San Diego professors weigh in on Project 2025

it's time for midday edition on kpbs project 2025 has entered the political news cycle

so on today's show we're talking about what it is and how it could impact san diego

i'm jade hindman with conversations that keep you informed inspired and make you think

we'll get analysis from political scientist carl luna in some ways this is an attempt to

roll back our ideological discussion not just to the 1960s or 70s but pre-1950s even 1930s

plus we'll dive into how this plan could impact immigration and reproductive rights

that's ahead on midday edition

you

just months out from the presidential election it's safe to say there's a lot at stake

while both major parties have individual stances on policies one conservative think tank the

heritage foundation joined forces with other organizations to create a playbook of actions

they intend to roll out within the first 180 days of

the presidential election

you

A second trump administration it's a 922 page document known as project 2025 project 2025 is technically tied to no campaign the trump fans ticket has tried to distance themselves from it which has been difficult mainly because a reported 140 people involved with the project also worked under the trump administration so what's included in this project and who's involved we dive into that now with carl luna professor of political science

at mesa college

he's also a visiting professor at usd and the director of their institute of civil civic engagement

professor luna you wear a lot of hats welcome back to the show

nice to be back jade

so to start off give us a big picture overview of what project 2025 is

think of project 2025 as a

fairly conservative wish list

for all the things you would like santa to bring after donald trump wins the 2020 election and

for that it gets inaugurated in january

as you said it's a nine hundred page document it's got everything on every policy area from the environment lgbtq to foreign policy

it's one of those things that really more than anything sets a tone of government that you'd like to see because there's no way the ministrations going to be able to affect all the different things on that wish list

so who exactly created it

heritage foundation has been issuing these are mandates for leadership since the late nineteen seventies paul wehrich was a

uh... very conservative uh... religious conservative and uh... political from the as seventy-two form to the heritage foundation

to basically provide talking points to counter what they saw as liberal dominance of the discussion washington

their first real mandate was for ronald reagan in nineteen eighty and like ronald reagan but do he never read the thing

some of the people from a word is administration but reagan then govern like reagan would do but every presidency

the heritage foundation is issued

these mandates for leadership this is possible

possibly the most ambitious they've ever issued, and certainly the most conservative.

And we should mention KPBS reached out to the Heritage Foundation for comment and did not

receive a response by our deadline. They've been around for 51 years. Tell me about how

this playbook came to be before the document was made public in 2023.

One of the things that a number of conservative activists and members of the first Trump

administration wanted to avoid, should he be reelected, was a bit of the chaos that ensued

when Donald Trump came to Washington in 2017. He did not have a lot of people that he knew,

and he kind of governed the way he ran his Trump enterprises from the top of the Resolute Desk.

And it did not allow a lot of the conservative agenda to be advanced, because until the

president has pushed it off to the staffers, things don't really work well down the line.

So starting really right in the first Trump administration, people in and out of

his Trump administration were not really aware of the fact that he was going to be reelected.

His administration were writing policy papers and position papers about what they believed a

conservative administration should do. So their goal was to have a 900-page roadmap on how to

staff his administration and simply get moving to adopt their policies as quickly as they could.

Before we get into some of those policies, I'm curious your opinion on this. When you

look at the roadmap, how far down that map do you think we are so far?

Oh, the map itself. I mean, what they're laying out,

it is very granular level policies. These are things that can be conducted at the

undersecretary, deputy undersecretary level. I think the most important points from this

roadmap, though, is the overall bureaucracy itself. They're pushing to get some tens of

thousands of positions in the bureaucracy reclassified from civil service to at-will

hires to allow them to then stock the bureaucracy with a lot of conservative appointees kind of on

the order of staffing the federal judiciary that was being done under the first Trump administration.

So while you have the wish list, they have a plan of action to be sure that if this

administration doesn't accomplish it, maybe the next administration will.

So we're already a ways down the road.

