What You Need to Know About Project 2025 and How It Puts Michigan’s LGBTQ+ Wins at Risk
Why people are searching for the document more than Taylor Swift
If it feels like you’re suddenly hearing about the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda everywhere lately, it’s not just you. In fact, Google searches for “Project 2025” have surpassed searches for Taylor Swift in recent weeks.
While the 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” portion of Project 2025 is not new — it was published more than a year ago after many months of work — Democrats have been spotlighting specific pieces of the document in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
What Is Project 2025?
Effectively, the document is a comprehensive blueprint for the next Republican president that details a plan for overhauling the federal government and implementing wide-ranging policies, from the mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants to eliminating the Department of Education. Importantly, Project 2025 specifically targets LGBTQ+ community members — especially (but not exclusively), transgender Americans of all ages.
Project 2025 is not formally tied to former President Trump, but dozens of former Trump administration officials and allies have been involved, and Trump has often praised Heritage for its efforts to drive forward its conservative agenda. Regardless, the plan was created for him to follow, should he win back the presidency — that plan, Project 2025 reads, is “to unite the conservative movement and the American people against elite rule and woke culture warriors.”
Several Project 2025 targets directly relate to LGBTQ+ rights:
- Transgender rights are specifically outlined. Gender identity beyond biological sex is outright refuted and the plan includes steps like:
- Reinstating the ban on transgender Americans serving in the military
- Barring public schools from referring to students by anything other than their birth names and pronouns without parental permission
- Blocking federal funding for gender-affirming care
- The Project squarely aims at diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs throughout the federal government and universities, seeking to entirely eliminate these efforts.
- While the plan doesn’t focus on outlawing same-sex marriage, it specifically supports “nuclear families” that include a “married mother, father and their children.”
- The plan calls for a restriction in discrimination laws established after the Bostock v. Clayton County 2020 Supreme Court ruling, which determined that discrimination based on sex includes sexual orientation and gender identity.
While Republicans are now downplaying the significance of Project 2025 and claiming Democrats have exaggerated its contents, Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan’s LGBT Project, says there is true cause for concern — especially for members of the LGBTQ+ community. Kaplan tells Pride Source that many community members seem unaware of what’s at stake.
While the Michigan legislature has made significant strides in recent years, including getting an LGBTQ+ discrimination amendment added to the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, many of those achievements could effectively be erased with moves at the federal level and the Supreme Court. In fact, specific portions of Project 2025 seek to override the kinds of gains that have been made at the state level under the next Republican presidential administration.
“People really need to have an understanding of what’s at stake,” Kaplan says. “Right now, it’s not too late.”
The list of what’s at risk is vast, but Kaplan honed in on some Michigan-specific gains that the state stands to lose should Project 2025 designers get their way. “Take the civil rights law that took effect this year, which explicitly covers gender identity and sexual orientation,” he says. “We believe this requires school districts to treat transgender students fairly and to allow them to use restrooms in alignment with their gender identity, and yet a state like Michigan, even with explicit civil rights laws protections, would be in danger of losing funding for its public school education if they actually tried to comply with their state civil rights law.”
Another Project 2025 goal aimed at the transgender community focuses on reinstating laws used to criminalize how transgender people present themselves in public. “Let’s say a transgender woman walks out in public and somebody identifies that person as a transgender woman. She could be arrested and charged with impersonating a woman,” Kaplan explains. “Project 2025 calls for a reinstatement of laws and ordinances like that. It’s a full-barrel attack on transgender people.” Michigan’s recently passed “gay panic” and “trans panic” legislation, set for Whitmer’s signature, would be at risk should Project 2025 become a reality, as well.
