October 13, 2024

Public sector unions would be severely weakened and possibly banned under Project 2025, the radical Republican-created to-do list for Donald Trump if he is elected president.

Public higher education would be irrevocably harmed if Project 2025 becomes reality—which is all but certain to happen if Trump wins Nov. 5.

“The radical changes it proposes would reverse decades of civil rights protections and widen the access gap, making a college education more inequitable and unaffordable,” the report said. “This extremist policy proposal is being used as a blueprint for undermining higher education’s role as a bulwark of democracy.”

According to a study by the American Federation of Teachers, titled “Project 2025 and Its Potential Impact on Higher Education,” Project 2025 would let states ban labor unions altogether. It would allow for loopholes so employers could end public employee unions—like UUP—in the middle of their contracts, let employers retaliate against union organizers, ignore the federal minimum wage and allow overtime protections to be done away with.

If enacted, Project 2025 would:

• Erode academic freedom and institutional autonomy by an overreach of governmental intrusion into program and curriculum;
• Eradicate diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives while permitting attacks on civil rights for all current protected classes; and
• Diminish academic workers’ rights and union protections.

Also, the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, a bipartisan initiative created in 2007, would be terminated under the plan. PSLF is meant to attract highly qualified workers to the public sector by allowing workers’ student loans to be forgiven after 10 years of making payments.

UUP members, through UUP loan forgiveness clinics created and run by statewide Secretary-Treasurer Jeri O’Bryan-Losee, have had more than $13 million in student loans forgiven.

Project 2025 is a 900-page plan crafted by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank. The sweeping, radical plan calls for mass deportations, blocking abortion access, severely limiting voting access and ending climate change protections, among other jarring changes.

Trump has publicly endorsed many of the initiatives listed out in Project 2025, though he has recently tried to distance himself from the plan. Read the report HERE.