By Cindi Branham
Project 2025 will become the platform of the Republican party if they win the 2024 election, but it will only benefit the White Christian nationalist males who will ensure its implemented.
Women (even their women), LGBTQ+, persons of color and the poor get left out of our society.
Nine Hundred pages is a lot of room to cover the wish lists of dozens, even hundreds of Christo-fascist white nationalists bent on overthrowing democracy in favor of something more self-serving. Something that allows them to hold onto power long after they cease to be a majority.
Nine hundred pages could take us back 900 years, as a figure of speech.
That’s what it will easily feel like to women, members of the LGBTQ community, people of color, and the poor.
Education, Voting Rights; LGBTQ+ Rights; Climate Change; Foreign policy; and Taxes: so many areas of change that can ruin the lives of most Americans. As we continue to slog through the many aspects of Project 2025 – only skimming the surface – we’ll look at Education today.
Education: Our forefathers recognized that strong public education was a necessity of a strong republic. Since the Reagan years, cutbacks and short-changing of education has been the norm under Republican presidents. Our public education system has faced many challenges, but one of the strongest may be the voucher system.
Across the country, we see state legislatures providing vouchers to private and church-based schools (non-public schools). We know that those schools don’t have any sort of teaching goals or standards, which leaves many of them open to agendas and indoctrination. (Yes, if a Republican is accusing the Left of anything, it’s bound to be a projection of what they’re doing or planning.)
It’s happened in Alabama. First, the Republican supermajority legislators approved vouchers for the non-public schools.
This year, they approved the financial scheme of taking funds from the public schools on a per-student basis and passing the funds to non-public schools.
These vouchers of $7000 a year won’t send a poor child to a private school. Additional tuition, books, uniforms, transportation and more will weigh in, all things their parents can’t afford. This is a massive, not well-disguised bonus program for parents who already have their kids in non-public schools.
However, the crux of their plan is to drastically reduce the Federal government’s involvement in public education, literally by dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.
If Republicans take the White House and Congress, we will see all these regressions and more become codified nationally as they implement Project 2025.
Federal funding for public schools will drop, in addition to the voucher reductions.
They will end Head Start – a program for young children in poverty that we know makes a positive difference.
Title I funding for schools serving low-income students will go away.
The many federal protections for the civil rights of LGBTQ+ and disabled students will disappear. Bullying of these children will become unbearable for many, and I fully expect suicide rates among their ranks to increase.
The federal loan programs – which are far less interest-based and more practical in their payment allowances will be privatized. The very industry that has created our massive student debt problem with crippling interest rates will take over all aspects of student loan activity. Fewer will go to college, and colleges will close.
Student loan forgiveness will go away, immediately after Trump takes office, as he’s promised to swarms of idol-worshipping followers who cheer him on (even though they, their children or their grandchildren would be negatively affected).
Public education in every state relies heavily on federal funding, but especially the poorer states, like Alabama. The next Republican administration plans a devastating list of program cuts and policy proposals, primarily targeting programs that benefit low-income children and students with disabilities.
As American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten says, “They want to take the meal programs away from kids. They want to take civil rights away from kids. How do we help kids go from struggling to thriving if they take this funding away?”
If there are no standards for teachers, the quality of teaching drops, as does the caliber of individuals going into public education.
Free books, free school breakfasts and lunches and funding for other aspects of public education will go away.
If the populace is weakened and under-educated, they do make for more plentiful soldiers in the elites’ military forces.
This all hits close to home. As a part of our community, we will either undergo these ruthless changes, or we will fight for those in our community who will be negatively affected by them.
Make no mistake: the parties bring these inhumane changes about want a dumber, less powerful, more controllable untroublesome electorate. Meaning: us; all of us, because it’s the only way they can hold onto power for the long term.
Why bother talking about why it’s important to vote against Project 2025 and all who support it when we live in deep red Alabama? Because we can still use our voices as a mandate to whomever wins – and takes power – this election.
A massive turnout on November 5th will be send more than one message. First that Democrats have a stronger presence in Alabama (we do, when we all vote). Second, when we add our votes to the national popular vote count, we will be telling ourselves and the country that Alabama can’t be ignored on the national stage.
We’re also imparting hope – to ourselves and to every person in the state who’s overwhelmed by the hopelessness we’ve lived under in Alabama since 2010.
Lastly, until we let someone take it away, we’ll be protecting the education system that produced the strong society that we have enjoyed in our lifetimes.