Dear Neighbor,

Over the past few months, you have no doubt heard a lot about Donald Trump’s Project 2025. You’ve heard that it’s a 920-page manifesto that includes all the most extreme proposals Republicans have to offer. You’ve heard that it will give Donald Trump unchecked power to rule the country more like a king than a democratically elected president.

All of that is true. Project 2025 is a laundry list of the most extreme, misguided, and downright un-American policies ever put down on paper. Let’s get into some of the details:

Replacing Civil Servants with MAGA Loyalists:

The core component of Project 2025 is the power it gives the president to fire or relocate thousands of career civil servants, including more than 100,000 here in the DC area, and replace them with MAGA loyalists and partisan sycophants. This is the part of the plan that unlocks all the rest. Without career experts to offer guidance and expertise, Donald Trump will be free to enact the remainder of his cruel agenda without guardrails. This is the tip of Project 2025’s spear, which is exactly why I wrote the legislation to stop it. Congress should immediately pass my Saving the Civil Service Act, which has bipartisan support, and send it to the president’s desk for his signature.

Eroding Reproductive Freedom:

Project 2025 calls for the prosecution of “providers and distributors of abortion pills that use the mail” under the Comstock Act, an antiquated law signed in 1873 that has not been enforced for 100 years. Resurrecting this law will not only prevent many women from accessing reproductive treatment, it will also prevent clinics and health care providers from receiving the products and medication they rely on to provide adequate care. Project 2025 also calls for a ban on mifepristone, a safe and legal medication that is used in roughly half of all abortions in the United States. All of this amounts to a ban on abortion for millions of women across the United States. Lastly, Project 2025 also eliminates certain emergency contraception medications from free preventive care requirements, meaning 1,290,000 women in Virginia would lose guaranteed access to free emergency contraception.

Defunding Public Schools and Abolishing the Department of Education:

Project 2025 would abolish the Department of Education entirely and eliminate Title I education funding, causing a devastating loss of funding for high-poverty schools. Ending Title I would take critical resources away from 49,597 children who attend Title I schools in Virginia and eliminate 3,647 teaching positions in Virginia. Project 2025 would also take school lunches away from 400 children in the 11th District alone by eliminating the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). It also calls for eliminating summer meal assistance for students, which will cause even more children to go hungry.

Making Health Care More Expensive and Less Accessible:

Project 2025 would repeal the health reforms that Democrats secured through the Inflation Reduction Act to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries. Eliminating these reforms would raise the cost of prescription drugs for up to 85,000 people in the 11th District. Ending Medicare drug price negotiations would also directly increase drug prices for 11,000 Medicare enrollees in VA-11 who take any of the ten drugs for which Medicare negotiated lower prices. Project 2025 would also push seniors into corporate health insurance plans rather than traditional Medicare without their full consent by making Medicare Advantage the default option. As Medicare shrinks, it could open the door to benefit cuts and privatization schemes that threaten the health and pocketbooks of 1,030,640 people enrolled in traditional Medicare in Virginia, including 73,000 here in VA-11. Lastly, Project 2025 imposes “time limits or lifetime caps” on Medicaid benefits, which could strip away coverage from 40,000 low-income individuals in VA-11 after they have been on Medicaid for a set amount of time, regardless of their health or economic needs.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the next few weeks, you’ll hear more from me as I lay out the rest of Project 2025’s draconian agenda. Spoiler alert: it’s just as dark and dystopian as what you’ve read here.

In the meantime, please continue to take care of yourselves and each other. And remember that my office is here to help. If you or a loved one need assistance, please don’t hesitate to call us at (703) 256-3071.