Reading Project 2025, part 6: the interior, justice, and labor

How might a likely second Trump administration impact higher education?  How can academics plan for and anticipate that major event, should it occur?

This week we continue our reading of Project 2025, a key document in understanding the near- and medium-term future of American politics.  This is an online, open, and distributed reading and anyone can participate. Here’s a post explaining how it works.  You can find all of our Project 2025 posts here.

In today’s post I’ll summarize this week’s reading, which continues under the header we’ve been working through for three weeks, “The General Welfare,” found on pages 517-617.    I’ll draw out the bits which bear directly on higher education. Next I’ll add some reflections and then several discussion questions.  At the end I’ll add some more resources.  Please join in with comments below – for examples of that, you can see good comments at the end of our first post.

Summary overview

With this section the book turns to the Departments of the Interior (DOI), Justice (DOJ), and Labor (DOL).

William Perry Pendley, who ran the DOI’s Bureau of Land Management for the Trump administration, fiercely criticizes the department for being openly partisan (“A department that has twice engaged in covert domestic election interference and propaganda operations—the Russian collusion hoax in 2016 and the Hunter Biden laptop suppression in 2020—is a threat to the Republic”). To undo that alleged damage, Pendley would cut back the Endangered Species Act, remove Biden’s 30×30 conservation plan, give some Alaskan lands to development, reduce judicial reviews of some regulations, and turn over publicly held land for logging and other commercial uses.

Next, Gene Hamilton tackles the Department of Justice, urging it to redouble efforts against violent crime.  This can lead to DOJ intervening in local and state jurisdictions:

Where warranted and proper under federal law, [DOJ should] initiate legal action against local officials—including District Attorneys—who deny American citizens the “equal protection of the laws” by refusing to prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions. This holds true particularly for jurisdictions that refuse to enforce the law against criminals based on the Left’s favored defining characteristics of the would-be offender (race, so-called gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.) or other political considerations (e.g., immigration status).

He wants the FBI to focus more on international crime and immigration, ending any work on misinformation, and to launched an overall assessment of just about everything the FBI does.  International topics include strengthening the Mexico border and ramping up efforts against China, including relaunching the first Trump administration’s China Initiative. On more domestic matters, Hamilton wants the DOJ to step back from scrutinizing abortion protestors, to devote more resources to going after protestors opposing anti-abortion projects, and to block abortion pills sent through the mail. He also wants the department to do more about voter fraud and illegal immigrants.

The third chapter in this week’s reading, written by Jonathan Berry, covers not only the Department of Labor, but also “the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the National Mediation Board (NMB), the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).”  It is also perhaps the most religiously themed section of Project 2025, starting off with this in its first paragraph: “The Judeo-Christian tradition, stretching back to Genesis, has always recognized fruitful work as integral to human dignity, as service to God, neighbor, and family.”  The chapter includes a call to firm up overtime pay for work on the Sabbath: “God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest, and until very recently the Judeo-Christian tradition sought to honor that mandate by moral and legal regulation of work on that day.”

At the same time, the texts wants to make it easier for employers to pay less overtime otherwise, especially “in lower-cost regions (e.g., the southeast United States”. (592). As 25andme summarizes this last point:

As with other chapters we’ve read, this one would end DEI training, practice, and data gathering for these agencies, including by “[e]liminat[ing] disparate impact as a valid theory of discrimination for race and other bases under Title VII and other laws”. Similarly, it would roll back Biden-era gender regulations, asking for a new president to ” [r]escind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.”  It would also seek to restrict employers’ support for employees’ abortion access.  Berry wants to expand religious belief protections in the commercial sphere.  He would also give states the ability to sidestep federal labor rulings.

What does this mean for higher education?

The DOJ section asks for colleges and universities to play a role in the anti-China push:

key goals for the China Initiative that included development of an enforcement strategy concerning researchers in labs and universities who were being coopted into stealing critical U.S. technologies, identification of opportunities to address supply-chain threats more effectively, and education of colleges and universities about potential threats from Chinese influence efforts on campus.

Further, there’s a research angle for the DOJ, an anti-academic one: “The National Institute of Justice… should fund high-quality, unbiased research on the topics of greatest interest to everyday Americans and policymakers rather than agenda-driven research desired by advocates or academics.”

The Department of Labor section might apply to higher education by reducing overtime regulations. At a broader level Berry’s chapter wants to boost apprenticeships, mostly likely in competition with college and university study. (594-5) This section also calls on Congress to end college degree requirements for federal positions. (597)

Reflections

These chapters carry on some consistent themes from the rest of the book, namely undoing Biden-era DEI measures, opposing China, and stopping illegal immigration.

Once more there’s the contradiction between devolving federal authority to states and localities, while at the same time calling for more federal power – most notably in asking for the DOJ to intervene in local authorities’ actions.

Again I’m struck by the civics of Project 2025, the sheer detail and ambition of its efforts to revise government. This week includes an extensive amount of agency, policy, and legal wonkery.

Questions

1. How would the policy changes expressed in this week’s chapters impact your professional and personal lives?
2. Do you see Trump as likely to attempt what this week’s reading describes?
3. How might the world change if these global policies take effect?
4. If you oppose what these three chapters call for, what opposition strategy and tactics would best resist it?
5. Having read this far, what do you anticipate from the rest of the book?

Resources

• 25andme, How Will Project 2025 Affect Me? A very handy critical guide.
• “What Trump doesn’t want you to know about Project 2025” 
•  “Aftermath” (thanks to Chanda)

…and that’s it for this week’s reading.  For next Monday, September 2nd, we’ll finally conclude “The General Welfare” then dive into “The Economy,” all found on pages 619-715.

Please do comment in the boxes below this post.  If you’d prefer to share your reactions on other platforms, tag me or otherwise let me know about those comments so I can include them in our next post.  If you want to respond but are worried about what people could make of your reactions, feel free to contact me here without the web knowing.

Comment away!  And on to the next tranche of Project 2025.