Project 2025 October 16th 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 the Pentagon press crackdown that united Fox News and CNN in defiance, the mass federal layoffs gutting protections for disabled children and LGBTQ+ youth, and the 319,000 Black women pushed out of work as Project 2025’s blueprint becomes America’s reality.

Unsigned: Project 2025 Clears Out Pentagon Press

For the first time in 82 years, America’s major news organizations will cover the nation’s trillion-dollar military apparatus from outside its walls. The unprecedented lockout began when a 17-page memoarrived in newsrooms on September 18. Pentagon reporters scrolled through the dense bureaucratic language until they reached the core requirement: journalists would be required to sign a pledge not to report any information, classified or unclassified, without explicit government authorization.

No one signed it. Not even MAGA mouthpiece Fox News.

The restrictions echo Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s policy manual that treats press access as an administrative privilege rather than a constitutional right. The Pentagon’s policy was crafted with advice from Tim Parlatore, Hegseth’s longtime personal lawyer who represented him when he was accused of sexual assault. Parlatore now serves as a Navy commander on Hegseth’s staff, exemplifying how partisan loyalists are being embedded throughout government to implement Project 2025’s authoritarian agenda.

On October 6, the Pentagon distributed a revised version. Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, who authored both memos, softened some language but maintained the core restrictions and introduced a new provision: reporters who “solicit” federal employees to disclose unauthorized information could lose their credentials.

“Solicitation may include direct communications with specific (Defense) personnel or general appeals, such as public advertisements or calls for tips encouraging (Defense) employees to share non-public (Defense) information,” the revised memo stated.

By the October 14 deadline at 5 p.m., the answer from America’s major newsrooms on both sides of the political aisle remained nearly unanimous. No.

The Washington Post declined. So did the New York Times, CNN, NPR, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and the Guardian. Conservative outlets Newsmax, the Washington Times and the Washington Examiner joined the rejection. Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC issued a joint statement refusing to sign. Journalists from defense trade publications such as the Military Times, Defense News, Aviation Week, Breaking Defense, Defense Daily, Defense One, Inside Defense, and USNI News also refused to sign. The far-right One America News outlet stood alone in agreeing to the terms.

“Today, we join virtually every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon’s new requirements, which would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues,” the television networks wrote in their joint statement. “The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press.” Fox‘s dissent proved notable considering the Trump-friendly views of many of its opinion hosts, whose ranks previously included War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

On October 13, Hegseth, who has had his own issues with sharing government information with the press, defended the policy on social media, writing that “Pentagon access is a privilege, not a right” and that credentialed press would no longer be “permitted to solicit criminal acts.”

That same day, the Pentagon Press Association (PPA), which represents Pentagon press corps members, formally asked the Defense Department to reconsider the new rules. “There is no need or justification for [the Pentagon] to require reporters to affirm their understanding of vague, likely unconstitutional policies as a precondition to reporting from Pentagon facilities,” the PPA said in a statement.

As the deadline approached, the Atlantic‘s Nancy Youssef noted on social media that, beginning on Wednesday, October 15, “for the first time since the Pentagon opened in 1943, there will be likely no major news outlets accredited to cover the [department], the one spending nearly $1 trillion of taxpayer money.”

Legal experts identified constitutional problems. Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, said the policy could constitute prior restraint, which the Supreme Court has found unconstitutional under many circumstances. “The Pentagon’s language blurred the line between legitimate national security protections and unconstitutional prior restraint,” Osterreicher wrote. “It treated ordinary newsgathering — asking questions, cultivating sources, seeking tips — as if it were solicitation of unlawful disclosures. That framing isn’t supported by the law.”

What happened at the Pentagon echoes Project 2025’s media control framework, and follows Project 2025’s depiction of the media as “denigrating the American story — all in the name of so-called journalistic independence. Indeed, content during the Trump Administration was rife with typical mainstream media talking points assailing the President and his staff.”

As credentialed journalists packed up decades of accumulated belongings on October 14, they left behind empty desks that had been occupied continuously since the building opened in 1943.  For the first time in 82 years, America’s major news organizations will cover the nation’s trillion-dollar military apparatus from outside its walls.

Mass Federal Layoffs Eliminate Special Education, LGBTQ+ Health, and CDC Programs as Project 2025 Takes Hold

Buried in Project 2025’s 900+ pages lies a blueprint for dismantling federal programs that protect vulnerable citizens, which OMB Director Russell Vought has gleefully brought to life under the cover of government shutdowns.

