In Other Words, What the Heck is Going On?
By Jordyn Britton
Howard University News Service
The 2024 election season is finally over. That is what many American voters are taking solace in as the results have left at least 49% of the country in awe. The remaining 51% of the country’s reaction is still to be determined as President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for his administration, which are news to some and not to others, have left several of his followers Googling how to change their vote.
Now that Trump has secured his second term, his close proximity to Project 2025 has become more evident. For voters who were rooting for Vice President Kamala Harris, that proximity has been a concern since before she was announced as the Democratic nominee in June.
However, as Inauguration Day approaches on Jan. 20, many citizens are concerned about the proposals in the 920-page document outlining the “conservative promise” to America.
“Project 2025: The Mandate for Leadership” is a document that was created by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank. The D.C.-based nonprofit has been openly regarded as an anti-LGBTQ organization and is staffed with over 100 former employees of the Trump administration.
Although the president-elect denied any connection to Project 2025 throughout his campaign, the plans and policies that he has promised to impose upon entrance to the White House have aligned perfectly with what has been proposed throughout this playbook.
The topic of education, or rather the plan for the Department of Education in Project 2025, has been a point of contention for all Americans who are affected by the issue. Students, educators and parents are focal points of one proposal or another within the Conservatives’ promise to dismantle the Department of Education, whether they agree with it or not.
Education has always been a prideful topic among many Americans, who boast about our schools and our students being some of the best in the world. What Immediately comes to mind is Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The university draws students internationally and its reign as the best university on a global scale seems to be synonymous with “USA hooray,” at least when it comes to education.
The hyper-polarization of American politics over everything from education to the economy has left some citizens feeling as though they need to just pull the wool over their eyes for the next four years and wait for it to be over. Others who decided to lean into their “fight” response have been vocal about Trump’s bold statements on his plans for the Department of Education. However, the law will make it difficult or even impossible for him to follow through.
Inside Project 2025
Project 2025 vows to do things like eliminate Title 1, a Department of Education program under the Every Child Succeeds Act signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2015. Title 1 refers explicitly to schools whose student poverty rate is more than 35%, designating funds to help those schools in critical need of the money.
Another proposal within Project 2025’s plan for the Department of Education is to bolster “parental rights” and censorship, which loosely translates to concepts like book banning and anti-DEI teaching and policies, even at the collegiate level.
As a college senior, writing about topics such as these feels asinine at times as I enter my final years of formal education. However, as a storyteller and a journalist, writing and reporting on these topics is critical (to say the least), but I am not the one who will be asked to buy a Bible before my first day of first grade simply because I was in school under the Obama administration. And the current dangers to education are leaving students, teachers and parents with the impending task of fighting for their right to an education that respects their humanity.
“The former president or the president-elect, I guess, has a pretty strong history of just destroying every single thing he touches,” said the Rev. John Finley, an Episcopal priest who is the head and co-founder of the Epiphany School in Boston.
Epiphany, an independent school for economically disadvantaged families in Boston, primarily serves children who otherwise would participate in the Massachusetts public school system. It provides students with free elementary and middle school education and support in their matriculation even after graduation.
“The general push towards states’ rights has often, in the past anyway, led to lowering of academic standards, and it’s often in the most vulnerable communities,” Finley exclaimed.
Trump’s Pick for Education Secretary
The president-elect’s pick to be the next Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, has been vocal on X (formerly Twitter) regarding her excitement about the plans for education under the new administration.
One post reads: “I’m ready to make America’s education system great again. Let’s get this done together!”
In another post, she tweeted: “Wrapped up a great meeting today with Senator @RogerMarshallMD. He understands the need to put parents, students, and teachers first, not the bureaucrats! Thank you, Senator!”
McMahon, the former CEO of the World Wrestling Entertainment company, has been meeting with Republican senators like Ala. Sen. Tommy Tuberville and Kansas Sen. Doc Marshal, discussing her plans for education at the federal level. Plans that, so far, have prioritized the rights of parents, students and teachers, according to her social media posts.
She also chair the board of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). According to the nonprofit organization’s website, it is a non-partisan research institute advancing policies that “put the American people first.” Its guiding principles are “liberty, free enterprise, national greatness, American military superiority, foreign-policy engagement in the American interest, and the primacy of American workers, families and communities in all we do.”
Throughout the AFPI website, its faith-based mission is evident. The institute highlights the Biblical Foundations Project as one of ita top four initiatives and features a video promoting Christianity as the “bedrock” of America.
States’ Rights
Slowly but surely, states across the country have seen their respective education departments begin attempts to exercise new policies and practices aligned with Project 2025.
The Oklahoma Department of Education found themselves under investigation due to a sum totaling $3 million that was allocated to purchasing “God Bless the USA” Bibles, which also happen to be endorsed by the president-elect.
“I’ve often thought the local state government thing is an argument people don’t have on principle,” Finley said. “They have it because it’s convenient.”
