Trump, Project 2025 and ‘Culture Wars’

In the workplace, DEI policies provide all employees “equal access to opportunities,” offer a “sense of belonging” for everyone and encourage the hiring of a diverse workforce, as described by the Harvard Business School.  

Labeling DEI “unlawful discrimination,” Project 2025 called for eliminating DEI offices, programs and polices throughout government, and preventing such “discrimination” in the private sector. The document called on the Department of Justice to “reverse this trend.”  

The DOJ should “lead a whole-of-government recommitment to nondiscrimination” not only in federal government “but also at the state, local, and private-sector levels,” Project 2025 said. 

Specifically, it urged the DOJ to “reorganize and refocus” its Civil Rights Division and use “the full force of federal prosecutorial resources to investigate and prosecute all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers who are engaged in discrimination in violation of constitutional and legal requirements.” 

In his first two days in office, Trump issued executive orders that directed federal agencies to eliminate “illegal and immoral” DEI offices, positions, policies, programs and initiatives in government, and “combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.” 

Following Trump’s executive orders, the DOJ refocused and reorganized the Civil Rights Division — as described in Project 2025.  

On Feb. 5, her first day in office, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the division to develop a plan “to encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including policies relating to DEI and DEIA.” (DEIA stands for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.)

On May 19, the DOJ launched a “Civil Rights Fraud Initiative” co-led by the Civil Rights Division. In a memo to DOJ staffers, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department will use the False Claims Act to take action against federal fund recipients who “certify compliance with civil rights laws while knowingly engaging in racist preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities, including through diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.” 

A few weeks later, Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate — who heads DOJ’s Civil Division – sent a guidance memo to staffers on its new enforcement priorities. Citing Trump’s executive order “to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences,” Shumate said the Civil Division, working with the Civil Rights Division, would use “all available resources” to combat “unlawful discriminatory practices,” which were defined as “private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.” 

The Civil Rights Division was created in 1957 by the Civil Rights Act. It has protected Black voting rights, prosecuted crimes against civil rights activists and enforced laws against discriminatory housing practices.  

The new direction for the Civil Rights Division has prompted a mass exodus of division lawyers and staffers. In an August article, Government Executive wrote that “the division has shed hundreds of employees — or more than 60% of its workforce — since January.”

“The realization sort of slowly dawned on people that there was no interest from this administration in enforcing civil rights laws,” Katie Chamblee-Ryan, a former attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told MSNBC. “And, not only that, they were going to weaponize those same laws against the very people they were designed to protect.” 

We could not find any examples of the Civil Rights Division bringing litigation against private companies, although some companies have changed their DEI policies since Trump took office. 

At the local and state level, the Civil Rights Division opened investigations against the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minnesota for adopting a policy that requires prosecutors to consider “racial identity” when negotiating plea deals, and Minnesota and Rhode Island for allegedly engaging in race-based discrimination in employment practices.

The Civil Rights Division also informed Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson in May that it had opened an investigation into the city’s hiring practices after the mayor made remarks “suggesting that you have made hiring decisions solely on the basis of race.” While speaking at a church, Johnson boasted that his administration is the “most diverse” in city history. 

Project 2025 called the Department of Education “a convenient one-stop shop for the woke education cartel,” claiming “bureaucrats” at the department “inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms.”

The document called on the department’s Office for Civil Rights to enforce civil rights laws “based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.”

On Feb. 14, the department’s Office for Civil Rights sent a letter to recipients of federal education funds that threatened to end funding to colleges, universities and K-12 schools that use “race as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring, training, and other institutional programming.” 

“Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism’ and advanced discriminatory policies and practices,” the letter said, citing discrimination against white and Asian students. “Proponents of these discriminatory practices have attempted to further justify them—particularly during the last four years—under the banner of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (‘DEI’), smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline.”

The Feb. 14 letter gave the schools two weeks to “cease using race preferences and stereotypes as a factor in their admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, sanctions, discipline, and beyond,” the department said in a press release.   

A month later, the department’s Office for Civil Rights announced it had opened investigations into 45 universities for “allegedly engaging in race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programs” and seven universities for “alleged impermissible race-based scholarships and race-based segregation.” The department said violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act “can result in loss of federal funds.”

