As for the specifics of Project 2025? There’s a good chance that it doesn’t say what you think it does. For instance, one graphic that’s been widely circulated (which The Dispatch reportshas racked up millions of views across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Reddit, and X) lists 31 policies supposedly found in Project 2025. These falsehoods include raising the retirement age, teaching Christian religious beliefs in public schools, banning books and curriculum about slavery, ending birthright citizenship, and eliminating the FDA and EPA. Project 2025 mentions none of these.
In fact, as Libby Stanford has capably reportedfor Education Week, most of what Project 2025 actually proposes for education is neither surprising nor all that new. The 44 pages devoted to the Department of Education call for shuttering the Department, block-granting Title I funding and then phasing it out, turning IDEA into a block grant, adopting a federal Parents’ Bill of Rights, spotlighting the extent of DEI efforts and then working to curtail them, requiring the office of civil rights to work through the courts rather than rely on “Dear Colleague” letters, and so forth. Anyone surprised by this kind of conservative wish list needs to get out more.
For what it’s worth, I mostly like what Project 2025 has to say on education. Block-granting is reasonable given the morass of regulation that’s made these programs intrusive and counterproductive. Curtailing the office of civil rights’ use of extrajudicial pressure tactics is overdue. Miguel Cardona’s politicized, legally dubious, inept tenure as secretary of education has powerfully made the case for dismantling the department. People of goodwill can disagree about all of this, but there’s nothing especially scary, theocratic, or fascist about it.