Project 2025 July 8th Update

Project 2025 Is Here.

With Trump’s return to the presidency, Project 2025, a 920-page blueprint for authoritarianism in the U.S., spearheaded by the powerful and extreme far-right Heritage Foundation, is becoming a reality, affecting all Americans and people around the globe. 

More than 100 far-right organizations support this plan for autocracy, which is proving to be the source for Trump’s anti-democratic policies, despite his repeated disavowal of Project 2025 during his campaign. Dozens of members of the new administration have direct ties to the effort.

Project 2025’s stated goal is to create an “ideal” America that would see women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, people of color, and others deprived of their hard-won constitutional rights and the erosion of environmental and education protections. It also advocates for a frightening centralization of power in the executive branch, something Trump is keen to achieve. Read GPAHE’s full analysis of Project 2025 and the groups behind it.

GPAHE monitors how Project 2025 is becoming a reality and reports on the ties between the project and the administration, and its impact on the American people and democracy. We track Project 2025 activities at the federal, state, and local levels, and their plans for an authoritarian and Christian Nationalist America.

This week, we look at how a vital LGBTQ+ suicide hotline is being shuttered as Project 2025’s mandate is being played out, Project 2025’s mass deportation policy is harming immigrant children, and the case of an Emmy-winning immigrant journalist threatened with deportation for reporting on ICE actions.

The Last Call: Trump Severs LGBTQ+ Suicide Hotline as Part of $125 Million Federal Withdrawal

As CEO of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organization, Jaymes Black had navigated two decades of political hostility, funding uncertainties, and the relentless tragedy of adolescent despair. But the news he announced on June 18, 2025 represented the end of an era.

Thirty days. That’s how long the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) had given his organization to wind down its “Press 3” program — the specialized suicide prevention service that connected desperate teenagers with counselors trained specifically in the complexities of LGBTQ+ mental health crises. “When a questioning youth calls because they’re terrified and they’re alone,” Black told the camera in a video statement. “They need someone who can say, ‘You are not broken, you are loved exactly as you are. ‘”

The Trevor Project’s contract termination represented the opening movement of a symphony of elimination — one whose score had been written years earlier in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint.

The Trump administration’s first few months have produced a dismantling so comprehensive in its targeting of LGBTQ+ federal programming that it reads less like policy adjustment than cultural archaeology in reverse — the burial of three decades’ worth of institutional recognition that sexual and gender minorities require distinct forms of governmental support. Consider the realities of erasure: over 270 research grants totaling at least $125 million, eliminated; the Adolescent Trials Network, a quarter-century of HIV prevention infrastructure, terminated mid-study; international aid programs serving vulnerable populations in regions where American dollars often represented the difference between survival and persecution, simply defunded.

Yet numbers, however staggering, fail to capture the linguistic precision with which this elimination has proceeded. When SAMHSA officials justified their decision to sever The Trevor Project’s contract, they spoke carefully of maintaining “LGB+ youth services” — a formulation that preserved lesbian, gay, and bisexual recognition while removing any reference to transgender individuals.

This semantic warfare finds its foundation in Project 2025’s explicitly Christian nationalist framework, which positions federal recognition of gender identity as supporting “the biological reality that there are only two sexes.” Project 2025’s call for agencies to promote “stable, married, nuclear families” while eliminating programs that challenge traditional gender roles has found expression through executive orders mandating that federal forms recognize only binary sex categories, transforming religious doctrine into administrative reality.

Dr. Lisa Hightow-Weidman experienced this transformation firsthand when she received notice that the Adolescent Medical Trials Network for HIV Interventions — her life’s work — would be terminated immediately. Twenty-four years of research infrastructure, encompassing more than 30,000 participants across collaborative relationships spanning 20 states, dissolved overnight.

The international implications prove equally devastating, though they unfold beyond American headlines. Uganda’s experience offers a particularly stark illustration: all 127 organizations conducting HIV prevention work with LGBTQ+ populations lost their U.S. Agency for International Development funding within weeks of the administration’s policy shift. Most ceased operations entirely, leaving vulnerable communities without the services that had sustained them through years of state-sponsored persecution in a country where same sex relations are punishable by life imprisonment.

