Earlier this summer, a 920-page ultra-conservative policy blueprint crafted by The Heritage Foundation made its way into the nation’s collective consciousness. The document, named Project 2025, creates a “governing agenda” for the next president to follow on Day One of their administration.
Below are some of the more dystopian, Handmaid’s Tale-esque political policies outlined in the document that take direct aim at women, pregnant people, the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants and people of color.
Abortion and Birth Control
Project 2025 mentions abortion roughly 200 times, and calls for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to report on “exactly how many abortions take place” in each state, the gestational age of the pregnancy, the “reason” for the abortion, and where the pregnant person resides. The same report would document miscarriages, stillbirths, and other pregnancy outcomes in each state. Such extensive monitoring, according to critics of the project, would lead to an increase in the criminalization of abortion patients and providers.
The document also attempts to separate abortion from miscarriage management and “standard ectopic pregnancy treatments,” essentially redefining abortion as something other than a standard form of healthcare and banning the CDC from labeling it as such.
Project 2025 would eliminate HHS’s Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force, established under President Joe Biden, replacing it with an anti-abortion task force that, as the Washington Post reports, aims to “recast the HHS as the Federal Department of Life.”
In addition, Project 2025 calls for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reverse its approval of mifepristone and misoprostol, the two pills used in medication abortions, calling them “the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post-Roe world.” In addition, Project 2025 calls for the elimination of telemedicine abortion services, requiring a return “to the pre-2021 in-person dispensing requirement” studies have shown to be unnecessary by way of the dormant 1873 Comstock Act.
The blueprint also directs the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to eliminate coverage of emergency contraception, claiming Plan B and other so-called “morning after” pills cause abortions (they do not). Project 2025 would also eliminate essential fetal tissue and stem cell research, calling on Congress to “prohibit such research altogether.” According to Mayo Clinic, stem cell research has the potential to help “generate healthy cells to replace cells affected by diseases” such as diabetes, Parkinson’s, arthritis, and more.
LGBTQ+ Rights
Read up on our full LGBTQIA+ Project 2025 breakdown here, but in general, Project 2025 calls on the federal government to deny the existence of transgender people, and calls on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to “immediately end its collection of data on gender identity, which legitimized the unscientific notion that men can become women (and vice versa).”
Multiple times over, the document demands the federal government officially declare families to be comprised of a married father, mother and biological children and, as the 19th reports, “redirects federal funds to support a biblically based definition of family.” Under Project 2025’s policy agenda, adoption and foster care services that refuse to work with or assist LGBTQ+ couples would receive federal protection, and claims that the “male-female dyad is essential to human nature.”
Immigration
Project 2025 seeks to completely restructure the U.S. immigration system, starting with the combination of multiple agencies — including HHS, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Department of Justice (DOJ) — to create a “standalone border and immigration agency at the Cabinet level” that would become the “third largest department measured by manpower.”
It also calls for the president to potentially “shrink or eliminate” the Department of Homeland Security itself, and allow for the use of active duty “military personnel and hardware” to prevent border crossings. The document would also allow for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to conduct “expedited removal” raids on immigrants anywhere in the country, including schools, hospitals and religious institutions.
The project’s agenda also calls for the government to fund the U.S.-Mexico border wall until it is completed, while eliminating due process rights and allowing for ICE to remove, arrest, and detain immigrants without a warrant.
Project 2025 directs the federal government to increase the number of immigrants who can be detained while facing deportation—up to 100,000 a day—while ending protections for the more than half a million Dreamers who came to the U.S. as children. The manifesto also calls on Congress to repeal all Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations, causing nearly 700,000 immigrants to automatically lose their work authorization and requiring their immediate deportation.
According to Project 2025, “victimization should not be a basis for an immigration benefit,” and therefore calls for the next sitting president to eliminate T and U visas issued to immigrants who have suffered “substantial physical or mental abuse” or have been “victims of human trafficking.”
It also calls for the Department of Education to “eliminate or significantly reduce the number of visas issued to foreign students.”
