The Her­itage Foun­da­tion devel­oped Project 2025 as some­thing of a blue­print for a con­ser­v­a­tive rev­o­lu­tion of gov­er­nance in the Unit­ed States under what was hoped to be an upcom­ing elec­tion of Don­ald Trump in the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Hence, “Project 2025” refers to the blue­print and imple­men­ta­tion plans for new Trump admin­is­tra­tion after the Novem­ber 2024 election.

Project 2025 is far more than an an abstract state­ment of pro­posed poli­cies. It is express­ly a “Pres­i­den­tial Tran­si­tion Project” for the new Tump admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing advice on get­ting a job in the new Trump admin­is­tra­tion, train­ing for new employ­ees (includ­ing detailed train­ing videos for new employ­ees in the admin­is­tra­tion), and a “180-day play­book” for aggres­sive­ly and quick­ly imple­ment­ing Project 2025’s changes in gov­er­nance in the new Trump administration.

You can go to Project 2025 and see that it has pol­i­cy state­ments on an extreme­ly broad range of issues, and those pol­i­cy state­ments are hun­dreds of pages in length.

ProP­ub­li­ca obtained numer­ous train­ing videos pre­pared by the Her­itage Foun­da­tion for the per­sons to be hired into the Trump admin­is­tra­tion for the “tran­si­tion project”. The train­ing video on “Left-Wing Code Words and Biased Lan­guage” illus­trates many of the planned changes relat­ing to gen­der issues.

Project 2025 plans extensive changes in employment law

Some of the most impor­tant and sweep­ing changes envi­sioned under Project 2025 are for employ­ment law and employ­ment rela­tion­ships in the Unit­ed States, both in the pri­vate and pub­lic sectors. 

• In the pub­lic sec­tor, Project 2025 envi­sions a restruc­tur­ing of the fed­er­al work­force so that a huge seg­ment of that work­force would be stripped of its civ­il ser­vice pro­tec­tion, giv­ing the hoped for Trump pres­i­den­cy vast­ly greater lee­way in fir­ing dis­fa­vored and unnec­es­sary fed­er­al employees.
• In both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, project 2025 envi­sions elim­i­na­tion of Diver­si­ty Equi­ty and Inclu­sion (“DEI”) programs. 
• For labor rela­tions, Project 2025 envi­sions extreme­ly sig­nif­i­cant shifts in pow­er away from orga­nized labor towards management.
• For wage and hour law, Project 2025 envi­sions sub­stan­tial changes in min­i­mum wage and over­time law to reduce the finan­cial bur­den on employers.
• For anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion law, Project 2025 envi­sions reduc­tions in pow­er for fed­er­al agen­cies and shifts in the law in impor­tant respects: a shift in favor of man­age­ment (away from employ­ees), and a shift in favor of the rights of per­sons assert­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion issues based on faith, and a shift in favor of the rights of white Americans. 
• Project 2025 broad­ly per­ceives a bias in our legal sys­tem towards women and minor­i­ty groups and envi­sions remov­ing entire­ly (“erad­i­cat­ing”) from the fed­er­al vocab­u­lary cer­tain ter­mi­nol­o­gy relat­ing to gen­der, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, and trans­sex­u­al issues.

How tightly is Project 2025 aligned with the Trump administraton?

Dur­ing the 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, there was a sig­nif­i­cant con­tro­ver­sy over whether there were ties between Project 2025 and Pres­i­dent Trump. Despite long-term affil­i­a­tions between Trump and the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, there were pol­i­cy posi­tions of Project 2025 that were not very palat­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic, so Trump dis­tanced him­self from Project 2025 dur­ing the campaign.

But now Pres­i­dent Trump is in pow­er, he has issued numer­ous exec­u­tive orders, direct­ly impact­ing employ­ment law, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di has issued numer­ous mem­o­ran­da impact­ing on employ­ment law, the new inter­im direc­tor of the EEOC is already mak­ing impor­tant changes in pol­i­cy there, and there are impor­tant changes going on at the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board.

All of this gives us some oppor­tu­ni­ty now to assess, albeit at a very ear­ly stage, the impact that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is going to have on employ­ment rela­tions and law in the Unit­ed States.

One of the most detailed arti­cles about the exec­u­tive orders by Pres­i­dent Trump that impact employ­ment law is by the New York law firm Pat­ter­son Belk­nap: “Trump’s Jan­u­ary 2025 Exec­u­tive Orders: Impli­ca­tions for Employ­ers.” But my focus is on the spe­cif­ic rela­tion­ship between Project 2025 and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion in the area of employ­ment law.

