EPISODE 29: Project 2025 Overview — Dismantling Democracy and Women’s Rights

Episode Summary
Welcome to Surviving Trump. I’m Bella Goode.
This is the first episode in a new five-part series on Project 2025 — a sweeping plan already reshaping the U.S. government from the inside out. Drafted by the Heritage Foundation and backed by more than 100 right-wing organizations, Project 2025 is not a theory. It’s a 900-page blueprint for dismantling the federal system as we know it — eliminating checks and balances, replacing public servants with ideological loyalists, and rewriting the rules of everyday life.
This episode focuses on what the plan actually says, what it means for women in particular, and how much of it is already being implemented.

In This Episode
– What is Project 2025 and why does it matter?
– 10 core features of the plan that aim to dismantle American democracy
– How the blueprint targets women’s rights, healthcare, abortion access, and IVF
– A behind-the-scenes look at what’s already in motion — from personnel changes to policy shifts
– The bigger ideological vision: a return to male-dominated, theocratic government masked as “order” and “family values”

Why It Matters
Project 2025 is not about draining the swamp — it’s about replacing democracy with domination. At the heart of this plan is a radical effort to reshape society through executive orders, surveillance, purges, and forced obedience to a singular vision of power. And women are at the center of that vision — not as leaders, but as subjects.
This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening — right now.
If you care about democracy, freedom, equality, or even the right to make decisions about your own body — this is your wake-up call.

Next Episode
In Episode 30, we go behind the curtain:
Who’s funding Project 2025? Who’s writing the playbook? And what do they really believe?
We’ll trace the origins of the plan, explore the role of Christian nationalism and authoritarian ideology, and examine how Donald Trump fits into the machinery — not as a lone actor, but as the face of a well-organized, well-funded movement to consolidate power.

Transcript

Bella Goode  0:04  
Hey there. I'm Bella Goode. And this is Surviving Trump. I'm glad you could join me today. I'm starting a new five part series on a topic that, quite frankly, more people urgently need to understand, because it's not just a theory. It's already underway. It's called Project 2025. It's not a memo, it's not a single executive order. It's a nearly 900 page blueprint to reshape the federal government from the inside out, a plan to strip away the checks and the balances built over decades and to replace them with unrestrained presidential power. 

Bella Goode  0:42  
The center of this effort is the Heritage Foundation, a powerful conservative think tank in Washington, DC. The plan is backed by mega donors and supported by more than 100 right wing organizations, many of which are already working inside and around the Trump administration. It's not abstract, it's detailed, it's strategic, and it's designed to move fast. You've probably heard supporters call it a plan to get rid of the deep state, but let's be clear, and that's kind of like code language. What it actually means is that they're removing experts, nonpartisan professionals and public servants, and replacing them with people chosen for one thing, loyalty, loyalty to Trump, loyalty to a hard line conservative agenda, not to the Constitution and not To the law. This isn't speculation. It's written down. It's being trained for and in many ways, it's already being implemented piece by piece. And very quickly. 

Bella Goode  1:51  
There's one part of this plan that I wanted to be especially clear about, because it's not abstract. It's personal. Project 2025 singles out women, not just as a footnote, but as a focus. It's a blueprint that aims to penalize women, to limit their autonomy and to redefine their role as secondary to men in the family, in the workplace and in public life. It's a vision that would push women backwards by decades. Let me be blunt. I hope, I deeply hope that 99.999% of women in this country find that vision completely unacceptable. I hope I'm not proven wrong. 

Bella Goode  2:37  
Here's what you're going to hear in this episode. First, I'm going to walk you through the 10 most important things that you need to know about Project 2025, maybe something like the top 10 list, the headline goals, the structural changes and how they're already setting the stage for a very different kind of government. We're then going to turn to how this plan specifically targets women from abortion and IVF access to the role of women in the home, because once you understand the vision they're pushing, you're going to see how central women's bodies and choices are to their larger agenda. And finally, I'll show you what's already happening. Project 2025 isn't just a proposal anymore. It's a living plan already being carried out through executive orders, personal shifts and policy roll outs. Once you see how much of it already is in motion, it becomes harder to ignore and more urgent to resist. One last thing before I begin, ask yourself, what happens when rules change, not gradually, but let's say overnight. What if the government you thought would protect your rights suddenly turns against them? Well, that's the scenario that project 2025 is preparing for. Let's start by laying out exactly what this plan is and how it's designed to work. 

