How Project 2025 would change American life – Axios

Democrats have warned of the damage that Project 2025 could do to the federal government and access to reproductive care if former President Trump wins in November.

Why it matters: The Heritage Foundation-backed plan would do far more than that. Its 900-page wishlist could reshape daily life for millions of Americans if some of its less publicized recommendations are adopted.

The big picture: The foundation has been a fixture in conservative politics for decades, and its roadmap for the next Republican administration zeroes in on programs and initiatives the GOP has long targeted.

• At least 140 former Trump administration officials contributed to Project 2025, CNN reports.
• Trump has publicly disavowed the project; his campaign has pointed to his own policy plan, Agenda47, and the official Republican Party platform as his agenda if he wins in November.

Yes, but: The foundation boasted that the GOP presidential nominee carried out roughly two-thirds of its 2015 recommendations within a year of taking office the first time.

• Here is some of what it wants during a second Trump presidency.

Privatizing weather forecasts

The project calls for dissolving the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and either transferring its functions to other agencies or eliminating them entirely.

• It argues NOAA must be terminated because its research on the effects of human-caused climate change from greenhouse gas emissions “is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
• The National Weather Service (NWS), one of NOAA’s sub-agencies that produces free weather forecasts and warnings for the public, “should fully commercialize its forecasting operations,” the plan recommends.Effectively privatizing weather data could hinder Americans’ access to weather data and how the U.S. accesses other countries’ weather models, the Atlantic reports.

Zoom out: Throughout all scientific agencies in the government, the plan calls on the president to “ensure appointees agree with administration aims,” which may allow political ideologues to overrule the expertise of trained scientists.

Shrinking the social safety net

Critical federal programs meant to support people experiencing economic hardship and children living in poverty would be significantly overhauled or eliminated under the plan.

• Its reforms would make it more difficult for people to qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as “food stamps.”
• SNAP is the country’s largest nutritional assistance program, serving an average of around 41 million people — or over 10% percent of the population — per month.
• The foundation also wants to roll back changes made by the Biden administration to increase SNAP benefits over 10 years to keep up with rising food costs.

Zoom in: The foundation wants Trump to tighten the criteria for when states may give people exemption waivers for SNAP’s work requirements, which are issued to ensure access to food stamps during times of high unemployment.

• The recommendation echoes a reform the Trump administration had pursued during his first term before being sued by a coalition of states and D.C.
• At the time, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimated that the changes would strip about 688,000 people of their SNAP benefits.

The foundation would also like to make it harder for people to qualify for SNAP benefits if they also receive aid from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, another federally funded assistance program.

• The recommendation would revive yet another Trump-era policy that was never finalized.
• The USDA estimated at the time that 3.1 million people — or 9% of SNAP recipients at the time — would have lost their benefits from the change and would disproportionately affect households with at least one elderly member.

Eliminating free preschool

The foundation wants to end another key federal program: Head Start, which offers free early childhood education, health and nutrition services to children from low-income families.

• That would eliminate services for the families of roughly 800,000 children, two-thirds of whom are Black, Hispanic or Latino.
• It seeks to limit the number of children who can qualify for free school meal programs while also calling for Republicans to block any effort to implement universal free school meal programs.

Capping funding for Medicaid

The plan calls for caps to how much federal funding states may receive to help pay for Medicaid costs, though it doesn’t specify how such caps would be determined.

• The caps would ensure that federal Medicaid spending does not keep pace with expected enrollment and health care cost increases, resulting in a significant cut to funding over time.
• It calls for setting time limits on Medicaid coverage and imposing lifetime caps on benefits “to disincentivize permanent dependence.”
• Under the project, states would also be allowed adopt work requirements for people to receive Medicaid benefits and “more robust eligibility determinations” for people to qualify for coverage.

Ending student debt relief

The plan’s architects propose ending all “time-based and occupation-based student loan forgiveness.”

• That includes the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which allows public employees, such as teachers, firefighters, members of law enforcement, and people who work for nonprofit organizations, to apply for forgiveness after they make 10 years’ worth of payments.
• Biden’s loan forgiveness efforts would be repealed, though Project 2025 does not specify if or how that would affect the over 4 million borrowers who have already been approved for forgiveness.

Context: Republicans have cast Biden’s cancellation effort as an unconstitutional giveaway and have fought to have his signature debt relief program overturned by the courts.

Defunding public broadcasting

Project 2025 calls for defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which has long been a Republican target.

• Its $500 million annual appropriation from the government helps support over 1,500 locally controlled and operated public television and radio stations that ensure Americans have universal access to free non-commercial, local public media.
• Defunding CPB “would severely diminish, if not destroy, public broadcasting service in the United States,” according to Booz & Co. in a 2012 report, which added that “noncommercial radio and television stations in many localities would struggle to survive.”

Banning adult entertainment

Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, writes in Project 2025’s foreword: “Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.”

• Roberts also calls for telecommunications companies that distribute porn to “be shuttered.”
• “It has no claim to First Amendment protection,” Roberts writes of adult entertainment.

Reality check: Prohibiting porn would challenge decades of free speech precedent.

• Courts, including the Supreme Court, have long held that adult entertainment is protected by the First Amendment so long as children are not involved and it is not obscene as defined by the Miller test, according to the Department of Justice.