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Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise—also known as the Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project or “Project 2025”—is a 900-plus-page document issued by the Heritage Foundation in 2023. As indicated by its title, Project 2025 is a playbook of recommended actions for the next presidential administration to implement upon taking office. Project 2025 proposals cover just about every important aspect of American life, including civic engagement, education, employment, immigration, labor, national security, and much more. 

But Project 2025 is not just a roadmap for a hypothetical future—it is here and now.

We have already seen several Project 2025 proposals move at the local and state levels. Even where those proposals are not yet embedded in law, policy, or practice, the groundwork is being laid for future enactment. LatinoJustice PRLDEF expects that there will be strong efforts to advance this agenda no matter who enters the White House in January 2025. 

Many of the recommendations in Project 2025, if enacted, will do great harm to the Latinx community. The proposals strike at the heart of the very rights, services, and programs that Latinos identify as crucial to their advancement and wellbeing. 

LatinoJustice PRLDEF’s analysis of the document found proposals that would harm:

 • Latinx children and young people, by weakening public education, cutting back on school meals, censoring curriculum, decreasing aid for college, and diluting child labor protections; 

• Latino immigrants, by reviving some of the cruelest anti-immigrant policies implemented in the past 15 years and removing several paths to legal migration; 

• Latino working families, by cutting overtime pay, undermining wage protections, reducing access to food assistance, and rolling back protections against discrimination in employment and housing; 

• Latinos and Latinas seeking health care, by making it harder to access health care, including abortions, allowing prescription drug costs to skyrocket, and moving people off Medicare to plans that offer lower-quality care;

 • Latinx LGBTQ+ people, by denying their civil and human rights, and restricting their access to gender-affirming care; 

• Latinos participating in our democracy, by making Latino voters suspect and making it harder for eligible Latinos to vote; and

 • Latinos threatened by environmental damage and climate change, by decimating federal agencies enforcing environmental protections and aiding in disaster recovery. 

The poisonous worldview animating this document regards Latinx and other groups who have been traditionally excluded from power—including the poor, immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, various groups based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and women—as “enemies within” whose rights and power must be suppressed. The Project 2025 proposals aim to strip away the checks and balances in our government to replace it with a power structure that answers exclusively to a fortified executive branch and a small cadre of extremists, in direct violation and betrayal of our country’s foundational principles and its most noble ideals.

These ideas stand in direct opposition to the vision that has driven the work of LatinoJustice PRLDEF and other like-minded civil rights organizations. Collectively, we imagine a future where our community members are free, safe, and can access opportunities to improve their well-being and that of their families, friends, and neighbors. LatinoJustice PRLDEF has fought to defend and expand rights in our five decades of existence, and we commit to continue this fight with our brothers and sisters who believe in and deserve equality and justice