In South Africa, OUT LGBT Well-being announced the closure of its Engage Men’s Health program — a development that severed 2,000 men from life-saving antiretroviral therapy and eliminated pre-exposure prophylaxis access for 4,000 others. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s assurance that life-saving medical care would continue came attached to a caveat that proved more significant than the promise: organizations focused on LGBTQ+ populations or promoting “diversity, equity and inclusion” would lose funding eligibility, effectively redefining humanitarian aid to exclude populations whose existence challenges traditional gender and sexuality norms.

The domestic front has witnessed equally systematic erasure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has scrubbed information about LGBTQ+ and racial health disparities from its website, eliminating public access to decades of epidemiological research that documented the particular health challenges facing sexual and gender minorities. Federal agencies can no longer collect data on gender identity, rendering invisible the very populations that such data was designed to serve and protect.

The elimination of these federal programs marks a deliberate withdrawal of government recognition that LGBTQ+ populations need specialized support for their unique health and safety challenges. Legal battles might eventually restore some funding, but the damage is already unfolding. Suicide prevention hotlines have fewer counselors available when young people reach out in crisis. Decades of HIV research have been abruptly halted. International communities that depended on American aid for life-saving medical care now find themselves cut off. Organizations like The Trevor Project must somehow continue their work with half their previous reach — a devastating blow when vulnerable youth need these services most. The Trump regime has essentially redrawn the boundaries of which groups deserve federal assistance, excluding those communities it sees as opposed to its agenda.

The Smallest Targets

Federal agents waited in a Florida Keys parking lot with the patience of hunters. But they weren’t after the vulnerable child inside the nearby shelter — already torn from their family. They wanted the undocumented parents or guardians who would eventually come to visit. What should have been a sanctuary had become bait.

This scene, described during a recent meeting between Florida’s foster care providers and state officials, captures something darker than tactical enforcement. It reveals how immigration policy under Donald Trump’s second presidency has torn up the rulebook that once protected America’s most vulnerable immigrant population: children.

For decades, schools, hospitals, churches and child welfare facilities maintained protective boundaries. Previous administrations understood that some spaces should remain off-limits during immigration raids. Those days are over.

The transformation reaches far beyond isolated incidents. Federal agents now show up at homes where unaccompanied children live with sponsors. They call these visits “welfare checks.” In practice, they’re fishing expeditions for deportation arrests. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has eliminated protections for Special Immigrant Juveniles — children who’ve been abused, neglected, or abandoned. These kids used to get temporary protection while waiting years for green cards. Now they face removal despite being documented victims.

The numbers tell their own brutal story. Border Patrol apprehensions of unaccompanied minors jumped 28 percent from April to May, from 789 to 1,008 cases. That surge reflects a grim calculation by desperate families: send children alone rather than risk deportation together.

At Los Angeles Immigration Court on May 29, a Honduran mother brought her two children — ages 6 and 9 — expecting to continue their asylum case. They’d fled Honduras because of death threats. Instead, ICE agents in civilian clothes waited outside the courtroom like a welcoming committee from hell.

The moment the family stepped into the hallway, they were surrounded. The 6-year-old boy has leukemia. When one agent lifted his shirt to display his gun, the child was so terrified he urinated on himself. Nobody offered him clean clothes for hours. The family now sits in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, where the boy has missed crucial medical appointments as his condition worsens.

This wasn’t some family on the run. They’d been living legally in Los Angeles for seven months through the now-defunct CBP One app. Their kids attended public school. They went to church every Sunday. The boys loved soccer and painting. Their arrest and the lawsuit they filed represents the first challenge to ICE’s new courthouse directive — a policy that’s swept up hundreds of law-abiding families despite a federal court ruling that such arrests violate the Constitution.

