“The capillaries in my eyes are bursting
If our love died, would that be the worst thing?
For somebody I thought was my saviour
You sure make me do a whole lot of labour”
–Labour, Paris Paloma
*TW: Mentions of rape, sexual assault, pornography*
In middle school, I was still the overambitious reader I am today. I remember feeling brave reading The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood — a frightening look into the totalitarian fictional society of Gilead, where women were essentially slaves to men and reduced to possessions of the regime. The narrative follows June (referred to as Offred to indicate that she is “of Fred”) who is among the few fertile women forced into sexual servitude to repopulate the world. At only 12 years old, the book had a serious and devastating impact on my mental health and my mom made me promise to not pick it up again until I turned 18.
While Margaret Atwood is no doubt a literary genius, her words are more reality than fiction today. Entering the office after this election is a man who has stood criminal trial, been impeached twice, and faced allegations of rape and sexual abuse.
I remember blinking sleep out of my eyes, hopelessly checking the US election map on Nov. 5. I remember talking to my friends over FaceTime, all of us distracted or in denial, and telling them the election wasn’t over yet. But by the time I went to sleep at 3 AM, America was already bleeding red.
The following day, knowing who had won, we carried pits in our stomachs at the thought of the next four years. At the thought that our choices were being taken away. A country priding itself on progress had taken several steps back.
“If we had a daughter, I’d watch and could not save her
The emotional torture, from the head of your high table
She’d do what you taught her, she’d meet the same cruel fate
So now I’ve gotta run, so I can undo this mistake
At least I’ve gotta try”
–Labour, Paris Paloma
I’m an EMT in a smaller conservative town, surrounded by other left-leaning towns. During a summer night shift, my supervising EMT grabbed the remote, said “Let’s see what the idiots are up to” and switched to the Democratic Convention. I was surprised that someone in healthcare that I looked up to was a Trump supporter. When I told my friends, they said it was unsurprising for the town. It struck me that the election shows us two sides of citizenship; fitting a demographic-based voting profile and citing “better economy” for a party line or disregarding those lines and voting for the issues. I would think humanity is an issue.
It dreads me knowing that someone might have voted against my and others’ rights and having to save lives alongside them. It makes me wonder why they value the lives we save at our jobs more than the ones they could have protected with their vote. While I may never know their reasoning, the divide between those who voted for human rights and those who voted despite their violation still stands. I suppose we will always be left guessing which category the people we interact with fall into.
While the time to change our vote (I swear, this is a real search on the internet) has passed, it’s time to learn more about the next four years. This is context but as more news comes out that may not be covered in this article, I highly encourage everyone to do their own research and keep themselves updated. Let’s take a look into the meaning of Project 2025 and the rather credible claims that it’s associated with the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump.
Project 2025: some details you need
Project 2025, also known as the 2025 Presidential Transitional Project, is a conservative political initiative meant to reshape essentially everything about the US to turn it into something I cannot distinguish from Gilead. A BBC report explains that the nearly 900-page document is written by the Heritage Foundation, an extremely right-wing “think tank.”
Trump has made all efforts to distance himself from it in the past, claiming he “knows nothing about it” but, as this CNN article highlights, around 140 of his own employees are involved in the document, six of them being his cabinet secretaries. This includes his former chief-of-staff Mark Meadows and longtime advisor Stephen Miller. He has also recently named new staff members that are tied to the Project. According to the Washington Post, a key example is Russ Vought who Trump might appoint to lead the White House budget office. Vought was one of the architects of the project. Here is some of what Project 2025 covers:
ending no-fault divorce
“No-Fault Divorce” refers to the law that the spouse filing for divorce does not need evidence or explicit reasoning to file for divorce. This law often helps spouses, particularly women, escape unhappy or abusive relationships. The document claims that weakening marriages are the cause of social breakdown and thus must be enforced. On page 481, the document states that “for the sake of child well-being, programs should affirm that children require and deserve both the love and nurturing of a mother and the play and protection of a father.” I can agree that the safety and security of a family is key but what good is the presence of a family if it’s not healthy? If we force women to have children, how does that foster a healthy environment? If we empower men to be the sole leaders in a family, how does that empower their daughters? Not only are we taking rights away, but we’re also reinstating the Victorian-era separation of general roles and spheres.
The text suggests that the US government aims to “wield” federal power to “reverse the crisis and rescue America’s kids from familial breakdown” even if that means legally limiting personal agency and exercising patriarchal authoritarianism (page 4). This makes the fight harder for girls who are trapped in child marriages in US states — an issue I joined the grassroots movement for as a National Youth Council Member for UNICEF USA. One step forward, three steps back.
