Project 2025 April 24th Update

Working off of Project 2025’s template for restructuring federal power through executive consolidation and bureaucratic loyalty tests, the Trump administration’s second term is intent on persecuting minority communities, which now include people with developmental disabilities. 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s national autism registry — announced on April 21, 2025 — embodies Project 2025’s authoritarian vision. This surveillance apparatus disguised as a public health initiative mirrors Christian nationalism’s broader strategy of cataloging and marginalizing communities deemed outside the administration’s vision of American society.

Kennedy’s registry draws private medical records from an expansive network of sources — pharmacy chains, insurance databases, smartwatch data, Veterans Affairs genomics, and Medicare records — creating what NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya calls a “transformative real-world data initiative” for external research groups to examine. The initiative lacks transparency about consent protocols and opt-out mechanisms, prompting Zoe Gross of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network to question “whether culled data will contain ‘personally identifying information’ or whether people will have the opportunity to opt out from the collection of personal data.” 

The appointment of David Geier to lead this project has intensified concerns about the registry’s true purpose. Geier was disciplined by Maryland regulators “for practicing medicine without a license” and has long promoted debunked theories linking vaccines to autism. The Washington Post reports that Geier “helped people who claimed injuries from vaccines seek compensation from the federal government and co-founded an organization that sued federal health officials, alleging harm from the use of thimerosal,” a preservative found in vaccines. Public health researcher Jessica Steier describes Geier’s involvement as “a worst-case scenario for public health” and “a slap in the face to the decades of actual credible research we have.” 

Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, whose brother and daughter both live with autism, has witnessed firsthand how Kennedy’s characterizations contradict real life. Her daughter maintains an active life working on a farm, caring for animals and growing crops, while her brother delivers meals to homebound seniors — both contributing meaningfully to their communities despite Kennedy’s erroneous claims that autistic individuals “will never pay taxes” or “hold a job.” Singer warns that “the goal of this administration is to prove that vaccines cause autism, even though they don’t. They are starting with the conclusion and looking to prove it. That’s not how science is done.” 

This systematic cataloging of neurodivergent Americans carries disturbing historical parallels. “The disability community, and many other marginalized communities, have reasonable fears, based in both historical events and in current policy pursued by the administration, of any attempts to create lists of marginalized people,” the Autistic Self Advocacy Network noted in its statement. “Given not only this administration’s deplorable, eugenic rhetoric about autism, but its demonstrated disregard for basic standards of scientific evidence, there is every reason to believe that this data will be misused in troubling and dangerous ways.” 

Disability rights attorney Ariana Aboulafia characterized collecting such information without consent as “dangerous” and crossing “a line in the sand, particularly given longstanding and historical concerns surrounding the creation of registries of people with disabilities.” 

The registry emerges within a broader administration initiative targeting vulnerable groups. Dora Raymaker, a research associate professor focused on autism at Portland State University, sees the registry within a larger context of marginalization, noting that adding people with autism to the list of scapegoats already populated by trans people and migrants, is ‘using people’s fear of something’ to ‘advance some other agenda.'”

The administration’s track record suggests potential misuse of such databases. DOGE has been granted access to immigrant records, including private tax information, and the administration’s willingness to violate confidentiality indicates a similar vulnerability for autism registry data. This convergence of surveillance systems targeting different minority communities reveals a cohesive, authoritarian strategy.

The broader context includes a draft of proposed HHS cuts that “would also eliminate support for people with disabilities in the US, including education, research and services.” These cuts arrive as the administration has “halted key research on autism through its ban on research and services related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility,” The Guardian reports. Stephen Shore, professor of special education at Adelphi University, warned that “the withdrawal of funding for research is going to dramatically slow down the acquisition of new knowledge.”

The dual approach — aggressive data collection paired with service elimination — epitomizes Project 2025’s governance model: extensive surveillance of marginalized populations coupled with dismantling support systems designed to serve them. As Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, observed, the agencies are “repurposing scarce research dollars that leave ‘all the oxygen sucked out of the room over phony autism links,'” instead of focusing on the roles of genetics and early brain development. 

This convergence — the autism registry, immigrant surveillance systems, and targeted restrictions on transgender healthcare — reflects a unified approach to governance centered on monitoring and controlling those deemed “other.” “It feels terrible. It’s attacking me — they’re attacking autistic individuals for no reason at all. Autistic people have a lot to contribute to society,” said Shore, who is autistic.

