Card 22: Project 2025 Update

Project 2025 Update

Dismantling American Democracy

In 2024, The Heritage Foundation (THF) released its “Mandate for Leadership.” Known as Project 2025, it is a roadmap to consolidate power in the presidency and destroy our democracy. This administration is fulfilling many of its goals, most of which are illegal.

Key objectives of Project 2025 and the current status:

• Centralize Presidential Power: Eliminate Congress’s oversight by placing the DOJ, FBI, Federal Reserve, and other agencies under presidential control. As Congress cedes authority, loyal staff run these agencies, and with the Supreme Court bending to his will, the president is checked now only by lower courts.
• Transform Federal Employment: Replace thousands of neutral civil servants with extremist loyalists, undermining opposition to the president’s authority. Loyalty tests are being applied to current employees and applicants across federal agencies.
• Crack Down on Immigrants: Detain and deport over 15 million people, including asylum seekers and innocent children. ICE currently holds countless immigrants, even U.S. citizens and legal visa holders, in inhumane conditions, with many being deported or “disappeared” to countries with which they have no ties. Asylum programs have been halted.
• Abolish Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives: These hallmarks of a just society are being dismantled, stripping protections from women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals.
• Eliminate the Department of Education: Mandate a Christian Nationalist curriculum and redirect public funds to private and religious school vouchers. This change is already in progress, with federal school vouchers anticipated by 2027.

• Dismantle the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): Though DHS is not yet abolished, its key functions, like counterterrorism and cybersecurity, are weakened. It now wields excessive power over border and immigration enforcement, with a budget that exceeds that of many countries’ military spending.
• End Climate Change Initiatives: Project 2025 calls for the EPA to be abolished, ending essential clean air and water regulations and funding for renewable energy. Although the EPA still exists, ongoing cuts to its programs threaten the future of our planet.
• Undermine Social Security and Medicare: These vital programs are at risk through benefit reductions, raised eligibility ages, and a pivot towards private insurance. The recent budget bill triggers automatic cuts to Medicare in 2025, eroding a lifeline for millions. Staff reductions at Social Security are compromising services.
• End Abortion Nationwide: Restrict access to medication, contraception, and reproductive health services until a national abortion ban can be imposed. While this initiative is ongoing, Medicaid’s ban on funding for Planned Parenthood is already limiting essential reproductive care nationwide.
• Establish Christianity as the National Religion: Laws and policy recommendations will be based on evangelical theology. Despite the First Amendment’s prohibiting Congress from passing laws establishing religion, this is becoming policy by executive order.