The upcoming election has a lot of very drastic implications for all sides of the political spectrum. Whether you are on the left or the right, Republican or Democrat, there are some significant things to know. One of the biggest factors discussed in the political sphere and surrounding the upcoming election is “Project 2025.”

Project 2025 is a plan proposed by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that proposes policy solutions for the Republican party and other conservatives in politics. The proposal is a game plan for the first 180 days of the presidency of the next Republican president.

Project 2025 consists of four “pillars:” a personnel database, a Policy agenda, Training, and a “180-day playbook.” All of these are significant and broken up into further chapters and sections within these in which they go into more detail.

According to project2025.org, “It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration. This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. The project will build on four pillars that will, collectively, pave the way for an effective conservative Administration.”

The most important thing to look at in these four pillars is the playbook, a 900-page book called Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, which is broken down into four sections and 30 chapters.

There are many issues that are discussed at length in this plan, however, some of the more publicly talked about are in “Section 3: The General Welfare.” This section covers their plans for the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice and many more.

Of the items mentioned in this wide array of propositions is a reform of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits which consist of food stamps and other support for lower-income people. According to Project 2025, the heritage foundation wants to re-implement work requirements to be awarded these benefits.

“Under the new rule, in order to waive the work requirement, the state’s unemployment rate had to be above 6 percent for more than 24 months. The rule also defined ‘area’ in such a way that states would be unable to combine non-contiguous counties to maximize their waivers,” reads page 299 of Mandate for Leadership.

This would affect millions of people who are struggling in our increasingly harsh economy where the cost of living is consistently increasing.

“After a dramatic increase in 2022, the average sales price of a new home in the United States dropped slightly in 2023 from 540,000 to 511,100 U.S. dollars. The average sales price of a new home exceeded 400,000 U.S. dollars for the first time in 2021,” according to statista.com.

The housing crisis and decrease in affordable housing are not only leading to a higher poverty rate but also a higher homeless population.

“582,462 people – or about 18 of every 10,000 people in the United States – experienced homelessness across the United States. • Six in 10 people experiencing homelessness were staying in sheltered locations, and four in 10 were un-sheltered, that is, staying in a place not meant for human habitation,” wrote The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in their 2022 annual homelessness assessment report to Congress.

The homelessness crisis is not being helped by the proposal to make being homeless illegal and make it a fine offense or punishable with jail time.

“Some politicians who contend with large encampments in western cities said the ruling brought legal clarity to the policies they could use to clear encampments they viewed as unsafe.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, was among the leaders who had supported officials in Grants Pass, a small city in Oregon, as they sought to defend their policy of fining people $295 for sleeping in public with a blanket or pillow, and jailing repeat offenders for up to 30 days,” wrote US news.

Another item in this section is that the proposal wants to absolve the student loan federalization from 2010 and pass off the obligations of federal student aid to another branch of government. What this means is that all of Biden’s student loan relief programs would be repealed and all of the support for student loans would be pulled back and replaced with a direct responsibility in the Treasury which would be “professionally governed by an agency head and board of trustees appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.”

The plan also includes changes to, the Office for Civil Rights by giving the power of the OCR to the Department of Justice, changes to Title IX to  “define ‘sex’ under Title IX to mean only biological sex recognized at birth; and strengthening protections for faith-based educational institutions, programs, and activities.”

Under “parental rights in education and safeguarding students,” the idea of reinforcing the Civil Rights Act from 1964 is proposed under the guise of “Prohibiting compelled speech.” This idea is then expanded upon to speak primarily about critical race theory.

“When critical race theory is used as part of school activities such as mandatory affinity groups, teacher training programs in which educators are required to confess their privilege, or school assignments in which students must defend the false idea that America is systemically racist, the theory is actively disrupting the values that hold communities together such as equality under the law and colorblindness,” Mandate for Leadership Pg 342-343.

In regards to higher education, something that would affect millions of students would be their plans to eliminate Plus loans, both grad plus and parent plus loans, terminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, and privatize student loans and all lending programs.

This would specifically affect the students both current and future who need loans in the future. Given that private student loans have a much wider and more flexible range for interest rates that can frequently be much higher than that of federal loans.

According to Bankrate.com, the range for federal student loans is usually 6.53% to 9.08% fixed, whereas private loans tend to range from 4.19% to 16.69% fixed and 5.37% to 16.85% variable.

With the current front-runner of the Republican party being former President Donald Trump, it is important to note that he has not technically endorsed this plan, if anything he has distanced himself from it.

“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

However, according to CNN, “at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025.”

So, while the plan has not been explicitly endorsed by Trump, the ties to the plan are not something to take lightly.

This upcoming election will have a major effect on the outcome of the future of the United States and the impact will be recognized and important. Regardless of political stance, it is important to stay educated on the issues being discussed in politics and how they can affect everyone going forward.