Yeah, at least they believe they are in terms of having all this on paper. Now,

here's the reality. First off, presidents are lucky to get three big things done

in their administration, period, in four years. So maybe a few of the big ticket items,

they'll be adopted. But secondly, again, Donald Trump has distanced himself from this because

when he says he doesn't know anything about it, I will bet you that is true. He does not operate

at that level of things. He operates in his own particular bubble of what he thinks is important.

The hope of the Heritage Foundation mandate for leadership is you get the right people in,

they will then be able to, whether the president's cognizant of it or not,

start pushing policies through the bureaucracy, and then he'll sign off on them when they get done.

I don't know how successful that would be, but they're trying to be

much more attuned to this president than they were the first time around.

Well, there are four pillars identified in this document. What can you tell us about each of them?

Well, each of the pillars addresses a different broad area of policy, but then it dwells down

into the micro. You have areas particularly looking at God and the family, that they want

to restore a traditional values system for American society. And that would extend into

every institution, the federal government, Department of Education, should it not be

abolished. From there to,

funding that goes to the public schools, looking at how you do diversity and equity programs

in government and getting rid of those and rooting those out, branch and parcel.

Essentially, a foreign policy, you'd look at having a Reagan-esque foreign policy, they say,

but much more of a reactionary foreign policy. We're going to leave the world alone and let

the world do what it will unless it's in the United States' immediate interest to intervene.

Environment, of course, rolling back everything that has to do with global warming initiatives,

with solar power.

Alternative energies. Pick an area and it fits under one of the four pillars.

So, if you could, talk about the connection in these pillars between politics, religion,

and government.

Well, when you take a look at the document, its opening discussion is about cultural Marxism.

It says the left is trying to affect at all levels cultural Marxism to destroy traditional

America values. That's something that even in the 70s, coming off the John Birch Society

of the 50s and 60s, the Heritage Foundation did.

They had policy divisions. They had some questions about who could better represent America,

but it's not this attacking the other side as being Marxist. Now, that whole cultural Marxism

thing itself is a dog whistle because until the last five, 10 years, this is the sort of thing

you found on the very far right of politics here and in Europe. And now it's become a rallying cry

around the world that the left is not just has dumb policies. They want to destroy everything

America stands for. And that's why when I look at the book, I'm not just talking about the left,

and I say the most important thing this document does is set out a theme of government, a governing

philosophy. That is a different governing philosophy than you saw under either the Bushes

or certainly under Ronald Reagan. So that's the area that is very different in terms of our moment

in politics. And I got to say, all this discussion on the left and the right, that the right is

fascist, the left are communists. If the left were really Marxist, they'd be arresting all these

people already and putting them into gulags. Just like if the right were fascist, they'd be arresting

people.

So it'd be nice that they cool the rhetoric, but they're actually operating like this is their

rhetoric. And it ties into a growing sense of Christian nationalism, that there's one right

view of what America is. They're clued into it. They're getting almost a divine fiat to do what

they want. And that's where I can start to get more problematic, if not dangerous, that they

get to actually start to rule. They're the real Americans and everybody else who doesn't agree

with them isn't. Would you characterize it as more than Christian nationalism? Is it white nationalism?

You get,

a strong element of that is simply if you look at the people that are involved, because once you get

into the saying, we're a Christian nation, then you get into the white Christian nation, and then

you run into the whole problems of Christianity in America's white Christianity's problematic

relationship with things like civil rights, with slavery, all through our history. In some ways,

this is an attempt to roll back our ideological discussion, not just to the 1960s or 70s,

but pre-1950s, even 1930s. A lot of the rhetoric

that you find in this document comes out of things that you would have been very traditionally reading

in John Birch Society pamphlets back in the 50s and 60s. Somehow this has become more mainstream

with conservatives. So it does have, if you get into what they would remove from government,

you make a government a race neutral, as they would say. The question is, what about all that

weight on the scales, which were working against people of color in the past? How will this affect

people today? And, you know, defenses disappear.

Civil rights get rolled back, and you get back to where you were 20, 30, 40 years ago.

