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Dear John,
Project 2025 is designed to dismantle the government if Donald Trump is elected, and remake it in a giant MAGA fever dream. Of its many disastrous proposals, some of the most devastating will fall on the nation’s most vulnerable: children.
Children will be the victims under the far-right Trumpian vision of Project 2025, as it calls for the complete elimination of Head Start and the Department of Education, and the slashing of nutrition assistance and federal funds for education.
Since its initiation in 1965 by President Johnson, Head Start has served almost 40 million children. In some underserved areas, Head Start is the only form of early childhood education available. In 2022, it served over 833,000 children and expectant families.
Decades of evidence have shown the lasting effects of Head Start programs, including improving high school graduation rates and lifetime income earnings of alumni. It may be the most fully documented success story in all of American education. But Trump’s vision does not include Head Start because it’s of little use to his billionaire cronies seeking to pay even less in taxes than they already do.
Send a message to Congress today: Reject any and all cuts to education and nutrition programs contained in Project 2025 now!
Eliminating Head Start is not the only way Project 2025 would harm children. Completely eliminating the Department of Education, Project 2025 also calls for firing 6% of the nation’s teachers -- and more in states with high levels of poverty and large rural populations.
Millions of students would be impacted by the firing of 3.2 million public school teachers -- making the current teaching shortage far worse. Especially hard hit would be the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona, which would lose nearly 10% of teaching jobs. The state of Louisiana would lose 12%.
Of course, the right wing does not have to wait on a presidential election to implement the brutal plans of Project 2025. Far right extremists in the House have already passed a $4.7 billion cut from Title I grants to schools serving low-income children. It’s not hard to see the pattern here of targeting the very children that most need support.
If the bill were passed without modification by the Senate and signed into law, the result would be a loss of 72,000 teachers, and the complete elimination of all English Language Acquisition programs.
Children need adequate nutrition to be able to learn. Is it any surprise that Project 2025 goes after food programs as well? Plans call for making it harder for low-income families to qualify for school meals, and cutting off all summer feeding programs. In the summer, it seems, the right wants low-income kids to just take a vacation from eating.
Even baby formula would be deregulated. Talk about a vulnerable population! Babies are in dire need of nutritional formulations that will foster brain growth and nervous system maturation, needed for emotional regulation and language acquisition, in preparation for the physical, social, and intellectual demands of toddlerhood.
We cannot accept these plans to put our nation’s most vulnerable children and families at greater risk of failure in all aspects of learning, and in life. Congress must act now to prevent the radical right from gutting our educational system and nutrition programs from top to bottom.
Send a message now to your senators and representative to demand they reject Project 2025’s radical and destructive agenda for children and families.
Thank you for standing up for the rights of our most vulnerable citizens.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
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