'Sounding alarm for 10 years': Mississippi residents warn of Project 2025 ramifications

Source: The Guardian

Sun 3 Nov 2024 07.00 EST


Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a second Trump presidency, has been used as a warning by Democrats to highlight what would be in store for the country if he were to win the upcoming election. But for some Americans, much of Project 2025 isn’t a distant possible future – it is a current-day reality.

In several states across the country, there are already extreme abortion bans that have led to the deaths of multiple pregnant women and at least one teen; restrictive voting policies that make it difficult for citizens to cast their ballots; defunding of education and censorship of books; and other such policies that have also been proposed by the authors of Project 2025. If the plan is successfully implemented, many policies that are already reshaping some states would become federal laws.

Project 2025 is “a fascist blueprint for governance”, said Lea Campbell, the founding president of the Mississippi Rising Coalition, a grassroots organization that supports lower-income communities. But Mississippi, she said, which has an entrenched conservative majority, is already dealing with many of the proposed policies, specifically the policing and surveilling of marginalized people.

Families across Mississippi are still rebuilding after the largest immigration raid in the country, which happened five years ago. In 2019, on the first day of school, scores of children returned home to find that their parents were part of 680 people who were taken into custody, some of whom were subsequently deported, after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided seven poultry plants. Under Project 2025, mass deportations would be expedited, further tearing families apart.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/03/mississippi-project-2025