Henry Bodkin
2024-11-03 13:50:22 UTC
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PermalinkRamifications
Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a second Trump
presidency, has been used as a warning by Democrats to highlight
what would be in store for the country if he were to win the
upcoming election. But for some Americans, much of Project 2025
isnt a distant possible future it is a current-day re
ality.
In several states across the country, there are already extreme abortion
bans that have led to the deaths of multiple pregnant women and at least
one teen; restrictive voting policies that make it difficult for citizens
to cast their ballots; defunding of education and censorship of books; and
other such policies that have also been proposed by the authors of Project
2025. If the plan is successfully implemented, many policies that are
already reshaping some states would become federal laws.
Project 2025 is a fascist blueprint for governance, said Lea Campbell,
the founding president of the Mississippi Rising Coalition, a grassroots
organization that supports lower-income communities. But Mississippi, she
said, which has an entrenched conservative majority, is already dealing
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Families across Mississippi are still rebuilding after the largest
immigration raid in the country, which happened five years ago. In 2019,
on the first day of school, scores of children returned home to find that
their parents were part of 680 people who were taken into custody, some of
whom were subsequently deported, after US Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agents raided seven poultry plants. Under Project 2025, mass
deportations would be expedited, further tearing families apart.
We have been sounding the alarm for more than 10 years, just around the
policies in this state, enacted by conservatives that target the most
vulnerable among us, Campbell said. Weve been saying about policies
under this ultra-conservative legislature that we have here in Mississippi
[that] the cruelty is the point, it seems, with a lot of this legislation
that targets poor people and people of color, and women, and the
queer and trans community.
Even when voters have made it clear that they disagree with proposed
conservative polici es, lawmakers have found ways to maneuver
around their wishes.
In 2011, 58% of Mississippians rejected a personhood amendment, which,
had it passed, would have defined fertilized eggs as people. Opponents
warned that because of the way the amendment defined life, it would ban
all abortions with no exceptions for rape or incest, and it would
have comp licated in vitro fertilization. A man praying outside a
womens health clinic Coleman Boyd prays aloud outside the Jackson Womens
Health Organization the only remaining abortion clinic in the state
on 28 June 2021 in Jackson, Mississippi. Photograph: The Washington
Post/Getty Images
Still, in 2013, the state, along with Kansas, Kentucky, Wyoming, Ohio and
North Dakota attempted to pass so-called fetal heartbeat bills, in which
abortion is banned after as early as six weeks once cardiac activity is
detected. For several years, multiple states tried to pass similar bills
and other restriction s. By 2019, 15 states introduced fetal
heartbeat bills; six were successful in passing them.
Project 2025 aims to enforce the Comstock Act, a 151-year-old
anti-obscenity law that prohibits the mailing of abortion-related
materials. Doing so could lead to a de facto nationwide ban on abortion,
as abortion clinics and advocates rely on the mail to sen d and
receive abortion pills. The plan also indicates a goal of legally
recognizing fetuses as people.
Currently in Mississippi, drug-sniffing dogs have been used to intercept
abortion pills. And in nearby Louisiana, two common abortion pills that
are also often used for miscarriage management, softening the cervix
during labor and other proced ures have been reclassified as
controlled substances, despite doctors warning that doing so
will harm women.
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As it stands, organizers and activists in states that have proto-Project
2025 policies are able to push for change on a state and local level. If
Project 2025 were implemented, however, many of those policies
could become federally enshrined, drastically changing the way lawmakers
and advocates can push to repeal such laws.
Nsombi Lambright-Haynes, the executive director of One Voice Mississippi,
a civil rights organization, said that the non-profit has been en
couraging people to vote by educating them about what Project 2025 would
do to the public education system and to reproductive rights.
We are pointing out what we already have and then pointing out
the danger that c an come if something like this is fully
implemented, she said. Its really like a wake-up call. A beacon to
get people fervent in their racism
Two years ago, Jackson, Mississippis capital and the Blackest city in the
country, was without water for more than a month due to decades of the
state refusing to invest in infrastructure. Danyelle Holmes, an or
ganizer with the non-profit Poor Peoples Campaign, said that implementing
Project 2025 nationwide would worsen the rest of the countrys
infrastructure woes.
Project 2025 supports removing clean water protection, she said.
That puts marginalized communities really at a very vulnerable
place and position, as were feeling the impact of not having access to c
lean and safe drinking water. A girl sitting facing a laptop in a
room Makayla Jackson uses a laptop in grandmothers dining room in
Jackson, Mississippi . Photograph: Rory Doyle
Project 2025 would downgrade per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
from being classified as hazardous to contami nants, and it
would eliminate the Environmental Protection Agencys (EPA) Toxic
Substances Control Act, preventing the government from adequately
monitoring the cumulative effect of toxins.
The plan could erode the countrys system of checks a nd
balances, according to an analysis by Salon, increasing the presidents
power over all of the federal government. But many states have already
given such extreme powers to their state officials.
In Texas, for instance, the Death Star bill prevents cities and counties
from passing measures that are stronger than those passed at the
state level across a broad range of policy areas. While in Florida, Ron
DeSantis, the governor, has augmented his own power by using the states
republican supermajority to cement his ideas into law.
Project 2025 would eliminate Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers
(FLETC), an interagency law enforcement training body, increase the use of
the fed eral death penalty, eliminate the use of consent decrees
and increase the use of mandator y minimum sentences, according to
an analysis by the Thurgood Marshall Institute, the research arm of the
Legal Defense Fund. Six former Mississippi law enforcement
officers, members of the goon squad, sitting in court. Six former
Mississippi law enforcement officers, members of the goon squad, sitting
in court. Photograph: Rogelio V Solis/AP
In Mississippi, police departments across the state have already been
embroiled in controversy. Six law enforcement officers in Rankin
county were convicted for torturing two Black men, while a federal
investigation found that police in a majority-Black town elsewhere in the
state have created a system where officers can relentlessly violate the
law.
Project 2025 would make i t so that the rest of the country
experiences the restrictive, conservative lawmaking that many southerners
have been organizing against for years, said Courtney Jones, a writer and
researcher with SippTalk Media, a digital media platform, said.
Theres no part of this nation that is untouched by the harm that racism
does. Project 2025 is more of a beacon to get people to be more fervent in
their racism, he said. Instead of whispering about it or doing
political loopholes, now theyre just directly saying, Were going to
take these small things that weve been doing to these specific
populations and now were just going to amplify them. And were going to
make this happen across the entire country.
Jones noted that organizers in the state and region had long been
trying to warn the rest of the country about what was happening and what
might soon come for them. Their warnings were met with dismissal, he said,
as people believed thats just Mississippi for you.
The people here that are doing the work have always been doing the work,
he said. A lot of people in Mississippi recognize that because weve
always been overlooked, that we have to kind of look within in order to
save ourselves. There is no grand agency or political candidate thats
ever going to come here and suddenly fix things for us.