So one of the pillars is to dismantle the administrative state. As a professor who

studies U.S. political history, what are your thoughts on that pillar? What does that mean?

The administrative state, as they call it, is the rise of a professional civil service from

the 19th century onwards. The simple fact is the country got a lot bigger with a lot more moving

parts, a lot more places where conflict could arise.

In terms of policy, any ended up needing more government to adjudicate those concerns. You had

to get into industry, communications, telecommunications, transportation. And there's

two basic models you can use for who's going to make these calls in government. The first is the

old patronage system, spoil system that we had up until the late 19th century, where whoever becomes

president gets to appoint their friends and supporters in whatever position of government

they want. And loyalty is the key test in ideological purity to who gets a position in

government. And that's the key test in ideological purity to who gets a position in government.

And that's the key test in ideological purity to who gets a position in government. And that's the key test in

ideological purity to who gets a position in government. Then you discover that if you try to

run the Federal Aviation Administration like that, planes start to fall out of the air. If you try to

run the Department of Transportation like that, highway bridges collapse. So that was a model

most of the rational world has moved away from. The only place you really find it now are in

ideological states, kind of like illiberal states, authoritarian states, where it's not the efficiency

of government that matters. It's the defense of the people who make the decisions in government.

It's the defense of the people who make the decisions in government. It's support for the leader that

matters. So this is a really odd notion to deconstruct. But even more so, possibly the most

important aspect of this plan is the idea to take 50,000 to 60,000 federal workers, make them

presidential appointments. And even if a future president changes them back, they will then have

four years to hire people into the bureaucracy who will be civil service protected, who will

reflect their ideology. It's a real effort to not get rid of the administrative state, but to make

it work the way they want it to. Well, more broadly in the Republican Party, can you tell us how

the GOP has responded to this project? There is no GOP outside of Donald Trump. I mean, the party

really is dominated. The national party has family members on the executive committee.

Donald Trump basically says what to do, and then they try to do it. So for the party itself, I think

the party just waits to see what happens if he wins re-election and then who he appoints into office.

Again, there really doesn't seem to be much of an independent official Republican Party outside of

Trump. That leaves everybody else scrambling for positions of power in this future administration.

Well, what are some takeaways every day San Diegans and Americans should know about Project

2025 and its potential impact on the 2024 presidential election?

Its impact on the 2024 election, Jade, is not its most consequential aspect. I think what's

most important is the whole attitude toward governance and kind of a presumptive

ness that their side is so right they should be able to do what they want. I mean, I tie Project

2025 into the incident at Arlington Cemetery, where there is Donald Trump, and he's brought in

for the graveside, and then voters are taken for a campaign commercial in violation of the rules.

And when a woman employee tries to explain to them that at Arlington you're not allowed to do that,

she was physically accosted. And then afterwards, the campaign called her

mentally incompetent, said she was having a mental incident.

To me, that's thuggery. And lurking beneath this is a sense of political thuggery that

we get to do what we want, and if you don't like it, we're going to push you out of the way.

And President Trump tends to distance himself from that after it happens,

but no one's ever held accountable for it. So that's the thing to keep in mind when you look

at the 2024 election. The consequence for who will actually be governing afterwards isn't just

limited to who the candidates are. Right. Well, lastly, before you go, I mean,

you've been studying politics as an academic,

discipline for a really long time. We've had you on the show many times.

Have you seen anything like Project 2025 before? And what's your thought on it?

Like I said, James, there's always think tanks that are out there generating things on the

democratic side. You've got progressive institutes that have their laundry list

of what they see accomplished. But this is probably the most detailed effort to try to

link not only the policy, but every one of those policies probably has one or two people identified

who, if they were put into office.

would try to work on this below the presidential level to get it moved through the bureaucracy.

