Danette Heredia | Staff Writer
Although President-elect Trump condemns Project 2025, the country is anxious to see what the Department of Education will look like within the next four years under a conservative president.
Project 2025 is a conservative manifesto overseen by the Heritage Foundation, describing Christian right-wing overhauls to nearly every aspect of the federal government.
This manifesto calls for advancements towards the restructuring of nearly the entire federal government system, including departments like the Federal Reserve, Department of Health and Human Service, Federal Election Committee, and more.
Having this project in motion would mean the reversal of decades worth of progress for women’s and queer liberties.
Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise is the book representing Project 2025, curated by over 400 conservative scholars detailing the reasoning and manifestations of their project, described as “prepared by and for conservatives” according to the Project 2025 website.
The book is available to the public by chapters on the Project 2025 website.
Project 2025’s first objective within education would be demolishing the Department of Education with the intent of restoring the majority education jurisdiction into the states.
Since the Department of Education currently handles student loans, Project 2025 would hand the responsibility to a new agency head and board of trustees that would be appointed by the president with consent from the Senate.
After Biden forgave $69.2 billion in student loans during his presidency, Project 2025 would eliminate any future plans of loan forgiveness from the Biden Administration, ceasing any type of federal loan forgiveness altogether.
“The federal government does not have the proper incentives to make sound lending decisions, so the new Administration should consider returning to a system in which private lenders, backed by government guarantees, would compete to offer student loans, including subsidized and unsubsidized loans,” reads Project 2025.
As far as course education, Project 2025 echoes what Florida governor Ron DeSantis has been preaching for years and has already made progress towards the removal of courses including mention of critical race theory and “woke” ideology.
“The theory disrupts America’s Founding ideals of freedom and opportunity. So, when critical race theory is used as part of school activities such as mandatory affinity groups, teacher training programs in which educators are required to confess their privilege, or school assignments in which students must defend the false idea that America is systemically racist, the theory is actively disrupting the values that hold communities together such as equality under the law and colorblindness,” reads the Project 2025 outline.
Although mentions of these topics are off-limits in classroom settings, the outline clarifies that educators should neither refrain from discussing certain subjects in order to “protect students from ideas with which they disagree,” says Project 2025.
Team sports are involved, as well. The manifesto aims to “ban biological men from competing in women’s sports” federally, according to the Heritage Foundation’s website, but failing to define what would happen to current transgender athletes.
Calling for the rollback of numerous policies protecting LGBTQ+ individuals, Project 2025 aims to rescind the policy that added ‘non-binary’ to the list of sex’s on the OCR’s data collection census.
This manifesto has created a hostile and unwelcoming environment for transgendered students and workers, with the ultimate goal of removing any acknowledgements of transgender identities within school facilities.
Although LGBTQ+ students would lose their federal protection, religious protection within academics would improve, defining policies that involve immunity to any interference on how faith-based institutions govern themselves.
Project 2025 carries the idea of prioritizing a parents rights over their children, focusing a lot of their policies (especially within LGBTQ+ children) on parental consent and satisfying parents requests.
Project 2025 includes charts similar to the one above, used as evidence that the current education system needs reform and Project 2025 is what it needs.
To combat these scores, savings accounts would be open for parents to directly access and invest into private tutors, materials, transportation, and more, investing in families directly rather than the government choosing what the money is invested to.
Many Americans believe this project is interlinked with President Trump’s election campaign and that he would be adopting Project 2025 after being inaugurated.
Although many of President Donald Trump’s associates and allies have contributed to Project 2025 in some way, there is no proof that President Trump had any contributions with the development of Project 2025, along with consistently condemning the project and denying any association.
Directors of Project 2025 consider this plan not to represent the views of any presidential candidates, but rather a fusion of conservative based ideas that can be picked and chosen from.
President-elect Donald Trump has outlined and announced his plans for the next four years calling it ‘Agenda 47’, committing to actions that appear similar to ideas on Project 2025, such as planning for mass deportation of illegal immigrants and limiting immigration altogether.
The removal of federal DEI programs, banning trans women from women’s sports, and prioritizing fossil fuel expansion over climate-friendly alternatives are only some of the policies that Trump and Project 2025 have in common in regards to higher-ed.
Akin to the wave of anti-Semitism reviews on campuses, Project 2025 allows more conservative policy and narratives to circulate nationwide, affecting higher-ed across the country.
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