Project 2025: LGBTQ rights

Climate change

Project 2025 takes extreme positions against LGBTQ rights, seeking to eliminate federal protections for queer people and pursue research into conversion therapies in order to encourage gender and sexuality conformity. The policy book also lays out plans to criminalize being transgender and prohibit federal programs from supporting queer people through various policies.”

From GLAAD: The Heritage Foundation’s “stated support for freedom and limited government does not extend to LGBTQ Americans, as evidenced by decades of waging losing battles against:

“Project 2025 aims to gut protections for the LGBTQ community, which its organizers believe exists in opposition to the ‘traditional American family’ and its Christian nationalist underpinnings. The Project would prioritize families ‘comprised of a married mother, father, and their children’ and would eliminate any federal policies that promote LGBTQ equality or that assist single mothers.”

From GPAHE: “Under the banner of “Restoring the Family,” Project 2025 aims to gut protections for the LGBTQ+ community… The Project would privilege ‘family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including the tax code’ to favor traditional families…  Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on ‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage. These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families.'”

Of course, you don’t have to read the document to know the position of the National Republican Committee. Just watch Day 1 of the convention.

Climate change

“Project 2025 would eliminate environmental protections and further delay climate action. In the foreword, Heritage President Kevin Roberts calls environmentalism a ‘pseudo-religion,’ claiming ‘environmental extremism is decidedly anti-human’ because it promotes ‘population control and economic regression’ by ‘regarding human activity itself as fundamentally a threat to be sacrificed to the god of nature.'”

From The Hill: “The project… proposes chopping up several agencies. It called for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the nation’s oceans, weather, climate, and fisheries science agency, to be ‘dismantled.’

“NOAA is home to the National Weather Service (which the plan says should henceforth focus on commercial operations), as well as the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (which the plan says should be ‘downsized,’ with much of its climate research “disbanded”).

“The plan would also eliminate offices within the Energy Department that focus on renewable energy, climate technology and energy technology research.”

Watch the Legal Eagle piece on Project 2025: A Hellish Legal Vision For America ft. Liz Dye, which touches on the whole 900-page document.

Media Matters on Project 2025

I thought Americans didn’t want a king

A LOT of folks I know IRL have said, online and occasionally in person, that we all need to know more about Project 2025. I agree. My first mention was in a link in August 2023, but it bears repeating.

Check out the Media Matters website.

“The initiative is backed by a coalition of over 100 organizations and individuals, at least two-thirds of which receive funding from the Koch network or conservative philanthropist Leonard Leo. The project is also heavily promoted by MAGA-connected media figures such as Steve Bannon, who has called it the ‘blueprint’ for Trump’s second term on his War Room podcast.”

The presumptive Republican nominee claims, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Or, less politely, he lies.

This is – let me think of a kind way to put this – disingenuous.  Just before he went to prison for a few months, Bannon told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that he had regularly been in touch with djt. “John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office and one of Trump’s most trusted aides, is a senior adviser for the project. McEntee said in April that the Trump campaign and Project 2025 plan to ‘integrate a lot of our work’ this summer, according to the liberal watchdog Media Matters.”

Peter Navarro, Ken Cuccinelli,  Stephen Moore, Christopher Miller, Roger Severino, and others who worked in his administration are all involved in Project 2025. In other words, he has implausible deniability.

A fundraising email from the Heritage Foundation also lays it on thick. “The Biden campaign has declared an all-out war on The Heritage Foundation and our Project 2025 initiative.

“The social media feeds for the campaign, and all their surrogates are filled with lies about our work. Their website even has a page dedicated to attacking Project 2025.

“They are terrified of Project 2025 because they know it will save our country from the radical Left’s destructive agenda.”

Here’s a video dispassionately explaining Project 2025, noting five criticisms of the program. It’s the type of resource that tries to be nonpartisan.

Immunity

Project 2025 is made more threatening by SCOTUS’ decision regarding immunity.

Once again, the Heritage Foundation says that Biden lied. “‘For all… practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do,’ Biden claimed.” He also suggested “that ‘the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self-imposed by the president alone.’ This accusation is objectively false.”

The prevarication belongs to the Heritage Foundation. The generally apolitical The Legal Eagle notes WE’RE F*CKED. In the description: “This is one of the worst SCOTUS decisions ever.” Trump Is Immune. He argues that djt’s “limited immunity,” in practical terms, is anything but limited.

New Civil Rights Movement: “Two hundred and three days after Special Counsel Jack Smith’s first request, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision along partisan lines… ruled an American President has ‘absolute‘ immunity from criminal prosecution if his actions are ‘official acts’ of Office.

Frank S. Robinson wrote in  The Supreme Court, Presidential Immunity, and the Implacable Tide: “The court unnecessarily pronounced [an overly broad] doctrine of presidential immunity. Practically deeming the president above the law, saying one can’t be prosecuted for any ‘official acts’ — only for stuff done in their ‘private capacity.’ Quite a limited carve-out. Worse yet, the Court’s majority, having promulgated a standard, failed to take the next step and apply it to the facts at hand.”

The Weekly Sift guy: “Roberts and the conservative majority have embedded a time bomb in the Constitution. That bomb could sit peacefully for decades until it is disarmed by some future Court, or it could go off as soon as next January.”

Am I scared? Yes, I am. Will I vote for whoever has the best chance of beating djt in November, even if he’s 81 and arthritic? I absolutely will. 

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