JALSA’s Spotlight on Project 2025

The extreme policy proposals of Project 2025, which you can read in the report's entirety at this link, are deeply harmful, undermine American democracy, and run directly counter to our shared Jewish and broader moral values. It's on each of us to raise awareness of Project 2025's destructiveness among our communities and networks.

Each week, in JALSA's weekly Action Alert email, for which you can sign up at this link, JALSA explores how Project 2025 impacts a different issue area. And, each week, the most recent issue explored will be added to the top of this page.

You can take part in JALSA's efforts to combat Project 2025, starting by filling out this form to let JALSA know what actions you're interested in taking.

Voting Rights & Democracy (9/26/24 Action Alert)

The implementation of Project 2025 would have irrevocably harmful impacts on Americans' voting rights and the safety of our democracy. Specific proposals outlined in Project 2025 that would undermine voting rights and democracy include:

Gutting Checks & Balances to Consolidate Presidential Power: Project 2025 would weaken the independence of public agencies and replace myriad civil servants and experts with politically-appointed loyalists. This would serve to undermine our system of checks and balances, consolidating far too much presidential power. This would allow a president to abuse the office to achieve personal ends and harm political rivals, particularly as it pertains to enforcement of the rule of law. The Brennan Center for Justice calls Project 2025’s proposals “a giant leap for authoritarianism.”

Enabling Attacks on Election Officials and Making Elections Less Secure: Project 2025 would weaponize the Justice Department and other federal agencies to further politicize election administration and revive unfounded attacks on election officials. Relatedly, Project 2025 would undermine the ability of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA, operated under the Department of Homeland Security) to ensure the security of elections and to combat efforts at disinformation, inviting foreign interference in our elections.

Perverting Civil Rights Laws to Undermine Voting Rights: The Enforcement Act of 1870 was passed following the Civil War to prosecute anyone who would try to prevent Black Americans, or anyone else, from voting. Project 2025 seeks to distort this law into a vehicle for enabling politically motivated prosecutions by using it as the legal basis for lawsuits to pursue conspiracy theories in court. This law meant to protect civil rights could be used to go after imagined cases of illegal voters and phantom election fraud, all designed to ultimately suppress voting rights.

For additional background on Project 2025’s harmful impacts on voting rights & democracy, references include The Nation’s “Project 2025’s Guide to Subverting Democracy,” Democracy Docket’s “Unmasking the Anti-Democracy Agenda of Project 2025,” and ACLU’s “Project 2025 Promises to Harm Our Communities and Turn Presidents Into Kings.”

Healthcare (9/19/24 Action Alert)

The implementation of Project 2025 would have irrevocably harmful impacts on Americans' access to and affordability of healthcare. Specific proposals outlined in Project 2025 that would undermine healthcare include:

Increasing Prescription Drug Costs: Project 2025’s proposals would reverse the cost savings for prescription drugs generated by the reforms to Medicare Part D made in the Inflation Reduction Act. This would increase the out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs for as many as 18.5 million Medicare Part D enrollees.

“Capping” Medicaid Coverage: Project 2025 calls for the implementation of a “targeted time limit or lifetime cap” on Medicaid benefits. This harmful proposal means that, after a set period of time, people could lose eligibility for Medicaid coverage, regardless of financial status. This could put as many as 18.5 million Medicaid beneficiaries at risk of arbitrarily losing coverage.

Laying the Groundwork for Medicare Privatization: Project 2025 would shift the default for Medicare enrollment to private insurance plans through the Medicare Advantage program. These plans would actually cost the federal government an estimated $83 billion more per year, while losing the oversight of the traditional government-operated Medicare program.

Reducing Vaccinations for the Young and Senior Citizens: Project 2025 would appease anti-vaccination extremists in multiple ways. First, the plan seeks to prevent public health agencies from requiring vaccinations in schoolchildren, endangering children’s health and rolling back decades-long progress in combating communicable diseases. Second, the plan would eliminate no-cost vaccines for 54 million Medicare beneficiaries, increasing healthcare costs and especially jeopardizing the health of older Black and Latino adults and those with lower incomes. These proposals would reduce vaccination rates among the young and old, among our most vulnerable populations.

