Project 2025 is a set of policy recommendations intended as guidance for the next administration. While it was developed as guidance for the 47th President, the ideas and policies are also being proposed by members of the U.S. House and Senate and state governments. Many support the policies proposed in Project 2025 which was developed by more than 100 conservative organizations and led by the Heritage Foundation and are looking for ways to implement its provisions through legislation or executive order. If enacted, the plan would significantly impact public health and equity in our country.
APHA is continuing to take steps to raise public awareness of threats as they emerge and challenge them in the courts. Read more about the steps we have taken to protect public health.
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Key areas of concern in Project 2025 include:
- CDC guidance and authority: The proposal recommends prohibiting the CDC from issuing prescriptive guidance on vaccines and masks, leaving such decisions entirely to parents and medical providers (p. 454). It also advocates for limiting the CDC’s role to evaluating only health-related costs and benefits of interventions, without considering any social impacts (p. 453).
- Restructuring key public health agencies: The plan proposes splitting the CDC into two agencies, one for data collection and one for policy recommendations, suggesting that CDC is not equipped to make policy decisions. This would slow emergency responses and remove the already limited authority the CDC has. The plan also recommends reforming the FDA’s drug approval process and calling for term limits for leaders at the NIH while sending funds directly to states instead of through the NIH.
- Reproductive health: The plan advocates a strict anti-abortion agenda, urging HHS to combat “abortion tourism” by cutting funds and mandating detailed abortion reporting by states (p. 455). It would also limit access to drugs like Mifepristone.
- LGBTQ+ protections: Project 2025 calls for CDC to stop collecting data on gender identity, as it claims this supports “unscientific” beliefs (p. 462), and focuses on limiting gender-affirming care and proposes a ban on transgender individuals serving in the military (p. 104).
- Census and Data Collection: Project 2025 would extend political ideology into the Census, which provides much of the data for federal decision making processes, by appointing “strong political leadership” (p.679), making the wording of race and ethnicity questions less inclusive, and adding a citizenship question.
- DEIA: The report calls for efforts to retool HHS for “reversing the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Revolution” (p. 582) and close various departments’ offices of diversity, equity and inclusion .
- Education: Project 2025 calls for the U.S. Department of Education to be eliminated entirely (p. 319); seeks to “phase out existing income-driven repayment plans” for student loans (p. 337) and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (p. 340) and restrict or ban educating students on topics like race, gender identity and sexual orientation.
- Vaccines and research: The blueprint advocates for limiting vaccine mandates, referring to them as “irrational, destructive, un-American” (p. 283). The plan also criticizes the FDA for the use of vaccines developed using fetal cell lines and lab-grown cells used in life-saving treatments.
- Medicaid access: The plan proposes adding work requirements and capping benefits from Medicaid, disproportionately affecting those with chronic conditions or disabilities (p. 468).
- Climate change: The plan calls to end “government interference” in energy decisions and encourages the use of oil and natural gas (p. 365) which would accelerate climate change and increase its negative public health effects.
- Federal workforce: The plan calls for significant changes to the federal workforce, including rolling back civil service protections and advocating for the ability to easily replace current civil servants with individuals who share the administration’s ideology.
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