Trump and Allies Seek to Dismantle All Diversity Programs, Project 2025 is the Blueprint for Its Implementation
By: Nicole Lashomb*/Editor-in-Chief—
Come 2025, pride month and what it represents to so many of us could come to a screeching halt as queer rights and liberation will be stripped from millions of LGBTQI+ Americans. That is, if Trump somehow gains access to the nation’s highest office again.
Since on the campaign trail earlier this year, the now twice impeached, 34 time-convicted felon has vowed to continue to roll back the LGBTQI+ community’s protections and those of most marginalized groups of people residing within the walls of the United States. Some Trump proponents argue that “it’s just hyperbole.” But, if there is anything that history has taught us is that it is destined to repeat itself unless meaningful progress is made. While progress has taken place by the battles and sacrifices of many in the past, our government and the supposed liberties many tout as American values are shamefully fragile.
American’s rights are, indeed, not safeguarded—not for LGBTQI+ people, Black and Brown folks, women and girls, immigrants and millions of others that make up the very fabric of the republic.
As Trump sets his eyes on rolling back civil rights, pundits around the news desks and families around the kitchen table continue to debate the issue. In a recent interview on PBS, anchors and correspondents explored this topic.
LGBTQI+ & women’s rights
White House Correspondent Laura Barrón-López reported on the plans that Trump and his “clan” will execute on Day 1, which as promised will dismantle more protections for Americans who are mostly at the bottom of the totem pole socioeconomically—amongst them the very members of our community.
“He’s [further] attacked gender-affirming care for minors, as well as their ability to play in sports. And [Trump] says that he plans quick action if elected,” she reported.
The disgraced former president has said he “will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing Critical Race Theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.” Clearly, he is taking lessons from the Jim Crow era playbook and expanding upon it.
In his erratic behavior, he refers only to people of color’s or sexual and gender minorities’ woes, but not the depravities that he has brought to the institution of marriage, the sexually predatory and abusive ways he’s treated many women—to include his most recent lawsuit loss to E. Jean Carroll—and the many more crimes he has supposedly committed.
“Specifically on restricting LGBTQ rights, what that details is reinstating a transgender military ban [and] limiting LGBTQ workplace discrimination protections. Currently, under the law, sexual orientation, and gender identity are protected,” Barrón-López explained. “It would rescind health care protections for transgender people and urge Congress to define gender as male and female, fixed at birth.
“And this playbook makes it pretty clear that his plan—this plan—also is trying to stop any and all acknowledgement of an acceptance of gender identity and LGBTQ people, period. Throughout this blueprint, there’s some pretty striking language where [the] government—saying that government officials should only recognize marriages between a man and a woman and that a man and a woman are the ideal natural family structure.
“When it comes to Project 2025, … what the plan would do is delete diversity, equity and inclusion from every piece of legislation, remove diversity, equity, inclusion offices from federal agencies, curtail the teaching of race and racism, and urge Congress to ban federal funds for Critical Race Theory training.”
Do you not remember that in 2017, right after his failed inauguration, Trump’s administration deleted the LGBTQ content from federal websites?
When this man says he’ll do something hateful, it has been proven–by what we have seen and lived in recent years under his government–that he’ll follow through on it, because this individual thrives on the ugly side of humankind, in that dark infested and viscerally ill way.
January 6
By this point, it should come as no surprise to anyone that a large part of Trump’s base thrives on hateful and extremist language and the beliefs of white nationalism—all concepts that have been proven countless times—culminating his time in office with the January 6 insurrection.
Meanwhile, many of us are still fighting to attain what we once had prior to his first term. As we continue to make those strides, Project 2025 reminds us of just how much worse it can all become. That is Trump’s second-term agenda and it entails more than infringing on people’s rights or the Capitol insurrection. As a matter of fact, if all falls into place for Trump and his white supremacist agenda, we might as well start looking for another place to call home.
Mein Kampf
Project 2025 is much like the Mein Kampf—the 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler—that Trump and his allies have laid out as the precursor to what will happen if he is re-elected.