The department’s actions triggered a flurry of lawsuits. 

In March, the National Education Association sued the department – claiming, among other things, that the “subjective nature of the Letter’s prohibitions allow for arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” On April 24, District Judge Landya McCafferty issued a temporary injunction preventing the department from enforcing the Feb. 14 directive, pending the outcome of the NEA’s lawsuit. 

On the same day, District Judge Stephanie Gallagher issued a temporary stay in a similar case that also prevented the Feb. 14 letter from taking effect. On Aug. 14, Gallagher granted summary judgment that permanently blocked enforcement of the Feb. 14 letter – which she said is “unconstitutionally vague,” citing freedom of speech under the First Amendment. 

“The crux of the problem, in this Court’s view, is that the Letter says to teachers and schools ‘if you engage in DEI practices we deem impermissible, you will be punished’ but does not provide any clarity on what DEI practices are impermissible,” Gallagher wrote. “That enables the government to enforce the Letter arbitrarily and chills the lawful and societally beneficial speech of regulated persons who do not understand what DEI- or race-related speech might be allowed.”

The Education Department issued a statement that said the judge’s ruling “setting aside this guidance has not stopped our ability to enforce Title VI protections for students at an unprecedented level.”

It’s true that the Education Department has other ways to eliminate or discourage what it views as DEI policies.

On Feb. 17, the department announced the termination of more than $600 million in teacher training grants awarded to schools and nonprofits, claiming the “[t]raining materials included inappropriate and unnecessary topics such as Critical Race Theory; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI); social justice activism; ‘anti-racism’; and instruction on white privilege and white supremacy.”

Eight states run by Democratic governors sued and won a temporary repreive from a federal judge in Massachusetts. But the Supreme Court reversed the lower court order, allowing the department to cancel the grant programs and terminate the awards while the case continues.

Project 2025 called for ending “taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood and all other abortion providers and redirect[ing] funding to health centers that provide real health care for women.”

Specifically, Project 2025 proposed an administrative rule change that would “disqualify providers of elective abortion from the Medicaid program,” noting that the “bulk of federal funding for Planned Parenthood comes through the Medicaid program.”

Trump is trying to disqualify Planned Parenthood from the Medicaid program through legislation, not rulemaking.

A section of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law on July 4, prevents medical providers from receiving any Medicaid reimbursements for one year if they also provide abortion services. 

But the Planned Parenthood Federation of America has challenged the Medicaid provision of the law, saying the law punishes the organization and its 47 member health care providers for “providing legal abortion access wholly outside the Medicaid program and without using any federal funds.” The lawsuit says its members operate nearly 600 health centers and provide “vital health care services such as contraception, cancer screenings, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (‘STIs’), gender-affirming hormone therapy, and abortion services.”

The abortion provision of the law is on hold for now. In July, District Judge Indira Talwani said Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit is likely to succeed and issued a preliminary injunction blocking the new Medicaid reimbursement policy from taking effect nationwide while the litigation continues. 

In her order, Talwani said that allowing the Medicaid provision to take effect would cause “irreparable harm” because “services will be cut and many Member health centers will be forced to close.”

“Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable,” Talwani wrote, citing a possible “increase in unintended pregnancies and attendant complications because of reduced access to effective contraceptives,” among other things.

Two drugs — mifepristone followed by misoprostol — are taken in combination to induce an abortion. The FDA approved the use of the abortion drugs to end pregnancies through 10 weeks of gestation.

Medication abortion, which studies have found to be “safe and effective,” currently accounts for about two-thirds of “all abortions in the formal health care system” in 2023, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research on sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Project 2025 recommended that the FDA “[r]everse its approval of chemical abortion drugs because the politicized approval process was illegal from the start.” Failing that, Project 2025 called for banning “mail-order abortions” by returning to the pre-COVID-19 in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone and “limiting abortion pills to the pre-2016 policy of 49 days gestation.” 

Trump, who nominated three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, takes credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which returned the regulation of abortion to the states in 2022. But during the election, Trump showed no interest in banning medication abortion.

