October 9, 2024
Liz Church
If you know me, you know I have zero tolerance for bullies. I take Chris Evans’ version of Captain America and hold it on a pedestal because, today, I feel like we need brave heroes against fascism more than ever. Last week, my colleague, Kate McNulty, gave us a glimpse of how close the United States is teetering toward it, and I’m going to take it a step further.
Like many Americans, I am worried, tired, and frustrated about this year’s election. It’s not an election for or against “red and blue” candidates but between fascism and democracy.
Thanks to the Harris-Walz presidential campaign, progressive organizations, and professional mainstream and independent journalists, I’m sure many of you have seen the name of a playbook – Project 2025 – in the headlines.
This 922-page ultra-conservative volume is full of wrong-headed policies, clearly unconstitutional laws, and unprecedented regulations (or deregulation) – is a step-by-step implementation guide for the next Republican administration.
I learned about the playbook in 2023 and closely kept it on my radar. I didn’t dare to read the flippin’ thing in the beginning because well… the obvious. Earlier this summer, I changed my mind. I needed to know what was in this damning thing.
I will be very frank with you—if this sinister tome about our nation’s dark past is implemented, many people will suffer in many ways.
While the entirety of this fascist manual is appalling, I want to focus on how women, LGTBQ+ communities, and our healthcare system could be impacted by dropping quotes with links from Defeat Project 2025, a volunteer group that’s done a lot of the hard work to gain awareness about this thing. You can visit their site and learn more about what these monsters intend. So please, my friends, take care as you read.
Potential Healthcare Policies:
“(U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) HHS should return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care and by restoring its mission statement under the Strategic Plan and elsewhere to include furthering the health and well-being of all Americans ‘from conception to natural death.’”
– page 489
About Abortion Specifically:
– page 455
“Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method…In addition, (Centers for Disease Control) CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion. Moreover, abortion should be clearly defined as only those procedures that intentionally end an unborn child’s life. Miscarriage management or standard ectopic pregnancy treatments should never be conflated with abortion.”
“Policymakers should end taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood and all other abortion providers and redirect funding to health centers that provide real health care for women.”
– page 471
“Congress should pass the Protecting Life and Taxpayers Act, which would accomplish the goal of defunding abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.” – page 472
– page 472
Potential Policies Targeting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer+ (LGBTQ+) Individuals and Communities:
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”
– page 4
“Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. 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.”
– page 451
“The Secretary’s antidiscrimination policy statements should never conflate sex with gender identity or sexual orientation. Rather, the Secretary should proudly state that men and women are biological realities that are crucial to the advancement of life sciences and medical care and that married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”
– page 489 (refers the “Secretary,” as the head of the Department of Life)
From Defeat Project 2025: Eradicating LGTBQ+ individuals is one of their biggest pursuits, and they intend to impose several policies that will severely injure the LGBTQ+ community.
Project 2025 also details dismantling our Department of Defense and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), annihilating our climate change efforts (now being dubbed by certain members as “weird science”), and privatizing government agencies like the National Weather Service and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). By the way, because it’s timely, the National Service and NOAA were responsible for telling us Hurricane Helene was coming. So, I want you to take a moment and think about what that means if we did not have it.
The elimination of the Department of Education because it’s “unnecessary.” Affordable housing opportunities would plummet. Medicaid and Medicare would be nothing as we know it to be in public health today. The Veterans Administration (VA) would be slashed. Tax hikes for the lower and middle class would cripple millions of people, moving some into poverty while millionaires continue reaping the benefits. “Schedule F,” the proposal to fill government agencies with political loyalists rather than qualified, non-partisan experts.
Many of the policy goals in Project 2025 are mean, cruel, and outright inhumane. Do you want to move our nation forward into a future of opportunities for all or drag it back 150 years into the unfair and undemocratic past?
Americans throw around the word “freedom” but never think about the possibility it can be taken away. As Kate McNulty says, “Let’s allow each other to be American in the most American way possible by living our lives our way and respectfully allowing others to do the same.”
So, my friends, we are not going back.