In accordance with our shared Jewish values, we know that every person has a right to the healthcare that they need. Kavod HaBriyot (upholding human dignity), Sh'mirat Haguf (caring for the body), and Pikuach Nefesh (preserving life) are fundamental values guiding us on healthcare policy.

Education (9/12/24 Action Alert)

The implementation of Project 2025 would have irrevocably harmful impacts on educational opportunities, protections, and funding across the country, heavily targeting marginalized and vulnerable student populations. Specific proposals outlined in Project 2025 that would undermine education include:

Dismantling the Federal Department of Education: Project 2025 seeks to realize a long-time goal of conservatives, eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. Wholesale shuttering the Department would reduce school performance monitoring, decrease avenues to support for high-poverty schools and students with disabilities, limit recommendation and implementation of national best practices in education, and myriad other harmful impacts like reducing civil rights protections and oversight in public education.

Eliminating the Head Start Program: Project 2025 proposes eliminating Head Start in its entirety, which “would vastly restrict the number of available childcare slots, dramatically increase childcare costs for families living in poverty, and undermine economic growth and exacerbate inequality.” In Fiscal Year 2023, Head Start served more than 800,000 Americans. With access to affordable, high-quality childcare being both a necessity for parents (and the employers for whom they work) as well as a key ingredient to enable children to meet their potential, eliminating Head Start would be immeasurably destructive.

Phasing Out Enormous Sources of Federal Funding: If enacted, Project 2025 would end vital sources of federal funding for our most vulnerable students. The extremist agenda would “phase out the $16 billion Title I funding program over the next 10 years” and “convert the $13 billion IDEA program for students with disabilities to block grants or a private school choice offering.” Title I supplies the vast majority of the nation’s 13,000 public school districts with funds to allocate to their highest-poverty individual schools. Title I has been a key vehicle for addressing “chronic funding and opportunity gaps between students experiencing high poverty and their more affluent peers.”

Undermining Protections for Marginalized Populations: Project 2025 would make school environments less safe and inclusive for students representing marginalized communities. Policies that attack LGBTQ+ students are high on the Project 2025 agenda, from misgendering to potentially outing students to limiting access to restrooms and sports teams. In the loaded and misleading name of parental rights, Project 2025 would lead to a crackdown on any curricula that could (however inaccurately) fall under the heading of “critical race theory” or acknowledge concepts like privilege and systemic racism. This would also lead to increased book banning in schools, targeting literature centering the stories of or written by authors who represent marginalized populations.

Increasing Costs for Student Loan Borrowers and Privatizing Student Loans: Project 2025 would reduce flexibility and increase costs for people who take out student loans by “phasing out existing income-driven repayment (IDR) plans for student loan borrowers, such as the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan and replacing it with a one-size-fits-all IDR plan.” These plans would no longer account for borrowers’ individual financial situations and would eliminate SAVE’s interest benefit, which would then threaten to bring back ballooning balances even for borrowers who make on-time monthly payments. A goal of Project 2025 is to privatize student loans, which would not only make them more expensive for borrowers but also make the loans potentially more predatory in nature.

Our Jewish values teach us that everyone deserves an education, especially early education. In fact, Judaism insists that learning should be made accessible to all, and is a communal responsibility. Proverbs 22:6 states the importance of early education as follows: “Train a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Climate Crisis (9/5/24 Action Alert)

The implementation of Project 2025 would have irrevocably harmful impacts on our climate, devastating our planet. When it comes to climate, Project 2025 has been called a “plan to bulldoze American climate policy,” “a disaster for the environment,” and “game over for climate progress.” Specific proposals outlined in Project 2025 that would exacerbate the climate crisis include:

Threatening Clean Energy Investments and Infrastructure: The Inflation Reduction Act established historic investments in our environment, especially in clean energy. Project 2025 would dismantle this progress and derail the transition to greater use of clean energy, cutting financing and investments for clean energy technologies and industrial manufacturing. The plan’s authors call for cutting OCED (Community Economic Development) programs, which work to improve sustainable development outcomes with community buy-in and benefits.

