When City On A Hill Press staff gathered to discuss the upcoming election, our collective voices reflected the diversity of opinion apparent in voters in our community.
Some of us staunchly believe that a vote for anyone but Kamala Harris is essentially a vote for Donald Trump. Others are withholding their vote for Harris until she changes her stance on continuing military funding to Israel. A portion is opting for third-party candidates that better represent their values. The rest refuse to participate in a system that at its core, is fundamentally broken.
There is, however, one thing that no one could dispute: Fascism is on a disturbing rise.
The evidence lies within Project 2025 — the “Conservative Promise.” This 920-page “presidential transition project” outlines how the executive branch will transform into a frightening conservative force, beginning the day Trump steps into office.
Trump has intentionally sought to distance himself from the document, stating that he has not read it on several occasions. The obfuscation of his relationship to the document serves as proof that even his own campaign recognizes that these policies are extreme and abhorrent to the majority of voters. CNN reporting found that at least 140 contributors to Project 2025 previously worked in the Trump administration.
According to their website, Project 2025 proudly recommends: Mass deportations, promoting and expediting capital punishment, ending DEI protections, increasing Arctic drilling, ending Biden’s “war on fossil fuels,” removing critical race and gender theory, and shutting down the Department of Education.
Rather than explicitly banning abortion, the Project tactfully revokes FDA-approved abortion drugs, establishes an “abortion surveillance system,” and tolerates extremists harassing healthcare workers offering reproductive health services.
Anti-trans inflammatory language is rife throughout the whole plan. The policy conflates trans people and drag queens with pornography, and plans to “outlaw pornography.” It also rolls back protections against discrimination and denies gender-affirming care, putting queer people in America in extreme danger.
State and local governments, such as Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma, have already become testing grounds for nationwide policy suggested in Project 2025. In 2021, Florida enacted a bill banning transgender female athletes from competing on girl’s teams at public schools. In 2023, Texas passed a bill banning books in schools deemed unsuitable via ratings assigned by booksellers. In June of this year, Oklahoma officials ordered the Bible to be taught in public schools.
Even though we may think California is protected from far-right policies, Project 2025 would completely change that.
It would eliminate abortion medication, deny emergency abortion access, and pull funding from Planned Parenthood nationwide. 5,560,000 women in California would lose guaranteed access to free emergency contraception.
Project 2025 eliminates the Head Start program, meaning 85,236 low-income children in California would lose free healthcare and comprehensive childcare services that support their emotional, mental, nutritional, and educational needs.
For those paying back student loans, Project 2025 would phase out the Biden-Harris SAVE plan, the most affordable repayment plan in history. This would mean 597,300 borrowers paying back student loans would pay between $2,700 to $4,100 more each year.
Project 2025 would completely dissolve the Department of Education, and eliminate Title I which supports schools serving low-income students. In California, this would cut 15,897 teaching positions, depriving 346,553 students of the education they deserve.
Project 2025 threatens to control and change everyday life as we know it, from the government to our homes and even our bodies. This sweeping authoritarianism, the dissolving of the barrier between the public and private spheres, is fascism in practice.
It is now a choice of life or death for millions of Americans across the nation.
We cannot let ourselves be divided by our methods when we’re all fighting the same fight. For some of us that may look like protesting, for some of us that looks like voting, for many of us it is both. Regardless of how we choose to show up this November, we must show up.
Other Projected policies of Project 2025 include:
- Privatizing Medicare
- Eliminating and scaling back climate policies that fight climate change
- Censoring education and banning books
- Exploiting child labor
- Taking away workers’ organizing rights
- Enforced misgendering of trans people and denial of gender-affirming care
- Increased enforcement of the death penalty
