A congressional committee on Tuesday released an annotated report exposing how the far-right Project 2025 "would undercut working families by making healthcare and higher education less affordable; providing less support to families; and rolling back climate enforcement and research."
The Joint Economic Committee (JEC) Democrats' publication is just two pages, but it highlights attacks on healthcare, education, and the climate found throughout the "radical" policy agenda for the next Republican president, which is over 900 pages long.
Along with the lengthy policy agenda, the 2025 Presidential Transition Project includes personnel recruitment, training, and a 180-day playbook. The project is led by the Heritage Foundation, backed by over 100 other groups.
The Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but at least 140 people who worked in his first administration, including six former Cabinet secretaries, have been involved with it. Also, his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio)—a JEC member—wrote the foreword to Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts' new book.
"This Republican plan would concentrate power within the executive branch, make life harder for working people, and cede power to Big Pharma and other corporations."
As the JEC Democrats report details, on the healthcare front, Project 2025 calls for "reversing Democrats' efforts to lower prescription drug costs (see page 465)" and "putting lifetime limits or caps on Medicaid coverage (see page 468)."
The agenda also calls for overruling the Food and Drug Administration's "approval for medication abortion (see page 457), making it increasingly difficult to access these vital medicines by mail (see pages 458-459), and prohibiting the use of federal funding to cover the travel needed to obtain an abortion (see page 471)," the publication continues.
In terms of education, the report adds, Project 2025 advocates "gutting public school funding by creating a school voucher program (see page 347) and cutting Title I funding that supports low-income schools (see page 325)," as well as "rolling back free school meals programs for low-income children (see page 303)."
The impacts would be felt at all levels of education. It calls for "eliminating Head Start (see page 482)," an early childhood education program serving nearly 800,000 kids, along with "ending the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF) (see page 354) and creating a new, less generous income-driven repayment (IDR) plan (see page 337)."
The report notes that Project 2025's plans for wrecking the global climate include "directing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to favor fossil fuels over renewables and raise market prices received by fossil fuel companies (see page 400)" and "gutting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforcement (see page 425)."
It also recommends "rolling back Democrats' investments in clean energy production that are cutting pollution and lowering emissions (see page 365)," "removing key protections for public lands (see page 532)," and "dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a hub for climate research and the primary source of weather data (see page 674)."
Overall, "this Republican plan would concentrate power within the executive branch, make life harder for working people, and
cede power to Big Pharma and other corporations," the report says, blasting the agenda as "an assault on the rule of law and a host of other core American freedoms."
In a statement announcing the new report—which follows JEC Democrats' analysis of Project 2025's anti-worker economic policies—committee Chair Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) stressed the importance of thwarting efforts to enact the far-right agenda.
"Republican's Project 2025 is a radical agenda that rolls back decades of progress we've made toward a better future for everyone," he said. "If Republicans get their way, low-income children will go hungry, seniors will be forced to choose between lifesaving medication and putting food on the table, and the planet our kids inherit will be in jeopardy. We can't let that happen."
