Nearly 50% of Project 2025’s goals have been completed.
While the administration is showing no signs of slowing down its effort to fulfill Project 2025’s anti-worker agenda, AFSCME members remain more committed than ever to fighting back through our Get Organized campaign.
Since reporting on Project 2025 in April, at least 25 more objectives have been achieved.
Here are some of the ways in which Project 2025 undermines our communities, public services, and working families.
Unions, labor rights
THEN: Project 2025 set out to ban public sector unions, weaken federal employee unions and labor rights (pp. 81-82).
NOW: The administration has eliminated collective bargaining for nearly a million federal workers, stripping them of their freedom to have a voice on the job. AFSCME members who have lost their union rights range from nurses who care for veterans at a naval hospital, to radio technicians who broadcast Voice of America programming promoting freedom and democracy, to grant administrators promoting community-oriented policing at the Department of Justice. And it also includes federal corrections officers. AFSCME has filed lawsuits challenging this union-busting, and they are ongoing.
Civil service
THEN: Project 2025 sought to reintroduce what’s known as “Schedule F,” which allows the president to install inexperienced, partisan cronies within civil service ranks (p. 73). This is a practice AFSCME got its start fighting against. The administration announced on Day 1 its intention to do this immediately, without any notice and comment process.
NOW: Imposing Schedule F on the first day was only the beginning of this administration’s assault on workers, though after AFSCME filed suit, the administration elected to follow the notice and comment process and has not yet implemented Schedule F. That was followed by callously firing tens of thousands of probationary employees illegally (claiming it was for cause when it wasn’t), laying off hundreds of thousands of federal workers, and throwing critical services into chaos in an attempt to dismantle our government. AFSCME lawsuits have undone or delayed much of the damage, but not all. More recently, during the shutdown, the administration launched another wave of illegal federal worker firings and even threatened others with not paying them back pay; once again, AFSCME’s efforts in the courts helped halt this attack on public service. The White House is also conducting “partisan loyalty tests” for job applicants across federal agencies, which AFSCME is fighting. At the state level, The Department of Labor is considering a rule to eliminate civil service protections for state employment service workers.
Student Debt
THEN: Project 2025 aimed to kill the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which eliminated student debt for people who served their communities, including many AFSCME members. It also sought to roll back student loan forgiveness (p. 354).
NOW: In addition to gutting Department of Education, which administers PSLF and other loan forgiveness programs, a new rule issued by the White House says it will prevent workers whose employers don’t tow the administration’s ideological line from using PSLF. But AFSCME is fighting back.
Tax breaks
THEN: Project 2025 proposed handing out billions of dollars in tax breaks for wealthy corporations and the richest 1% Americans (p. 696).
NOW: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act delivered just that — trillions of dollars in giveaways to billionaires and wealthy corporations who don’t need another dime. As a result, working Americans are facing a cost-of-living crisis and skyrocketing health care costs.
Prescription drugs
THEN: Project 2025 described eliminating Medicare’s ability to lower drug prices for seniors, letting companies impose sky-high prescription drug costs for life-saving medicines like insulin (p. 465).
NOW: In addition to scrapping $2 co-pays for drugs widely used by Medicare retirees, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act prevents or delays Medicare’s ability to negotiate prices for some prescription drugs. Meanwhile, prices for nearly 700 drugs have actually gone up.
Russell Vought
THEN: Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025, has for decades wanted to gut public services and hand over as much power and influence to billionaires as possible. He described wanting to “traumatize” public service workers.
NOW: As the head of the Office of Management and Budget, Vought has celebrated the firing of federal workers and weakened public services, while eroding critical checks and balances that are foundational to our democracy. But through our Get Organized campaign, AFSCME is fighting back to protect working people’s jobs and standing in the way of their efforts.
Medicaid
THEN: Project 2025 proposed a broad assault on Medicaid, including imposing work requirements, limits and severe cuts (p.466).
NOW: Through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Project 2025 has achieved many of its Medicaid goals. It gutted Medicaid by more than $1 trillion. About 15 million Americans will lose their health insurance. Hospital closures and cutbacks — especially in rural areas — have already begun. And job losses and furloughs of health care workers are expected.
Food assistance
THEN: Project 2025 sought to “reform” the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by imposing work requirements and making dangerous cuts, potentially throwing millions into hunger (p. 299). It also proposed limiting access to and even eliminating universal free school meal programs (p. 303).
NOW: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act achieved Project 2025’s SNAP goals. More than 20 million families will lose food assistance. Those cuts also shrink America’s school breakfast and lunch programs, with hundreds of thousands of kids going hungry without free and reduced-price school meals.
Unemployment insurance
THEN: Project 2025 proposed half-baked measures to root out unemployment insurance (UI) fraud (p. 605), while failing to address the program’s lack of funding, staffing, and its ability to get the right benefits to the right people on time.
NOW: Under the guise of fraud detection and prevention, the administration is proposing a new rule that could severely harm the ability to deliver UI benefits to people in need, while requiring states to hand over sensitive data to the federal government on nearly all workers in the U.S., not just on UI claimants.
Veterans
THEN: Project 2025 proposed privatizing the Veterans Health Administration (pp. 645-7) by expanding the Community Care program and Community Based Outpatient Clinics.
NOW: Through workforce reductions and a major shift of new medical care to private community care, the administration is close to achieving Project 2025’s goal of privatizing veterans’ health care — a goal recently decried by hundreds of current and former VA doctors in a joint letter to Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins.
Through AFSCME’s GO campaign, we’re doing everything possible to freeze Project 2025’s progress.
We’re continuing to fight in the courts.
We’re continuing to fight in Congress.
And we’re holding the lawmakers who supported Project 2025 accountable for throwing working families under the bus to deliver even more tax giveaways to billionaires and greedy corporations.
We need your help. Join the movement that’s fighting for strong public services and working families.
