A recent public forum discussed the impacts that Project 2025 would have on the lives and health of millions of people in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean.
ANNE-CHRISTINE D’ADESKY; stopthecoup2025@gmail.com
D’Adesky is an investigative journalist and author as well as a longtime human rights, LGBTQIA+, gender equality, HIV, and immigration activist. She is the founder of Stop the Coup 2025, a public education and mobilization campaign to raise awareness about the scope of Project 2025.
JAVIER MORALES; racmel.morales@gmail.com
Morales is a cofounder of LatinX+, a network of people of Latin American descent living with HIV in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
Several groups are working together to publicize the negative impacts that Project 2025 would have on disease prevention––including impacts on funding for PEPFAR, the U.S. government initiative that addresses the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. The recent forum was held in Spanish.
D’Adesky said that Project 2025 “will have a devastating impact on the health of the United States and the world.” Other speakers emphasized that “Project 2025 threatens the termination of funds that traditionally come from the United States” and would force other countries, including many in Latin America and Africa that directly rely on the U.S. to combat HIV/AIDS, to “adhere to extremist policies.”
D’Adesky encouraged governments and NGOs to examine their vulnerability to Project 2025, including how it might affect them and what resources they stand to lose if the proposal is put into action.
“The political and human rights landscape of the U.S. has already deteriorated,” d’Adesky said. D’Adesky pointed to several areas of concern going into the 2024 elections:
- Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders recently spoke at a CPAC conference, where one speaker openly called for the “overthrow” of democracy in favor of Christian nationalism.
- The House of Representatives passed a gag law for transgender people that uses the same formula to restrict funds to organizations that provide gender affirming surgery or care or “promote transgenderism.” (It did not become law.)
- Former Trump administration officials are drafting plans and traveling the world to promote anti-rights “alternatives” to internationally agreed-upon standards.
- The five-year reauthorization of PEPFAR was derailed for the first time in its 20-year bipartisan history. It has only been reauthorized and financed (without new anti-abortion restrictions) until March. Even prior to Project 2025’s proposals, some Republicans have pushed for PEPFAR’s budget to be cut. Right now, it is estimated that the program will be cut by 25 percent next year.
D’Adesky also emphasized some of the areas that Project 2025 would impact in the global human rights landscape:
- Project 2025 would convert USAID into a “Department of Life” that would cut all U.S. federal funds to any group that provides services to LGBTQ+ people or those who provide abortion services.
- It would seek to ban some contraceptives, in vitro fertilization, and sex education programs. PEPFAR and AIDS programs would be cut off unless they adhered to those “pro-life” principles. Services would also be prohibited to LGBTQ people and women seeking abortions.
- It would seek to resurrect the global gag law, or Mexico City Policy, that prohibits federal funding for abortion.
- It would criminalize transgender identity and prohibit gender affirming surgery.
D’Adesky told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “I wanted to put this event together because a few months ago, the first polls were showing that Latino communities in the U.S. were lagging behind [other communities] in terms of their knowledge about Project 2025.”
The conversation around Project 2025 remains U.S.-centric, d’Adesky said. “People think of Project 2025 as a U.S. issue. But they want to know more when they realize it’s a global issue,” and that it impacts “all areas of U.S. foreign assistance.”