How to Combat the Dangers of Project 2025
In the months leading up to the election, Democratic lawmakers blared the alarm on Project 2025 — The Heritage Foundation’s massive blueprint to reshape the federal government into the authoritarian arm of President-Elect Donald Trump’s administration.
Many of the proposals in the sprawling 900-page document seemed as if they were stripped right out of some dark, dystopian novel: a complete dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, enabling mass deportations, gutting civil rights protections, obliterating reproductive health rights and weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice as the president’s personal attack dog. And some of Project 2025’s proposals were so extreme that, throughout the campaign trail, Trump and other Republican leaders tried to distance themselves from it.
But since Trump won the election, the mask is fully off: Project 2025 is the agenda.
Now nonprofit organizations, federal unions, pro-democracy thinktanks and scores of other groups that could be affected by the propositions in Project 2025 are coming together to figure out how to protect the people and communities most threatened by the plans.
“Everything about it is very concerning,” Jacqueline Simon, the public policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which is the biggest federal employees union, told Democracy Docket. “We could sit here all day talking about what is concerning, but I think that federal employees are concerned, not only for their own jobs, but also for the work that their agencies do, and that they know American people rely upon.”
For Simon and the nearly 750,000 federal employees that AFGE represents, one of the most pressing proposals of Project 2025 is the reintroduction of Schedule F — a late-term executive order during Trump’s first presidency to reclassify tens of thousands of civil service employees. The order essentially stripped their employment protections so they could more easily be dismissed from their jobs if perceived as disloyal to the administration.
More than 2 million people make up the bulk of the civil service — federal government employees who are hired based on the merit of their job experience and expertise. These federal workers are protected by the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB), which ensures that their hiring, firing and any promotions or raises are determined strictly through merit, and not by political retaliation. But Schedule F would reclassify a bulk of civil service workers who, for decades, were protected by the MSPB.
Simon points to the career employees in departments like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA), who are at risk if Schedule F is reintroduced. It’s not just their careers on the line — but the function and progress of crucial federal agencies working to make different aspects of life better for the country.
“All of this is put at risk with these kinds of crazy plans that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are talking about,” Simon said. “[Federal workers] care about their jobs and their ability to support their families. They care about their rights on the job, but they will hardly be the only losers if Trump gets his way.”
A brewing legal fight
With Trump set to return to the White House and the GOP controlling both chambers of Congress, it’s easy to feel like Project 2025 is all but inevitable. But many of Project 2025’s proposals — including Schedule F — bring up more uncertainties about the feasibility of Trump’s ultimate vision.
Can Trump really just eliminate an entire department of the government? How can 50,000 civil service employees just lose their jobs from an executive order? Shouldn’t it be illegal to fire nonpartisan career federal workers because they’re perceived as disloyal to a president?
It’s clear that Trump — and the architects of Project 2025 — plan to at least try and do it and leave it to the courts to decide what is and isn’t legal. And it’s setting up a new era of legal battles, way more than during Trump’s first administration.
“Repeatedly throughout the Project 2025 chapters, they say to just move forward, go ahead and implement and worry about defending it in court later,” Simon said. “Expect legal challenges, because they know what they’re doing is unlawful.”
That’s exactly what Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the nonpartisan legal and public policy research nonprofit Democracy Forward, is ready for. Under Perryman’s leadership, Democracy Forward organized Democracy 2025 — a coalition of hundreds of lawyers from 280 different organizations to fight Project 2025 and the coming Trump administration in the courts.
“There’s a range of policies in Project 2025, and that the President-Elect has announced, that he’s seeking to pursue that we believe suffer from legal infirmities, and believe that legal challenges are going to be important,” Perryman told Democracy Docket. “There will be swift and robust legal opposition to some of the most destructive policies of Project 2025. That would include things like seeking to undermine our civil service, including trying to reimpose Schedule F.”
Unlike the first Trump administration, where many organizations like Democracy Forward were caught off guard by Trump’s win and initially unprepared to fight his policies in the courts, Perryman said that Democracy Forward has been quietly preparing for years for a second Trump administration. The coalition in Democracy 2025 is already gearing up to go to court to fight for environmental protections, reproductive rights, health care and a slew of other policies set forth by President Joe Biden’s administration.
The question that remains, though, is how the courts will rule in whatever legal challenges arise. Despite the conservative supermajority in the U.S. Supreme Court and the army of judges Trump appointed in his first term, Perryman is confident about the state of the judiciary.
“President Biden has appointed more than 200 pro-democracy judges since 2021,” she said. “The federal courts on day one of the second Trump administration are much better than they were on the last day of the first Trump administration.”
In the meantime, as scores of federal workers and other Americans grapple with what a second Trump term may bring, Simon said that the AFGE is encouraging its members to carry on and continue to do their jobs. “We have collective bargaining agreements that we intend fully to enforce,” she said. “And we’ll work with any members of Congress who are willing to work with us to try to make sure that the agencies are funded properly and that rights are not taken away.”