So I think they will attempt to get things done if they are elected. And this sense of the

demonization of the Democrats as Marxists, you get that at levels way below the presidency in

campaigns. But even Ronald Reagan didn't go that far when he talked. Barry Goldwater wouldn't go

that far when he talked. Richard Nixon certainly didn't. It's, again, a very different sense of

what's at stake in the election and the rights that it entails to one side to do what they think

is right, no matter the consequences, to change things while they have a window to do it. And

that's sort of almost a desperation in politics. I'm not used to it. Usually, if you have the

election, if you lose, guess what? There's another one in four years. We'll try again and learn

something from why we lost. I've been speaking with Carl Luna, professor of political science

at Mesa College. He's also a visiting professor at USD and the director for the Institute of

Civil-Civic Engagement. Thank you so much, Carl. It's always great to have you on.

Thank you, Jade. Great talking with you.

Coming up, the impact of Project 2025 on immigration.

Project 2025 would effectively end family-based immigration and would also highly restrict

humanitarian immigration.

Hear more.

When KPBS Midday Edition returns.

To learn more, visit kp.org forward slash San Diego.

You're listening to KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. As you just heard,

Project 2025 covers a broad range of issues, immigration and border policy being one of them.

Here to break down current U.S. immigration policies and the impact Project 2025 could have

is Tom Wong. He's a political science professor at UC San Diego and director of the U.S. Immigration

Policy Center. Professor Wong, welcome. Thanks for having me back.

So glad to have you here.

So let's get into it. I mean, what does Project 2025 say about immigration policy?

Project 2025 would redo immigration policy as we know it in the United States. So one of the

first things to think about when it comes to Project 2025 is the question of immigration

itself. So when we think about immigration, we can think about who we let in, how many,

and under what conditions.

Project 2025 would do away with one of the pillars of our legal admissions policies.

So when we think about legal admissions, we're thinking about family-based immigration,

as well as employment-based immigration and humanitarian immigration. Project 2025 would

effectively end family-based immigration to the United States. This is a dramatic shift. Even

during our most restrictive,

eras in terms of immigration policy, we still carved out space for immediate family members

of those who we admitted into the country for immigrant visas. But Project 2025 would do away

with the entire system of family-based immigration to the United States. So if you have a family

relationship, whether it be an immediate family member or another relative, there are a lot of

other things that you can do.

There are certain avenues that you have to potentially enter the United States. The political right often refers to family-based

immigration as so-called chain migration. You can think about an image of one person turning into 10 people turning into 100 people. That is

an inaccurate depiction of how family-based immigration to the United States works because there are only certain family relationships

that allow for

immigrant visas. When it comes to family-based immigration, we're talking mostly about immediate

family members, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. But Project 2025 would effectively end

family-based immigration and would also highly restrict humanitarian immigration.

So when it comes to humanitarian immigration, there are temporary visas. For example, we provide

something called temporary protected status to countries that are undergoing turmoil, whether

it be political turmoil like coups in other countries or countries affected by natural

disasters. There are several countries that we have provided temporary protected status for,

and Project 2025 would do away with TPS altogether. When it comes to humanitarian immigration,

we also have refugee admissions.

And Project 2025 would significantly decrease the number of refugees admitted to the country

annually.

So what does it say about people who are undocumented specifically?

So Project 2025 would also redo how interior immigration enforcement works in the United

States. And this will have significant implications for those who are undocumented.

So currently at the border, there's a project that we're working on that's going to be

a process called expedited removal. This leads to the deportation of those who arrive at the

southern border without judicial review. So there is no a day before an immigration judge before

somebody is deported. What Project 2025 wants to do is expand expedited removal to the interior of

the United States so that every undocumented immigrant could effectively be summarily

deported from the United States. And that's going to be a process called expedited removal.

This is part of a ramped up enforcement effort that also does away with what we refer to as

enforcement priorities. Because of finite budgets, immigration and customs enforcement

often has to be selective in terms of who it targets for immigration enforcement.

Under the Obama administration, there were enforcement priorities. For example,

those who had criminal records were priorities for immigration enforcement. But that means those

without criminal records and other characteristics such as having U.S. citizen children or having

lived in the U.S. for decades or longer were not priorities for immigration enforcement.

