How could Donald Trump target the LGBTQ+ community? Project 2025 is a ready-made blueprint for discrimination

Donald Trump’s victory in last week’s US elections has sent shockwaves through the LGBTQ+ community, given the president-elect’s divisive rhetoric and demonization of the trans community in particular.

There is fear of a second Trump administration devastating consequences for millions of LGBTQ+ people in the United States and past.

What could Trump do while in office? The Project 2025 Policy Manifesto gives some clues.

A blueprint for discrimination

Written by the Heritage Foundationa conservative think tank, Project 2025 is a playbook for the next conservative president.

It includes input from more than 110 groups on key policy and workforce recommendations. The intention is to act quickly. It features a 180-day action plan that “includes a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency.”

Trump tried to distance himself from the manifesto during the campaign. However, many of the contributors roles played during Trump’s first term. This includes Stephen Miller, who is too expectedly mentioned deputy chief of staff for policy in his second term. Miller’s group, America First Legal, supports Project 2025.

Trump too in 2022 said of the Heritage Foundation’s plans:

This is a great group, and they are going to lay the groundwork and lay out plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.

The Project 2025 Manifesto calls for the abolition of anti-discrimination policies that protect the LGBTQ+ community. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), this means: to delete all federal regulations and rules prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Project 2025 is specifically aimed at this limit the application of a Supreme Court ruling that protects people from workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and transgender status.

The plan also calls for the reversal of the policy that allows transgender people to serve in the military. And it advocates blocking gender-affirming medical care for transgender people in federal health care programs, such as Medicare.

The authors also want to reverse the Biden administration’s executive order promoting gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The foreword to the manifesto says that in today’s America

children suffer from the toxic normalization of transgenderism, with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.

Particularly troubling is the suggestion that transgender identity and drag queens are synonymous with an unclear definition of “pornography.” The document further recommends that educators and public librarians who “distribute pornography” be classified as registered sex offenders.

The plan is not specifically aimed at marriage equality. However, there are mentions of the “biblically based” definition of marriage and family. Some to believe this treats same-sex unions as “second-class marriages.”

Trump’s record on LGBTQ+ issues

Looking beyond Project 2025, there are even more troubling signs that Trump will not be a president who acts in the best interests of LGBTQ+ Americans.

His appointment of anti-LGBTQ+ judges during his first presidency has already led to one judicial environment hostile to LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV.

While president, Trump too opposite one suggested Equality Act. It would have provided consistent and explicit protections against discrimination for LGBTQ+ people in key areas of life, including employment, housing and education. The deed was reintroduced by Democrats last year and failed to pass the Senate.

During his first termTrump also:

• supported employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ people
• banned transgender people from serving in the military, and
• Obama-era nondiscrimination protections have been rolled back.

Moreover, he makes his anti-LGBTQ+ statements feed contradictions and divisions that lead to this increase in hate speech.

In 2017, for example, Trump reportedly joked his vice president, Mike Pence, wanted to “hang” homosexuals. (The White House denied the comment.)

Attack on LGBTQ+ rights at the state level

The ideology underlying some of the anti-LGBTQ+ proposals in Project 2025 is already very visible at the state level in the US.

In 2024 alone, the ACLU has done that followed 532 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the US These include:

• 208 bills that restrict the rights of students and teachers
• 70 bills on religious exemptions
• 112 on health care limitations, and
• 34 bans in the area of ​​free speech and expression (including 27 drag bans).

Protests against drag queen stories about children’s literacy have led to increased scrutiny of public libraries. false claims Such events are funded by taxpayers.

After pressure from conservative activists companies have also backed away from their commitments to LGBTQ+ inclusion. For some, this also means not participating in the The Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.

Constitutional challenges

In addition, the ACLU warns the Trump administration could use federal law against transgender people. For example, the group says it could override crucial protections at the state level, arguing that state laws protecting transgender students conflict with the federal legal rights of non-transgender students.

The ACLU has also expressed concern that the Trump administration could take the “extreme position.” The U.S. Constitution gives employers the right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people based on employers’ religious beliefs, despite state nondiscrimination laws.

Many of the anti-LGBTQ+ policies outlined in Project 2025 would likely violate the Constitution and federal law. Organizations like the ACLU could then use the courts to challenge any Trump executive orders or other policy changes.

And Congress can still use its oversight and investigative role to curtail the Trump administration’s agenda. However, Republicans now have a majority in the Senate and possibly also a majority in the House of Representatives.

This means that activists who want to challenge anti-LGBTQ+ policies will need a well-coordinated policy pro-equality action coalition at the federal, state and local levels to effect change and block discriminatory policies that could emerge during Trump’s second term.