“In other words, if it works, it works for advancing their cause, which in this case is trying to create a Christian nation where everybody’s, you know, reading the Bible and so forth,” the priest added. “Look, I love Jesus as much as the next person. But I really, really don’t think that there’s anything in the scripture that says to me that Jesus wants to dominate and control everyone else’s ideas.”
The concept of states’ rights that is proposed in Project 2025 suggests that instead of the federal government funding public schools across the country, states would instead receive the money so taxpayers can decide whether to pour it back into their public school systems.
When it comes to education, states rights would give parents autonomy to make decisions not only for their children, but also for all students within their respective public school system, which some people consider problematic and potentially harmful for both children and families.
“Jim Crow 2.0”
As a Black woman, a member of the LGBTQ+ community and a practicing woman of faith in Massachusetts, the Rev. Irene Monroe has lived parts of American history that are now being repeated today. While the threats and concerns might be different, she says, the theme remains the same.
The lesbian feminist theologian said that Project 2025 “touches us on every aspect of American life that upholds our identity — our understanding of a multicultural democracy, I mean, the rollback of civil rights, the rollback of gains of the Black civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, as well as now the LGBTQ movement!”
“I’m at the intersection of all three of them,” she explained. “So, you could imagine having grown up and seeing incrementally the movement forward, and now to see it be snapped back to what it will be in 2025. Hurts my heart.”
Monroe was steadfast in her sentiments of sorrow for what the incoming administration might inflict on not only the LGBTQ community, but also communities of color and other marginalized groups.
“The thing about the transgender community is, they make up less than 1% of our population,” she said. “When you talk about the banning of transgender students, you know, and the discussions around things like who can use what restrooms, well, you know, I have to be honest with you, I think I’d call that Jim Crow 2.0.”
Monroe is referring to newly implemented laws in Utah and Florida that have made it illegal for people to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity, instead of the gender they were given at birth.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., originated the bill after her failed crusade to ban the first transgender senator, Sarah McBride of Delaware, from using the women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill this past year.
“The whole idea of Project 2025 is to frighten us, to beat us down before Trump even takes office, so we engage in anticipatory obedience for fear of reprisal in the form of violence, deportation, you know, and or incarceration,” Monroe exclaimed.
So, who would this directly affect?
LGBTQIA+ rights are threatened under Project 2025. Here’s what the plan proposes on the definition of sex:
“The next administration should abandon this change redefining “sex” to mean “sexual orientation and gender identity” in Title IX
immediately across all departments. … On its first day in office, the next administration should signal its intent to enter the rulemaking process to restore the Trump administration’s Title IX regulation, with the additional insistence that “sex” is properly understood as a fixed biological fact. Official notice-and-comment should be posted immediately.”
Under the Trump Administration, practices that validate gender identity for all based on personal identity would be abandoned. Gender-affirming practices within public and federally funded schools would be restricted to the genders that students, teachers and faculty were assigned at birth.
Trump has also been vocal about his intent to eliminate LGBTQ+ subject matter by withholding federal funding from schools that do not adhere to curriculum guidelines that he and his administration will try to impose on them..
During a Trump-Vance campaign rally in June, the president-elect said: “On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding of any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto the lives of our children, and I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask.”
This declaration was one of many that the president-elect has made that directly align with the proposals outlined in the conservative promise to America, otherwise known as Project 2025. Among those are his plans to dismantle the Department of Education, restrict access to abortions through the reversal of the Federal Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, enact mass deportations through tactics like invalidating birthright citizenship and restrict access to voting for Americans.
A Sense of Belonging
“You need queer staff and faculty because you need representation,” Monroe said. “It adds to a student’s sense of belonging. It reaffirms this whole notion that the classroom and the school are safe spaces. It breaks down those stereotypes and barriers about LGBTQ+ people.”
“If you erase someone, if you erase their history, you’re doing two things here,” she added. “It’s not only a form of erasure, but you’re saying that your life doesn’t matter. It says that you have made no contribution to American history here.”
Since Trump’s victory, organizations like The Trevor Project, a non-profit dedicated to suicide prevention and crisis intervention for LGBTQ+ youth, have seen a staggering 700% increase in crisis services since Nov. 6, the day after the election.
The surge in calls to a crisis intervention hotline only gives credence to concerns that young people and those who are directly targeted by these “suggestions” and “proposals” are scared, and they are taking it to mean that their rights are already being overturned.
Some people are already taking steps to protect their rights as indicated in a recent article in the Washington Post titled “LGBTQ+ Americans Stockpile Meds and Make Plans to Move After Trump’s Win.”
While slightly discouraging, this solution is one of many that has been popularized throughout the LGBTQ+ community, and it is being strongly considered among those who feel their rights are directly threatened by this new administration.
The subject in the article, a transgender woman, described her plans to move to Canada as more of a contingency if her livelihood is seriously threatened under the new administration. However, stories and feelings like hers are spreading beyone the LGBTQ+ community.