Project 2025 would also do away with what we call the sensitive locations memo.

So the department of Homeland Security often

issues a memo to immigration and customs enforcement saying that

certain locations

such as schools and churches and other places of worship would be exempt from immigration enforcement

actions. But Project 2025 would do away with the sensitive locations memo.

但 Мы đã说 Investment on Immigration for 2025

themselves from Project 2025. But there is overlap between the project and Trump's rhetoric regarding

immigration. Tell us about the commonalities here and the differences.

Yeah, when it comes to the commonalities, Trump is campaigning on one of the sort of largest

deportation operations that the country has ever seen in order to achieve that the Trump

administration would have to do a lot of what Project 2025 recommends. For example, the expanded

use of expedited removal would be one mechanism that the Trump administration could use to

deport large numbers of undocumented immigrants. In terms of the overlap, the Trump campaign has

also talked about expanded immigration detention and detention camps. Project 2025 calls for

the expansion of the immigration detention industrial complex in the United States.

So when we think about how one would actually go about in terms of implementing the largest

deportation operation in the history of the United States, then the Trump team would have to adopt

a lot of Project 2025's recommendations in terms of redoing how immigration enforcement in the

United States would be implemented. And so I think that's one of the things that we need to

think about in terms of how the United States works, as well as expanding immigration detention capacity.

On the other side of all this, you have proponents who say Project 2025 would secure

the borders. Do you agree with that characterization? What do you think is met when they say secure?

Project 2025 envisions a secure border as one that is highly militarized.

So what we see in Project 2025 is authorization of the military to

essentially,

patrol our southern border. When we think about different security metrics at the southern border,

we can actually see that the border is quite secure. Even when there are record numbers of

people, mostly asylum seekers, who are approaching the southern border,

we don't have the kind of open or porous border that some on the political right,

like to talk about when trying to attract votes. When we think about different metrics

at the southern border, I think Project 2025 wants to use the military to effectively end

entry at the southern border as a means to secure the southern border. That would do significant

harm, for example, to the ability of asylum seekers who are seeking protection from persecution from

entering the country. So whereas Project 2025 envisions a secure border as one that is closed

off, others see a secure border as one that is well managed, so that things like

contraband are effectively interdicted, unauthorized immigration is lessened,

but we still have legal avenues for people seeking protection from persecution from entering the country.

There can be a lot of fear when you look at this. How are communities

who could be impacted by this responding? I think Project 2025, coupled with the Trump

campaign's call for mass deportations, is having a chilling effect on undocumented immigrants

and their families. When it comes to the mass deportation plans, for example,

we haven't heard rhetoric as harsh as this in

And so if you are an undocumented family thinking about how to live and plan your future in the context of political rhetoric that is effectively demonizing you and calling for your arrest and subsequent deportation, then one can imagine how very divisive that is.

We need to remember that many undocumented immigrants are residents who have lived in the U.S. for decades and have dug deep roots here.

And our broken immigration system is one that does not provide these individuals with an opportunity to earn a path to citizenship.

I think what Project 2025 and the Trump campaign have shown is that on the issue of immigration, politically at least,

conversations about a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants have soured and they're no longer scoring the political points that they used to.

So even the Harris campaign right now, whenever it mentions incorporating undocumented immigrants, whether it be through an earned path to citizenship or by other means,

says in its same breath that we need to clamp down at the border.

The Harris campaign is trying to sort of strike a balance between those individuals who support the Trump style approach to immigration, being that heavy handed enforcement first approach with a sort of both and approach where we can do a path to citizenship while also, quote unquote, securing our border.

But I think that is a difficult line to strike, especially.

And when the rhetoric on one side of the political aisle is, again, calling for the mass deportation and roundup of millions of undocumented immigrants, something that we have never seen in this country's history.

Critics of Project 2025 have said this document is blatantly racist and exclusionary.

As someone who's worked in policy spaces to mitigate xenophobia, what do you do with these proposed sweeping policies?

