Throughout this election season, Project 2025 has been referenced many times by both Democrats and Republicans. Kamala Harris called it a "detailed and dangerous plan" to implement if former President Trump is elected again at a presidential debate on May 9. "I haven't read it," Trump said. I don't want to read it intentionally. Since then, he has continued to try to distance himself from conservative initiatives.

With all the rhetoric surrounding Project 2025, it has been difficult to understand what it really is. In a nutshell, Project 2025 is a multifaceted plan aimed at influencing the next Republican president (aka, Trump). According to the website, the policy agenda of the new president, a database of people who can serve his administration, training for people called the "Presidential Administration Academy", and a screenplay of recommended actions to be taken within the first 180 days of the administration.

The most watched aspect of Project 2025 is the first part — a 920-page policy book calling for a sweeping review of the federal government. "It's essentially a playbook for bureaucrats and politicians to take over every aspect of our lives and manipulate the federal government to serve their political purposes," says Mike Zamore, National Director of Policy and Government at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "It's department by department and agency by agency with specific plans to dramatically remake how the federal government works and who it works for

Project 2025, written by veterans of Trump's first administration, is a conservative think tank that aims to "formulate and promote conservative public policy," according to their website. The project is led by the Heritage Foundation, which is a global project. The group has been dedicated to promoting America's conservative vision and influencing Republican presidents since announcing its first "Mandate for Leadership" at the beginning of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. (Since then, we have released a new "Mandate for Leadership" every 4 years.

But how influential are their recommendations' According to the Heritage Foundation, during the first year of Trump's first term, he "accepted" almost two-thirds of their policy obligations. The website states that "64% of the policy prescriptions were included in Trump's budget, implemented through regulatory guidance, or under consideration for action." "These included leaving the Paris Climate Agreement, increasing offshore drilling and military spending, and abolishing net neutrality."

It is not yet known how much of Project 2025 will be enacted after Trump takes office, but there is no doubt that everything from LGBTQ+ and abortion rights to immigration and climate justice is at risk. Below, Project 2025 lays out some key issues.

"The Project 2025 agenda is to deny existence and take away the identity of LGBTQ+ individuals, especially transgender individuals," Zamore says. Indeed, the policy guide laments the "toxic normalization of transgenderism" and equates "transgender ideology" with pornography. The authors write that families are made up of "married mothers, fathers, and their children," and that policies that ensure LGBTQ+ equity should be "repealed and replaced with policies that support the formation of stable, married nuclear families."

Project 2025 also aims to protect LGBTQ+, which has won many hard-won awards. The plan calls for the removal of terms such as "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" from federal regulations and laws, allowing legal discrimination against people who identify as LGBTQ+, and seeking to roll back anti-discrimination protections, such as the Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County that provides protection against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also states that transgender people should be banned from serving in the military, a policy Trump enacted during his first term, and Biden reversed.

Project 2025 aims to severely restrict access to abortion nationally. (We also recommend changing the name of the Department of Health and Welfare to the Department of Life Sciences.)The initiative calls for a reversal of FDA approval of mifepristone, a drug widely used for abortion and abortion management. It also aims to revive stricter rules for using the drug and demand that it be given directly (not by mail). And speaking about the mail, Project 2025 also wants the Justice Department to begin enforcing the Comstock Act, a law from 1873 that prohibits "obscene" materials like pornography, contraceptives, or drugs and devices used for abortions from being sent via mail.

The authors of Project 2025 also want to increase data collection of people who have abortions. They write:"Liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, so HHS needs to use all available tools, including funding cuts, to ensure that all states report exactly how many abortions have been performed within their borders, the child's gestation period, what reasons, the mother's status of residence and in what way.""

Zamore says the ACLU is concerned about how the new administration collects data. "We are concerned about surveillance-based tactics that can be used to see where people's phones have gone, like if your phone went across a state line to an abortion clinic," he says. "Or, if you've been providing health care through telemedicine, these are very real concerns in this environment," could be targeted."

Trump has campaigned primarily on the promise of mass deportations of illegal immigrants - the idea that the Project 2025 agenda fully supports. The authors encourage the next administration to finish the wall along the Mexican border and "take a creative and proactive approach to tackling dangerous criminal gangs at the border (they call Mexico a "failed state" run by drug cartels).To support arrests along the border, the authors recommend using active duty military personnel and the National Guard - an approach never used before.

"They envision something that targets the huge, militarized dragnets of our community, families," Zamore says. "There are millions of mixed-state families in this country, for example, whose children are citizens, but their parents are not. It can really tear families apart."There are also concerns that immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) could launch schools, playgrounds and churches, as Project 2025 suggests,"to roll back the power of attorney that banned ICE enforcement in such "sensitive zones."

Project 2025 will undo much of the environmental progress made by the Biden administration. "It provides a framework for strengthening fossil fuels, ending the U.S. leadership on global climate change issues, and repealing much of the bipartisan Infrastructure Act (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) advances," the report said in Washington, D.C.C."It's important to understand the importance of sustainability," said Emily Hammond, a law professor at George Washington University and director of the Academic Sustainability Program."It would further push for usurping the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The conservative agenda also calls for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to be split and downsized. NOAA has six offices, including the National Weather Service, the National Marine Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. The authors of Project 2025 wrote: "These have become one of the main drivers of the climate change alert industry, forming a huge undertaking that is detrimental to future U.S. prosperity.1

In all sections of the Project 2025 Policy Guide, the authors recommend eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs across the federal government. They also reject critical race theory, saying, "If critical race theory is used as part of school activities, such as obligatory affinity groups, teacher training programs where educators need to confess their privileges, or school assignments where students have to defend the false idea that America is systematically racist, then the theory should be used to protect communities such as equality under the law or colorblindness." We are actively destroying the values we hold together."

Zamore says that the author is trying to rewrite history — literally, in some cases, to ensure that history textbooks "do not tell the full story of our country or make certain people uncomfortable."

In some instances, the Agenda also recommends ending federal employees who "engage in ideological agitation on behalf of the DEI Agenda."

Project 2025 has no specific policy on gun control. Still, given its conservative position, it is safe to assume that the author will accept the gun lobby's agenda, including weakening the concealed-carry law and overturning the state's ban on offensive weapons.