Bella Goode  4:00  
Project 2025. Is a sweeping initiative developed by the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 right wing organizations. It's been designed to rapidly reshape the US government at its core, it eliminates agency independence, replaces experienced civil servants with political loyalists, and it gives the next Republican president nearly total control over the executive branch, bypassing traditional checks and balances, the result isn't a government that serves the people, it's a top down machine engineered to serve one man, one ideology and one party. If the federal government is a complex system built to balance power, project 2025, is the plan to tear it down and rebuild it to obey let me take you through the top 10 List of project 2025 the most important things that you should understand. These are told. Directly from the document itself, the 900 page document, some are sweeping others are buried in legal languages, but all of them are designed to reshape how power works in this country and who gets to live freely under it. As you listen, ask yourself, How would this affect my life, my work, my rights? 

Bella Goode  5:21  
Number one, top 10 list, a radical restructuring of the federal government. This plan doesn't just tweak the system, it would dismantle it, firing 1000s of career civil servants and replacing them with loyalists. Imagine the Department of Justice or the FBI, as it currently stands, is no longer enforcing the law but doing the political bidding of the President that be Trump. 

Bella Goode  5:49  
List number two, this item number two, dismantling and downsizing federal agencies. Agencies like the Department of Education and homeland security, they're on the chopping block. The responsibilities would be dumped on states. So if you live somewhere underfunded or mismanaged, you're going to be out of luck. 

Bella Goode  6:10  
Number three, it has a hard line social agenda. This plan would erase, and as doing a pretty good job right now of erasing DEI programs, removing LGBTQ protections, criminalizing abortion and some contraception and legally elevating biblical family values. It's social engineering, targeting anyone who doesn't fit their vision of tradition. 

Bella Goode  6:40  
Number four, Project 2025, it's deregulation that favors the wealthy. They want to slash corporate taxes, expand fossil fuel drilling, eliminate green energy investment and gut agencies like the EPA. It's a giveaway to the powerful at the expense of your air your water safety and climate project 2025 attacks, social safety nets, programs like Head Start food assistance cut Social Security delayed or downsized. Veteran benefits weakened. These aren't budget reforms. These are acts of abandonment wrapped in patriotic language. Did you know that project 2025 proposes to raise the Social Security retirement age to 70, meaning you'd pay in longer and get less back. 

Bella Goode  7:32  
Number six a militarized immigration crackdown. They want to use the military, and they are doing so for domestic immigration enforcement, mass deportations, intimidation of local officials, fewer legal pathways, more cruelty. This is about fear, not security. 

Bella Goode  7:53  
Number seven, ideological loyalty over competence. They're building a conservative linked in to staff. Or, I should say they're building the Fox network, LinkedIn network, to staff the government with loyalty tests, not resumes. Expertise doesn't seem to matter. Alignment does. Well, that's not a democracy. That's a purge. 

Bella Goode  8:18  
Number eight, there's a plan to bypass Congress, which is exactly what he's pushing on right now. They've drafted 180 day playbook, of which were probably three quarters of the way through now, to push through sweeping changes by executive order, skipping Congress completely, no hearings, no debate, no accountability. Thank goodness it's being pushed back by the legal system, but it's all part of the plan. It's been there, and they are in the process of executing it. 

Bella Goode  8:46  
Number nine of the top 10 List, long term dominance. This isn't for one term. It's built to outlast elections by embedding loyalists deep inside the agencies. The goal is to make reversal nearly impossible, and that's the real end game, permanence. 

Bella Goode  9:05  
Number 10. I hate to say this, but everyday life will change under Project 2025. It will affect nearly everything from health care and education to voting rights and retirement and the farther you are from power, economically, racially, socially, the more you are likely to feel. Picture this. Your OB GYN clinic closes, your kid's public school loses funding, your neighbor loses their disability benefits. That's not theory. That is what they're looking to do and what they don't want you to see, huh? 