Example of how Project 2025 is being implemented by the Trump Administration

Even a cur­so­ry exam­i­na­tion of many of the changes already imple­ment­ed shows us that there is an extreme­ly close rela­tion­ship between the new Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s employ­ment poli­cies and the Project 2025 pol­i­cy papers. Any­one inter­est­ed in the com­ing changes in employ­ment rela­tions in the Unit­ed States needs to read, among oth­er things, the Project 2025 pol­i­cy paper on the “Depart­ment of Labor and Relat­ed Agen­cies”.

The path from the Project 2025 pol­i­cy arti­cle on, among oth­er things, DEI and “gen­der ide­ol­o­gy”, to its imple­men­ta­tion in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion , is illus­trat­ed by the fol­low­ing chain of events:

• Project 2025 issues its pol­i­cy state­ment on “Depart­ment of Labor and Relat­ed Agen­cies”, con­demn­ing “gen­der ide­ol­o­gy” (in part based on trans­gen­der issues) and call­ing for com­plete elim­i­na­tion of pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion (“DEI”) pro­grams.
• Project 2025 issues a train­ing video for peo­ple com­ing into the Trump admin­is­tra­tion on “Left-Wing Code Words and Lan­guage” which focus­es on the “gen­der ide­ol­o­gy” and DEI issues, detail­ing the planned “erad­i­ca­tion” of “equi­ty” lan­guage in exec­u­tive orders and oth­er admin­is­tra­tion documents.
• Pres­i­dent Trump issues his exec­u­tive orders on “Defend­ing Women from Gen­der Ide­ol­o­gy Extrem­ism and Restor­ing Bio­log­i­cal Truth to the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment” and “End­ing Rad­i­cal and Waste­ful Gov­ern­ment DEI Pro­grams and Pref­er­enc­ing”.
• Pres­i­dent Trump’s new Attor­ney Gen­er­al, Pam Bon­di, issues her mem­o­ran­dum on “End­ing Ille­gal DEI and DEIA Dis­crim­i­na­tion and Pref­er­ences”.
• Pres­i­dent Trump fires two Demo­c­rat EEOC com­mis­sion­ers because they, accord­ing to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, sup­port­ed DEI poli­cies. The EEOC by law is sup­posed to be a bipar­ti­san body con­sist­ing of 5 Com­mis­sion­ers serv­ing stag­gered 5‑year terms, with no more than 3 of the Com­mi­sion­ers being from a sin­gle polit­i­cal par­ty. Because of the ter­mi­na­tions, the EEOC is down to two Com­mis­sion­ers, depriv­ing it of the required quo­rum for pur­pos­es of mak­ing impor­tant deci­sions. There is a legal cloud over whether the pres­i­dent has the legal pow­er to fire EEOC com­mis­sion­ers absent mis­con­duct. But that reduc­tion in EEOC author­i­ty is con­sis­tent with anoth­er set of guid­ing prin­ci­ples for Project 2025: dimin­ish­ing the role of admin­is­tra­tive agen­cies in gen­er­al and specif­i­cal­ly dimin­ish­ing the pow­er and author­i­ty of the EOOC. For exam­ple, Project 2025 argues that the EEOC has no author­i­ty to issue reg­u­la­tions and has no author­i­ty to issue “inter­pre­ta­tive guid­ance” about fed­er­al employ­ment laws.
• Pres­i­dent Trump’s new Inter­im EEOC Chair, Andrea Lucas, issues a new press release from the EEOC enti­tled “Remov­ing Gen­der Ide­ol­o­gy and Restor­ing the EEOC’s Role of Pro­tect­ing Women in the Work­place” (sig­nal­ing numer­ous changes com­ing to the EEOC). The fir­ing of the two Demo­c­rat com­mis­sion­ers and the absence of quo­rum, pre­vent Lucas from revok­ing the pri­or EEOC guid­ance that impacts DEI and gen­der issues, but Lucas in the press release makes clear her oppo­si­tion to the pri­or EEOC posi­tions tak­en dur­ing the Biden administration.

Summary: the importance of Project 2025 to coming changes in employment law

This is just one illus­tra­tion of the tight rela­tion­ship between Project 2025’s plans for employ­ment law, and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s imple­men­ta­tion of those plans. Lawyers and oth­ers who want to antic­i­pate and under­stand the upcom­ing changes in employ­ment law should read Project 2025 very carefully.

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Drew M. Capuder

Attorney at Capuder Fantasia PLLC

Publisher of Drew Capuder's Employment Law Blog. Lawyer with more than 30 years of experience, focusing on employment law, commercial litigation, and mediation. Extensive trial and appellate experience in state and federal courts. Call Drew at 304-333-5261.

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Lat­est posts by Drew M. Capud­er (see all)

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