Loudoun Democrats Raise Alarm on Project 2025

Democrats in Loudoun County and throughout the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area are sounding the alarm that the right-wing agenda known as Project 2025 will cost federal employees their jobs, politicize the bureaucracy, and help Donald Trump gain too much power if he is reelected in November.

 Drafted by former Trump aides and others in the conservative Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a highly detailed, frightening blueprint for a second Trump administration. More than 6,500 federal employees who live in Loudoun are among those who would be targeted by the plan.

“Project 2025 is a significant threat to career civil servants and could jeopardize their benefits and job security,” said LCDC Chair Liz Carter. “This is particularly a concern in Loudoun which is home to so many federal employees.”

Though Trump has tried to distance himself from some of the most extreme proposals in Project 2025, it includes many features he has already proposed and implemented in the past.

Though Trump has tried to distance himself from some of the most extreme proposals in Project 2025, it includes many features he has implemented in the past or has proposed in his own “Agenda 47,” the administration's official policy platform.

Project 2025 would:

●      Eliminate the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security/

●      Weaken the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other agencies.

●      Wipe out as many as 1 million federal government jobs through budget cuts, elimination and privatization of agencies, and other provisions.

●      Declare public unions illegal and reduce federal workers’ pay and benefits.

●      Weaken hiring standards to make it easier to discriminate in the hiring of people of color, women, and LGBTQIA+ persons for federal agencies.

●      Destroy the Department of Justice’s independence by filling it with leaders who intend to further Trump’s agenda.

 Countless federal workers are fearful of Project 2025 and of speaking out publicly against it. According to the Virginia Employment Commission, there are more than 140,000 federal employees in Virginia, about 90,000 in Northern Virginia, and more than 6,500 in Loudoun.

Project 2025 would raise the retirement age for federal employees and would decide their pay raises based on how well they carry out orders. It would restore hiring tests that have been found to be discriminatory. And it would prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in most agencies.

 Trump has said repeatedly that he intends to “shatter the Deep State,” a reference to a mythical cabal hidden in the federal bureaucracy that promotes progressive causes and thwarted his plans during his presidency. He says he intends to fire “rogue bureaucrats and career politicians” and replace them with loyalists.

“Voters understand that this is an actual, written plan for extremist and dangerous ideas that are going to be implemented,” Jefrey Pollock of Global Strategy Group told The Washington Post.

Currently, about 4,000 federal employees are considered political appointees. They typically change with each administration. However, Trump could reclassify tens of thousands of the 2 million federal workers as employees who could be fired more easily. Trump did so when he took office. President Biden rescinded that executive order in 2021. Trump has promised to reinstate it.

A 900-page treatise, Project 2025 has been described as an attempt to infuse Christian nationalism into every facet of government policy. It calls for mass deportations, would make reproductive care harder to secure, and would gut climate-change initiatives. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has stated that “we are in the process of a second American revolution.”

Trump is a convicted felon running with an extreme and dangerous Project 2025 agenda that would give him unprecedented, virtually unchecked power to do whatever he wants.

 “Our civil servants are not political pawns—they're the backbone of our democracy," Carter said.