Bella Goode  9:42  
There's a couple more on the list. I would call them landmines buried in the blueprint, a little bit on the extreme side, the some of the things that they're certainly not talking on the airway or, you know, the parts that they're not talking about on camera, these are just sound bites, just kind of like one or two sentences on each. They want to criminalize the production and distribution of pornography, rolling back decades of First Amendment precedent. Another thing that they want to do is they want to treat drug dealers as domestic terrorists. Using the National Security Law instead of criminal law. They propose arresting homeless people for sleeping outside while tying aid to religious programming. Hmm, interesting. They want to use federal funding as a weapon cutting off states or schools that don't align with their ideology. Well, we know that they're doing it right now with Harvard. We're trying to and another one. They openly advocate public prayer as national policy, not as a spiritual right, but as a tool of political dominance. These aren't outliers. They're part of the same plan, the same 900 page plan, footnoted, drafted and in some cases, already being tested at the state level. 

Bella Goode  10:56  
So with that, let's move on to our second part, which is women under attack, we're going to look at how one group in particular is being targeted with a level of focus and intensity that reveals the deeper goals of this entire movement. Because if you really want to know what kind of society Project 2025 wants to create, look at what it plans to do to women. Let's start with abortion. Project 2025 does not call for federal abortion ban, not explicitly, but it doesn't have to. Instead, it lays out a legal strategy to functionally outlaw abortions nationwide, even in states where it is still legal. It starts with something called the Comstock Act, C O, M, S, T, O, C, K, the Comstock Act, a 19th century anti obscenity law. Project 2025 wants to bring it back and reinterpret it to criminalize the mailing of abortion pills, medical equipment and even information related to reproductive health that would make medication abortion, which now accounts for over half of all US abortions, nearly impossible to access anywhere. 

Bella Goode  12:13  
They also propose revoking FDA approval of mifepristone, the drug at the center of the medication abortion, and they want to prosecute anyone who ships it, prescribes it or uses it, not just doctors and clinics, but potentially patients too. What about emergencies? Under current law, hospitals are required to provide life saving abortion care if a pregnant patient is in crisis. That's called E, M, T, A, L, A, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, but project 2025 wants to rescind the guidance that enforces it, which would allow hospitals to turn away women, even if their lives are at risk. This is not about life. This is about control. The plan also expands so called conscientious laws, allowing anyone, nurses, doctors, pharmacists, even receptionists, to refuse participation in abortion care. And states that choose to protect abortion access, they could lose federal funding under this plan. And then it gets worse. 

Bella Goode  13:19  
Project 2025 outlines a plan for national abortion surveillance. They want to require states to report detailed data about every abortion, including the reason it was performed in the patient's location. In a post Roe world that's not reporting; That's a roadmap for prosecution. Even the language of reproductive health would be erased. Federal policies and websites would scrub words like abortion, reproductive rights, gender. The idea is to eliminate the concept from public life altogether. This isn't only about ending pregnancies. It's also about controlling how families are created. Let's talk about IVF. 

Bella Goode  14:05  
Project 2025 calls IVF, of course, in vitro fertilization, ethically unthinkable. Why? Because IVF involves creating multiple embryos, and not all of them are implanted. This plan equates that with abortion. So what would they do? Well, they would cut off federal funding for IVF related research. They would redefine life as beginning at conception, which would make standard IVF procedures illegal. They would deny IVF access to single parents and LGBTQ couples by arguing that children have a right to a biological mother and father. So whether you're trying to avoid pregnancy or trying desperately to get pregnant, This plan puts your body, your family and your future in someone else's hands. These are not isolated proposals. If you step back, the bigger picture becomes clear. Project 2025 is a roadmap for putting women back in their place, not legally, but structurally, economically and culturally. It's a push to rewind women's rights, opportunities, and visibility by at least, at least 75 years to a post war model where women were expected to marry young, stay home, raise children and depend on men. 