Well, I think what Project 2025 would do in terms of racial and ethnic politics is target mostly people of color to the benefit of mostly future white immigrants to the United States.

I think the racial and ethnic contours of Project 2025 are quite clear.

I think that people who describe Project 2025.

2025 as explicitly and blatantly racist are correct, especially when it comes to the immigration related proposals that we see in Project 2025.

I think what we do is fight back and being an election year, one way that people can fight back, especially those who see value in diversity and inclusion, is by voting.

I've been speaking with Tom Wong.

I'm a political science professor at UC San Diego.

He's also the director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center.

Professor Wong, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

Still ahead, a look at how Project 2025 could impact family planning and privacy.

To me, this is even more expansive than what I think people realize.

Because it's really going into our private lives, basically determining who we can marry, who we can't marry, how we can identify.

KPBS Midday Edition returns after the break.

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For more than 50 years, San Diegans have been talking about this topic and I'm very excited to be here with them.

I'm a political science professor at UC San Diego.

I'm a doctor, and I've been working with workers for over 20 years.

I've been working with women in the health division for over 20 years.

And I've been working with women in the health division for over 20 years.

entrusted their health care to us. Our care and coverage connect to provide medical care tailored

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make lives better. To learn more, visit kp.org forward slash San Diego. You're listening to KPBS

Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. Two years out from the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the United States

is still grappling with the legalities around abortion and its restrictions. While some states

are doubling down on abortion protections, others are ramping up on bans,

Project 2025 doesn't outline a nationwide ban, but it would curtail abortion access.

Across the country, reproductive rights activists are pushing back. Here to help us understand the

history of the reproductive rights movement and current context of Project 2025 is Kimala Price.

She's a professor and chair of women's studies at San Diego State University. She's also a

co-director of the Bread and Roses Center for Feminist Research and Activism

at SDSU. She's also a co-director of the Bread and Roses Center for Feminist Research and Activism

at SDSU. She's also a co-director of the Bread and Roses Center for Feminist Research and Activism at SDSU.

Professor Price, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

So glad to have you here. So Project 2025 has been gaining more coverage and visibility

regarding its ties to the Republican ticket. What are your initial thoughts and reflections

on the project? Well, as someone who's been working on these issues for a long time,

actually been for at least 30 years in terms of reproductive rights and reproductive justice

issues. In some ways, I wasn't surprised because if you've been paying attention,

what's been going on for the last 40 plus years, particularly after Roe v. Wade was decided back in

1973, the anti-abortion movement, which is pretty much comprised of the Catholic Church, Protestant

evangelicals and political conservatives, they have slowly been working at chipping away at

reproductive rights very slowly, you know, sort of starting out in terms of what kinds of

restrictions they could place on abortion at the state level to kind of test the boundaries of Roe v.

Wade. Also, in terms of this political strategy of getting people who are anti-abortion elected,

not only in the congressional level, but also at the state levels and local levels,

as well as in the presidency, ensuring that conservative justices get appointed throughout

the court system, throughout the federal court system and making this all the way up to the U.S.

Supreme Court, so that things were already set in place. So by the time the Dobbs decision came

in 2022,

all the elements were in place to kind of shift. And we saw that shift happening with the overturn

of Roe. And now what we're seeing is them sort of going full force with their, basically their

playbook. And again, just running with it in terms of pushing even more restrictions, even trying to

get more states to either restrict it or ban it outright. They also oppose contraceptives as well.

And in some cases would either have like to put,

restrictions on contraceptives or have certain contraceptives banned outright.