Increasing Toxicity of Our Air and Water: Project 2025 includes a myriad of concrete proposals that would neuter regulators’ ability to oversee environmental health and facilitate polluters’ ability to poison our air, water, and natural resources. Project 2025 fundamentally weakens the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by banning research on toxins and obstructs the development of climate mitigation strategies. Further, key enforcement and compliance offices within the EPA would be dissolved. And vital protections against destructive elements like lead poisoning and forever chemicals would be wholly reversed. Put simply, Project 2025 would “gut” climate and environmental regulations.

Imperiling Our Oceans and Other Waterways Through Increased Oil Drilling: Project 2025 would expand offshore drilling, which increases pollution, risks oil spills, and diverts resources from renewable energy sources. Vital ecosystems, biodiversity, and natural resources would be jeopardized needlessly.

Undermining Global Preparedness Strategies for Worldwide Climate Emergencies: Project 2025 advocates for a recission of all climate policies from foreign aid programs. Among these programs is the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE), the U.S. government’s strategy to use all of its tools to support more than half a billion people worldwide to adapt to climate impacts. Eliminating funding for this initiative would halt the deployment of lifesaving extreme weather early-warning systems and disaster risk reduction resources to communities worldwide.

To get even deeper into the fine points of Project 2025's harmful impacts on our climate, Sierra Club and Voters of Tomorrow have both posted analyses of Project 2025 that further explore the plan's destructive proposals in this area.

In accordance with our shared Jewish values, we have a profound duty to be responsible stewards of a healthy environment. Rooted in Deuteronomy 20, we adhere to the ethical principle of bal tashchit (“do not destroy”), the prohibition of wasteful destruction. Psalm 24 (“The Earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof.”) reminds us of the eternal nature of our environment and the responsibility to perpetuate it in a healthy manner. And, of course, the value of Tikkun Olam instructs us to “repair the world,” meaning that we all must leave our planet in better shape than we found it.

Labor and Wages (8/29/24 Action Alert)

The implementation of Project 2025 would harm workers, undermine unions, increase dangerous working conditions, and negatively impact wages. Specific proposals outlined in Project 2025 to that end include:

Undermining Workers' Right to Form and Join a Union: The National Labor Relations Board is the front-line agency tasked with enforcing labor laws. And, under the current NLRB, progress has been made in protecting workers' right to organize. However, as the Center for American Progress puts it, "the Project 2025 policy playbook offers instructions for future administrations to neuter the NLRB’s enforcement capacity and turn it against unions by firing key agency leaders, making it easier to decertify unions, and closing off established ways of forming unions." In short, anti-labor, malign actors running the NLRB can turn it into an obstacle to rather than a vehicle for enforcing labor laws and empowering workers to unionize.

Facilitating Union-Busting, Union Elimination, and Other Obstacles to Unionizing: Project 2025 also calls for a number of measures to make it easier for employers to eliminate unions and otherwise union-bust. For one example, under current law, workers can only vote to decertify a union for a short period before their union contracts expire (or when there is no contract in force). Project 2025 would allow such decertification votes any time a union contract is in force. In another example, Project 2025 would rescind the Persuader Rule, which requires employers to disclose the union-busting law firms or consultants they use and how much they paid for such services. New obstacles would also be put in place to make it harder for fast-food workers and other employees of franchise-based businesses to unionize.

Increasing Dangerous Child Labor: Project 2025 proposes eliminating protections against hazardous work for children. Specifically, Project 2025 calls on the U.S. Department of Labor to "amend its hazard-order regulations to permit teenage workers access to work in regulated jobs with proper training and parental consent." Amending these "hazard-order regulations" means letting teens work in hazardous jobs. Since 2019, child labor law violations have increased nearly 90%! Meanwhile, states run by conservatives - including Iowa and Arkansas - have already seen a relaxing of child labor laws, an alarming trend that Project 2025 will exacerbate.