Just like the Mein Kampf, Project 2025 is mostly about the perceived trials and tribulations of the extreme right “at the hands” of the “radical” left, or so they claim it to be. But, be forewarned.
“Dozens of conservative organizations are behind the effort. Part of the plan includes firing federal employees that conservatives believe are preventing right-wing policies from being implemented and replacing them with their own picks,” according to the Associated Press.
MichiganAdvance.com reported that the incoming president—assumption here that it is Trump—would have “complete power over quasi-independent agencies such as the FCC, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies that have been the bane of Trump’s political existence in the last few years. And they want to ensure that what remains of this slashed-down bureaucracy is reliably MAGA conservative—not just for the next president but for a long time to come—and that the White House maintains total control of it.”
Heritage Foundation, Authoritarianism
The sinister project is “led by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, and it details a blueprint for a second term for Trump,” reported Barrón-López.
According to Prospect.org, the Project’s name is “Mandate For Leadership.” The Manifesto is not a new document nor idea. Various iterations of the “Mandate For Leadership” have been specifically made and tailored for every presidential election and president since 1980.
Project 2025’s website stated that “most recently (under his past admin), the Trump administration relied heavily on Heritage’s ‘Mandate For Leadership’ for policy guidance, embracing nearly two-thirds of Heritage’s proposals within just one year in office.”
But, many have argued that it is a “government-in-waiting” as if we were ever looking for a structural change in the democracy we know and understand (flaws and all, but fixable and not in waiting).
It is an extreme right-wing plan written for and by the religious right propounders who are close to and/or members of the Heritage Foundation. It is deemed a sort of “bible” for each incoming conservative president with specific instructions for their political term. However, each conservative administration decides what to indoctrinate or not from it.
This 2025 iteration, according to Prospect.org, is fine-tuned for Trump’s specific vengeance-type of spirit–”lighter on policy but heavier on retribution.”
Its enemies list begins with the usual targets of right-wing wrath (those less privileged and with less overall power): welfare recipients, lazy and liberal civil servants (since there are “no” lazy MAGA Republicans), anti-business regulators, environmentalists (never mind all the mother nature disasters happening), union bosses, and more. Also more recently, it includes professionals too such as: scientists, woke bureaucrats, woke educators, woke diplomats, woke generals and admirals, woke G-men, and anyone who doesn’t indulge the next Republican president’s every impulse (read Trump).
Project 2025, according to MichiganAdvance.com, is a completely different beast of its own.
“Project 2025 is a serious endeavor—if Trump returns to the White House—to make America a fascist country. After all, on May 20, Trump posted a video on his Truth Social media account depicting his 2025-2029 administration as a ‘Unified Reich.’ (Hitler’s Third Reich occurred 1933-1945.)” And as in the Mein Kampf, the extreme right is the victim and the Left the victimizer. It’s the proverbial good vs. evil story.
They claim the extreme Right is good (as they take everyone’s rights away: women, immigrants, LGBTQI+, Muslim, Black, Hispanic, and other communities) and change America’s core government to an authoritarian-type of government. And, in this surreal world they have made up, the Left is the aggressor. If you believe that there was no insurrection and that the Capitol police weren’t hurt at the hand of the violent mob, then you’ll believe this too, even when it’s all there documented via their own videos, and happening in front of your eyes.
Why is Project 2025 so Important to the Extreme Right?
Regardless of the answer, don’t let the right convince you that Project 2025 is nothing to be worried about. It is not a simple answer. Let’s delve into how many pages it has, since it is meant to dismember our democratic-bodied government into nothing of what it’s been ever before. Ponder this to yourself, in private if you will. If this Manifesto wasn’t important, why have they put all this effort into it? Project 2025 is 920 pages long. It basically states what Trump and his cronies are to do in the first 180 days of his potential 2025-2029 presidential administration.