Undermining gender: women because of a family
Project 2025 seeks to “refocus gender equality on women, children, and families” while removing references to “gender,” “gender equality” and “reproductive health” from the USAID website (pages 258-259). USAID, or the United States Agency for International Development, plays a critical role in overseeing foreign aid and developing assistant programs for global health and gender equity. The authors believe that the Democratic administrations have “nearly erased what females are” through gender policies instead of protecting “vulnerable women, children, and families” (page 259). The new conservative President-elect has policies that threaten women everywhere, reinforcing a narrative that reduces women to their ability to bear children.
Here is their truth according to the Project:
“Without women, there are no children, and society cannot continue.” (Page 451)
And here is the parallel:
“We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.” (The Handmaid’s Tale, Chapter 23)
As a 19-year-old aspiring doctor, I feel as though my government is telling me my most valuable trait is being fertile. The authors want to change the USAID office from “Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment” (GEWE) to “Office of Women, Children, and Families” (page 259). The claim is that they want the basic human needs met by this department and define these as equal access to potable water, sanitation, food, education, healthcare, house of worship, justice, pregnancy, etc. However, if women cannot escape child marriages or abusive relationships, they cannot have access to justice, education, or healthcare.
Consider Nancy Davis, a 22-year-old mother of two, who was expecting another child but was told her 10-week fetus was developing without a skull, a condition called acrania. Her home state, Louisiana, had already banned abortions by this time. Davis shared that she was essentially told to “carry [her] baby, to bury [her] baby.”
And yet, Project 2025 states that USAID’s continuation of funding the global abortion industry does not “promote life, women’s health, and the family.”
“All day, every day,
therapist, mother, maid
Nymph then a virgin,
nurse then a servant
Just an appendage, live to attend him
So that he never lifts a finger”
– Labour, Paris Paloma
Abortion: we’ve heard this one before
To be clear, Project 2025 strongly alludes to a national abortion ban with little to no exceptions for any state rules or medical situations. They want to ban pills such as mifepristone and mail-order abortion (page 459). They claim that mail-order abortions are a danger when they are “trying to protect women, girls, and unborn children from abortion” but it is the only way for many women, especially those in red states.
The authors want the CDC to mandate abortion surveillance. Instead of being reported on a voluntary basis, they want it essentially mandated (page 455). The HHS would “use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure every state reports how many abortions take place,” including details like “gestational age of the child,” the reason for termination, maternal residence, and the method of termination (page 455).
Project 2025 wants to withdraw funding for Medicaid to the states with abortion coverage by enforcing the Hyde Amendment into permanent law with monitoring them (page 474). This would prohibit funding of Planned Parenthood and parallel organizations and reduce the availability of all clinical services.
NGOs can be at the mercy of changes in government funding if a President enacts the Global Gag rule. The rule would stop NGOs receiving US global health assistance from “providing legal abortion services or referrals…even if it’s done without the NGO’s own, non-US funds.” This would reduce the quality or access to HIV services, undo work for reproductive health, and cause suffering to many women, especially poor women. Research shows that this reduces contraceptive access and increases rates of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions.
Early discussion of abortion in the document begins with a claim — “conservatives should ardently pursue…pro-life and pro-family policies…recognizing that many women who find themselves in immensely difficult and often tragic situations and heroism of every choice to become a mother.” The deep rooted, shameless belief here is that women are only brave as mothers. That we breathe and live to give life rather than deserve one ourselves. If you recognize that women can be in difficult situations, where are the foolproof protections for rape or incest? Where is our healthcare? Where is our choice?
“24∕7, baby machine
So he can live out his picket fence dreams
It’s not an act of love if you make her
You make me do too much labour”
– Labour, Paris Paloma
How can forcing a family on women who cannot afford or safely carry one be healthy for the child? The point should not be to have more children but to have them in a safe, providing environment.
To “restore culture” in America, they want to move to revoke Executive Order 14020 and every policy that supports the Gender Policy Council and their issues (page 63). The GPC addresses “economic security, health, gender-based violence and education — with a focus on gender equity and equality and particular attention to the barriers faced by women and girls.” They want to abolish this organization and end “comprehensive sexuality education” in order to strengthen family values.
The document quotes Former State Department director of policy planning Kiron Skinner in saying that the US “should focus on core security, economic, and human rights” instead of what the document calls “radical abortion and pro-LGBT initiatives” (page 481). I’m sorry, I must be confused on what human rights mean. I assumed it wasn’t letting women in need of emergency care die for your sexist political views. My bad.
Eliminating unions and worker protections
Project 2025 proposes reducing the influence and bargaining rights of unions and workers on the government for key issues like working wage, conditions, and benefits. The proposal prioritizes corporate interests over worker protections.
They want to decrease the enforcement of wages and hour laws. Through reducing the DOL (Department of Labor) enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), they aim to reduce protections on minimum wage, overtime pay, and child labor. The FLSA ensures that employees receive a federally mandated minimum wage and get paid overtime for hours over 40 a week.
