By: Tatum Owens and Jackie Rogers

We are facing global, unprecedented attacks on democracy in France, the UK, Brazil, and right here in the United States in the form of a potential second Donald Trump presidency, paired with the immediate installation of the Heritage Foundation’s scheme, Project 2025. It is imperative that we ensure our freedoms and futures by voting for democracy in November. 

Provided below is a look into the future, dependent on who wins the presidential election this November: will we see a continuation of progress or chaos and corruption in government in 2025?

Project 2025 - Trump’s Second Presidency

After Taraji P. Henson sounded the alarm at the BET awards, opposition to Project 2025 has steadily grown as more people learn about the plan. When you look into the Heritage Foundation’s federal “policy and personnel platform,” you discover a concentrated effort to overthrow our government as we know it. More Americans are realizing that a second Trump presidency would be devastating, and even Trump is distancing himself from the 900 page plan. But if his closest aides, appointees, and top donors are behind it, you can be assured — this is a Trump mandate staffed by those who will be right by his side as they derail democracy in a swift, united action on Day One.

What Is Project 2025 Anyway?

The “Presidential Transition Project” has four pillars: a policy agenda, personnel database, administration academy, and playbook for the first 180 days of the next administration. Lowlights of the 30+ chapter blueprint include totally dismantling the federal bureaucracy of subject matter experts, including independent agencies such as the Department of Education and Justice; extending Trump’s attack on the environment, undoing life-saving Biden-era climate policies; and stuffing the federal workforce with conservative operatives while drastically cutting and changing the executive branch’s operations under his control. If re-elected, there will be a concentrated effort led by his supporters to dissemble our government the first chance they get, swapping the highest levels of democracy for de-facto fascist structures.

How your everyday life will change under Trump and Project 2025:

• Economy:
  • Student loan debt will be reinstituted, burdening millions, you won’t have overtime pay, and homes will be even more expensive to buy.
  • Trump will cut taxes for billionaires, adding to the middle and working class’ tax burden while gutting public services.
• Education: 
  • The Department of Education will be closed. Private school voucher schemes will replace public schools, and low-income families will be deprived of affordable access to education.
  • Title 1 will be eliminated, decreasing school funding, subjecting students to censored and reduced resources, and increasing class sizes. This will be combined with the removal of Head Start, after-school care, food, and college preparation programs.
• Environment:
  • The government will be forced into needless fossil fuel production to provide profits, not energy, for billionaire donors who determine the fate of our planet.
• Executive Powers and Voting Rights:
  • Trump’s refusal to honor election results means that if elected, he would put your voting power in the trash. Further, he’s promised to seek retribution against those who disagree with him—including military tribunals for fellow Republicans who oppose him and put their country before party—while filling his administration with loyalists.
  • He will implement a massive deportation targeting more than 11 million people (think concentration camps).
• Healthcare: 
  • Turning back the clock to the 1960s, limited access to contraception would lead to more maternal deaths, worsen racial inequalities, and without safeguards, disregard crimes like rape.
  • Trump will terminate your and your parents’ Social Security and Medicare, repeal Biden’s $35 cap on insulin, and institute a new tax on health insurance, making healthcare even more unaffordable, instead of making healthcare a protected right.

Progress 2025 - Biden’s Second Presidency

In President Biden’s second term, he plans to protect birth control and IVF, restore abortion as healthcare, increase affordable housing, relieve student debt, and support the middle and working class. Joe and Kamala believe in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people—that is what they work for every single day.

How your everyday life will change if he gets to “finish the job”:

• Economy: 
  • President Biden delivered historic infrastructure investments improving all aspects of public life, from roads to high-speed internet, announcing $454 billion for more than 57,000 projects to date continuing into his next term.
  • Corporations will pay their fair share. The restoration of his American Rescue Plan’s expansion on child tax credits (which brought children across America out of poverty, but Republicans opposed), will ease burdens on middle and working-class families.
• Education:
  • Everyone will have more access to affordable education with President Biden making two years of community college free and offering universal preschool.
  • Historic efforts to decrease the bills of many borrowers would continue, as Biden has forgiven more student debt than any other president, with more policies like the Biden administration’s SAVE repayment plan.
• Environment:
  • Biden’s Build Back Better plan included $375 billion in financial incentives for clean energy in the Inflation Reduction Act, making it easier to get electric cars and breathe easier in 2025 onward.
• Executive Powers and Voting Rights:
  • Your voting power will be protected, with expanded access to voter registration, and voter suppression combated by working with the Justice Department.
  • The power of the Presidency will defend democracy at home and abroad. 
• Healthcare:
  • Your access to reproductive healthcare will be protected, with Biden working to restore your protections from Roe, and vetoing any proposed national abortion bans.
  • Expanded negotiations with Big Pharma will lower your drug costs – remember, President Biden capped insulin costs at $35 for Medicare recipients.
  • Since the Affordable Care Act passed, more Americans have access to health insurance than at any other time. Expanding premium tax credits and lowering health insurance premiums will ensure high quality care is reachable for all. 

Conclusions:

The stakes for this presidential election couldn’t be higher. The choice is clear: you can vote for a future of progress and stability or a descent into regression.