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** Project 2025's Top Ten Attacks on Church-State Separation
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“Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. … You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” That’s Donald Trump speaking to the Believers Summit in Florida. It sounds as though he wants to Christianize everything so permanently that there will be no reason left for Christians to bother voting. Apparently if you're among the 122 million Americans who aren't Christian, you're out of luck. But what could Trump mean specifically? Project 2025 gives us answers.

Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation’s playbook for “the next Republican President” as they phrase it. With input from many other conservative organizations and many former Trump Administration officials, Project 2025 ([link removed]) is a 920-page compendium of conservative policy proposals for every federal agency. Project 2025 is also the gathering and vetting of thousands of resumes from conservative/MAGA Republicans to fill the four thousand high-level government positions a new president gets to fill.

The Heritage Foundation has been developing policy proposals for new Administrations since the 1980s but not with a 920-page road map until this year. Heritage officials want Donald Trump to be as prepared this time to bring in conservatives and implement conservative policies as he was unprepared in 2016. It’s questionable how much interest he has in who is hired for a deputy assistant secretary position at an agency or what they do there. Project 2025 eliminates the need for him to ever worry about that. It provides the people to run his federal government and their objectives.

Our mission at the Secular Coalition for America is to defend the rights of nonreligious Americans and to fight for the separation of church and state. When we see 920 pages of ideas for changing the federal government and the words “religion,” ”religious,” “faith-based,” “Christian,” “Sabbath,” and “God” show up 170 times, well, we know Christian nationalism when we see it. We know a plan that must never be implemented. And we remember that the Constitution of the United States contains those six words a combined total of one time, and that’s where it says there will be no requirement for a religious test for any public office. The Constitution is a secular document that established a secular government. Project 2025 spells out ways for the next Republican president to change that. Here are ten of the 163 examples, all quoted:

Department of Labor:
* “Sabbath Rest. God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest, and until very recently the Judeo-Christian tradition sought to honor that mandate by moral and legal regulation of work on that day… Congress should encourage communal rest by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to require that workers be paid time and a half for hours worked on the Sabbath.”

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS):
* COVID: How much risk mitigation is worth the price of shutting down churches on the holiest day of the Christian calendar and far beyond as happened in 2020? What is the proper balance of lives saved versus souls saved? The CDC has no business making such inherently political (and often unconstitutional) assessments and should be required by law to stay in its lane.
* Prohibit abortion travel funding. Providing funding for abortions increases the number of abortions and violates the conscience and religious freedom rights of Americans who object to subsidizing the taking of life.
* Grant allocations should protect and prioritize faith-based programs that incorporate local churches and mentorship programs or increase social capital through multilayered community support (including, for example, job training and social events).
* Require HRSA to use rulemaking to update the women’s preventive services mandate. The contraceptive mandate issued under Obamacare has been the source of years of egregious attacks on many Americans’ religious and moral beliefs.
* Protect faith-based grant recipients from religious liberty violations and maintain a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family.
* HHS should reestablish waivers for state and child welfare agencies for religious exemptions, especially for faith-based adoption and foster care agencies.
* Clarify Title VII’s religious organization exemptions. Congress should clarify Title VII’s religious organization exemptions to make it more explicit that those employers may make employment decisions based on religion regardless of nondiscrimination laws.

Department of Education:
* Protect faith-based institutions by prohibiting accreditation agencies from:
1. Requiring standards and criteria that undermine the religious beliefs of, or require policies or conduct that conflict with, the religious mission or religious beliefs of the institution; and
2. Intruding on the governance of colleges and universities controlled by a religious organization.
* Work with Congress to amend Title IX to include due process requirements; define “sex” under Title IX to mean only biological sex recognized at birth; and strengthen protections for faith-based educational institutions, programs, and activities.

Not every proposal in Project 2025 that would benefit faith-based organizations or schools, or allow discrimination based on religion, includes any of those six keywords such as “religion” in the text. For example, Project 2025 wants the Department of Education to greatly expand funding for school vouchers that could be used at private, and therefore religious, schools, weakening public school systems in the process. But that section doesn’t mention religious schools, just private schools.

One of the most insidious threats in Project 2025 is the plan to change the employment status of tens of thousands of federal employees ([link removed]) who currently can’t be fired without any reason by a new president, and then fire them and replace them with loyalists who may not actually be qualified for those positions. Currently medium- and lower-level federal employees have job protections that allow for continuity when a new president takes office so federal agencies can maintain experienced employees who do nonpolitical work. Can Donald Trump fire tens of thousands of federal employees without cause? He actually did change their employment status in 2020, but never actually got to the firing stage of the plan, and then President Biden reversed it. So yes.

Donald Trump has disavowed Project 2025, saying "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.” Which is difficult to square with his statement from two years ago ([link removed]) at the Heritage Foundation: “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.” If elected Trump would probably suddenly discover the value in making use of Project 2025, or his top advisors certainly would. Eight years ago he was apoplectic ([link removed]) when he found out he had to pay the salaries of the people working on his transition team (that he eventually fired). This time there’s no charge, courtesy of the Heritage
Foundation.

Project 2025 is a plan written with help from Christian nationalists such as Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director ([link removed]) to infuse religion in federal programs and benefit religious groups receiving federal funding. There’s a lot more to dislike in Project 2025; the climate change denial, the politicization of the Justice Department, the consolidation of power with the President. The Secular Coalition for America is sounding the alarm and organizing our 20 member organizations to keep Project 2025 from ever happening because of its un-American merging of church and state.

You can find voter resources here. ([link removed])

Scott MacConomy, Director of Policy ad Government Affairs at the Secular Coalition for America, wears a blue suit and stands with his arms crossed over his chest in front of the United States Capitol Building.
Your advocate,

Scott MacConomy
Director of Policy and Government Affairs
Secular Coalition for America
[email protected]

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The Secular Coalition for America works every day to defend the separation of religion and government and to fight anti-democratic ideologies like Christian nationalism. Your support for this work is vital.

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If not now, when?

P.S. Please consider leaving a legacy gift to the Secular Coalition for America ([link removed]) . The protection of our secular values requires eternal vigilance.

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