So what exactly is Project 2025? You’ve probably heard these words, but you may not understand what they mean. We are here to fill you in on the details thanks to a report by Responsible. USA.

What is Project 2025?

Basically, Project 2025 is a blueprint for what far-right activists want from the next conservative president — and Donald Trump is the conservative who just won the 2024 election. It includes plans to fire up to 50,000 career federal employees and replace them with people who have unquestioning loyalty to the president; restricting access to contraception; possibly implementing a national ban on abortion; cuts federal health care programs; and many others, designed to make the US an authoritarian nation. And LGBTQ+ people are directly at stake.

“Project 2025 has failed to clarify its anti-LGBTQ+ agenda. With far-right extremists at the helm, the bill is a power grab by conservatives who are trying to turn back the clock on hard-fought progress and fundamental rights,” Caroline Ciccone, Accountable’s US president, said in a statement to Outsideits sister publication The lawyer. “Project 2025 not only poses an existential threat to our democracy, it seriously threatens the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ communities across the country.”

Who created it?

Project 2025 is led by the ultraconservative Heritage Foundationwith Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, as project director. Several other Trump associates are involved, such as Stephen Millerwas a senior adviser to Trump during his presidency; and Roger Severinoa notoriously anti-LGBTQ+ official at Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services; and Kiron Skinner, who served as director of the Office of Policy and Planning in the Trump administration until she was fired for abusive and unprofessional behavior, including homophobic remarks.

How will it affect LGBTQ+ Americans?

Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership”. it’s a 900-page document, but Accountable.US has put together a succinct summary of what Project 2025 would mean for LGBTQ+ Americans and lawyer has a first look. Here are the key points.

The bill urges the next conservative president to virtually ignore the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the court found that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by prohibiting sexual discrimination in the workplace, also prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. President Joe Biden, on the other hand, did led all federal agencies to implement the provisions of Bostock not just in the workplace, but also in health care, education and other aspects of life.

Request a ban transgender people in the military and to stop what he sees as the “toxic normalization of transgenderism” in American government and society. It seeks to dismantle the president’s Gender Policy Council, “which it sees as promoting abortion and the ‘new awakened gender ideology,'” Accountable.US notes.

The next Secretary of Health and Human Services, Project 2025 recommends, should reverse what it calls a focus on “‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single motherhood, discouraging work, and penalizing marriage, replacing such policies with ones that encourage marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood and nuclear families’.

“Project 2025’s playbook laments that President Biden’s HHS family policies and programs are ‘filled with agenda items that focus on ‘LGBTQ+ equity,'” making it clear that it intends to roll back those points of on the agenda,” explains Accountable.US.

In addition, it calls on the Department of Justice to “defend the First Amendment rights of those who would discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. It also opposes DOJ notifying states that their bans on abortion and transgender medical services may violate federal law,” reports Accountable.US.

On foreign policy, Project 2025 says a new conservative president should also dismantle USAID programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, such as what it calls the “LGBTQ+ bullying agenda.”

“Project 2025’s anti-LGBTQ+ policy recommendations are sweeping — affecting agencies across the federal government and even past Supreme Court decisions,” the Accountable.US summary concludes. “In no uncertain terms, Project 2025 and its allies intend to curtail LGBTQ+ equity advances in favor of what they claim is ‘life and strengthening the family.’