Bella Goode  15:29  
That ideal, by the way, is all over the manual. The plan repeatedly emphasizes the importance of the two parent, married household as the foundation of society, and uses federal policy as the tool to enforce it. It calls for reorienting federal support systems to favor family formation, meaning traditional heterosexual marriage with children. It argues that social policies should be pro family, pro natalist with women's economic choices seen primarily through the lens of motherhood. Housing Assistance re weighted to favor married couples. Child care programs defunded access to contraception and abortion restricted. IVF, morally condemned women in non traditional households, single, working, queer, child free, are implicitly framed as outside the social order. The plan wants to restore even the language used in the document leans toward a vision of women as caretakers and moral anchors, rather than independent citizens with equal agency. Women are not described as leaders. They are described as nurturers. Their freedoms are not expanded. They are narrowed in the name stability, order and tradition. Oh my gosh, this is the gender politics of the 1950s but implemented through 21st Century federal policy, and under Project 2025 that vision wouldn't just be a cultural preference, it would be written into the rules of public life, enforced through funding, access and the law. 

Bella Goode  17:18  
What's underneath all of this isn't just a set of policies, it's a philosophy. Project 2025 envisions a country where a woman's primary role is to serve the family, not to shape the world. It promotes a return to a post war ideal where women are economically dependent, socially obedient and politically silent. That model isn't stated outright, but it's everywhere, between the lines, in the rewards it offers to stay at home wives, in the punishments aimed at single mothers, and in the way it ties federal benefits to family formation as they define it. This isn't about empowering women to choose their path. It's about narrowing the path until one version of womanhood remains domestic, married, submissive and under male authority. It's not a return to tradition, it's a revival of control. 

Bella Goode  18:16  
So so far, we've talked about what's inside project 2025 the plan itself, the policies and the ideology, but now, and of course, the impact on women. But now, it's time to ask the next question, how much of this plan has already happened? How much of this has already taken place? The answer probably more than you think. 

Bella Goode  18:39  
While the Trump administration officially avoids mentioning Project 2025 by name, the overlap is unmistakable. Independent trackers monitoring over 300 action items from the 922 page manual estimate that by the end of May 2025 which is this month just about to happen, more than 40% of the agenda has already been initiated or completed. Oh, my God, 40%! Let that sink in. In the first 23 days of Trump's second term, the White House issued more than 60 major executive actions, from executive orders to personnel appointments to sweeping agency directives, many of them pulled directly from Project 2025. In some cases, the administration has even gone beyond what the plan recommended. So let's take a look at what they've done so in the first place, federal personnel and appointments, dozens of project 2025 contributors have been appointed to top positions, including at the FCC, at ICE and at the Office of Management and Budget and across multiple agencies. Nominees are being confirmed faster than during Trump's first term, even faster than Biden's term, and most of them are in place. There's one or two that are left. This isn't accidental. It's strategy. They are staffing the government with loyalists, just as the plan instructs 

Bella Goode  20:07  
Number two, executive power and government restructuring. Trump's early executive orders consolidated more control under the presidency and began shifting federal responsibilities to the States or private contractors, disaster relief, emergency management, oh, it's about to be offloaded, aligning perfectly with the plans call to shrink the federal footprint. 

Bella Goode  20:32  
Number three, immigration, border policy has become even more militarized. Federal agents are cracking down on local officials who don't cooperate, and placing key project 2025 architects in charge of immigration enforcement. The rhetoric is clear. This isn't about reform. It's about punishment and power. 

Bella Goode  20:54  
Number four, social policy and civil rights. Within weeks, the administration revoked federal recognition of transgender people, restricted gender affirming care and banned transgender individuals from military service. DEI programs across federal agencies have been dismantled or in the process of being dismantled, just as Project 2025 prescribed. 

Bella Goode  21:20  
Education, Trump has signed an executive order that redirects federal funding from public schools to private school voucher programs. It's a direct fulfillment of project 2025. Call to weaken public education and promote religious or charter based alternatives. 

Bella Goode  21:38  
Number six, the environment and energy. This is where the alignment is most aggressive. More than 70% of project 2025, environmental recommendations have already been implemented or set into motion. What's been done, loosened appliance energy efficiency standards, rolled back federal climate initiatives prioritized fossil fuel production over renewables, rescinded USAID climate programs, shifted FEMA Disaster Response obligations to the states. So if you're wondering where the climate fight stands, this is your answer. 

Bella Goode  22:17  
Number seven, the administration has imposed budget freezes and major federal spending cuts. The NIH National Institute of Health changed its grant cost structure, reducing support for university research, a direct match with a plan's goal 2025 that is goal to defund independent science. 