Trump told CBS News in an August 2024 interview that “the Supreme Court has said, ‘Keep it going the way it is.’ I will enforce and agree with the Supreme Court.” Trump was referring to a court ruling not on the merits of the case (challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone) but rather on a technical issue (whether the plaintiffs had legal standing to sue the FDA).

After the election, Trump similarly told Time magazine in a December 2024 interview that it is “very unlikely” that he would restrict access to abortion pills, and he has not done so as president. 

In a court filing in May, Trump’s Department of Justice supported the Biden administration’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Missouri, Idaho and Kansas that seeks to ban dispensing abortion drugs by mail, restrict the use of the drugs to no more than seven weeks of gestation, and increase required in-office doctor visits from one to three. (Other GOP-controlled states have since joined the lawsuit, which was moved to a court in Missouri on Oct. 1.)

But abortion rights advocates remain skeptical of Trump’s position on medication abortion – concerns that were only heightened after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly said he would ask the FDA to review the data on mifepristone. In a Sept. 19 letter, Kennedy and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary wrote to Republican attorneys general, saying that the FDA would conduct “its own review of the evidence, including real-world outcomes and evidence, relating to the safety and efficacy of the drug.”

For now, the FDA website says that mifepristone is “safe and effective.”

“Mifepristone is safe when used as indicated and directed and consistent with the Mifepristone Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) Program,” the agency says in a Q&A on its website. “The FDA approved Mifeprex more than 20 years ago based on a thorough and comprehensive review of the scientific evidence presented and determined that it was safe and effective for its indicated use.”

And on Sept. 30, the FDA approved a new generic version of mifepristone, angering anti-abortion advocates. In an Oct. 2 statement, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser described the FDA decision as “reckless” and “unconscionable.”

Project 2025 called for the Justice Department to conduct “a thorough review” of all “brazenly partisan and ideologically driven” prosecutions – including curbing prosecutions of those convicted of violating a law protecting access to abortion clinics.

“An egregious example of the need for such a review is provided by the depart­ment’s use of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act to harass pro-life demonstrators while not pursuing similar investigations of shocking acts of violence committed against pro-life pregnancy resource centers,” the document said.

On Jan. 23, Trump pardoned nearly two dozen people convicted of violating the FACE Act, and a day later the DOJ announced it would now limit such prosecutions.    

“[F]uture abortion-related FACE Act prosecutions and civil actions will be permitted only in extraordinary circumstances, or in cases presenting significant aggravating factors, such as death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage,” the chief of staff to the U.S. attorney general said in a Jan. 24 memo to staff.

Planned Parenthood also sued HHS after the department issued new guidelines for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program that required grant recipients to “revise their projects to align” with Trump’s executive orders on “gender ideology” and “discriminatory equity ideology.” TPP programs cannot teach “minors about such content, including the radical ideological claim that boys can identify as girls and vice versa,” according to the new guidelines, which were issued in July. 

Grant recipients “may face grant suspension” if “all program materials” do not comply with the new requirements, the department said. 

In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood said the new requirements “are not only unlawful, they are also unworkable,” claiming “[t]hey force grantees to guess how the agency will enforce a requirement mandating ‘alignment,’ to censor medically accurate and inclusive content.”

A federal judge denied Planned Parenthood’s request to block the new requirements from taking effect until the case is concluded. 

The grant fight might be moot if Congress goes along with Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget request to eliminate the program, although there is disagreement within the Republican Party. The House appropriations bill for HHS would eliminate the program, but the Senate bill would provide $101 million to continue it.

Project 2025 didn’t call for ending the program; it called for involving parents and ensuring this and another sex education program don’t “promote abortion or high-risk sexual behavior.”

Passed in 1986, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires hospitals that receive Medicare funds to treat all patients seeking emergency services, regardless of their ability to pay. 

In July 2022, Biden signed an executive order directing HHS to “ensure that all patients—including pregnant women and those experiencing pregnancy loss, such as miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies—receive the full protections for emergency medical care afforded under the law.”

Days later, HHS — through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — issued “clarifying guidance” reaffirming that EMTALA protects medical providers who provide “life- or health-saving abortion services in emergency situations,” regardless of state laws.

