LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute Releases New Report ‘What Project 2025 Means for Black Communities’

Read a PDF of our statement here.

Today, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF)'s Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) released a new report, "Attack on Our Power and Dignity: What Project 2025 Means for Black Communities," which dissects Project 2025 and details how its radical proposals to restructure the federal government and increase the president's authority will severely harm Black communities across the country. The report is the most in-depth legal analysis of Project 2025's impact on Black communities and offers an affirmative vision for how Black communities can thrive.

The report outlines the direct and deliberate threat that "Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise," more commonly known as "Project 2025," poses to the livelihoods and hard-won progress of Black people in the United States. The report provides analysis across seven key areas: civil rights and equal opportunity, education, Black political participation, the criminal legal system, housing, reproductive justice, and environmental justice.

"Since its founding nearly 85 years ago under the leadership of founder Thurgood Marshall, LDF has had a transformative vision to advance the dignity and citizenship rights of Black people and directly challenge regressive attacks like those we see in Project 2025," said Janai Nelson, LDF President and Director-Counsel. "Make no mistake: These threats are nothing new. Steeped in dangerous, exclusionary rhetoric, this extreme proposal is designed to roll back progress, unravel justice, equality, and fairness, and erode the most foundational ideals of our democracy. These disturbing and egregious measures include aims to severely diminish Black political power, threaten and subjugate Black communities within the criminal legal system, and undermine every person's right to quality education and reproductive health care. More than ever, it is paramount to the future of our multiracial, multiethnic democracy to advance an affirmative vision of justice and equality that serves everyone."

"Dangerous efforts like Project 2025 only seek to reverse progress that Black communities have fought so hard to achieve for generations within the United States. Such anti-democratic, anti-justice actions threaten the very fabric of U.S. democracy as a whole," said Karla McKanders, Director of the Thurgood Marshall Institute. "We find ourselves at a critical juncture that we have visited many times before in this country's history: a choice to propel forward in pursuit of a stronger nation that lives up to our constitutional ideals, or fall backward into antiquated, divisive ways that act to reverse civil rights and concentrate power in the hands of a privileged few. We must categorically disavow any proposal or action, such as Project 2025, that threatens to harm communities and work collaboratively to build an equitable, inclusive future."

The new report outlines the ways in which Black communities will be adversely impacted by Project 2025, including:

• Weakening anti-discrimination laws and cutting essential worker protections - Project 2025 will eliminate key safeguards that protect Black workers and bar federal agencies from collecting racial demographic data, making it harder to enforce anti-discrimination laws and combat racial inequities, especially in the workplace.
• Limiting access to quality education for Black students - Project 2025 will exacerbate the education and wealth gap for Black students and workers by dismantling the Department of Education; expanding the ongoing, coordinated attack on truth in schools and libraries; and making higher education even more inaccessible for Black students by privatizing student loans and eliminating student loan forgiveness programs.
• Undermining Black political power - By overhauling the U.S. Census Bureau and criminalizing election-related offenses, Project 2025 will weaken the political influence of Black communities by undercounting them and suppressing the Black vote through threats and intimidation, destabilizing the key foundations of our multiracial democracy.
• Promoting punitive criminal legal policies - Project 2025 will endanger Black communities by likely increasing the use of the U.S. racially discriminatory death penalty and rolling back efforts to address police misconduct for constitutional and civil rights violations.
• Jeopardizing Black families' access to affordable housing - Project 2025 will transfer control of critical housing programs to expand access to affordable housing, like Section 8, to states-including those with a history of racial discrimination-threatening the housing stability of millions of Black low-income families.
• Threatening reproductive rights and the health of Black people - Black pregnant people, who already face disproportionately high maternal mortality rates, would be hit the hardest by Project 2025's restrictions on reproductive health care, which include proposals to ban federal access to abortion care and criminalize health care providers. Given that 42 percent of women seeking abortion care are Black, this proposal will have devastating consequences for their health and autonomy, and the health and autonomy of their families.
• Exacerbating health disparities caused by environmental racism - By shutting down the Office of Environmental Justice, Project 2025 will allow the federal government to turn a blind eye to the persistent and increasing environmental racism that is causing severe health disparities in Black communities, leaving Black people even more vulnerable to pollution and hazardous living conditions.

The report offers critical insights into these seven areas and advances an affirmative vision in which all communities come together to defend and uphold the promise of our shared future and democracy.

Read the full report.

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Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation's first civil rights law organization. LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF. Please note that LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957-although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights.

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