But also if you think of about reproductive rights and reproductive justice more broadly,

it's not just about access to abortion or contraceptives. It's also about in terms of

how we live our lives in terms of our bodily integrity and our autonomy, but also in terms of

the ways in which we form relationships and families. Because if you take a reproductive

justice framework, which is different from the reproductive justice framework, which is different from the reproductive justice framework,

which is different from reproductive rights is not only about the right

not to have children, but it's also the right to have children. the right to

parent those children in safe and sustainable communities, as well as protecting one's

bodily integrity and autonomy. And that includes

forming families and forming families in any ways that's necessary for you, whether it is using IDF and other reproductive technologies,

whether it is through adoption, whether it is marrying whom you wanna marry, regardless of what their

races, regardless of what their gender identity is, and so forth. So to me, this is even more

expansive than what I think people realize, because it's really going into our private lives,

basically determining who we can marry, who we can't marry, how we can identify in terms of our

sexual identity, in terms of our gender identity. But it also as well ignores the special conditions

or special circumstances or other things, ways in which people of color, in which low-income people,

which immigrants face when it comes to their reproductive rights, because the history isn't

in terms of who gets regulated and who doesn't get regulated and how they get regulated

depends upon your race, as well as your immigrant status, as well as your social and economic class.

Yeah. Well, do you see the attacks on reproductive rights as being a repeat of history in this

document?

Yes.

Yeah. I think, you know, they're trying to go back to this imagined perfect world before all

the radicals and the liberals and feminists and queer folks made things bad, and that our society

is on this moral decline, and that they have to sort of regain that, and sort of blaming all of

the social movements that happened in the 60s and the 70s, saying the reason why things are as bad

as we say that they are is because we've gone too far to the left. We've become way more permissive

than we should have, and that we should go back to our good old-fashioned values of things were so

much better in the U.S. when we had the nuclear family, when we had a mother and a father in the

household. You had a father who went out to work and who was the main breadwinner, and you had

the mother who stayed at home and took care of the kids. And that's how things should be. That's how

that's the foundations of our society. That's what has made us great as Americans, right? But

it's a very skewed way of looking at our past because that wasn't everybody's reality, you know,

in this, you know, imagined past or reimagined past that they sort of were thinking about.

That many folks did not have, you know, didn't have the right to exercise many of their rights.

They couldn't write. They couldn't vote.

There's a lot of voter, you know, suppression in terms of African-Americans, particularly in the

South, right? We know that. We know that women didn't have a lot of rights when it came to

the workplace. So what I see when I read this document is that women, and particularly white

women, need to go, they need to leave the workplace. They need to go back home and take care of their

kids. And at the flip side, saying all these other folks, whether we're talking about people of color,

low-income people,

immigrants, they're having too many babies and they're relying on a system to support them. We

need to stop that. And so that's kind of what I'm sort of seeing playing itself out. So I think it's

cyclical. I think whenever people sort of feel threatened, that they're losing power, that

they're losing their social status. And so it's a way of kind of regaining that control.

And Project 2025's efforts also intend to abolish the Gender Policy Council and eliminate central

promotion of abortion.

And comprehensive sexuality education. What impact do you think this might have on our health care and

educational system?

I just have to say, I just find it disheartening that we have a certain segment of our society who

refuses to see the humanity in other people. So what I'm feeling like is sort of the forcing of

a particular religious belief on people and that we all have to adhere to that specific religious

belief.

Even though we might have religious beliefs or moral beliefs that are counter to that.

That means a change in the curriculum that in terms of sexuality education and all the work

that's been put into making sure that it's comprehensive. A lot of that might be gutted

to the point where we only are talking about do not have sex until you get married.

Absence or fertility awareness methods is the only proper contraceptives, quote unquote,

that you can have.

That's the only thing that we can possibly use. But also, in many ways, what they're doing in terms of their policies is also the erasure of queer and trans people out of public life, which means if they don't exist, you don't have to worry about making sure that they have equal rights or they're treated equitably because they, quote unquote, don't exist.

Well, in California, reproductive rights like the right to an abortion, it's protected under law. Is that enough, though?

You think to safeguard those rights locally if Project 2025 is implemented?

Right now, we're fine as long as we have laws in place that protect, you know, Californians. Right.

My fear is that what will happen at the federal level and a lot of it depends on the elections and who is going to occupy not only the presidency, but also Congress.