The Trump administration has set ambitious goals: 3,000 immigration arrests daily, totaling one million per year. Officials claim they’re targeting violent criminals. Yet data obtained by the Cato Institute reveals that more than 93 percent of immigrants arrested this fiscal year never committed violent crimes. The gap between rhetoric and reality becomes a chasm when agents arrest families seeking protection, not posing threats.

The courthouse arrests have exploded since the administration eliminated funding for legal representation, abandoning approximately 26,000 minors without attorneys. When Trump’s team cut support for roughly 100 nonprofits providing legal services to minors, it created courtroom scenes that would shock any reasonable observer. Four-year-olds now face deportation proceedings alone.

Consider this statistic: only 51 percent of unaccompanied minors have legal representation. Among those whose cases end favorably, 98 percent had attorneys. Without lawyers, these children must navigate complex legal issues that challenge even seasoned professionals.

San Antonio immigration advocates report something almost surreal — children showing up to court proceedings without parents or lawyers. Professor Erica Schommer of St. Mary’s University explains it as families responding to legitimate terror. Parents lurk nearby while sending kids into courtrooms alone, desperately hoping to avoid ICE agents who now patrol judicial facilities like bounty hunters.

The enforcement surge has created incentives that prioritize numbers over child welfare. Take Henry, a 17-year-old Honduran in Florida’s foster care system. Despite the state’s own 1995 rule prohibiting action based on immigration status, the Department of Children and Families handed him to ICE. Henry had experienced abuse — that’s why he was in state care. Agents removed him in handcuffs and shackles, an image that perfectly captures how enforcement priorities now supersede child protection.

Some state governments are pushing back. In Colorado, a federal judge blocked Governor Jared Polis from forcing state employees to hand over personal information about sponsors of unaccompanied immigrant children. ICE wanted addresses, phone numbers, and employment history for 35 sponsors.

Officials claimed welfare concerns, but the real purpose seemed obvious — deportation targeting. Scott Moss, who runs Colorado’s Division of Labor Standards and Statistics, successfully argued that compliance would violate state laws protecting immigrant data.

Policy changes have stretched children’s shelter stays dramatically — from two months on average in December 2024 to over five months by May 2025. Potential sponsors face increasingly harsh screening while children wait in limbo during crucial developmental periods. This prolonged detention happens precisely when stability and family connections matter most for healing trauma.

The most disturbing aspect? These enforcement actions target children who pose zero flight risk and no security threat. Former immigration judges document cases where initial court appearances revealed trafficking victims who might have been returned to their exploiters without legal intervention. Stripping away protections and representation doesn’t enhance security—it increases vulnerability.

Courthouse scenes grow more dystopian daily. Phoenix displays red, white, and blue flyers encouraging immigrants to self-deport, complete with Department of Justice logos promising “safe” departure while threatening “possible imprisonment.” In Dallas, attorneys explain to judges that four-year-old clients can’t attend hearings because immigration agents detained their parents.

Child welfare providers sound increasingly desperate alarms. During that Florida meeting, one provider described struggling to keep undocumented children out of foster care while uncertain whether state and federal dollars could fund prevention efforts. “We have almost close to 30 kids now that are in our system, and I’m small,” she said.

What we’re witnessing represents a fundamental break from American child protection traditions. Federal agents stake out sanctuaries disguised in parking lots. Courthouses become hunting grounds where families seeking legal protection find themselves trapped in deportation proceedings. We’re living through a moment when how we treat the most vulnerable reveals who we really are as a nation — when sanctuary transforms into strategy and protection becomes predation.

Double Target: How One Journalist’s Arrest Serves Two Agendas

Mario Guevara’s livestream captured the moment his American dream turned into a deportation case. Twenty-one years after fleeing El Salvador, where his political reporting for La Prensa Grafica had earned him beatings and death threats, the Emmy Award-winning journalist, who has authorization to work in the U.S., found himself in the same situation he had escaped — persecution by the state for doing his job. His coverage of ICE arrests, the work that brought him national recognition and a 2019 New York Times documentary feature, became the reason immigration officials wanted him deported. “Officer, officer, I’m a member of the media, officer,” his voice carried across digital channels to his 112,000 Facebook followers who depended on his warnings when federal vehicles appeared in their neighborhoods.