A key point, enforced by the Center for American Progress, is that the project allows workers to calculate their overtime over extended timeframes while the current system is weekly. While this offers flexibility, it weakens oversight, increasing the risks of wage theft. The policy also proposed that employees choose between overtime pay or banked time off (PTO). Low-wage earners often struggle to use paid leave due to job pressures. This policy would allow their employers to entirely withhold overtime compensation.
ending affordable healthcare
Outside of abortion regulations, there is hypocrisy in the text that states that the government should reduce “burdens of regulatory compliance.” It heavily critiques the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and wants to repeal its provisions to return regulatory power to the states. The ACA provides affordable health insurance and the “premium tax credits” to allow for household income to be a qualifier for federal poverty level. Low-income, disabled, chronically ill, or unemployed Americans rely on this limitless coverage. ACA provided insurance coverage for 16 million Americans in its first five years, primarily young adults. Without ACA, conditions such as cancer received limited healthcare insurance and sometimes, none at all.
The project wants to eliminate access to health care in Medicare and Medicaid. The effect of the text would end Medicare’s ability to control drug prices. This would disproportionally affect elderly Americans who depend on Medicare. Medicare negotiations focus on some of the most expensive drugs and help save hundreds of thousands of dollars in these costs per year. They also want to limit which disabilities qualify veterans for benefits (pages 649-650). This is how many afford the food on their tables.
The Project wants to promote stable and married families and defines it strictly as a married mother, father, and children. This excludes every LGBTQ+ individual and those who choose not to marry or have children. It states that the US is experiencing a crisis of “fatherlessness.” The most harrowing part of this is the statement “fathers insulate children from physical and sexual abuse, financial difficulty or poverty incarceration, teen pregnancy, poor education outcomes, high school failure, and a host of behavioral and psychological problems” (page 451). I believe firmly that healthy families are good for development and a stable life. However, I don’t think they are the only vital component of it like the document makes a point of.
dismantling the department of education
Yes, Project 2025 proposes that “the federal Department of Education should be eliminated” in an effort to reduce the federal involvement in education (page 319). Trump has also advertised this agenda at his rallies. They wish to relocate the funds of this to other agencies and authorities. The authors also want to eliminate Title 1 funding which has provided critical financial help to high-poverty schools and districts. This would undermine the education of 2.8 million vulnerable US students. Project 2025 wants to end the Head Start Program which would end universal free school meals that provide food security to millions of children (page 482).
While they lead with the metaphorical banner of reducing federal involvement in schools, the text is limitless on the number of provisions the government should put on the teachings in these institutions. Project 2025 states that no public institution can mandate an employee to uphold the use of another’s pronouns if it conflicts with the employee or contractor’s “religious or moral convictions.” This would promote a restrictive and manipulated (and dare I say, heavily monitored) view of gender identity (page 346). Moreover, they want to remove “critical race theory and gender ideology” in all public schools as they believe it to be “poison” to children. As a student, I find books to make me more aware but that does not seem to be the agenda.
Trump wants to “send education back to the states” and have Linda McMahon on as a “fierce advocate for the parents.” In a proposal outlined by his campaign team, Agenda47, parents would elect school principles and federal funding would be cut to schools teaching “critical race theory.” This would divide America’s education statistics, from policies to opportunities. Already, with the analysis of the election results, this divide exists. This map shows a clear correlation between the votes casted and the level of education around the country.
Project 2025 would cut federal loan programs that help parents that want to send their children to college, graduate students, and immigrants wishing for higher education. This would narrow down access to education so it’s only for the wealthy and well-connected (pages 167 and 354). This already exists in our education system with the expensive schooling and advantage of connection but with a decrease in public school education, it would worsen.
Project 2025 states, “children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pronographies invading their school libraries” (page 1). It explicitly states that “pornography should be outlawed” and that “purveyor are child predated and misogynistic exploiters of women” as a direction to the next conservative President (page 5). Trumps’ documented and alleged history with sex workers, sex parties, and criminal trials over adult actresses contrast the Project’s moral claims.
The document condemns “pornography” and the “misogynstic exploiters of women,” yet the next conservative President is the most prominent advocate of these valleys. President-elect Trump was caught on tape bragging that he “moved on her like a bitch… [he] couldn’t get there and she was married…she’s now got the big phony tits and everything…I just start kissing them…I don’t even wait…Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” This is the conservative President being told to outlaw what he is most known for. I end with this — family values are important but we need a safe, supportive, and inclusive family.
AND more
Suffice it to say, this article barely touches the surface of an almost 900 page document accompanied with enough context and partnerships to take a while to unpack. There’s the overwhelming theme of removing non-discrimination policies (ex. mentions of sexual orientation and equity). As always, everyone should indulge in their own, credible research and if you’d like to download the pdf for the project, here is the link to their website. New information is emerging every day, from new appointments to policies and connections. Not all of it is highlighted here. Education and empathy are our most powerful tools.
While the goal here is not to provide hope, I hope this was a resource to people who want to learn more. As always, put your mental health and safety first, form your own opinions, and stay tuned to know more.