‘Disbanding’ Project 2020 Won’t Stop the Global Attacks on Women’s Rights
For those who are unaware, Project 2025 is a nearly 1,000-page document that was created by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation. It has been endorsed by more than 100 organizations. The Heritage Foundation, which has taken great pains to distance itself from the document produced by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, celebrated the fact that President Trump implemented two-thirds (or more) of the recommendations made in that document during the first year of the Trump administration. The director of Project 2025 resigned in late July but the goal to reform government is still there. The current U.S. government is already taking the torch, whether or not the second Trump administration does the same. In June, the House passed a funding bill for fiscal year 2025 that cuts global health assistance by a staggering 12 percent and reduces international family planning and reproductive healthcare to levels not seen since President George W. Bush–despite having just passed a bill funding it at $146.5 million more three months prior. In June, the House passed a funding bill for fiscal year 2025 that cuts global health assistance by a staggering 12 percent and cuts international family planning and reproductive health to levels not seen since President George W. Bush–despite having just passed a bill funding it at $146.5 million more just three months prior.
Regardless of Project 2025, the expansion of harmful anti-rights language and restrictions on funding from the United States to NGOs and multilaterals is already part of the playbook.
The bill also draws right from the Project 2025 playbook. The bill codifies an expanded version the global “gag rules” that falsely claims to limit U.S. funding of abortion, but actually limits the services and advocacy local governments, donors and other governments are able to provide. This makes foreign aid less effective by preventing organizations that work on tuberculosis or malaria to accept U.S. funding, even if they use a penny of their funding for information or care the United States does not agree with. It disproportionately impacts young people and rural populations abroad. This is not a small government.
Some ideas are not new: the global gag rule will soon turn 40. We know that conservatives aren’t bluffing on their claims. They have already shown this by the PEPFAR reauthorization fiasco, when conservative lawmakers refused approval for a continuation of HIV/AIDS global programs in the next five-year period without imposing the Trump-expanded Global Gag Rule. This was done under the false pretense that the funds were used to fund abortions, despite the evidence to the contrary. They will stop and do anything to influence how other countries carry out their health programs, even if it means putting the lives of full-grown humans at risk. Sen. Mike Lee, R-UT, introduced a bill in January to expand the Helms Amendment. The amendment already imposes enormous restrictions on what U.S. foreign assistance can fund and makes us the only country to impose restrictions on other countries’ health-care systems.
So, regardless of Project 2025, the expansion of harmful anti-rights language and restrictions on funding from the United States to NGOs and multilaterals is already part of the playbook.
Thankfully, human rights defenders also have a playbook, too. The 2023 Blueprint for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice Policy Agenda, endorsed by more than 100 organizations, focuses on the specific policy and leadership steps the executive branch can undertake to further advance sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justicia in the United States and abroad. Conservative policy leaders believed this agenda would be popular among voters, despite the fact that evidence shows otherwise. Just because the leader of Project 2025 is stepping down doesn’t mean their ambitions to influence future administrations and Congress have stopped.
Those who believe that less than 1 percent of the budget spent on foreign aid should be spent effectively to save and enrich lives and that the United States can be a force for good will continue to push for policies and policy implementation that reduce, not increase bureaucratic burdens and gets more–not less–funding into the hands of local actors who know their communities best and are best positioned to provide local solutions.