The climate of apprehension has already driven some families to consider relocating. Parents of autistic children have increasingly appeared in expatriate social media communities, inquiring about immigration procedures to Mexico and Canada, fearing further marginalization of people with disabilities under the registry system. These families cite historical precedents where registration of vulnerable groups preceded more severe restrictions on their rights and freedoms.

The administration’s coordinated targeting of marginalized communities through data collection initiatives represents the methodical implementation of Project 2025’s vision, which catalogues difference as deviation and treats diversity as something to be monitored and extinguished rather than protected and celebrated.

Biblical Imperative vs. Policy Reality: Evangelical Leaders Challenge Trump’s Mass Deportation Plans

Donald Trump’s second-term immigration agenda, guided by Project 2025, has created an unprecedented rift within evangelical Christian leaders who formed a crucial component of his electoral base. As the administration accelerates deportation processes affecting hundreds of thousands of immigrants with legal status, faith leaders are mobilizing scriptural arguments against policies they view as contradicting core Christian teachings.

The administration’s indefinite suspension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has become a focal point for faith-based opposition. These cancellations expose immigrants who entered legally to deportation to countries facing humanitarian crises where they would face imminent, in some cases, life-threatening danger upon their return.

Project 2025 calls for “the civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the United States, without warrant where appropriate,” a familiar tactic for right-wing authoritarian governments seeking to marginalize and foment negative perceptions of minority communities.

“Many of these individuals are… active members of evangelical churches, which is one reason that these concerns are so personal to many evangelical Christians throughout the country,” notes a coalition letter sent to President Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on April 7, 2025. “Evangelical churches, following biblical commands to show hospitality to strangers and to make disciples of all nations, have offered physical and spiritual support to many immigrants who have been legally paroled into the U.S. in recent years that have come from active war zones and countries engaged in military conflict,” the letter emphasizes, following biblical commands “to show hospitality to strangers.”

Coalition member Myal Greene, president and CEO of World Relief, articulates the disconnect that evangelical leaders are seeing between Scripture and Trump’s policies. “If President Trump understood that evangelical Christians wanted secure borders and the deportation of violent criminals, I think he got that right. But if he concluded that evangelical Christians wanted to see deportations on a much larger scale  — including hundreds of thousands who came to the U.S. lawfully from countries facing war or dire humanitarian crises — I am quite confident that he misunderstood,” Greene says. “I hope he will heed the pleas of evangelical and other Christian voters in asking him to reconsider this position.”

Gabriel Saguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, notes that many immigrants facing deportation came into the United States through legal means. “It is unconscionable and cruel to now threaten to deport these law-abiding members of our churches and communities into the arms of oppressive regimes hostile to the United States and to those who accepted our country’s abruptly-withdrawn offer of freedom, safety and opportunity,” he notes.

Salguero, who is also pastor of The Gathering Place in Orlando, Florida, frames the issue in spiritual rather than partisan terms: “The gospel has called us to love our neighbor as ourselves and to welcome the stranger. Jesus said in Matthew 25 ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’ So, our perspective is always a gospel-centered one, not a partisan one. We’re pastors. We’re not politicians.”

The human cost extends beyond individual deportations. A report by Catholic bishops and evangelical Christian leaders indicates that one in 12 Christians in the U.S. could be affected by Trump’s deportation plan, with as many as 10 million Christians vulnerable to rendition and an additional seven million living with family members at risk of removal.

“Catholics represent 61% of all those vulnerable to deportation in the United States. So this is an issue we obviously feel very deeply because they’re, in a particularly close way, members of our Catholic family,” said Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso.

For an administration that has cultivated religious conservatives with actions like establishing the White House Faith Office, issuing a presidential action titled “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias,” and Secretary of State Marco Rubio implementing an anti-Christian bias reporting system within the State Department, this organized opposition from evangelical leaders represents both a political and moral challenge that tests the boundaries of Trump’s coalition-building strategy.

The Great Scientific Exodus: How Project 2025 Is Driving America’s Brightest Minds Abroad

Undermining science by attacking data that counters administrative policy or economic goals, hobbling universities and research centers and suppressing dissent is part and parcel of the authoritarian playbook, and American scientists are rightfully concerned. Seventy-five percent of 1,200 scientists responding to a survey by the journal Nature are now considering leaving the United States — an unprecedented exodus that threatens America’s century-long dominance in scientific innovation. 