On October 10, Vought, the White House budget chief who co-authored Project 2025, announced on social media that “The RIFs have begun.” More than 4,000 federal employees across seven agencies received reduction-in-force notices. Unlike furloughs in previous shutdowns, these are permanent terminations.

Vought appears to be enjoying himself. Trump shared an AI-generated video depicting his budget director as a Grim Reaper wielding a scythe while Trump plays the cowbell and JD Vance is on drums. Set to a parody of “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” the video shows Vought’s character walking past portraits of Democratic congressional leaders. The lyrics declare: “Russ Vought is the reaper. He wields the pen, the funds and the brain.”

Trump has dropped all pretense of disavowing Project 2025, as he did on the campaign trail. Trump posted on social media that he would meet with Vought, “of PROJECT 2025 Fame,” to discuss which “Democrat Agencies” to cut. The consequences land hardest on those least able to fight back, like disabled children.

The Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs lost all but two senior staff members on October 10. This office distributes $15 billion annually under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which funds services for roughly 7.5 million students on Individualized Education Plans, which ensure that students with disabilities receive an education that accommodates their needs.

One terminated employee told Mother Jones she knew of no contingency plan for distributing these funds to states and school districts. Michael Gilberg, a special education attorney, warned that “this is absolutely a violation of federal law since this is money obligated to the states that would not be delivered.”

These workers monitor whether states comply with federal disability law, and review reports from states and school districts to verify that children with disabilities get the speech therapy, occupational therapy, behavioral support, and specialized instruction the law requires. When states fail to provide these services, federal workers tell them how to fix the problems and track whether they comply.

“The reason we had to put the federal law in place was states weren’t doing the job,” said Denise Forte, president of advocacy group EdTrust. “Without that oversight, are states going to be stepping up to the plate? Who is minding the store?”

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, already operating with half its previous staff and a backlog of 25,000 cases, absorbed additional layoffs on October 10. Attorneys now carry caseloads exceeding 300 cases each.

Project 2025 called for eliminating the Department of Education entirely. “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated,” page 319 states. Trump laid off 40 percent of the department’s staff in March. The October 10 cuts brought the Project 2025 vision closer to reality.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) suffered equally devastating losses. The Office of Population Affairs, which administered the nation’s Title X family-planning network, teen-pregnancy prevention programs, and LGBTQ+ health initiatives, was eliminated entirely. Between 1,100 and 1,200 HHS employees were fired, with more layoffs expected.

“This wasn’t a budget decision — it was ideological,” a former senior Biden administration official told The Advocate. “These are the programs that centered [on] reproductive and queer health, and now they’re gone.”

Adrian Shanker, who served as deputy assistant secretary for health policy and senior adviser on LGBTQ+ health equity under the Biden administration, said the cuts “are devastating” for both federal employees and the American public. The Office of Population Affairs had provided funding for sex education programs benefiting LGBTQ+ youth. “It’s not a small cut — it’s actually the entire office,” Shanker said. “Without these people in place, it’s unlikely that a lot of these programs will be able to continue even after the government reopens.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost over 1,000 employees on October 10. Entire divisions, including those overseeing epidemiology and global health, were dissolved. One senior scientist told Time that the CDC “is not functional.” The administration reversed some layoffs after realizing it had fired staff responding to measles outbreaks and an Ebola case.

Still, analysts with top-secret clearance who monitor biological, chemical, and nuclear threats lost their jobs. The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response fired individuals who work with intelligence agencies on biodefense issues such as pandemics and weaponized pathogens, according to a former HHS official. Staff members who coordinate biodefense exercises and drills received RIF notices. So did those who monitor data on natural disasters, infectious disease outbreaks, and cyberattacks on hospitals for the main operations center at HHS headquarters.

The National Center for Health Statistics lost about 100 workers, including a team that runs the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. That survey assesses the health and nutritional status of Americans. It helped identify rampant consumption of ultra-processed foods, which HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has decried as a major health threat.

Other divisions where staff remain fired include parts of the Office of Science, which approves the agency’s scientific publications, including the flagship Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The human resources office lost its ethics office that vets conflicts of interest. A team monitoring neurodegenerative prion diseases, which are 100 percent fatal, was eliminated. The CDC Washington office that handles congressional inquiries and briefings is gone.

