Project 2025 is a 900-page blueprint for a second Trump administration, created by The Heritage Foundation. Many of the ideas in Project 2025 are ideas Trump has endorsed and were put forward by close advisers or people who worked in his administration.
The following article is part of a series from the Center for American Progress exposing how the sweeping Project 2025 policy agenda would harm all Americans. This new authoritarian playbook, published by the Heritage Foundation, would destroy the 250-year-old system of checks and balances upon which U.S. democracy has relied and give far-right politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives. Reprinted by permission.
Here are specific ways that Project 2025 harms residents of West Virginia.
Raising taxes for the middle class:
■ Project 2025 shifts the tax burden from the wealthy onto the middle class. Under
the plan, the typical family of four in West Virginia would see a tax increase of
$2,185 per year, while 45,000 households in America reporting more than $10
million in income would each see an average annual tax cut of $1.5 million.
Cutting Social Security:
■ Project 2025 authors have endorsed and supported plans to cut Social Security by
raising the retirement age for roughly 69 percent of West Virginia residents—
1,221,564 people. Their ideas are reflected in the two most recent Republican
Study Committee budget proposals, which propose increasing the Social Security
retirement age from 67 to 69. Doing so would cut benefits by $4,100 to $8,900
after just one year, depending on when one claims Social Security. A median-wage
retiree would lose $46,000 to $100,000 over 10 years.
Limiting health care:
■ Project 2025 proposes imposing “limits or lifetime caps on [Medicaid] benefits.”
In West Virginia, 70,000 Medicaid enrollees would be at risk of losing coverage
because they are low income and lack access to alternative, affordable coverage.
■ The plan would raise the cost of prescription drugs for up to 140,540 people in
West Virginia by eliminating out-of-pocket Medicare drug cost limits. It also
blocks the government from negotiating for lower drug prices.
Eliminating abortion rights and contraception:
■ Project 2025 eliminates some emergency contraception medications from free
preventive care requirements, meaning 212,000 women in West Virginia would
lose guaranteed access to free emergency contraception.
■ The plan instructs the U.S. Department of Justice to misapply the Comstock Act, a
pair of laws from 1873 and 1909, to criminalize the mailing of medication abortion.
Doing so would result in an effective abortion ban nationwide, even in states
where abortion is legal.
■ The plan instructs the Department of Justice to take legal action against local
officials who refuse to bring cases against women and doctors who violate state
abortion bans, such as West Virginia’s ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy.
Eliminating Head Start:
■ Project 2025 eliminates Head Start, which provides access to no-cost child
care—among other services—for 8,480 low-income children in West Virginia.
Eliminating Head Start would wipe out a critical supply of child care in rural and
other underserved communities that already face a lack of child care slots.
Increasing cost of student loans:
■ Project 2025 replaces income-driven repayment (IDR) plans with a one-size-fits all
program that would increase payments for all borrowers enrolled in existing
IDR plans, including the Biden-Harris administration’s Saving on a Valuable
Education (SAVE) Plan. Under Project 2025, 38,500 borrowers in West Virginia
enrolled in SAVE would pay $2,700 to $4,100 more each year.
Reducing number of teachers for public schools:
■ Project 2025 eliminates the U.S. Department of Education, including Title I, which
provides funds to ensure schools serving low-income students have additional
resources to deliver a high-quality education beyond that which can be supported
by local property tax revenue. Ending Title I would lead to the loss of 1,378
teaching positions, which serve 18,598 students, in West Virginia.
Read more about Project 2025: Exposing the Far-Right Assault on America from the Center on American Progress
What you can do:
Register to vote, check on your registration, request an absentee ballot, or find your polling place at govoteWV.com
Vote for Democratic candidates who will fight for you. Educate your family and friends.
Read how the WV Democratic Party platform supports all West Virginians.
Donate to our Blue Skies Ahead campaign to help get out the vote in Greenbrier County this November.
Sign up for our Greenbrier County Democratic Women’s Club email newsletter to learn how you can volunteer and help get out the vote.
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