The situation reveals a troubling pattern. The immigrant journalist who had built a career documenting immigration enforcement found himself trapped by that same system. Even his July 1 release on $7,500 bond after two weeks in detention came with threats from federal prosecutors who argued that his livestreaming “presented a danger to the public by compromising the integrity and safety of law enforcement activities.” Guevara’s case shows how the Trump administration uses immigration law as a weapon against press freedom, targeting journalists who represent multiple vulnerabilities to serve dual Project 2025 objectives.

Guevara’s story embodies both immigrant success and the fragility of that success. Born into El Salvador’s violent political climate, he had established himself as a credible journalist covering a country where reporters often faced a choice between silence and death. When he arrived in Georgia in 2004, he carried the understanding that shapes many immigrant journalists: information can save lives, but it can also make you a target.

In Atlanta’s immigrant communities, Guevara created something new in American journalism. He built a real-time warning system that turned surprise immigration raids into documented events. His independent outlet, MG News, became more than media — it became community infrastructure. When helicopters circled overhead or unmarked vehicles appeared in neighborhoods, his Spanish-language coverage provided information that could mean the difference between families staying together or being torn apart.

This work earned Guevara an Emmy Award and national attention. The 2019 New York Times Op-Doc mini-documentary highlighted his exceptional journalism, showing how he used his immigrant experience to reach communities that mainstream media struggled to understand. His immigration raid coverage, built on a network of sources and real-time reporting, had become essential for vulnerable communities. That made him both a celebrated journalist and an inevitable target.

The June 14 protest against Trump’s immigration policies offered Guevara familiar ground: angry crowds, police lines, and tension that could go either way. He had covered dozens of similar events, turning policy debates into human stories. This gathering would be different, not because of its politics but because of what happened afterward.

Body camera footage later documented the seconds that destroyed two decades of careful work. Guevara stepped from sidewalk to street as officers approached, a movement lasting moments that would trigger what supporters call a constitutional crisis disguised as normal procedure

The charges themselves seemed routine at first. Improperly entering a roadway, obstruction of law enforcement officers, unlawful assembly — minor violations typically handled with citations or overnight jail. But federal authorities used these misdemeanors as building blocks for deportation proceedings.

Katherine Jacobsen, who coordinates the Committee to Protect Journalists’ domestic program, recognized the strategy immediately. “Guevara was initially detained because he was recording a protest,” she said. “To use that as a pretext to hold him — a journalist —for a very long period of time in law enforcement detention, and then to transfer him to ICE detention after, that is something that we haven’t seen before and is an incredibly alarming precedent to set.”

What followed showed how federal authorities can override local courts. Despite being released on bond by a DeKalb County judge, Guevara remained in jail because of an ICE detainer, a federal request that trumps state court decisions. Even after prosecutors dropped all criminal charges on June 25, citing insufficient evidence and noting that Guevara was “generally in compliance” with police instructions, he stayed locked up at Folkston ICE Processing Center. His freedom became hostage to administrative procedures designed to operate beyond normal legal oversight.

The immigration court hearing that secured his release revealed the government’s broader hostility toward press freedom. Federal prosecutors didn’t just argue that Guevara might flee. They claimed his journalism itself endangered public safety, that livestreaming protests “presented a danger to the public by compromising the integrity and safety of law enforcement activities.” When that wasn’t enough, they reached back to a 2015 Facebook post allegedly showing Guevara with a firearm, though his attorney objected that this was not properly presented as evidence.

The immigration judge’s response was almost as concerning as the prosecution’s arguments. He acknowledged “a gray area between constitutionally protected speech and obstructive behavior” while noting that immigration courts shouldn’t rule on First Amendment issues. But he warned that additional charges or convictions could lead to reconsideration of Guevara’s release, putting his freedom on permanent probation and turning journalism into a deportable offense.

By silencing immigrant journalists who document enforcement operations, the administration achieves multiple goals: eliminating oversight, intimidating communities, and showing that even established media figures remain vulnerable to government retaliation.