Another four years have passed, and with a new election cycle comes a new government. This government in particular has a conservative majority in all of the major areas, including the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and, of course, the presidential seat itself. This majority weakens the checks and balances in the government, meaning that the Republicans are more likely to execute–and in some areas, have already begun executing–a plan they’ve been brewing for the past 104 years: Project 2025.
You read that right. Project 2025 isn’t a new thing–at all. It has existed since 1921 and is part of a series of documents called the Mandate for Leadership. The idea started with Warren G. Harding, who wanted to “omit unnecessary interference of government with business,” but this first iteration of the Project ground to a halt due to the Great Depression. There simply weren’t enough funds to keep it going. Then in 1973, Nixon created a new version of it called the Federal Political Personnel Manual, or the Malek Manual (named after its author, Fredric Malek). The new plan–one more comparable to Project 2025–was to “move the country so far to the right, you won’t even recognize it.” This was stopped because it was revealed to be part of the Watergate scandal and the government didn’t let it move forward. But those are only the major revivals: this is the ninth attempt at making it work.
Now, in 2025, the project has started up once again. This time, Kevin Roberts–the CEO of the Heritage Foundation–has revived it, and Trump–despite claiming to not support the Foundation–has endorsed it and has even begun signing executive orders following its guidelines. The 922-page document details how exactly it wants to “Take the Reins of Government” (word for word, this is the title of Section One).
As a side note, Kevin Roberts–in addition to authoring Project 2025–published a book on November 12, 2024, titled Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America. It actually sounds pretty patriotic–heroic, even–until you find out that the original subtitle was Burning Down Washington to Save America. According to The New Statesman, the central idea of the book is that “America’s institutions need to be destroyed in order to be rebuilt.”
If you thought this book wasn’t related to Trump, think again: JD Vance, Trump’s vice president, personally put a foreword at the beginning of the book. In that foreword, he says that it’s “time to circle the wagons and load the muskets.”
At this point you’re probably thinking: “Okay…but what does this have to do with me?” Trust me, it has everything to do with you–and all of America–especially as a student. Let me list a few examples.
It is very clearly stated in the Project 2025 PDF that the Department of Education should be dissolved. Trump is already drafting an executive order to carry out that vision. Once the Department of Education is eliminated, the Republicans want to move educational control to the states–meaning that in a red state like ours, we could be taught creationism instead of evolution if the Iowa legislature wanted to implement that as policy.
Now you’re probably thinking: “Oh, then it must be fine in blue states, right?” Wrong.
The supporters of Project 2025 also want to make it so that teachers can’t teach “critical race theory,” the theory that many parts of Western society carry inherent racial bias, and “gender ideology,” the idea that gender is not exclusively decided by biological sex. The PDF also states that it wants to kill the Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) programs or move them to the Department of Labor. If the former were to become reality, that means no PSEO courses, no free Kirkwood programs, and nothing college-related while in high school. They also say that the education system “should be rebalanced to focus far more on bolstering the workforce skills of Americans who have no interest in pursuing a four-year academic degree.” In simpler terms, it appears that they’re saying they think that the majority of Americans want to go straight into the workforce after high school. No wonder they want to kill OPE programs then, huh?
The PDF also talks about “deleting” DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) because it “deprives Americans of their First Amendment rights.” Do you know what this means for queer people? That’s right! Executive orders barring trans kids from sports.
On the immigration side of things, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have become unrestricted: they can arrest migrants anywhere, whether that be a church, hospital, or school, and if they have a warrant, they can go into a suspected illegal immigrant’s home. Heck, they could even do it while someone’s walking down the street; it doesn’t have to be in a building. In short, nowhere is safe for undocumented migrants now.
Additionally, Project 2025 mentions removing Title I programs, which means majorly cutting funding for public schools and losing an estimated 180,000 teachers, or about six percent of the workforce, which will affect 2.8 million students.
And this is only on the education side of things. There is much more to Project 2025 (which, fun fact, takes about an hour and nine minutes to read in one sitting). For a concise, organized summary of the document, you can read Democracy Forward’s 48-page PDF and continue diving down the rabbit hole.
