At the end of June, in clear contradiction to the Founders’ intent,[i] the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the President has “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for . . . all his official acts.”[ii] In other words, the President is above the law, or, as Justice Sotomayor said in her impassioned dissent: “The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
The ruling left many outraged. The people at large do not want a presidency unchecked by law. The ruling becomes even more chilling given the real possibility of Trump – a self-proclaimed admirer of autocrats — returning to the office of the President, and the specter of Project 2025, the blueprint by the Heritage Foundation that lays out the sweeping changes Trump and a faction of conservatives have planned to put in place if Trump is elected.
From an ecofeminist perspective, Project 2025 is a dystopian Handmaid’s Tale and more.[iii] The Project calls for wide-sweeping regulations on reproductive rights of all kinds. It specifically states that abortion is not health care, and calls for such things as requiring abortion providers to report information about abortion and those who seek abortion care to the CDC, audit states for Hyde amendment compliance, block Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, reverse FDA approval of mifepristone, and dismantle the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) that requires treatment of women who are miscarrying. It would be particularly punitive toward minors seeking abortion care, labeling young women who cross state lines seeking abortions victims of “trafficking.” Nor would it allow the US government to promote or fund abortion in international programs. It would invoke the 1873 Comstock Act — that until the 1964 Griswold decision had been used to prevent the distribution of contraceptive information and materials — to prevent the availability of mifepristone through the mail.[iv] In addition, it charges the CDC with promoting the “unsurpassed effectiveness of modern fertility awareness-based methods of family planning”[v] – in other words, the “rhythm method.”
The Project also has broad measures surrounding marriage and families — which it defines as “ . . . comprised of a married mother, father, and their children.” It claims that “the male-female dyad is essential to human nature and every child has a right to a mother and father”[vi] and “married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by men and women who conceived them.”[vii] It lays out its prescription of the appropriate gender roles of these men and women, since in its view “children require and deserve both the love and nurturing of a mother and the play and protection of a father.”[viii] It condemns single parenthood and same-sex marriage and states that the next Health and Human Services secretary “should reverse the Biden Administration’s focus on ‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, . . . and replace those policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.” It also condemns day care as causing “anxiety, depression, and neglect.”[ix]
Regarding trans men and women, the Project would block gender-affirming care, block NIH research on gender identity and transgender health, fund NIH studies on the negative effects of gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers and surgeries, and prevent public education employees or contractors from using the desired pronoun of a student if different from their birth certificate without written permission from the parents or if doing so is contrary to the employee’s religious or moral convictions. Finally, it would prevent trans men and women from serving in the military, arguing that “gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service.”[x]
The Project would eliminate the Department of Education which enforces Title IX of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits sex discrimination in education. In addition, it would invoke Trump era Title IX sexual harassment and assault standards which put restrictions on survivors’ ability to report assaults. It would also ban the inclusion in education of what it considers “critical race theory,”(CRT) which actually means accurate factual history and civic education, treating any participation in conveying “CRT” or “DEI,” without objecting on a constitutional or moral ground, as “grounds for termination of employment.”[xi]
Project 2025 interweaves the oppressive policies toward women, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC populations and extends them in kind to oppression toward the earth. The Project would weaken environmental justice programs, eliminate the NOAA weather service, end climate-change research, weaken PFAS regulations, promote the oil and gas industries, and open public lands to drilling. It regards climate change as merely a fear tactic of the Left and would strip the government of climate change regulations and incentives for renewable energy.
To conclude, I will let the Project speak for itself. In the foreword to the Project the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin D. Roberts, states: “The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation and piece of legislation that exists.”[xii]
All of this has left me, and so many I know, in a state of mourning, of fear for the future –not just of our country and future generations, but the planet itself.
. . . and then everything changed. See Part Two in the next page.
Notes
[i] In Federalist Paper #69, Alexander Hamilton addressed the issue of presidential immunity, stating clearly that once out of office, the President “would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.”
[ii] Trump v. United States, CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATESCOURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT No. 23-939 (2024).
[iii] For more detail on Project 2025 see: A guide to Project 2025, the extreme right-wing agenda for the next Republican administration | Media Matters for America; The Paranoid and Unhinged Rhetoric of Project 2025 – Ms. Magazine (msmagazine.com); The 22 Scariest Lines We Found in Project 2025’s 900-Page ‘Mandate for Leadership’ – Ms. Magazine (msmagazine.com); and Project 2025: The Right’s Dystopian Plan to Dismantle Civil Rights and What It Means for Women – Ms. Magazine (msmagazine.com)
[iv] The 1873 Comstock Law outlaws the distribution, sale, mailing, and possession of “obscene” materials. It was used to prevent the distribution of contraceptive information and materials in the early part of the 20th century. It was not until Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 that married women received the right to the use of contraception under rights of privacy – the same rights that fell in the Dobbs decision. Single women had to wait until 1972 to receive these same rights with the Eisenstadt v. Baird ruling.
[v] Project 2025, 455.
[vi] Ibid., 451 & 461.
[vii] Ibid., 489.
[viii] Ibid.,481.
[ix] Ibid.,486.
[x] Ibid., 104.
[xi] Ibid., 708.
[xii] Ibid., 4.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Ann Bartlett, Ph.D., is an educator, author, activist, and spiritual companion. She is Professor Emerita of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, where she helped co-found the Women’s Studies program in the early 80s. She taught courses ranging from feminist and political thought to religion and spirituality; ecofeminism; nonviolence, war and peace; and women and law. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including Journey of the Heart: Spiritual Insights on the Road to a Transplant; Rebellious Feminism: Camus’s Ethic of Rebellion and Feminist Thought; and Making Waves: Grassroots Feminism in Duluth and Superior. She is trained in both Somatic Experiencing® and Indigenous Focusing-Oriented trauma therapy, and offers these healing modalities through her spiritual direction practice. She has been active in feminist, peace and justice, indigenous rights, and climate justice movements and has been a committed advocate for the water protectors. You can find more about her work and writing at her personal website, Beth Bartlett.
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