Project 2025
A Nightmare Waiting to Happen
Looking for some good end-of-summer reading? Perhaps a thriller or a horror story? If you want something that will get your pulse pounding, try reading a few pages of a blockbuster called Project 2025.
Be warned, it will chill you to the marrow and give you nightmares, if it doesn’t keep you up at night. Here are just a few of the terrors its authors propose for our futures:
Ban public-sector unions and allow states to ban labor unions entirely, ending your right to organize in the workplace.
Ban medication abortion, effectively ending access to abortion for millions of Americans.
Any books, movies, and TV shows that include LGBTQ+ content or characters are pornographic and to be banned.
Get rid of price caps on life-saving drugs like insulin and asthma inhalers.
Eliminate or cut social safety net programs, raising taxes on the middle class, and giving huge tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy.
End oil and gas drilling restrictions, including on our public lands. (This is one of my personal favorites…)
And Trump would have the legal right to fire any civil servant or government employee who he thought wasn’t sufficiently loyal to MAGA…and it goes on and on. It’s Orwell’s 1984 on steroids.
Indivisible is an excellent organization that’s been working since 2016 to defeat MAGA-ism. Their website has a very helpful short guide to the highlight (lowlights?) of Project 2025.
25 Things to Know About Project 2025 — Project 2024: Majority Over MAGA
From their site: “There’s a huge overlap between Trump staffers and the creators and co-sponsors of the plan – CNN has identified over 140 different people who worked for Trump and also played a role in creating or endorsing the transition plan.”
And you know all this, right? I don’t have to convince you that Trump is quite the sneaky person and up to no good. But there are still a remarkable number of potential voters out there who aren’t paying attention. Who haven’t even heard the term Project 2025. Ask any three people at random if they know what it is—I tried that and only one had heard of it, the other two had not.
Our job is to spread the word.
25 andMe is another excellent site that lets you identify your main area of interest—the environment, voting rights, abortion—and gives you a summary of how Project 2025 is targeting that topic. It’s truly chilling, but it’s simple and direct, a good website to refer doubters to.
I’ve been using Indivisible’s cheat sheet to do social media posts, on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Twitter (X). Yes, it takes a fair amount of time. But I do it every day, first thing—make coffee, brush teeth, post on social media.
I figure that most people are getting bored with political posts. There’s just so much stuff out there. But everyone likes pretty pictures. In my most recent social media posts, I’m using vacation photos. I put the same caption—Project 2025 calls for ending oil and gas drilling restrictions, including on our public lands—and then put a picture of every national park I’ve ever visited.
(Want to do social media posts but don’t have your own photographs? Do you know about Wikimedia Commons? Like Wikipedia, it’s a wonderful public resource, one of the best things about the Internet. Need a photograph of a national park, the Women’s March, Susan B. Anthony, a honeybee, a hockey puck, a hippopotamus? You name it, they got it. Just type what you want into the search bar and presto! there’s a wealth of images you can legally use, copyright-free. You should credit the photographer, but you can use these for social media posts, websites, newsletters, blogs, books, whatever.)
Sorry, can’t resist a good hippo photograph. (Credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim.)
Anyway. It’s up to us, in any way possible, to spread the word about Project 2025. Write about it, post about it. Talk about it.
Wait a minute. Shouldn’t we avoid talking politics with our family, our friends, our neighbors? Shouldn’t we stay on safe and noncontroversial topics? What if we piss someone off? Annoy an uncle, alienate a neighbor, irritate a spouse or a book club member or an Amazon delivery-person?
I think we should talk about politics. To everyone you know, everyone you meet. Especially if there are young people in your house, or anywhere in your orbit. Not an impassioned rant, necessarily, just raise some questions. Ask if they’ve heard about Project 2025, and what they think of it. And mention a few points from Indivisible’s handy list.
Keeping quiet about evil only allows it to spread.
Dear Friends,
Are you elated, frightened, hopeful, and worried about the election of 2024 and wondering what to do about it? I hope you’ll continue to check out The Optimistic Activist.
Every week I post some ideas for doing something. How to get out the vote, spread the word, and support progressive candidates. Ideas for simple but effective activism. As easy, as practical, as do-able as I can make them.
Together, I think, we could really make a difference.
“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future.”
--Noam Chomsky