Project 2025 leans into a Trump-era tactic that has been successful at every judicial level: religious exemptions for anti-LGBTQ+ actions. Kaplan cites an ongoing argument that there should be legal religious exemptions for medical providers, who, some conservatives claim, should not have to comply with civil rights laws when it comes to hiring or even providing medical services based on their religious beliefs. “So, in other words,” Kaplan says, “a doctor, even a general practitioner, who doesn’t want to treat someone who is transgender or who happens to be gay, can articulate their religious beliefs and would be exempt from having to comply with civil rights law. It would sanction discrimination in the name of religion.”
Kaplan emphasizes that even when there are state civil rights laws on the books, individuals would be sure to challenge these state laws, claiming they violate the freedom of religion — an argument that would continue to gain traction in the far right-leaning federal court system Project 2025 designers dream about. In fact, this has already happened with the 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis case, which centered on whether a website designer was compelled to comply with a Colorado civil rights law when they were asked to design a site for a same-sex couple. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the website designer; soon after, a hair salon owner in Traverse City publicly stated that she would no longer serve transgender clients, citing the ruling as proof that she didn’t have to. The owner was charged under the city’s anti-discrimination law and later sued the city, but a judge threw out her case in March.
Kaplan urges people to pay attention to what the Trump administration focused on and to expect more of the same in a new term. There’s no reason to think Project 2025’s aims wouldn’t be front and center should Trump be reelected. “During the Trump administration, they rescinded guidelines protecting transgender students with regards to bathrooms. And remember, in a tweet, Trump excluded transgender people from the military — a tweet was all it took,” Kaplan recalls.
Apart from LGBTQ-specific issues, many other Project 2025 targets would impact virtually every American or members of their family:
- In addition to abolishing the Department of Education, other agencies on the chopping block include the Department of Homeland Security, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The plan calls for privatizing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
- Abortion restrictions are an important piece of Project 2025, which directs the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to revoke its approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. It also calls for revoking federal funding for healthcare coverage for abortion and for states to report all abortions that take place there to the federal government.
- Project 2025 directs the next Republican president to leave the Paris Climate Agreement, to undo much of the federal government’s climate work and to overhaul the Department of Energy to promote oil and natural gas while deemphasizing green energy sources.
- Public education is also in the crosshairs. Project 2025’s proposed “school choice” policy mirrors that of several conservative-leaning states where public funds can be used for students to attend private or religious schools. The plan bars “critical race theory” from being taught in federally funded schools and allows parents to sue schools they claim have acted improperly by teaching controversial subjects.
- Student loan relief efforts would end, including the long-standing public service loan forgiveness program and income-driven repayment plans.
- The plan calls for banning TikTok and reforming Section 230, which shields tech companies and social media networks from being sued over content that appears on their platforms.
- The plan includes a “top-to-bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice and the FBI to rid “radical left ideologies.” A new agency would focus on violent crime and filing litigation consistent with the next Republican president’s agenda.
- Project 2025 radically alters the current tax structure, eliminating most deductions and credits and instituting a 15% rate for anyone under the Social Security wage base (currently $168,000) and 30% for taxpayers earning more than that — meaning the lowest-income taxpayers would pay more and some higher earners will pay less. The corporate tax rate would be lowered to 18% from the current 21%.
- The project describes China as a “totalitarian enemy” of the U.S. and directs the country to pull out of international organizations like the World Health Organization and many United Nations agencies.
- The plan includes cuts to Medicaid and new work requirements to receive coverage as well as reforms to Medicare, including making Medicare Advantage, a paid Medicare supplement, the default for every patient.
Kaplan is especially concerned about the Project’s plans for overhauling the judicial branch. Citing ACLU research, Kaplan notes that Trump appointed 234 judges to serve lifetime appointments on the federal court, including one-third of the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. Of these, 85% were white, 74% were male and four of 10 had previously issued decisions against LGBTQ+ rights.
This stands in stark contrast to Biden’s appointments, thus far. As of May 22, Biden had appointed 201 federal judges, including one Supreme Court Justice: 60% are people of color and 64% are female. Biden has nominated more women, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals than any other president in U.S. history. “That’s a clear distinction,” Kaplan notes.