Pushing Down Labor Costs Via Non-competitive Wages: Project 2025 calls for repealing the nearly-century-old Davis-Bacon Act, which requires contractors on public works projects to pay the prevailing wage paid to local workers doing similar work. Davis-Bacon was enacted to prevent government contractors from winning projects by underbidding competitors through ever-lower labor costs. Repealing Davis-Bacon would unfairly push down wages and generate a race to the bottom with labor bearing the brunt.

Reducing Eligibility for Overtime Pay: Project 2025's proposals would decrease access to overtime pay and give employers more power to exclude and disempower their employees. Currently, overtime is calculated weekly, which enables workers to accurately keep track of their time. Project 2025 proposes allowing employers to choose more irregular and intentionally confusing time periods, giving employees less control of and visibility into their own paychecks. This is particularly troubling as overtime eligibility and access are already among the most common forms of wage theft by employers.

To get even deeper into the fine points of Project 2025's harmful impacts on labor and wages, the AFL-CIO and AFSCME have both posted analyses of Project 2025 that further explore the plan's destructive proposals.

In accordance with our shared Jewish values, it is important to recall that the Torah explicitly calls for respecting labor and paying due wages. Deuteronomy 24:14-15 compels employers "do not take advantage of hired workers" and also "pay them their wages each day... because they are counting on it." Leviticus 19:13 further amplifies the message to not "defraud" hired workers of their wages. Fair wages and fair treatment of labor, which Project 2025 intentionally seeks to undermine, are vital to our shared Jewish values.

Gun Violence and Public Safety (8/22/24 Action Alert)

The implementation of Project 2025 would drastically undermine efforts toward implementing policies to prevent gun violence, eroding our freedom to live in a safe society.

Specific policies exacerbating gun violence and harming public safety, as outlined in Project 2025, include:

Politicizing Law Enforcement: Project 2025 calls for moving the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) from under the auspices of the more politically independent FBI to operating under the auspices of the Treasury Department. This would allow for more over political interference in the enforcement of gun laws and the prevention of gun violence.

Federal progress on combating gun violence has been made in recent years with passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that created the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, coupled with the proposal of federal rules to crack down on untraceable "ghost guns" and strengthen background checks. The politicization of law enforcement under Project 2025 would no doubt let this progress wither.

Exerting Control Over Local Officials to Make Guns in Public More Pervasive: Project 2025 pushes the threat of federal legal action against local officials who don't enforce extreme right-wing policies. This would lead to a one-size-fits-all approach to public safety, with that one size being a policy agenda in line with the most conservative elements of our national politics. In the context of gun safety, this would include achieving "Concealed Carry Reciprocity," which would overrule state laws regarding carrying concealed firearms, allowing for almost anyone to carry firearms in public.

Racial Justice and Equity (8/15/24 Action Alert)

The implementation of Project 2025 would roll back decades of progress made toward strengthening racial justice in America and undermine efforts to improve racial equity.

Specific policies undermining racial justice, as outlined in Project 2025, include:

Eliminating DEI Initiatives: Project 2025 seeks to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across the federal government. The right-wing blueprint goes so far as to call for the removal of references to DEI from every rule and regulation. This destructive, demagogic approach is promoted despite the fact that DEI initiatives have been demonstrated to contribute to greater retention and attraction of team members and, in the private sector, substantially higher revenues and profits.

Reducing Investment in Businesses Owned by People of Color: Project 2025 would rescind the executive order requiring federal contractors to participate in affirmative action and reduce compliance with anti-discrimination measures. Further, the plan calls for the elimination of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which would reduce oversight of federal contractors and lead to increased discriminatory practices by companies that receive federal funds.

Increasing Discrimination in Education: Project 2025 notoriously calls for the dismantling of the Department of Education, en masse. The Department's Office of Civil Rights would also cease to exist. This all but guarantees a steep increase in discrimination in education across America as the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights fielded nearly 20,000 complaints in 2023!

