Project 2025 September 18th 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, GPAHE examines how Project 2025’s immigration policies are driving international artists and musicians away from the United States. We’ll also look at how the administration is weaponizing immigration law against foreign journalists, and the bitter irony facing Trump voters in rural America who are discovering they desperately need the immigrant workers they voted to deport.

The Sound of Project 2025: Silence

Red-hot recording artist Bad Bunny’s tour map tells the story. Red pins dot Mexico City, São Paulo, Madrid, Tokyo. Fifty-plus cities across 30 countries. The United States? A glaring black hole in the lineup of this galactic star nominated for 12 Latin Grammys in 2025. And the reason is because he doesn’t want his U.S. fans to disappear.

“ICE could be outside my concert venue,” the Puerto Rican superstar told i-D magazine. “And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.” When an artist who sells out stadiums worldwide won’t set foot in America for fear of his fans being targeted and detained, the message is clear. The very cultural fabric of the United States is becoming hopelessly frayed as the country trudges toward authoritarianism.

This is Project 2025 in action. The Heritage Foundation’s playbook calls for mass deportation — and it’s working exactly as designed under Donald Trump. Enforcement now targets not just undocumented immigrants but DACA recipients, visa holders, even those with decade-old misdemeanors. The message to international artists is crystal clear: legal entry means nothing. America has weaponized its own immigration system, and the world’s cultural icons are responding by simply staying away.

Salt Lake City classical musician John Shin was sliding his violin case into his car after a guest performance in Colorado when the black SUVs pulled up. August heat shimmered off the hotel parking lot as ICE agents stepped out, badges glinting. The South Korean-born musician had just finished another gig — Utah Symphony, Ballet West, the kind of prestigious stages that had defined his American dream.

“Honey, I don’t have much time,” he told his wife. The couple had been texting back and forth all day about plans for her birthday celebration that evening. “I’ve been arrested by ICE and they are sending me to a detainment center,” was all he could tell her in the one phone call he was given.  Shin, who has lived in the United States since he was a child, was detained for 17 days and released on $25,000 bond. His crime? A 2019 misdemeanor DUI that stripped away his DACA protection.

Renowned chamber musician Christian Tetzlaff made his decision to forego concerts in the United States — he typically plays about 20 per year — while backstage at Chicago’s Symphony Center in February. The German violinist had just finished performing when he told his manager: never again. He voluntarily canceled his October return, wiping America from his calendar.

“There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on. I feel utter anger. I cannot go on with this feeling inside. I cannot just go and play a tour of beautiful concerts,” he said of Trump’s policies in an interview, particularly the administration’s embrace of Russia.

British punk band U.K. Subs learned the hard way that visas don’t guarantee entry after customs agents separated the group at LAX, detaining them for 25 hours in windowless rooms. Bassist Alvin Gibbs said he’d been “flagged.” The agents wouldn’t say why, but Gibbs had an idea. “I can’t help but wonder whether my frequent, and less than flattering, public comments regarding their president and his administration played a role — or perhaps I’m simply succumbing to paranoia,” Gibbs said. Their vocalist performed alone that night with hired local musicians — four Americans on stage where five British punks should have been.

Trans musician Bells Larsen spent four years layering his voice. The Canadian singer-songwriter recorded each song on his new album twice — once before testosterone deepened his vocal cords, once after. The hauntingly beautiful harmonies tell the story of his transition better than any words could.

He was mapping out venues for his first U.S. tour supporting the folksy new collection of songs when the policy change hit: customs would only recognize “male” and “female” as assigned at birth. His lawyers’ advice was clear and concise: “Don’t go.” U.S. immigration then made it official. “I received an email with underlined wording stating that my application would not be able to be processed,” Larsen said. “So I know for sure that I am not able to apply for a visa and come to the States in a touring capacity, at least for the next four years.”

Other trans musicians seeking to enter the United States recently have faced a similar involuntary change of plans as the Trump administration, adhering to Project 2025 policies, seeks to erase the transgender community altogether. “I feel overwhelmed by the degree to which my community is being completely dehumanized,” Larsen said. “My livelihood has been robbed of me, but this is also so much bigger than me.”

Matthew Covey’s phone rings constantly now. The immigration attorney fields calls from panicked managers and artists who’ve spent months preparing visa applications. “Record numbers of artists who are part way into the process of deciding, you know what? I think I’m not going to do this tour this year,” he says.

Booking agent Bill Smith knows the precautionary fees and asks for $10,000 upfront per international act. Half goes to visa fees that might get rejected. The rest covers flights that might end at detention centers instead of concert halls. “It’s not guaranteed that just because they have visas and have arrived here that they’ll be permitted to enter the U.S.,” he explains to nervous clients.

At the Chicago Symphony, empty guest soloist chairs tell their own story. Orchestra managers used to book international stars two seasons ahead. Now they’re scrambling to fill slots as one artist after another sends the same message: not this year.

Project 2025 promised to reshape America’s relationship with the world — and it’s succeeding. The country that once drew global talent like a magnet now repels it. As stages go dark and artists stay away, America discovers the true cost of turning immigration into a weapon: a cultural wasteland of its own making.

