With Donald Trump’s second term comes Project 2025.
It is a 900-page manifesto outlining how to systematically eviscerate our institutions from the inside. Authored by over 140 former Trump advisors at the Heritage Foundation, the radical reforms include sweeping changes to presidential overreach, higher education, and people’s rights.
Trump has tried to distance himself from this undertaking to dismantle our country, but the authors of Project 2025 are no strangers to Trump: the Heritage Foundation was consulted for Trump’s Supreme Court picks, his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and his trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.
Trump’s own website outlines his Agenda 47, with eerily stark similarities to Project 2025. Both would see the abolishment of the U.S. Department of Education, deportation of millions of people, cutting of corporate taxes, expansion of executive power, and enshrining Donald Trump with paramount authority over the executive branch.
Swatties will not be immune. Project 2025 will make higher education economically inaccessible to more students. Take their words at face value: “It is not the responsibility of the federal government to provide taxpayer dollars to create a pipeline from high school to college.”
All student lending programs would be privatized — your peers’ ability to pay for college may evaporate. There is even a backup plan if they are unsuccessful: to consolidate all federal student loan programs into one, without interest rate subsidies, loan forgiveness, or Parent PLUS plans. College graduates will be forced to pay three times more back in loans than they are currently.
Project 2025’s goals extend far beyond higher education: more alarming proposals include expanding the power of the executive branch, gutting parts of the federal government, shunning any attempts to mitigate climate change, and ransacking legal protections for minorities and women.
Civil rights progress will be thrown out and set back by half a century. Protections against mass surveillance will disappear in tandem with measures to prevent minorities and disenfranchised communities from voting. With the power of voting being suppressed, it will be all the more difficult for material conditions to improve for marginalized communities.
The fight against climate change will be decimated under Project 2025. The plan advocates for the United States to retreat from the international stage regarding climate action. Under the plan, we would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, and many climate policies enacted by Biden and Harris through their Inflation Reduction Act would be reversed.
Once Project 2025 is enacted through Trump’s victory, stopping it will be nearly impossible.
Federal government workers could be terminated — Project 2025 will reclassify over 50,000 civil service career positions to political appointments.
Workers’ ability to advocate for improved working conditions would similarly be stripped. This will negatively impact the hard-fought efforts by student organizers to advocate for higher wages for Resident Assistants (RAs), as evidenced by the creation of an RA union this past year. Project 2025 removes worker’s rights protections and eliminates the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s ability to collect data on racially discriminatory hiring practices.
As Swatties, we have the opportunity to stop Trump from being elected. If Donald Trump wins Pennsylvania in this upcoming election, it could very well hand him the presidency.
We cannot afford to let Trump dismantle our education system. We cannot afford to sit this election out.
Let’s vote Trump out this November. Our livelihoods may depend on it.
