By U.S. Congressman James E. Clyburn (SC-06)

In two years, we will celebrate our nation’s 250^th birthday. Our great country has survived a Civil War, two world wars, a Cold War, and a plethora of legislative and judicial fits and starts in our pursuit of a “more perfect Union.” We have endured some devastating Supreme Court decisions, Dred Scott, The Slaughterhouse Cases, and Plessey v Ferguson, to name just a few. We have survived some oppressive presidencies, Andrew Johnson, Rutherford Hayes, and Woodrow Wilson, tantamount among them. Johnson attempted to nullify the impact of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Hayes ended Reconstruction. Wilson’s policies towards federal civil service employment seem to be the foundation upon which a significant portion of Trump’s 2025 Project is built.

But eliminating civil service jobs is not the only devastating and oppressive policy proposed by Trump’s Project 2025. Project 2025 is a detailed plan to update the efforts of Johnson and Hayes to limit Black participation in our society, deny women freedoms over their own bodies, and deny association and nuptial rights to our LBGTQ+ community. Trump’s Project 2025 is a radical agenda that would – among other things – eliminate the Department of Education, zero out federal funding to low-income schools, and end the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program. As Maya Angelou admonished, “When people tell who they are, believe them the first time.” The PSLF Program became effective in the first year of Trump’s Presidency and in his entire four years, only 7,000 public servants benefited from the program. In the three-and-one-half years of the Biden-Harris Administration, nearly 1 million teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public servants have received over $69 billion in student debt relief.

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Trump’s Project 2025 would also eliminate the requirements for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to collect racial data on employment, making it hard to determine where disparities and gaps persist. Further, the plan would end disparate impact liability, making it harder to bring a case of employment discrimination.

Trump’s Project 2025 would remove diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from all federal laws and regulations and shut down DEI offices across the federal government. Project 2025 would make it harder to organize or be represented by a union. In sum, coupled with recent Supreme Court decisions on presidential immunity, the weakening of the Voting Rights Act, and the elimination of affirmative action, Trump’s Project 2025 represents less freedom for a growing majority of Americans and more favor for a privileged few. In short, Trump’s Project 2025 is Jim Crow 2.0.

Although Trump has repeatedly tried to distance himself from Project 2025, it is hard for him to do so when six of his former Cabinet secretaries, four individuals he nominated as ambassadors, his first deputy Chief of Staff, and 140 individuals who worked in his Administration all had a hand in crafting the document. And dozens more were contracted to advise on Project 2025, including his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and longtime advisor Stephen Miller.

I remember when my parents were able to cast their first effective vote. I remember segregated lunch counters and “separate but (un)equal” schools. I do not want my grandchildren to grow up in a country like the one my parents and grandparents experienced.

During the stormiest days of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Paine, an English immigrant and critic of slavery, wrote in his little Pamphlet, The American Crisis No. 1:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Thomas Paine’s words are as apropos today as they were in 1776. Storm clouds are forming, and current conditions are not conducive for fair-weather friends. Trump’s Project 2025 represents the reincarnation of “Jim Crow,” and defeating “Jim Crow 2.0” requires the participation of “soldiers and patriots” who are willing to fight in stormy as well as sunny times.

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