Dear John,
Project 2025 embodies an agenda led by the Heritage Foundation to revise, reorganize and eliminate vast portions of the statutes, rules and norms that were built over decades, and that have guided our democracy and preserved our freedoms during Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Embodied in a 900-page document entitled “Mandate for Leadership – The Conservative Promise,” and developed in collaboration with more than 100 other organizations, Project 2025 would dramatically change both.
It is important to stress that recent changes in the Project’s leadership alter neither the document’s text nor the “Mandate for Leadership” that lies behind it. The president of the Heritage Foundation has made clear that the policy work has been completed as scheduled and their efforts to build a personnel apparatus to carry out this work at all levels of government continues.
All of us, and lawyers in particular, have a role to play in discussing with others the nature of the proposed changes and how they endanger our freedom. To facilitate those discussions, Lawyers Defending American Democracy is publishing a series of “Talking Points” that highlight changes Project 2025 is intent on making and their potential effect.
Each Talking Point will quote directly from a section of the document and explain its impact on our democracy, our freedom, and the rule of law. Please share this information widely with your friends, family, and colleagues in the upcoming months.
Department of Labor and Related Agencies (Page 616)
“The good of the American family is at the heart of conservative labor policy recommendations. The longstanding tradition of a strong work ethic in American culture must be encouraged and strengthened by policies that promote family-sustaining jobs. By eliminating the policies promoted by the DEI agenda, promoting pro-life policies that support family life, expanding available apprenticeship programs including by encouraging the role of religious organizations in apprenticeships, making family-sustaining jobs accessible, simplifying employment requirements, and allowing employers to prefer American citizens when making hiring decisions … we can begin to secure a future in which the American worker, and by extension the American family, can thrive and prosper.”
Why it Matters: Talking Points
This quotation is from the conclusion to a section in Project 2025 that proposes sweeping recommendations that would eliminate significant laws, including Title Vll of the Civil Rights Act, as well as regulatory and policy requirements implementing these statutes. Rather than strengthening the American worker, these extensive proposals would eradicate longstanding reforms that have taken place over decades to ensure that workplaces are diverse, equitable, inclusive, and promote equal opportunities for all.
Unquestionably, the good of families living in America should be one of the primary goals of American labor policy. The diversity, equity, inclusion, and other policies these proposals would abandon are designed to ensure that all families living in America and contributing to its success share in the available good.
To eliminate such policies that provide families with a pathway to achieving family-sustaining jobs would be to reinstall barriers that long have blocked that pathway.
Visit our website for more on our Project 2025 Talking Points Series.
Thank you for your dedication to maintaining our democracy. Please support our efforts by donating to LDAD and by sending this email to your networks. As always, please also feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] if you may be interested in volunteering or if you wish to share your ideas.
Lawyers Defending American Democracy