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told The Advocate: “They have cut so deep into the muscle of CDC that it will not be able to deliver on routine or emergency situations. I fear it has been damaged beyond repair.”

Many dismissed employees were locked out of their computers during the furlough. They couldn’t check whether they still had jobs. One HHS staffer with three young children described the whiplash: “I felt some relief after being fired just to be done with the uncertainty.”

A child with autism may lose speech therapy. LGBTQ+ youth will lose access to health programs and sex education. The country may stumble in responding to the next outbreak. Trump claimed he knew nothing about Project 2025. The October 10 layoffs, which were deemed illegal in U.S. District Court on October 15, tell a different story.

How Project 2025 Is Devastating Black Women’s Employment

More than 300,000 Black women have been pushed out of the American workforce in just five months — casualties of Project 2025 policies that critics warned would hit the most vulnerable workers first.

The numbers tell a stark story. Between February and July 2025, Black women lost 319,000 jobs across public and private sectors while the overall economy added positions. By July, Black women’s unemployment rate hit 6.3 percent — nearly double the national average and the highest since October 2021.

The connection to Black women’s employment crisis is direct. Project 2025 explicitly called for eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government and proposed massive federal workforce cuts — policies Trump enacted on his first day in office through an executive order titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.”

“Black women, we are the canaries in the coal mine on the economy,” Gabrielle Wyatt, founder of The Highland Project, said in October. “Our unemployment rate should not just be a concern for us, it should be an early signal of a deeper economic distress that will impact everyone if it’s not addressed.”

Black women have been hit hardest because they’re overrepresented in exactly the positions Project 2025 targeted. They make up 12 percent of the federal workforce — nearly double their share of the overall labor force. Over 69,000 federal positions were slashed by mid-2025, many in roles tied to DEI or held by Black women in administrative, training, and human resources departments.

Dr. Ravon Alford, 33, lived this reality. The senior policy analyst at a Detroit criminal justice reform nonprofit received an email on May 30 informing her that the federal government had revoked the organization’s active grants. Organization-wide layoffs followed, affecting 75 percent of the staff.

“It was an extremely traumatic experience for me because this was my first time ever being laid off,” Alford said. “Had I been laid off because of my own merit, then it would’ve been easier for me to deal with. But it was just the fact that this administration chose to not prioritize something that we actually were aligned with in the last administration cost me my job.”

The cuts concentrated in agencies where Black women are most represented. The Department of Education has been reduced by 46 percent and the Department of Health and Human Services by 24 percent, according to federal job trackers. Black women made up 28 percent of Education Department employees.

Representative Ayanna Pressley framed the crisis in stark terms during House testimony. “If I had a sight line into [President Donald Trump’s] to-do list every day, I’m sure one of the action plans would be to attack Black women,” Pressley said. “As a Black woman, the dichotomy that we navigate in this world is to be hypervisible so that you are targeted, surveyed, criminalized, while also hyperinvisible, where there are those that work actively to deny your excellence and to erase your contributions and to delegitimize your pain.”

The ripple effects extend beyond federal employment. Job postings for DEI roles dropped 43 percent between August 2022 and July 2024, with total DEI positions falling from 20,000 to 17,500 by April 2025, according to analysts.

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, researcher and author of The Double Tax, warned that other groups will soon follow. “Usually when Black women are not faring well in the market, it’s speaking to larger frictions that haven’t yet been fully realized with other groups,” she explained. “This means that we’re in the jobs that people see as expendable, and so when an economic crisis is looming and organizations and companies need to cut back, they’re going to cut back on jobs they think are expendable. At some point, all other groups are going to be affected, because what’s expendable today may not be what’s expendable tomorrow.”

Jessica Fulton, senior fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, noted that the pattern is familiar. “Black workers, and particularly Black women, show up as a canary in the coal mine, giving a picture of what may happen to everyone else later.”

Jasmine Tucker, vice president for research at the National Women’s Law Center, connected the unemployment spike to broader economic anxieties. “Are we heading into a recession? Is some action the current administration is going to take going to keep moving us in that direction?” Tucker asked. “For me, Black women’s unemployment going up — this is the backbone of our economy, of our labor force. We have cause to be concerned.”