Bella Goode  22:39  
Number Eight has to do with media and public broadcasting under leadership tied to project 2025 the FCC has launched investigations into NPR and PBS. This reflects the planned strategy to defund and de legitimize Public Media, replacing it with private or partisan sources of information. I do believe that we are in Germany in the late 30s. It's just unbelievable. And they've gone even further in some areas. Trump's team has moved faster and more aggressively than even project 2025 proposed. One example, USAID, the International Development Agency is being dismantled at a pace the Heritage Foundation didn't fully predict. And while Project 2025 hasn't focused on banning TikTok, the Trump administration has revived that push separately. 

Bella Goode  23:35  
So yes, there are differences, but the core direction is unmistakable: what Trump is doing and what Project 2025 says in its 990 some pages. By June 2025 Trump's administration has already enacted a substantial portion of the Project 2025 agenda in areas like the environment, civil rights, immigration and public education, the pace of change has been fast, deliberate and aligned. This is not some long term vision. This is the present. Project 2025 is no longer a blueprint, It's a construction site. And if you're feeling like the country that you thought you knew was disappearing, I don't think that's your imagination. That's the plan in motion. 

Bella Goode  24:26  
Okay, so why isn't awareness just knowing about it? Why isn't it enough? And what comes next? Well, now that you've heard what's inside Project 2025, at least, the top line version, the headline policies, the hidden landmines, the deeply personal attack on women's freedom. You might be asking yourself, How can this be real? How can something this extreme, this anti democratic, this cruel, this be moving forward and still flying under the radar? Well, the answer is simple. That's the plan. That is their strategy. The people behind Project 2025 are counting on two things, confusion and silence. They know that most people won't read a 900 page policy blueprint. They know that the legal jargon and administrative reshuffling don't trend on social media, and they know that the people most affected, women, immigrants, LGBTQ, Americans, low income family are too often the ones without a national platform, without the microphone and without a safety net. So they hide, they meaning the Trump administration and the architects behind Project 2025 they hide the most explosive parts in the footnotes. They wrap the ideology in constitutional language, and they keep the strategy moving Quietly, quietly in staffing, decisions and memos and executive orders behind closed doors. 

Bella Goode  25:59  
That's exactly why I'm doing this series, to try to break the silence, to name the plan, to put it right in front of you, so that you can see it clearly and decide what to do with that knowledge. But awareness alone isn't going to stop this, not anymore. Understanding what's coming is only the first step. The next step is understanding what's behind it, where's the money coming from? Which institutions are pushing this, and what's the worldview that are fuelling this takeover, with or without Trump in the Oval Office? So that's where we're headed next in Episode 30, we'll go behind the curtain of Project 2025. We're going to find out. We're going to find out. We'll talk about the hard right think tanks, the mega donors, the operatives orchestrating this from the shadows, the deep influence of Christian nationalism, white grievance politics and the authoritarian legal theory.  And yes, Donald Trump, not just as a figurehead, but as the movement's most powerful weapon, because this is not some quirky policy document. Project 2025. Is the strategy. It's the roadmap for the whole Trump administration, the whole Republican Party, the hiring pipeline, the legal manual, and it's already being used. 

Bella Goode  27:19  
So if you want to know what's coming for your country, your country, your community and your future, start by understanding who's behind the curtain. And that's episode 30. Just quick conclusion for you, Project 2025 is real. It's not a theory, it's not a rumor. It's a written, resourced and rapidly unfolding plan. It exists as a 990 page document, a fully staffed website, a private hiring pipeline, a strategy hub with deep funding and legal backing. It's public, and yet it's designed to stay invisible to most people. And here's the hardest truth they've already started. It's not about imagining a dystopian future. It's about recognizing what's already underway in school boards, state legislatures, federal agencies and courtrooms, they've told us in their own words what they intend to do. So the question isn't, what are they doing? The question is, what are we prepared to do in response? And this series exists to help answer that, to expose the machinery, to name the tactics, to give you the clarity and information you need to fight back. Because Surviving Trump, it's not about riding out a presidency. It's about resisting the system. He's trying to build a system that replaces democracy with domination, replaces truth with loyalty, replaces freedom with fear, and if you're still listening, that means that you're already part of that resistance. I'm Bella Goode, and this is Surviving Trump, signing off.