Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
The Congressional Equality Caucus on Thursday released a report titled, “Ripping Away Our Freedoms: How House Republicans are Working to Implement Project 2025’s Assault on LGBTQI+ Americans’ Rights.”
“People often talk about Project 2025 as a plan for the future, but the reality is there are members of Congress working to implement Project 2025 right now,” said U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), who chairs the caucus.
“When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives last year, we saw an avalanche of attacks against the LGBTQI+ community,” the congressman said. “During the past two years, they forced more than 70 anti-LGBTQI+ votes on the House floor. And nearly every bill and amendment idea was ripped out of the pages of Project 2025’s ‘Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise.’”
The caucus’s 53-page report details efforts by the House GOP caucus to effectuate the “anti-LGBTQI+ agenda” of Project 2025 by “undermining and ending nondiscrimination programs, restricting access to medically necessary care, censoring LGBTQI+ books, symbols, art, and related words, ending U.S. leadership on LGBTQI+ human rights abroad, ending diversity, equity, and inclusion and LGBTQI-inclusive efforts, and demonizing LGBTQI+ people.”
While Republicans including Donald Trump have sought to distance themselves from Project 2025, the 900+-page governing blueprint produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation has many ties to the former president.
As the New York Times reported on Tuesday, “the analysis of the Project 2025 playbook and its 307 authors and contributors revealed that well over half of them had been in Mr. Trump’s administration or on his campaign or transition teams.”
“MAGA Republicans in the House, led by Speaker Johnson, have used every tool at their disposal this Congress to push extreme legislation that resembles the dangerous policies outlined in Project 2025, including sowing doubt regarding the integrity of our elections,” Malachi Rafiq White, spokesperson for the House Accountability War Room, told the Washington Blade.
“This even includes the many Republicans who either proclaim themselves as moderates or simply fly under the radar, despite their complicity in attacking LGBTQI+ people, our democratic institutions, abortion access, funding for SNAP and other crucial services for Americans,” said White, who was previously press secretary for the Congressional Equality Caucus.
“Republicans have doubled-down on election conspiracies like supposed non-citizen voting and election insecurity with bills like the SAVE Act and the ACE Act, and supporting Project 2025’s goal to gut the very institutions that help to secure our elections, including calling for a restructuring of the Department of Justice,” White added.
“Now, more than ever, Americans across the country must be aware that Project 2025 is not simply a potential threat, but rather a mission already being executed. The CEC’s latest report demonstrates this regarding LGBTQI+ people and research from the House Accountability War Room builds upon this fact at large.”
The caucus published a report last year called, “Obsessed: House Republicans’ Relentless Attacks Against the LGBTQI+ Community in 2023,” which provided a comprehensive overview of anti-LGBTQ bills, votes, amendments, and rhetoric from the GOP caucus.
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