What Project 2025 could mean for LGBTQ+ Americans
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The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which President-elect Trump's allies have touted as the incoming administration's agenda, outlines vast plans for rolling back rights and protections for LGBTQ+ people.
The big picture: If implemented, Project 2025 would reshape the fabric of American life by expanding the power of the presidency, shrinking the social safety net and rolling back rights for a vast swath of Americans.
- Over the course of his campaign, Trump repeatedly tried to distance himself from Project 2025, as Democrats attempted to link him to it.
- Trump's allies were quick to celebrate his election Wednesday by gloating over the open pathway to implementing Project 2025.
- As the nation assesses its new political reality, many advocacy groups are directing members of the LGBTQ+ community to resources they can use and connect with.
State of play: The conservative agenda outlined in Project 2025's over 900-page "Mandate for Leadership" pushes a variety of anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
- Trans rights were a favorite boogeyman of Trump and many other Republicans over the course of the 2024 election cycle, as the GOP amped up its culture wars over gender-affirming care and women's sports.
Workplace protections
Project 2025 attempts to virtually erase LGBTQ+ people from federal protections altogether. It would also have broad implications for people of color and women across the country.
- The mandate calls for deleting the words "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."
- In 2020, the Supreme Court expanded workplace discrimination protections under Title VII for workers based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Project 2025 calls for restricting the application of that ruling to hiring and firing and directs the president to instruct federal agencies to withdraw any guidances that aim to apply it beyond that scope.
It also calls for rescinding other regulations prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.
- "The President should direct agencies to focus their enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of 'sex,'" the mandate states.
Health care
Project 2025 would remake the health care landscape for LGBTQ+ Americans, particularly for transgender people.
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should "acknowledge that there is insufficient scientific evidence to support" coverage of gender-affirming care, the mandate states.
- Reality check: Major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, consider gender-affirming care to be medically necessary and potentially lifesaving.
The blueprint calls to revoke President Biden's executive order creating the first-ever White House Gender Policy Council in 2021. The executive order sought to promote gender equity and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
- It also calls for cutting federal funding for gender-affirming care and cracking down on "abortion training" at medical schools.
Other rollbacks for trans rights
Project 2025 includes a wide slate of other restrictions that would impact trans Americans' everyday lives.
- Project 2025 calls for transgender people to be banned from serving in the military, saying, "gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service."
- It calls for legislation banning public education employees or contractors from using names and pronouns that don't match a student's birth certificate unless they have written parental permission.
- It seeks to reverse the Biden administration's efforts to expand Title IX protections and calls on Congress to amend Title IX to define "sex" to mean "only biological sex recognized at birth."
Additional restrictions
Project 2025 outlines additional initiatives that could impact LGBTQ+ people at home and abroad.
- It calls for an end to federal funding of DEI programs, which are designed to also serve other groups like women and racial minorities, and gutting DEI initiatives at federal agencies and higher education institutions.
- It also calls on the U.S. government to "stop promoting policies birthed in the American culture wars" in other parts of the world, like African countries, including "pro-LGBT" initiatives.
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