A new community-based tracker reveals how quickly the Trump administration is advancing policies that erode civil rights, healthcare access and worker protections.
Project 2025
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project—or “Project 2025,” for short—has “four pillars”:
- an 887-page policy agenda,
- a presidential personnel database of vetted conservatives,
- a Presidential Administration Academy to train these people to achieve the Project 2025 policy agenda, and
- a 180-day playbook, which is what they hope to achieve in the first 180 days if Trump takes office in January 2025.
Yes, America Should Make It Easier to Have Kids—But Trump Wants to Punish Childless and Single Women
The Trump administration wants to juice the birthrate. This isn’t surprising: Vice President JD Vance is an ardent pronatalist. So is shadow president Elon Musk, who seems to be working on populating Mars with his own progeny.
Abortion opponents, who make up a solid chunk of Trump’s base, want to see women have more babies whether we like it or not. Republicans and the Christian conservatives who elect them have generally been on the “be fruitful and multiply” side of things.
What’s different this time around, though, is that the Trump team is looking at carrots, not just sticks, in their baby-boom strategy. While the old way was to restrict abortion and make contraception harder to get, some of the proposals now include things like cash for kids, mommy medals, reserving scholarship program spots for young people who are married with children and (somewhat bizarrely) menstrual cycle education so women can figure out when they’re fertile and a national medal for motherhood for women with six or more children.
The administration is also considering policies that would effectively punish people for being single.
‘I Thought Only First Pregnancies Could Go Bad’: When Allie Phillips’ Lawmaker Dismissed Her, She Decided to Run for His Seat
“I decided to meet with my district representative in the state legislature,” said Allie Phillips. Her idea was a bill she’d called “Miley’s Law”—named after the child she’d lost—which would create an exception in Tennessee’s abortion ban allowing for the termination of pregnancies when the fetus has a fatal diagnosis.
She said the meeting with her lawmaker, Republican Rep. Jeff Burkhart, was disturbing. “I quickly learned that these [Republican] lawmakers don’t know anything about reproductive care. He was confused because I had had a healthy first pregnancy, and then lost my second one. He told me, ‘I thought only first pregnancies could go bad.’”
Burkhart, a 63-year-old father, told Allie he’d set up a meeting for her with the state’s attorney general—but never followed through.
“After that, my mom said, ‘Maybe you should run against him,’” Allie said. “And then my TikTok followers started to say the same thing.”
The Ghost of Jim Crow Haunts Trump’s War on Public Education
As Trump moves to dismantle the Department of Education, echoes of Jim Crow remind us what happens when states are left to decide who deserves an education—and who doesn’t.
Programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and the GI Bill exist because certain rights are too fundamental to be left to the whims of individual states or marketplaces. Education is one of them.
Education Is a Right
The Trump administration is trying to gut the Department of Education and divert funds to charter, private and religious schools that won’t be held accountable. This move threatens the progress we’ve made through civil rights efforts, especially in making schools more integrated and fair. The dismantling of key federal protections and funding will disproportionately hurt low-income students, students with disabilities, and communities already struggling.
We need to stand up, demand better resources for public schools, and refuse to let these harmful changes happen. We’ve fought for this before, and we can do it again.
Foreign Aid Cuts Will Lead to 34,000 More Pregnancy-Related Deaths in Just One Year
The freeze on U.S. foreign assistance funding and the subsequent stop work order has already taken an irreversible toll on global health programs, including family planning services, causing chaos across public health systems and forcing many sexual and reproductive health providers and programs to close doors permanently. Despite ongoing litigation to challenge these actions in court—including an important court victory that found this attack likely unconstitutional—most USAID partners are still waiting for government payments for work already completed. Adding to the upheaval, the administration gutted USAID staff and cancelled 83 percent of its aid contracts.
Contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, cutting foreign aid for reproductive health is not a fiscal gain, but a significant step backward.
Amid Right-Wing Attacks on Education, the American Association of University Professors Organizes for Academic Freedom
When the right-wing Heritage Foundation released its Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise—better known as Project 2025—in 2023, its authors laid out a comprehensive framework for undercutting democratic governance. Moreover, its authors made no secret of their antipathy to both public education and trade unions, putting the National Labor Relations Act and Fair Labor Standards Act in their crosshairs. They also made it clear that they support the elimination of the Department of Labor Women’s Bureau which works to ensure workplace safety and increase opportunities for female job advancement.
And then there’s education, pre-K through college. The Heritage authors put forward an agenda that includes broadscale book bans and curricular limitations on classes in African American, Latinx, LGBTQIA+, Feminist, Ethnic, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. In addition, they support the cancellation of the federal student loan program; the revocation of Title IX policies meant to protect students from sex-based harassment, discrimination and violence; and an end to faculty tenure.
Trump Administration Drops Lawsuit to Protect Emergency Abortion Access: ‘A Cruel and Callous Act That Could Cost Pregnant Idahoans Their Lives’
The Trump administration’s recent decision to drop the Biden-era lawsuit defending emergency abortion access in Idaho under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) is another powerful indication of its intent to dismantle existing federal protections for sexual and reproductive health.
Anticipating this move, St. Luke’s Health System filed filed a new lawsuit against Idaho during the first month of Trump’s presidency. On March 3, upon learning that dismissal was imminent, St. Luke’s sought and was granted a temporary restraining order to preserve the status quo—meaning Idaho remains barred from enforcing its criminal abortion law to the extent it conflicts with EMTALA. At least for the moment, pregnant Idahoans with emergency medical conditions that pose serious threats to their health are not faced with the dilemma of whether to be airlifted out of the state to receive stabilizing abortion care or wait until an abortion becomes necessary to prevent their death. However, the case is far from over, and the eventual outcome is uncertain—especially if it winds up again before the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority.
Executive Orders, Pardons and Purges: Trump’s Opening Salvo Meets a Fierce Resistance
As the Trump administration unleashes a barrage of destructive policies, a powerful resistance—led by activists, lawmakers and legal teams—is already pushing back in the courts, in the streets and in statehouses across the country.
Trump’s Administration Seems Chaotic, But He’s Drawing Directly from Project 2025 Playbook
In his first few days back in office, President Donald Trump engaged in a whirlwind of executive actions, from exiting the World Health Organization to deploying military personnel and National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Many of these actions are unprecedented. Some appear to be illegal and unconstitutional, according to legal experts and judges. But none of them should come as a surprise—nearly all of them were outlined in 2022 in a plan called Project 2025.