In August of that year, the DOJ sued Idaho because the state’s abortion law “permits the prosecution of any physician who performs any abortion, even as a life-saving treatment,” in violation of EMTALA.

Project 2025 urged HHS to repeal its guidance on EMTALA and the DOJ “to eliminate existing injunctions against pro-life states” and “withdraw its enforcement lawsuits.”

In March, Politico reported that the Trump administration dropped “a yearslong legal battle with Idaho over the right to an abortion in a medical emergency … reversing its stance in one of the highest-profile cases it inherited from the Biden administration.”

Three months later, the CMS rescinded the Biden-era policy involving pregnant patients at EMTALA-covered hospitals.

Project 2025 criticized then-President Joe Biden’s Education Department for adopting a rule that broadened implementing regulations for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination by institutions that receive federal funding. Under the rule change, which was temporarily blocked from taking effect by the Supreme Court last year, Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination was expanded to include “sexual orientation and gender identity.”

“[T]here is no scientific or legal basis for redefining ‘sex’ to ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’ in Title IX,” Project 2025 said.

The document called for federal agencies to enforce sex discrimination laws based on the gender assigned at birth, which would place schools at risk of losing federal funding if they allowed transgender individuals to use facilities, such as locker rooms and restrooms, based on their gender identity.

“The President should direct agencies to focus their enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of ‘sex,’” the document said. 

On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order that professes to be “defending women from gender ideology.” The order defined “sex” as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female,” and directed agency heads to “assess grant conditions and grantee preferences and ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology.” 

On Feb. 4, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights informed recipients of federal funds that it would enforce Title IX consistent with Trump’s executive order.

A day later, Trump signed another executive order directing federal agencies to deny federal funding to schools that allow transgender female athletes to participate in women’s sports. 

In April, the Education and Justice departments formed a Title IX Special Investigations Team. In its press release, the Education Department said: “To all the entities that continue to allow men to compete in women’s sports and use women’s intimate facilities: there’s a new sheriff in town.” 

The Education Department has opened numerous Title IX investigations, including against school districts in Colorado and Virginia and state education departments in California, Maine, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington. It also has opened investigations against several higher education institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, where FactCheck.org is based. 

Some institutions – including Wagner College and Penn – have since settled with the department. 

Other institutions have gone to court to challenge the department’s actions. 

For example, the department found that five northern Virginia school districts violated Title IX for “policies pertaining to ‘transgender-identifying’ students,” such as allowing “students to access intimate, sex-segregated facilities based on the students’ subjective ‘gender identity.’” After the Virginia districts refused to change their policies, the department announced it is “seeking suspension or termination of federal financial assistance” to the districts. Two of the districts on Aug. 29 filed lawsuits seeking to prevent the Education Department from withholding the funds.

In its self-described war on “the Left’s wokeness,” Project 2025 targeted the Department of Defense, which it called “a deeply troubled institution.”  

The conservative document called on the Defense Department to “[r]everse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military,” saying “[g]ender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service.”

In his first week in office, Trump issued an executive order that echoed the language of Project 2025’s proposal. Trump’s order banned transgender people from serving in the military, claiming that “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ … conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” 

The order – which affects an estimated 4,240 service members – has been challenged, but the Supreme Court on May 6 allowed the ban to remain in effect while the case works its way through the legal system.  

After the high court ruling, the Defense Department released separation guidelines for transgender military service members. Active-duty military and reserves were given until June 6 and June 7, respectively, to “self-identify,” according to a department press release. After that, the military branches were given 30 days to begin separation proceedings, with higher separation pay for those who agree to voluntarily leave the military, the release said.  

Some transgender service members turned to the military’s internal appeals process to remain in the armed forces. But, in an Aug. 12 memo, the Air Force announced a new policy that prevented its members from appealing involuntary separations to discharge boards. It is the first branch to issue such a policy, according to Federal News Network, although it may not be the last. 

Project 2025 called for ending the Department of Health and Human Services’ “woke transgender activism” and the National Institutes of Health’s “junk gender science.” 