Expanding Use of the Federal Death Penalty: Project 2025 not only urges "obtaining finality" (a haunting euphemism) for those currently on federal death row, but the document further calls for explicit expansion of the use of the federal death penalty, pushing for the executive branch to "pursue the death penalty for applicable crimes." Implementation of the death penalty is replete with racial bias.

Cutting Myriad Support Programs: Project 2025 calls for cuts to countless support programs that strengthen efforts toward equity, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, school lunch programs, student loans, rental assistance, and credit programs that increase Black homeownership.

Prohibiting Data Collection on Race: Project 2025 proposes to amend the Civil Rights Act in a way that would prohibit the collecting of Equal Employment Opportunity data like race, clearly making it much more difficult to identify and address systemic racism and other institutional prejudices.

Reproductive Rights (8/8/24 Action Alert)

The implementation of Project 2025 would pose tremendous threats to the ability of people to access reproductive care and services, as well as intrude on and violate the privacy and bodily autonomy of people in many profound and disturbing ways.

Specific policies undermining our reproductive rights, as outlined in Project 2025, include:

Banning Abortion, Including Medication Abortion: In its 920 pages, Project 2025 mentions abortion about 200 times. The document pushes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to "pursue a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life" stressing that life begins "at the moment of conception" and that abortion is explicitly "not health care" (in direct contravention of Jewish law and values). Project 2025 gets even more declarative regarding medication abortion, stating that "Abortion pills pose the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post-Roe world," adding that the "FDA should therefore: Reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs because the politicized approval process was illegal from the start." Further, Project 2025 calls for misusing a 19th century law called the Comstock Act to crack down on sending medication or other medical supplies by mail, and explicitly seeks to curb what it refers to as "abortion tourism," when a person must travel to another state to seek abortion care because it is already banned in their home state.

Enacting Fetal Personhood and Banning IVF: Project 2025 centers so-called "personhood" language, the belief that not only does life begin at conception but that a fetus, or even a fertilized embryo, possesses all of the same and equal rights of an actual human being. Personhood language can propel not only a national ban on abortion but also on forms of birth control and on assisted fertility treatments like IVF.

Making Emergency Contraception Inaccessible: As the Center for American Progress lays out, Project 2025 seeks to "exclude some forms of emergency contraception from no-cost coverage. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires most private health insurance plans to provide no-cost coverage—without copayment, coinsurance, or deductible—for recommended preventive services. This benefit includes the full range of U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved birth control methods and counseling, including emergency contraception. Rescinding no-cost coverage could have lifelong consequences for women nationwide. A new Center for American Progress analysis estimates that if Project 2025 were enacted, nearly 48 million women of reproductive age would lose their guaranteed no-cost access to emergency contraception."

Engaging in Abortion Surveillance and Rolling Back Privacy Protections: Project 2025 calls for the rolling back of HIPAA protections for abortion patients. Further, suggests that the CDC cut funds from any state that does not comply with tracking and surveillance efforts, should a state not tell the CDC "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."

Journalist Jessica Valenti dubs Project 2025 "a step-by-step plan on how the government can force American women out of public life and back into the home." Jewish law and values affirm that abortion care is health care. As such, abortion bans and other efforts to curtail reproductive rights and freedom are, unquestionably, violations of religious freedom.

LGBTQ+ Equality (8/1/24 Action Alert)

The implementation of Project 2025 would pose tremendous threats to the legal protections, healthcare access, educational opportunities, social acceptance, and economic stability of LGBTQ+ Americans.

Specific anti-LGBTQ+ policies outlined in Project 2025 include:

Rollback of Anti-Discrimination Protections: Project 2025 aims to redefine "sex" under federal law to exclude gender identity, which would eliminate protections for transgender individuals under civil rights laws like Title VII and Title IX. This could lead to increased discrimination in employment, education, housing, and healthcare settings.