Silencing the Witness: How America Turned Immigration Into a Weapon Against the Press

Mario Guevara won an Emmy. He covered ICE protests, documented family separations, told stories the government didn’t want told. Today he sits in immigration detention, even as months have gone by and his charges have been dropped.

There are court orders demanding his release but officials ignore them. They’ve declared him “not releasable” — a bureaucratic phrase that means whatever ICE wants it to.

This is how immigration law becomes a weapon against the press. The Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security released a proposal in August that cuts foreign correspondent visas from five years to 240 days. Chinese journalists get 90.

About 13,000 media visa holders work in America. In fiscal year 2024, they explained U.S. elections, policies, and democracy to billions of people worldwide. The restrictions placed on them accomplish two Project 2025 objectives at once: fewer foreigners in America, and less press scrutiny of government. It’s an efficient policy for those who see both immigration and journalism as problems to solve rather than democratic strengths to preserve.

More than 100 news organizations have pushed back — AFP, Reuters, BBC, and Germany’s ARD among them. They warn the policy would “reduce the quantity and quality of coverage coming from the US” while damaging “America’s global standing.” The Department of Homeland Security claims undefined “safety risks” justify the visa restrictions. “Foreign journalists can’t constantly be looking over their shoulders, fearing deportation in retaliation for a story they reported that the US government doesn’t like,” Clayton Weimers of Reporters Without Borders explains.

“This policy could force hundreds of journalists to leave the country, robbing both American and international audiences of vital coverage of the United States. It serves no purpose other than to create new barriers to journalism, and it’s closer to what we expect from the Chinese Communist Party than from the nation of the First Amendment. The arbitrary non-renewal of visas for journalists is a common tactic used by authoritarian regimes to expel reliable reporters.” 

Under the new rules, every story a foreign journalist writes could spark a risk assessment and the possibility of a visa review. The new rules, RSF says, will leave journalists “wondering if their visas will be canceled because a single public official disapproved of the content of their journalism,” leading to “self-censorship and even the deportation of journalists whose only misstep was to report the news honestly.”

Foreign correspondents serve as translators of U.S. culture and politics between America and the world, for audiences in democratic capitals and authoritarian regimes alike. When they write about American elections, people in dozens of countries read those stories to understand what democracy looks like in practice. As America seeks to punish the press through immigration enforcement, the message couldn’t be clearer. Neither could the consequences.

Project 2025’s Bitter Harvest: Trump Voters Discover They Need the Workers They Wanted Gone

John Painter milks 450 cows twice daily. Come November, after his two remaining Guatemalan workers have left, it will be just him and one man to handle an operation that never sleeps. “The whole thing is screwed up,” Painter, who voted for Trump three times, told a reporter while standing in his Westfield, Pennsylvania, dairy. “We need people to do the jobs Americans are too spoiled to do.”

Painter’s dilemma echoes across Trump Country, where the immigration crackdown voters demanded now threatens their livelihoods. In Tioga County, Pennsylvania — where Trump won 75 percent of the vote — dairy barns sit understaffed while crops rot unharvested.

The agricultural workforce has hemorrhaged 155,000 jobs since March — a seven percent drop that coincides with 750,000 fewer immigrant workers nationwide. It’s not a complicated equation: fewer hands means less food production.

Painter hired a Mexican couple who worked reliably for two years. Then the husband visited family in New York, got pulled over, and was arrested for fake papers. Detention stretched over a year before deportation. His wife and children followed him back to Mexico. “I understand he was here illegally,” Painter says. “But I also understand he’s human.”

In Idaho, where 90 percent of dairy workers are foreign-born, the anxiety is palpable. Rick Naerebout runs the Idaho Dairymen’s Association and watches his industry brace for what comes next.

Meanwhile, John Deere warns that agricultural machinery sales could plummet 20 percent this year. The tractor company faces $600 million in tariff costs while demand sinks as farmers confront worker shortages caused by Project 2025 deportation policies, and cratering commodity prices. These days corn is selling for half its 2022 peak.

House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson represents these Pennsylvania farmers. “It’s hard to be more urgent than I have been on this issue,” he says, promising legislation to fix the H-2A visa program for farmer workers that farmers avoid due to bureaucratic nightmares.

The Trump administration has flip-flopped on farm enforcement. After initially exempting agriculture from workplace raids in June, officials reversed course within days, leaving farmers guessing about their workforce’s safety.

Charlie Porter heads Pennsylvania Farm Bureau’s labor committee. “It’s a shame you have hard-working people who need labor, and a group of people who are willing to work, and they have to look over their shoulder like they’re criminals,” he says. “They’re not.”

The Economic Policy Institute warns that mass deportations eliminate jobs beyond just immigrant workers — American-born employees whose roles depend on immigrant labor also lose work. Less immigrant labor shrinks opportunities for everyone. Restaurants shorten hours. Construction sites slow to a crawl as the dominoes fall.

As harvest season approaches, Painter faces an impossible situation: two men, 450 cows needing to be milked, and no clear solution in sight. The American dream his workers sought now collides with the American voters who elected the president determined to end it.