What's the congressional makeup is? Because I know even though I know in Project 2025, they said, oh,

we're not proposing anything at the federal level or any national laws or whatever.

But it's disingenuous to say that this is not something that they have. They haven't thought about. Right.

They have thought about this for the last 20 years of passing a law, a national law, a federal law that will outlaw abortion throughout the United States.

And so even taking that out of the hands of the states. Right.

Or in some cases, I know under George W. Bush's administration, there was talk of actually putting an amendment.

In the Constitution to ban abortion.

But even if they don't go that route, just reading Project 2025, there's always political pressure that may be placed on states, particularly the states that they that they call, quote unquote, abortion sanctuary states that they might threaten withholding federal funding from those states.

California being one of them. That's my worry.

Yeah. Well, given all of that, I'm just curious, how is the Harris-Walls campaign?

Handling conversations about reproductive rights?

What I can say is that reproductive rights will be much better protected if this ticket is actually elected into office than if the opposition is.

And I know just looking at sort of Harris's record in terms of like reproductive rights, reproductive justice, she generally has been very supportive of those rights. Right.

And also recognizing other things that are important, like maternal health issues.

And particularly when we're talking about Black women and pregnancy outcomes.

When she was in the Senate, she introduced bills to provide programming to sort of look at and to find ways in which to support Black folks in terms of pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes.

Because we know Black women, Black people in general have the highest rates of death when it comes to pregnancy related issues, that they're more likely to die from pregnancy than their white counterparts, for example.

And the same with infant health, that Black infants are the most likely to die within the first year of their lives than their counterparts.

So I think they have an understanding of how important it is to protect abortion rights, but also recognizing that abortion is a part of health care.

If we're talking about preserving people's health and well-being, you have to have abortion services have to be available because people need access to abortion service forever.

And that's a variety of reasons.

Well, the program that you mentioned that addresses the infant and maternal mortality rate among Black women and Black babies, would a program like that even be legal under Project 2025?

How might that impact reproductive rights?

And that's a good question.

I'm not so sure.

Because particularly when I read the part about maternal and child health in Project 2025, there was no mention of race.

Right.

There's no mention of, there's a mention of, yes, we have an issue of like, maybe our cesarean section rates are too high.

And we know, we have an idea that, you know, there might be an issue with maternal death, but it doesn't break it down in terms of the racial differences or the class differences.

It's just a blanket statement of maybe we need to do something about it, but they don't have anything comprehensive in terms of how do you address something like that.

It's basically, they're saying, if we just holler,

hire more doulas, then the issue will go away.

That's it.

If you refuse to see that there are, that racism and sexism are part of what people are dealing with, then you're not going to acknowledge the fact that maybe racism and sexism might be an issue when it comes to these high pregnancy-related deaths amongst Black women or high rates of Black infant mortality.

You're just not going to recognize it.

Well, before we go, is there anything else that you'd like to add or say to this conversation that I may have missed?

I just want to reiterate.

I just want to reiterate to folks that we shouldn't be sleeping on this election.

I'm sure a lot of people who are listening to this probably know this, but I just want to reiterate it because this is not just about a difference of opinion.

This is about fundamentally changing who we are and basically fundamentally changing our system because when you're thinking about what they're doing is, it's moving to a more authoritarian way of being, of government, concentrating power only in a few, you know, a select group of people.

But it's also in terms of an overreach into our personal lives that we haven't seen in a long time.

And if you think that you are not affected by it, you are affected by it because what is outlined in Project 2025, to me, is just the beginning of what the possibilities could be in terms of what a Republican Trump presidency would look like.

I've been speaking with Kimala Price, professor and chair of women's studies at San Diego.

State University.

She's also a co-director of the Bread and Roses Center for Feminist Research and Activism at SDSU.

Professor Price, thanks for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks.

That's our show for today.

If you missed anything, you can download KPBS Midday Edition on all podcast apps.

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On San Diego issues.

Join us again tomorrow to find out what's happening on the arts and culture scene in San Diego.

I'm Jade Hindman.

Thanks for listening.