Attacks on the rights and dignity of LGBTQ+ Americans do not align with public polling on Americans’ views of nondiscrimination protections. 76% of Americans support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people. Among American Jews, the number is over 80% (PRRI 2023). This proposal would make it easier to target LGBTQ+ people in the workplace and discriminate without risk of legal recourse, thereby normalizing hate toward our community.

Restrictions on Gender-Affirming Care: Project 2025 includes policies that restrict access to gender-affirming healthcare. This could involve banning or severely limiting best-practice medical treatments supported by all major medical groups and authorities, which would negatively impact the physical and mental health of LGBTQ+ youth and adults. Our Jewish values teach us pikuach nefesh, that to save one life is as if to save the entire world. Gender-affirming healthcare is life-saving care and is sacred.

Curriculum and Safe Spaces: Project 2025 advocates for “rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory” in education. This could lead to the removal of LGBTQ+-inclusive curricula and the reduction of safe spaces for LGBTQ+ students in schools. Eliminating discussions around sexual orientation and gender identity exacerbates bullying and discrimination against LGBTQ+ students. These proposed laws would make it harder for teachers to have open, honest classroom discussions about our history and how we can improve society to be more inclusive. History tells us we are on a slippery slope when public institutions are censored — it is essential to Judaism and the rights and safety of Jews in the U.S. to protect free speech.

Increased Stigmatization and Empowerment of Anti-LGBTQ+ Ideology: The emphasis on “traditional family values” and opposition to what Project 2025 terms "gender ideology" contribute to a more hostile social climate for LGBTQ+ individuals. This leads to increased stigmatization, social ostracization, and mental health challenges within the LGBTQ+ community. The adoption of Project 2025 would embolden individuals and groups that promote anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, leading to an increase in hate speech and hate crimes against LGBTQ+ individuals. We know from the Trevor Project that LGBTQ+ youth are negatively impacted by the public conversations on their rights and human dignity. These efforts would undoubtedly do harm to our youth.

Discrimination: With the rollback of federal protections, LGBTQ+ individuals would face increased discrimination in hiring, firing, and workplace conditions. This would lead to higher rates of unemployment and underemployment within the LGBTQ+ community, impacting economic stability and quality of life. There could also be attempts to allow religious exemptions to discriminate against same-sex couples in areas such as adoption services and public accommodations.

Erasure: Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts writes in Project 2025’s introduction that once in power, they will implement an erasure campaign of “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…out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.” We know that LGBTQ+ people always have and always will be here. Yet this dangerous strategy of attempting to erase the LGBTQ+ community's visible presence from public life would be devastating.

Immigration (7/25/24 Action Alert)

Project 2025 lays out a radical, xenophobic vision for immigration policy. Plans for mass deportations have been well reported. Mass arrests and deportations of all 11 million undocumented immigrants — sometimes without a warrant — are at the core of this vision, including arrests where ICE was not previously active, like schools and places of worship.

Project 2025 calls for massive detention camps at the border — including to hold children, who are released under current policy — and, in total, a near tripling of detention beds nationwide. It calls for continuing work on the border wall and sending the military to "aid" at the border.

Of course, identifying and apprehending 11 million people is a big task, so DHS would try to enlist other parts of the federal government, as well as state, county, and local jurisdictions in their effort. With respect to identifications, Project 2025 proposes for the IRS to identify undocumented tax filers and share that information with DHS. There are also proposals to condition FEMA-administered grants on "total information-sharing" and DHS access to motor vehicle databases. (And this, after we in Massachusetts and at JALSA specifically worked so hard to pass the Work and Family Mobility Act!)

With respect to immigration enforcement, Project 2025 envisions making it easier to enter so-called 287(g) agreements, whereby state, county, or local law enforcement contract with ICE.

In aggregate, Project 2025 makes fear, cruelty, and xenophobia the foundation for U.S. immigration policy. This, of course, runs directly counter to our values, most notably "welcoming the stranger," which the Torah instructs no less than 36 times.