Project 2025, the controversial conservative thinktank blueprint for a future Republican administration, represents a “direct and deliberate threat to Black communities,” according to civil rights activists.
A report this month from the Legal Defense Fund argues that the blueprint, which would eliminate key government agencies and roll back policies aimed at remedying police misconduct, “is the latest and one of the most comprehensive efforts to turn back the clock and erase the hard-won progress of Black people in the United States that has strengthened U.S. democracy.”
The Independent has contacted the Heritage Foundation, authors of Project 2025, for comment.
The analysis points to some of the most controversial parts of Project 2025.
Proposals to eliminate the Department of Education could impact civil rights enforcement in higher education and harm Black students, who are disproportionately likely to receive Pell Grants, according to the analysis.
“We look at the proposals for dismantling the Department of Education, [which] might be an abstract concept that people hear, but we bring it to a more concrete level in terms of how it will impact individual lives,” Karla McKanders, the director of the fund’s Thurgood Marshall Institute, told The Guardian. “If we look at pre-K, Project 2025 proposes to dismantle the Head Start program for pre-K. In the report, we have statistics that show that 28% of the enrollees in Head Start are Black children. While it will undermine education efforts for all children, in particular it will disproportionately impact and widen achievement gaps for Black and Latinx students.”
She added that other ideas in the blueprint, like further restricting abortion and the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, are already playing out in states, in ways that dramatically “upend” life in Black communities.
The report argues calls to increase the use of the now-suspended federal death penalty would hit communities of color especially hard, given their over-representation on death row, as would an attempt end to federal consent decrees, legal agreements with police agencies that have been a key tool in cracking down on officer misconduct.
And a plan to dismantle the Census Bureau could entrench these issues even further if Black communities are under-counted in the population studies that determine congressional representation, according to the report.
The Kamala Harris campaign has sought to tie Donald Trump to the project, though the former president has insisted he wasn’t involved in it and called some of its proposals “seriously extreme.”
“[Trump] and his extreme Project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class. We know we got to take that seriously,” Harris said during one campaign appearance. ”Can you believe they put that thing in writing? Read it. It’s 900 pages.”
The Trump campaign has tried to distance itself from the plan, despite vice presidential nominee JD Vance writing the foreword to a book on the project, which was crafted by more than a dozen former Trump officials.