“I just refuse to let a bully bully me from my homeland,” Monroe said. “But it has encouraged bullying. It has. It’s intentioned to other our kids or otherizing our kids, I call it. They’ve become pariahs and outsiders. The misgendering is intentional to create, you know, tremendous psychological and emotional harm”
Reaction From High School Students
Students like Ketura Joseph and her peers are the ones whose education is being threatened, along with their rights and autonomy as people.
“My reaction is that I feel upset and nervous,” said Joseph, a high school junior and writer for Teens in Print, a youth-led news outlet and subsidiary of the nonprofit Write Boston.
“Education is a powerful thing,” Ketura said. “It’s supposed to help you bring yourself to another stage in your life, … and I feel like people are trying to undermine people’s education and put them in a bubble.”
“What’s happening, what’s going on with education, is similar to what’s going on with like abortion, because I feel like people are entitled to their own opinions.”
Ketura and her fellow Teens in Print journalists Cimmaron Holman Jr. and Isaiah Roseau continued to express their feelings surrounding the plan for federally funded education in Project 2025 in a small, focus group.
“What’s wrong is to put your opinions on other people, and I feel like that’s what people are trying to do,” Ketura said. “This is all happening, because people don’t have basic respect for others’ choices and beliefs. Because if we respected one another and what we believe, I feel like education wouldn’t be threatened, and women’s rights wouldn’t be threatened if we just like had basic respect.”
Isaiah, a high school senior, said his peers would feel the effects of the incoming administration’s plans at a greater level than he might.
“Because we’re in Massachusetts, it doesn’t feel like a big deal to me but if I were in another state, like a red state, I would be more worried,” Isaiah said. It’s like we’re just regressing rather than progressing. It’s supposed to be education is one of the most powerful things that we have. If that’s limited, then, um, it’s going to limit our progression. And, even now, people’s education isn’t the best. We saw a bit of that after the election.”
Roseau’s reference to the current state of education in the country raised an excellent point. Higher education in America has reported students struggling at alarmingly high rates, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. In an article published by the New York Times, a professor at Columbia University reported that students of his struggled to do so much as read a book from cover to cover at an elite Ivy League university.
No Child or School Left Behind?
Schools that serve a student body where 40% or more students live in low-income households or are members of a low-income family are eligible to receive funding under Section 1114 of Title I. The No Child Left Behind Act is among the Title 1-related programs and initiatives that are at risk if the president-elect follows through on his plans for education at the federal level.
Dr. Cheryl Watson-Harris and her husband, Dr. Roger Harris have experience working in urban education settings that give them a unique perspective on how the revocation of Title I funding will affect schools across the country.
They have worked in Title I schools on the teaching and leadership levels over their combined 60 years in education. Both have served as professors, superintendents and currently co-founders of Urban Schools Specialists LLC, an organization that “provides strategic assistance to central office school administrators, school leaders, business and community organizations with meeting and surpassing their strategic plan goals,” according to its website.
“The government cannot dictate what should happen in schools in the states,” Harris said. “And what they try to do is incentivize states with these different title programs. So, that’s an incentive for folks to do the right thing by economically disadvantaged children. Right?”
In this instance, the incentive that is offered by Title I is money — money that is allocated to public schools in marginalized communities that are consistently at an economic disadvantage on all fronts, including education.
Statistics show that in America, Title I schools primarily serve children of color, the majority of whom are Black and Hispanic children.
“Title I aims to provide a level of equity, and equity doesn’t mean that every school is getting the same thing. Right? It means that you’re providing additional support so that every school can be at the same starting point,” Watson-Harris exclaimed.
“In terms of the needs of the students, … that whole idea of equity and leveling the playing field is what is at risk.”
Educators like Finley believe the country will continue to piece together an education system that has been fractured for decades — long after the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle it. And the autonomy that the incoming administration seeks will pose threats that go beyond human rights.
For example, vouchers have been proposed as an option to give families the ability to choose whether to send their children to public schools or other educational institutions. However, Finley notes that this option might raise the issue of the quality of education these students would receive.
Suppose a family chooses to homeschool their child or send them to a school that has developed or adjusted their teaching methods and curriculum to align with the new administration’s stance. The question then becomes, what will these students really learn?
While public schools are the main entities that would be affected by Trump’s changes, they are not the only that should be prepared to adjust.
Individuals from marginalized communities, communities of color and the LGBTQ+ community — along with those who support human rights, personal autonomy and freedom — are collectively scratching their heads and preparing to fight or flee come January.
Jordyn Britton wrote this analysis for HUNewsService.com. She also wrote an article on Project 2025’s education proposals for a three-part Behind the Ballot series for our Election 2024 coverage.
Where to Turn: LGBTQ+ Resources
LGBTQ+ youth and adults can find resources through organizations such as The Trevor Project, The Human Rights Campaign, The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (Lambda Legal), and the National LGBTQ Task Force.
It is also worth noting that hundreds of LGBTQ+ advocacy groups are state-specific. It might be helpful to research organizations that are dedicated to the advancement of the queer community in your area. These groups help to foster and build community so that LGBTQ+ people can feel less alone in this uncertain and frightening political climate. — Jordyn Britton