“This is my home — I really love my country, but a lot of my mentors have been telling me to get out, right now.” “Seeing all of the work stopped is heartbreaking,” a graduate student in plant genomics and agriculture at a prestigious university told Nature. “I’ve been looking very diligently for opportunities in Europe, Australia and Mexico.”

This potential brain drain comes as the Trump administration systematically dismantles scientific infrastructure and purges researchers across federal agencies, while issuing statements that are irreconcilable with its actions. The administration has cut funding for science so severely that thousands of researchers have been laid off, climate research has been sidelined, and all new grants from the National Science Foundation have been frozen entirely. 

Project 2025 — the 922-page Heritage Foundation blueprint for a second Trump term — contains explicit instructions to “exert more presidential control over traditionally nonpartisan governmental workers” and ensure appointees at scientific agencies are “wholly in sync” with presidential policy. 

The administration’s implementation of this agenda has been swift and far-reaching. On April 24, 2025, the White House celebrated Earth Day with a statement proclaiming, “On Earth Day, We Finally Have a President Who Follows Science.” This Orwellian and patently false declaration came as the EPA dismantled regulations that its own analysis showed would prevent over 100 million asthma attacks over the next 25 years.

“I don’t say this lightly, but these are programs that were keeping people alive,” said Laura Kate Bender of the American Lung Association. “And now we have this double whammy where on the one hand, we are seeing the threat of a slew of air pollution rollbacks and lax enforcement at EPA, and on the other hand, they are cutting programs that were helping people manage their lung disease.” 

For scientific data itself, the situation has become dire. “You get a message at 11 o’clock at night saying, ‘This is going down tomorrow,'” says Cathy Richards of the Open Environmental Data Project. “You try to enjoy your day and then everything goes wrong. You just spend the night downloading data.” 

Richards is part of a growing network of academics and digital preservationists working around the clock to save government scientific data before it vanishes from servers. Multiple organizations, including the Internet Archive, Safeguarding Research and Culture, and the Data Rescue Project, are now engaged in activities to rescue this data from oblivion. “It’s our library,” Richards explains. “You gotta save the books, you have to keep it for the future.”

The human toll of this scientific purge is mounting rapidly. David Die Dejean, who studied sustainable tuna fishing at NOAA in Miami, received an email in February ordering him to vacate his premises within 90 minutes. “I want to work wherever they allow me to do the research,” he said. Die Dejean is now applying for positions in Europe, joining a growing contingent of researchers being actively recruited by European institutions.

In March, France’s Aix-Marseille University announced it was accepting applications for its Safe Place For Science program, which it said offers “a safe and stimulating environment for scientists wishing to pursue their research in complete freedom.” Just weeks later, the university reported receiving 298 applications, with 242 eligible candidates currently under review. Of these, 135 are American scientists and 45 have dual nationality. 

The European Union Commission and several European universities have announced multiple programs aimed at offering academic freedom to US researchers if they relocate to Europe, especially those targeted by the Trump administration in the fields of immunology, communicable diseases, climate change, and social sciences. 

“It is outrageous, unjustified,” Maria Leptin, President of the European Research Council, told Deutsche Welle. “I have many friends and colleagues in the US and it is just shocking to see what’s happening there.” 

“The American government is currently using brute force against the universities in the USA, so that researchers from America are now contacting Europe,” Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, announced in March. “This is a huge opportunity for us.”

The parallels to historical scientific purges are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. When Albert Einstein fled Nazi Germany, he helped create the American century of scientific achievement. Now, with three-quarters of American scientists contemplating exodus, we may be witnessing the end of that era — not with a denial of science, but with its banishment.

“Just as we need clean water and safe roads to get where we need to go, reliable epistemic infrastructure — with its commitment to rules of truth and fact — supplies the public with the means to see through their lies. So authoritarians seek to destroy it,” notes author Michael Patrick Lynch in an April 17, 2025, essay for Princeton University Press. 

“It is crucial to see the connection between the bald-faced lies told by the administration and their attack on our scientific, legal and academic institutions. Undermine the courts and the universities and you undermine the institutions where critical thinking is taught and developed,” he writes. “That’s when authoritarians can work their will — in the darkness that falls when we no longer respect evidence, when we ignore facts, when we shrug at the complete inversion of truth.”