The broader implications of Project 2025 go beyond the EPA. The plan envisions a complete transformation of the executive branch: expanding surveillance, restricting free speech, curtailing abortion rights, rolling back protections for the LGBTQIA2S+ community, and aligning policy with Christian nationalist ideals.
For those of us who worked in federal agencies during the Trump administration, we understand how such restructuring is intended to not only paralyze the government—its goal is to oppress those with less power. To silence those whose voices are just now being heard. To divide our society and subjugate the poor, the disinvested, and the marginalized.
The Trump administration’s first attempt to dismantle environmental protections faced setbacks due to incompetence and unfamiliarity with internal government processes. This time, they are prepared.
Project 2025 is meticulously detailed, outlining a roadmap to restructure the entire government from day one. It proposes moving EPA offices, reassigning senior executives, and cutting critical programs—moves little understood and hard to defend against from the outside. These steps would bring the agency’s work to a grinding halt, crippling its ability to protect public health while taking down decades of progress in environmental justice.
It’s unmistakable that the implications of Project 2025 are now imminent and will be felt most acutely by communities that have long suffered exposure to pollution and environmental hazards—outright dumping and oppression—on a scale that is hard for many to fathom for anyone who did not grow up living in such a reality.
Leaders in these communities have fought for decades to enjoy things that so many of us take for granted—like clean air to breathe, safe drinking water—and not worrying about contamination in the ground where our children grow up playing.
If we allow Project 2025 to fully take hold unchecked, the consequences will be disastrous. The EPA, an agency that has historically made progress protecting us from environmental pollution, will soon become unrecognizable. We all lose in that scenario. We lose protection, we lose momentum, we lose progress toward achieving the society of equality that remains the unrealized dream of our nation. And as has always been the case, EJ communities are set to feel that loss far more deeply and immediately than anyone else.
