Project 2025 has been in the headlines recently and Democrats have been warning about it in their ads, claiming that it will destroy America.
They are correct.
This project, or ‘Playbook,’ as the Heritage Foundation has been calling it, is otherwise known as the Presidential Transition Project. It is a guide to Donald Trump, but it isn’t directed specifically at Trump. This is a guide for any Republican who makes it into the White House.
So what’s in it? Why is it so bad?
This manual is nearly 1,000 pages long, detailing how to dismantle the efficiency of the government and hijack the executive branch to give more power to the president of the United States. In the foreword, written by Dr. Kevin Roberts, it mentions four ways the “Conservative Promise” will be upheld by the whole document.
The first is to “Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect children.” Roberts claims that the nuclear family is in crisis, with “70 percent of black children” being “born to unmarried mothers.” Roberts ignores the fact that the United States has a mass incarceration problem in America that disproportionately targets young black men. The problem that he is gesturing at is a problem conservatives created in the first place.
Robert also claims that “The next conservative president must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors.” The way he suggests doing this is by “deleting the terms” of a long list of things including sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion and even reproductive rights.
“Deleting” these terms will not “save the American family.” It is an attempt to stop people from learning more about themselves. People have a right to learn and understand themselves.
The elimination of the term “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” has already started. Campuses across the country have been dismantling their diversity departments, including UNL. This is disappointing to see.
Robert suggests that the president should work with Congress to deploy existing federal powers to “protect innocent life” and “vigorously” comply with “statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion.” Despite conservatives and Republicans continually claiming that they don’t want a national abortion ban, it is written in the foreword clear as day.
As Tim Walz continually says, this is their playbook. They don’t write this sort of thing to leave it on the shelf.
If the path to saving the “American family” is paved with the systematic elimination of the things we have fought so hard to protect, like diversity and reproductive rights, I don’t want to take that exit. There are better routes to take.
