Project 2025 is a group of policies aimed at reshaping government agencies and the powers of the executive branch in the case of a Republican victory during the presidential election of 2024. The project was launched by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. The policies that come with the agenda consist of gutting funding from government organizations, reverting environmental regulations aimed at targeting climate change and possibly anti-LGBTQ policies. 

“Project 2025 looks to dramatically curtail and eliminate many aspects of the federal government,” social studies teacher Bryan Looker said. “The project specifically targets the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the latter the project claims spreads, in their view, hysteria and false information on climate change.”

In early 2024, many candidates for the presidential election dropped out, leaving the two main candidates as President Joe Biden running for re-election, a Democrat, and former President Donald Trump, a Republican.

“The project also looks to dramatically increase the power of the presidency, primarily within the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communication Commission,” Looker said. “With this increased power, the president could directly influence private industry and news. This is extremely dangerous within a federal republic. In this system, the president could manipulate supply and demand, as well as regulate the types of news a citizen consumes, a direct violation of the First Amendment and freedom of the press.”    

 Lilly Biggs, a freshman, denounces the political agenda and its policies.

“The bill has multiple bans against queer people, such as banning same-sex marriage, forbidding queer couples from adoption, banning transgender healthcare (i.e. testosterone and estrogen, gender reaffirming surgery), and repealing anti-LGBT discrimination laws,” Biggs said. “The bill will also include abortion surveillance, banning abortion pills and banning the mailing of abortion pills, all laws against a woman’s personal autonomy. These might, and will, introduce even more hatred against queer adults, kids and women.”

Biggs describes their concerns about the agenda and its possible effects on women and the rights of minorities.

“I personally think that the project is terrible and violating,” Biggs said. “Everybody deserves the right to their own body, rights, and decisions. No one, child, adult, man, or woman, should be forced into a box of hate and disrespect.”

Biggs discusses the possible negative effects of the policies on LGBTQ+ students and children around the country.

 “These policies will show the kids of America that it isn’t okay to be LGBTQ, and that it isn’t okay to live for yourself and make their own decisions,” Biggs said. “It will hurt minorities by showing them that they aren’t equal to everyone else and that they can never live up and be as great as the straight, white male at the top of the chain, which is not true. Students of LHS will be hurt for both reasons above, and the fact that they will grow up in the real world surrounded by unjust rules and having to live in fear of being themselves.”

Director of the Soil and Water Conservation Service Leah Walthery expresses her concerns over the topic.

“Generally speaking, businesses and citizens in this country seem to need financial ‘coaxing’ to think beyond quick, short-term profit and to implement long-term projects and safety nets for our future generations,” Walthery said. “Project 2025, it is my understanding, would actively take away incentives for climate readiness and much-needed action to protect our soil, water, and ecological resources.”

Walthery talks about the current state of policies put in place to conserve the environment and the consequences of them being reversed.

“As the Director of the SWCD, I am required as a representative of my board to express opinions that are quite carefully politically neutral,” Walthery said.  “What I can say is that it has been exciting to see the potential and energy currently being breathed into conservation. The dismantling of these programs and new opportunities, still in their infancy, would undoubtedly be quite a blow to the conservation world that I work in and very disheartening. That being said, there is much room for the initiatives to be made more efficient and better run.  Perhaps there is a middle ground between Project 2025 and the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act environmental funding that could be reached.”