Queer media has been covering Project 2025 since last year, but the Heritage Foundation’s playbook is now making headlines across mainstream media. Last week, the president of the conservative think tank, Kevin Roberts, appeared on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” to discuss Project 2025. In the interview, Roberts, who wrote the foreword to Project 2025, talked about a “second American Revolution” that would “hopefully be bloodless…if the left allows it to be.”
Roberts’ comments have raised alarm, and even conservative politicians, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, have attempted to distance themselves from Project 2025.
“Well, he’s not running for president, is he?” Rubio said to CNN’s Dana Bash when asked about Roberts’ comments. “Our candidate’s Donald Trump. I didn’t see Donald Trump say that.”
Even Donald Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025. On Truth Social, Trump disavowed knowledge of the project, which several former Trump Administration staffers created.
“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” said Trump on the conservative social media platform. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Trump has his own policy playbook, which he has released in video format on his reelection website. Called Agenda 47, the playbook tackles key issues in Trump’s reelection platform, including the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act, a pushback on international tariffs, and ending automatic citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, also known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Effects of Agenda 47 on the LGBTQ+ Community
How would Agenda 47 affect members of the LGBTQ+ community? There are several ways the LGBTQ+ community would be directly and indirectly affected by Agenda 47 if it comes to pass.
Education: In Agenda 47’s “Protecting Students from the Radical Left and Marxist Maniacs Infecting Educational Institutions” section, Trump calls for the replacement of “radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics” including “removing all DEI bureaucrats” and changing standards at American colleges and universities.
Trump pledges to take away billions of dollars in funding for private universities, naming Harvard as an example. Agenda 47 calls student protesters “savages and jihadists” and claims these universities are “turning our students into Communists and terrorists and sympathizers of many, many different dimensions.” It is unclear what Trump is referring to in terms of different dimensions.
Military: While Agenda 47 does not address LGBTQ+ military personnel directly, it does refer to “Joe Biden’s woke policies and political purges have repulsed many great patriots from serving.”
Regarding LGBTQ+ people in the military, in 2019, after several legal battles, the Trump Administration’s transgender military ban went into effect. A Biden Administration 2021 policy update, reversed this, allowing transgender troops to serve openly. In 2011, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was rolled back.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: DEI initiatives have been on the chopping block of right-wing and conservative platforms, including both Project 2025 and Agenda 47. In Agenda 47’s “Reversing Biden’s EO Embedding Marxism in the Federal Government,” Trump vows to eliminate DEI policies within the federal government. The agenda calls these initiatives an attempt to weaken American institutions and accuses the Biden Administration of seeking to “impose racist and woke sexual ideology across the federal government.” This would include firing all employees hired to implement these initiatives and eliminating all related offices.
Gender-affirming care: Transgender issues have been a key point for conservatives in this election year. Agenda 47 lays out a plan to eliminate any gender-affirming care for minors and “cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.”
In his video, Trump says he “will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female—and they are assigned at birth.”
Trump also claims, “No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender—a concept that was never heard of in all of human history—nobody’s ever heard of this, what’s happening today. It was all when the radical left invented it just a few years ago.”
Agenda 47 also promises to ban transgender women from competing in sports that align with their gender identity.
Trump refers to gender issues as madness and promises to end them under his leadership.
Note that the term “transgender” is never used in Agenda 47.
Overall, Agenda 47 is considerably more vague in its language than Project 2025, but the two playbooks share many similarities that could significantly impact LGBTQ+ people and many other marginalized communities.