“NIH has been at the forefront in pushing junk gender science,” the document said. “Instead, it should fund studies into the short-term and long-term negative effects of cross-sex interventions, including ‘affirmation,’ puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, and the likelihood of desistence if young people are given counseling that does not include medical or social interventions.” (Desistence refers to considering but rejecting the idea of gender transitioning.)

Trump embraced Project 2025’s recommendation. 

The Department of Health and Human Services terminated about 2,100 NIH grants worth around $9.5 billion, according to Scott Delaney, a research scientist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Those cuts included grants for LGBTQ, gender identity and DEI research, ABC News reported.

In April, the American Public Health Association, four researchers and others sued to block HHS from terminating grants connected to DEI and gender identity research, claiming the terminations were “arbitrary and capricious.” (Citing internal NIH documents, the lawsuit said the NIH also cancelled grants related to COVID-19, vaccine hesitancy, climate change and “countries of concern, e.g., China or South Africa, etc.”)

“As a result, critical studies addressing urgent health disparities — designed to develop prioritized strategies for populations at the highest risk of disease — have been indiscriminately wiped out,” the association said in announcing its lawsuit. 

Plaintiff Brittany Charlton, an associate professor at Harvard University who heads the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, said in a court filing that NIH told her in a termination notice that her research “no longer effectuates agency priorities.” 

In June, District Court Judge William Young ruled that the terminations were arbitrary and unlawful. “I am hesitant to draw this conclusion — but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it — that this represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community,” Young, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, said from the bench. 

However, the Supreme Court in an Aug. 21 ruling stayed Young’s order and allowed the administration for now to terminate the grants, which totaled $783 million, while the lawsuit proceeds. 

Under Biden, HHS took steps to end “discriminatory restrictions” on access to health care and insurance coverage for transgender people. 

In May 2021, HHS announced that it would “interpret and enforce” the Affordable Care Act’s “prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sex” to include sexual orientation and gender identity. In March 2022, the department’s Office for Civil Rights issued guidance to make clear that the discrimination ban under Section 1557 of the ACA included “gender affirming care for minors, when medically appropriate and necessary.” 

“This means that if people believe they have been discriminated against in a health program or activity that receives financial assistance from HHS, they can file a complaint,” the HHS said in its March 2022 guidance.

Project 2025 called for the repeal of “all guidance issued under the Biden Administration concerning sexual orientation and gender identity under Section 1557, particularly the May 2021 announcement of enforcement and March 2022 statement threatening states that protect minors from genital mutilation.”

On Jan. 28, Trump issued an executive order that directed the HHS secretary to withdraw the March 2022 guidance, calling gender-affirming care a “dangerous trend” that “must end.” The department’s Office for Civil Rights rescinded the Biden-era sex discrimination guidance on Feb. 20.

Since January, more than 20 hospitals or medical systems have changed their policies for transgender care, according to an NBC News analysis published Aug. 24.

“Twelve hospitals have announced they have discontinued or will discontinue puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans patients younger than 19,” the report said. “Four announced they are no longer providing transition-related surgeries to those patients; one said it discontinued gender-affirming care for teens; and four said they temporarily stopped transgender care for those under 19 after an executive order from President Donald Trump in January but resumed after a judge blocked part of the order in March.”

As part of its call for “deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity” from federal rules, Project 2025 urged the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to “immediately end its collection of data on gender identity.” 

The document claimed that collecting such data “legitimizes the unscientific notion that men can become women (and vice versa).”

On his first day, Trump issued an executive order that rescinded “harmful executive orders” issued under the previous administration – including a Biden order that required agencies to collect sexual orientation and gender identity data “to advance equity for LGBTQI+ individuals.” He issued another executive order directing federal agencies to “remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology.”   

In response to Trump’s directives, HHS issued guidance that defined “sex” as “either male or female” – prompting the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network, for example, to change its data collection to “[r]emove … all fields related to gender/gender identity,” and any other field other than male and female. 

In a review of Trump’s executive orders on LGBTQ+ health, the nonprofit health policy research organization KFF said ending such data collection and other related Biden-era orders “could lead to less oversight, reduced health programming, and fewer policies protecting LGBTQ+ people, which could negatively impact access to care and well-being.”