Project 2025 Promises to Harm Our Communities and Turn Presidents Into Kings. We Won’t Stand for It.

Deeply embedded in our Bill of Rights and our most basic American values is the idea that we the people — not the government — are in charge of our own lives. But there are plenty of people who disagree with that premise and want to control our lives. And those people have a plan.

All of us remember Donald Trump’s presidency: separating families, banning visitors from Muslim countries, stacking the Supreme Court with justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and attacking LGBTQ people. Yet as the ACLU’s detailed analysis of Trump and his supporters' policy proposals and rhetoric has shown, if reelected, his administration will likely be far more aggressive and effective in executing its unlawful plans than ever before.

Under a second Trump administration, our federal government could be used to openly discriminate against marginalized communities, to spy on private citizens, and be given authority over what we can and can’t do with our bodies. If such a dystopian view of American life and politics feels like the plot of a Netflix special, consider that this vision of America is what former Trump administration staffers and The Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank, have outlined in Project 2025.

Project 2025 is a federal policy agenda and a blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch that would undercut decades of progress and Constitutional values. Though Trump has claimed he is not connected to Project 2025, a CNN report found that 140 people who worked on Project 2025 previously worked in Trump’s administration. The Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts also worked on Trump’s 2016 transition team and has described his organization’s role in Project 2025 as “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Trump himself told a conference, after taking a flight with Roberts, “they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

Project 2025, Explained

While the ACLU doesn’t endorse or oppose candidates for elected office, we recognize how Project 2025 would erode our freedoms and our democracy. Project 2025's largest publication, “Mandate For Leadership,” includes a long list of extreme policy recommendations that empower Congress and the executive branch to hack away at our civil liberties and civil rights.

At the ACLU we’ve been fighting unlawful attempts to curtail our rights for more than 100 years. We’re prepared to use all of the tools at our disposal — litigation, legislation, advocacy, and grassroots mobilization — to ensure our nation lives up to the promise of the Constitution. But this fight isn’t just about policies or procedures — it’s about people.

Life Under Project 2025

Take, for example, an undocumented father living in Texas whose spouse and young children are U.S. citizens. The undocumented father is injured in a workplace accident, but in Project 2025’s America, he will have to choose between forgoing treatment or risk being separated from his family.

Currently, policy dictates that immigration agents avoid arresting or detaining suspected noncitizens in “protected areas” like schools, churches, and hospitals. But Project 2025 calls to weaponize these crucial common spaces as part of a broader anti-immigrant agenda that includes co-opting state and local police to help carry out a mass deportation plan. Nobody should have to choose between the pain of an untreated injury and the agony of being torn away from their children, but Project 2025 is designed to create exactly those kinds of impossible decisions for millions of immigrants and mixed-status families.

This example is hypothetical, but the risk is not. We’ve already seen how damaging family separation can be for children and parents, we know that immigration detention has a deadly track record of abuse and medical neglect, and we have heard time and again how devastating deportation can be across generations.

When the government decides how we are permitted to live, people and communities suffer. Imagine a 27-year-old woman in eastern Washington State who has a young son and becomes pregnant. She works two jobs, but struggles to make ends meet. She knows that having another child would be detrimental to her and her son and wants to end her pregnancy. But she lives several hours from the nearest abortion provider. She doesn’t have a car and she risks losing her job if she takes time off to travel to the clinic. Today, she would be able to do what 20 percent of people seeking abortions do and use telehealth to contact a provider and have FDA-approved abortion pills sent to her.

However, Project 2025 calls for a presidential administration to push the post-Dobbs epidemic of abortion bans into blue states like Washington. The Project has called for the misuse of a 150-year-old anti-obscenity law to prosecute health care providers for mailing abortion pills. If Project 2025 succeeds, that means the pregnant woman in Washington State won’t be able to get an abortion and will be forced to carry her pregnancy against her will and endure labor, possibly putting her own health and the wellbeing of her family at risk.

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Know Your Rights Camp & The Autopsy Initiative

Our mission is to advance the liberation and well-being of Black and Brown communities through education, self-empowerment, mass-mobilization and the creation of new systems that elevate the next generation of change leaders.

The objective of the Autopsy Initiative (“Initiative”)  is to provide a second autopsy free-of-charge for victims’ families who have lost their loved ones due to a police-related death. The services offered through the Initiative include the completion of a second autopsy, disclosure of preliminary findings, and issuance of the final autopsy report. 

The Year We March

2022 is proving to be a fight or flight kind of year. Legislators are trying to take away women’s rights to their bodies by banning abortions and birth control and asking neighbors to report each other for money. They also don’t want to pass any legislation for gun control to help curb the incredible amount of mass shootings happening in this country. And the Supreme Court ruled recently by 6-3 that “state prisoners have no constitutional right to present new evidence in federal court to support their claims that they were represented at trial and on appeal in state courts by unqualified or otherwise deficient lawyers” (Totenberg, NPR, 2022). This will make it almost impossible for the wrongfully convicted to prove their innocence.

So this is the year we march! And vote! March and vote with every fiber in your body. Make your voices heard so that legislators know they can not ignore us. Show them we are tired of going backward. We need to march forward for a better tomorrow where everyone has rights not guided or legislated by others.

Women’s March May 2022 - Raleigh, NC

Making Our Voices Heard!

On June 11th, cities around the country took part in the 2nd March For Our Lives. In Raleigh, the rally brought together student activists and local legislators talking about changes needed to gun laws.

You Are Our Superman!

Dawn Poole 1/25/22

Last weekend one of our own, contributor Kalel Rojas, suffered a heart attack and is in the ICU in a coma. He is full of love and light. Please keep him in your thoughts and hope for a speedy recovery. To show our support we are changing all our social media profile pics to the Superman emblem. We ask that you do the same. We love you Kalel. You are our Superman!

 

Our Swag Is Here!

The Vision For Reform store is up and running. We have t-shirts and hoodies promoting social justice and our website. Check out our different designs and find one that speaks to you. Our products are meant to spark dialogue and change! Right now, $1 from every product sold will be donated to Emancipate NC. Thank you for your continued support!

 
 

#changethenarrative t-shirt

#changethenarrative hoodie

#changethenarrative hoodie

 

Womens’ March For Abortion Justice 2021

October 2, 2021. The Women’s March for Abortion Justice went nationwide with 650 marches, both live and virtual, across the United States. The goal? To tell our legislative bodies that when it comes to reproductive rights and abortion, “OUR BODIES, OUR RIGHTS!”. No one has the right to tell a woman what is right for her and her situation. Don’t let others throw away Roe V Wade. It’s time to fight! Here are some pictures from the march in Raleigh, North Carolina. Keep fighting!!

Showing Mental Illness Through Digital Art!

Contributor Morgan Cawley-Prince is not only a Psychology graduate and future Counseling Psychology Grad student, but she’s also a digital artist. And she uses this art to show different forms of mental illnesses. Here are eight pieces she recently completed!

Note: Click on each piece of art and you will be directed to a website for more information on that mental illness.

 If you would like more information on Morgan Cawley-Prince’s artwork, buy some of her artwork, or message her about it, visit her website at www.Theladylikedesign.com.