According to MichiganAdvance.com, the Heritage Foundation’s (white supremacist, my words) Manifesto came from 2 editors who checked over the “written [work of] 34 authors, 277 contributors, a 54-member advisory board and a coalition of more than 100 conservative organizations and individuals (including the Koch Brothers, Leonard Leo—alleged Supreme Court lavish present-giver to Justices Alito and Thomas, who was been subpoenaed by the US Senate judiciary committee, according to The Guardian—, American Legislative Exchange Council, The Heartland Institute, Liberty University, Middle East Forum, Moms for Liberty, NRA, Pro-Life America, Tea Party Patriots, etc.).” If that list doesn’t give you chills, I don’t know what will.
Thus, Project 2025 is more important to the extreme right than anything else because it is a conduit to take control of the government permanently. Their plan is to hire rightwing ultra conservative religious fanatics to make and rule on the laws that were put in place by the authors of the Constitution of “We The People,” if there still exists a ‘We The People’ after they destroy everything that we have fought so hard to keep and have others emulate. The Checks and Balances component of our government would be demolished under Project 2025. Gone will also be the Fourth Estate, the media, to be replaced by propaganda outlets that will further MAGA’s Agenda. That is what Putin has always wanted and this is what the extreme right will hand him, an authoritarian regime that will destroy our “united” states, much like what happened to the Soviet “union” then. An eye for an eye.
If you are unfamiliar with an authoritarian government, read along. The definition of authoritarianism is a system of “government that has no established mechanism for the transfer of executive power and does not afford their citizens civil liberties or political rights. Power is concentrated in the hands of a single leader or a small elite, whose decisions are taken without regard for the will of the people,” according to Britannica.com. This is in total contrast to what we know and live in today’s United States of America. It is a scary thought and such an offense to know that a segment of Americans wishes to change the U.S. for a Russian-like type of government.
For those still thinking about voting for this man, ask yourself now, who is the fascist? Once Trump is installed into office, under Project 2025, he will never have to vacate the White House. For the first time in our nation’s history, we will effectively be living under a dictatorship.
Who will be erased or who will simply succumb to Project 2025
Without shame, as usual, Trump openly and unapologetically wrote his “truth” on Truth Social, his right-wing extremist social network for his “own” people. He wrote, after saying he was “thinking about what they were going to do to Biden and the Communists when it’s our turn,” about the Left.
Most alarming, he emboldened the extreme right more so—his Army of judges, spouses, rich people (whether rich through their “own” success or an inherited one), extreme radical religious folks, and his Army of cultists—by writing: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Trump said in a recent speech. “They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream … the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within …”
The alarm has been sounded. Trump and the fascist right, just like written in the Mein Kampf, plan to overhaul several federal agencies, continue to oppress the Jewish community (that they claim to side with), and further curb abortion rights—as if it weren’t enough what they have done via the extremely right and “religiously ill” Justices that the orange man has appointed to the High Court. As always, they want the ability to do anything with impunity. If you don’t believe it, think of the termination of Roe v. Wade, and how the LGBTQI+ community has gone from a group of people living and loving their own lives to a myriad of fabricated lies the religious extreme Right uses against it to move forward their white nationalist and totally separatist and anti-Semitic mantra.
The Democrats
In sharp and staggering contrast, Democrats and the Biden administration are punching back. Ahead of pride month, the Biden administration and federal agencies have taken key action on behalf of LGBTQI+ securities in virtually every aspect of life from LGBTQI+ families—including adoption and fostering—to school inclusion programs; protecting against book bans; protecting healthcare rights; employment rights, marriage rights, and countless others. More about the vast number of securities can be found on page 22 of The Rainbow Times.
There are two realistic and tangible choices in this presidential election—it all comes down to Biden and the Democrats or Trump and the extreme Right. There is nothing in between, no matter how disgruntled someone may be. There is no overwhelming protest vote. There simply can’t be, what’s at stake is far too great. One of these two presidential candidates will assume office come January 2025, whether we like it or not. It is not a choice between two evils, but about the prevailing of good over evil.
*Nicole Lashomb holds a Master’s degree from Marylhurst University and a BM from the Crane School of Music/SUNY Potsdam. She can be reached at editor@therainbowtimesmass.com.
[This opinion story first ran in the June 6, 2024 issue of The Rainbow Times].
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