequences for their health and autonomy, and the health and autonomy of their families.22
Exacerbating health disparities caused by environmental racism
By shutting down the Office of Environmental Justice,23 Project 2025 will allow the federal government to turn a blind eye to the persistent and increasing environmental racism24 that is causing severe health disparities in Black communities, leaving Black people even more vulnerable to pollution and hazardous living conditions.