Eric Galatas, reporter/producer, Colorado News Connection, a bureau of Public News Service.
Civil rights groups are sounding the alarm about potential threats to American democracy posed by Project 2025, a roadmap created by The Heritage Foundation for the next Republican president.
The 900 page document calls for dismantling key protections against discrimination, access to reproductive health care, and more.
Maya Wiley, CEO of The Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights, said Project 2025 aims to undo gains made 60 years ago with the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
But she said this agenda isn’t new.
“And either we’re going to stand on the victory of ending slavery, and of understanding the role of a federal government in ensuring that we all have civil rights, or we will not have a democracy,” said Wiley. “And this is a blueprint for ending it.”
Former President Donald Trump has recently distanced himself from Project 2025, after praising the Heritage Foundation’s plans in 2022.
Heritage says the roadmap – which was co-authored by top Trump advisors – does not speak for any single candidate, it just provides recommendations.
Many of those track closely with Trump’s priorities, including removing regulations and checks on presidential power.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said Project 2025 also calls for expanding child labor and rolling back workplace protections under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or “OSHA” – designed to prevent accidents, injury and death.
“Tell that to a woman who lost her son in a grain silo, that could have been prevented, because he was cleaning it without the proper equipment,” said Shuler. “That is OSHA. These fines and these laws are there for a reason.”
Project 2025 would ban both abortion and in vitro fertilization nationally, and restrict access to contraception.
Patrick Gaspard, CEO of the Center for American Progress, said he believes the roadmap’s creators want to take the nation back not to 1964 but to 1864.
“When men made decisions for women,” said Gaspard, “when people who looked like me did not have the full agency and franchise of this great American republic, when huge corporations worked folks like farm animals.”
Support for this reporting was provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
