HRC, other groups to rally against GOP ‘masterplan’ for a Christian theocracy
The Human Rights Campaign will join a coalition of groups for a rally on Saturday against Project 2025, the 887-page plan that would reshape American government if a Republican is elected president in 2024.
The demonstration was organized by the Center for Popular Democracy as part of its yearlong Stop the Coup campaign. Participants will gather by the headquarters of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, which produced Project 2025, at 1 p.m.
“A blueprint for a future dictatorship that reflects the GOP’s 2025 party platform” the Center for Popular Democracy wrote in a press release, “Project 2025 is an 887-page extremist GOP masterplan to systematically dismantle our federal government and democracy.”
The document “envisions America as a future Christian theocracy and seeks to replace public education with the Bible” and was created by “The Heritage Foundation and 75 Christian groups” as “a radical plan to retake power in America.”
Among the plans detailed in Project 2025 are the following:
- • Withdrawing the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the safe and effective abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol;
- • Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, the most impactful legislation ever passed to address climate change; encouraging allied nations to use more fossil fuels; additional investment by the U.S. government in cultivating oil, gas, and coal; and prohibiting the U.S. government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions;
- • Expanding presidential powers, including by ending the independence of the Justice Department, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and other agencies by putting them under control of the Executive Branch;
- • Deploying the military under the Insurrection Act for purposes of quelling protests and demonstrations and directing the Justice Department to pursue people whom Donald Trump considers disloyal or political enemies (the Heritage Foundation denies the plan contains these directives);
- • Rescinding anti-discrimination rules at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that cover discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity;
- • Outlawing all pornography;
- • Reforming the civil service by firing government employees who are insufficiently loyal to Trumpism and other conservative principles;
- • Advancing a Christian nationalist theocratic agenda: “The message that America must remain Christian, that Christianity should enjoy a privileged place in society, and that the government must take steps to ensure this is clear in every section of the plan, as is the idea that American identity cannot be separated from Christianity.”