Project 2025’s Impact On Employment Policy And Practice Is Controversial But Undeniable

Published in 2023 by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 espouses a number of policy changes throughout the government. An unapologetic conservative political manifesto, it calls for profound limitations on the ways government has been functioning for most of the past century. The clearly stated objective of the manifesto is to reduce the federal government by consolidating power in favor of the executive to better establish conservative policies. Although formally disclaimed by President Trump, he has adopted many of the project’s proposals and appointed many of its authors. 

The 930-page program is ambitious and comprehensive, including virtually every government operation. What follows here will briefly focus on how the project’s proposals have altered policies and practices affecting the workforce, public and private. The larger story, which is too great to be told here, is its stunning success at altering the course of the government. The general principles of (1) reducing the size of the government and (2) eliminating all efforts in every department and agency to promote what it calls “illegal” diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) provide a road map to understanding many of the administration’s actions, from the elimination of USAID to the defunding of the NIH, the CDC, NOAA, and FEMA. Although many of these actions remain controversial, no one can deny Project 2025’s impact. 

Department of Labor/EEOC Attack on DEI 

The breadth of Project 2025’s impact on the DOL and its policies is best understood by recognizing that Jonathan Berry, principal author of the chapter on the DOL and all affiliated employment practices, is now the Solicitor of Labor, the DOL’s chief legal officer. 

Often overlooked among more publicized cabinet departments, such as Treasury and State, the DOL may play a more active role in more people’s lives. From regulating minimum wages and pension benefits, federal contracting and worker classification, health and safety and civil rights, the DOL’s enforcement of critical federal statutes and regulations makes it a factor in the daily lives of tens of millions of businesses and individuals. Solicitor Berry has direct oversight of all these programs, and his political philosophy has influenced employment policy throughout the administration. 

Chief among Berry’s and the project’s successes is the rescission of Executive Order (EO) 11246, which had required federal contractors to take affirmative action to ensure their employment practices were free from prohibited discrimination. Concurrent with this rescission was the effective elimination of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the agency that enforced the antidiscrimination order. In a single stroke, a half-century’s efforts at ensuring that businesses that spent federal dollars didn’t discriminate in employment were discarded. A consequence of the excision of affirmative action for federal contractors was the decimation of corporate HR departments focused, particularly, on those administering diversity initiatives. 

Both of these specific actions were central facets of Project 2025 and were crucial elements of the broader attack on DEI at the root of many of the administration’s policies, far beyond the reach of the DOL or the EEOC. 

The EEOC may well be a harbinger of how an agency functions in the age of the unitary executive, in which all EEOC commissioners are at-will employees. In addition to implementing a number of the project’s goals regarding the “cleansing” of the federal workforce so it reflects the political aims of the presidency, newly confirmed Chair Lucas and Member Panuccio are systematically following the project’s suggestions by reducing due process protections for federal employees throughout the government and refocusing the agency’s enforcement efforts on religious discrimination against Christians, gender discrimination against males, and ethnic discrimination against American workers. The EEOC, along with the Office of Personnel Management, is overseeing the effort to eliminate DEI in hiring the federal workforce and in the use of federal funds. 

Regulation of the Workplace 

In keeping with the suggestions of the project, the DOL is in the process of issuing new regulations on how to classify independent workers and identify joint employment. In the name of reducing regulatory burdens, the proposed regulations will ease the path to independent contractor status and limit the imposition of joint employment on businesses. A number of proposals specifically reducing a union’s right to organize and workers’ rights to protected speech are in the works.

Conclusion 

Numerous commentors have noted the apparently spontaneous and random nature of President Trump and his policies. In many, often inconsequential instances, this may be correct. But closer observers will have discerned a “pattern in the carpet” of his policies. With respect to the workplace and the American economy, that pattern was woven by Project 2025. As many of its proposals are based on executive actions, the outcome of the midterms is likely to have little impact on its influence or the administration’s continued efforts to make Project 2025 a reality. 

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