Project 2025, a manifesto created by the conservative organization The Heritage Foundation is a playbook of likely actions to be taken within the first 180 days in office if Donald Trump is elected (despite his protestations about having any involvement). Although the sweeping proposal touches on everything from critical race theory to abortion bans, one of the most concerning parts of the plan is how it could affect the future of work for millennials of color.
Some of the agenda focuses on proposed changes to workplace policies that could adversely affect workers’ pay, security, and right to organize against grievances.
For instance, Project 2025 outlines a concerted slashing to overtime pay for workers’ leaving with smaller take home pay. Data shows millennials are still the hardest working generation in comparison to Gen X and Gen Z, the two age groups millennials are sandwiched between.
The plan also proposed eliminating the Biden administration-led rule that raised the salary threshold to $58,656 and expanded the protection to 4.3 million more workers. Project 2025 reads like it is aiming to help business owners and investors save money over time by skimping on employee protections, but the plan could make way for larger financial disasters.
Project 2025 includes details that rolls back post-crisis policies that protect consumers, investors, and the stability of financial markets by limiting regulators’ ability to step in during periods of volatility. This includes putting a stranglehold on the Federal Reserve’s “lender-of-last-resort” function in which failing banks are able to borrow emergency funds to stay solvent.
An example of this can be seen in the 2023 Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) crisis in which the Federal Reserve and other regulators stepped in to ensure funds would still be available to the bank’s customers despite the institution facing liquidity issues. SVB’s potential collapse could’ve devastated a number of Black businesses and employees since it has been one of the most pivotal in aiming to help narrow the funding chasm for Black founders.
“We all know that young Black founders get a fraction of the business loans and venture capital their non-Black counterparts get,” Shila Nieves Burney of Zane VC says.
Zane VC, a firm that boasts an investment catalog of young startups aims to address the health equity gap, through infusions of much needed capital. Nieves Burney says if Project 2025’s proposed actions are implemented, already vulnerable Black and Brown workers could be in dire straights.
“I’m sitting on the side of the table where Black women typically aren’t invited,” she says. “I get to push against the narrative that Black founders don’t exist and ensure they get the funding they deserve but my job will be made harder if these proposed restrictions get implemented.”
Another lynchpin in the workforce section of proposed initiatives of Project 2025 is its plan to address DEI, which is often described as an attack on America’s progress by conservatives.
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors,” Project 2025 authors write. “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.”
Dominic K. Hawkins, Vice President Of Communications at the NAACP says the proposed roll backs to DEI efforts will cause great harm to the country.
“Project 2025’s policies will weaken civil rights protections, increase workplace discrimination, and ultimately set us back years,” Hawkins says. “As a Black professional who has worked across private and public sectors, I’ve seen how DEI practices only strengthen organizations and give opportunities that our community might be barred from due to the legacy of enslavement and systemic racism. If Project 2025 is enacted, what’s to stop companies from blocking my application even when I’m more qualified? Nothing! And there would be no federally powered recourse.”
He adds, “On top of that, it could create a dearth Black leaders at the top of organizations, who can’t then help guide operations and they wouldn’t be able to serve as role models and mentors for the next generation. As a Black executive, I wouldn’t be where I am today with out sponsors at the C-level. Project 2025 would seek to wipe that out.”
The far reaching plan not only has the ability to touch business owners and corporate workers, but the content creator community as well. Quentin “Funky Dineva” Latham and Patrick “Mr. Jones X” Jones both expressed their fears for what’s to come if the project is fully rolled out.
“It’s terrifying, honestly,” Latham says. He hosts a video podcast on his Youtube channel, which boasts more than 440k subscribers. Although he generates income from his broadcasts, Latham shares that government sanctions on DEI-driven initiatives could affect growth opportunities, including strict censoring rules that could impact the way he creates content.
Jones, on the other hand, shares fears of how his overall safety could be affected since he is a public figure that often comments on hot-button political topics. His combined social media pages boast more than 100k followers.
“Some people on TikTok that weren’t very fond of my messaging {about Project 2025 potential ills} found out where I lived and sent the law enforcement to my house, which is where I work,” Jones stated. “I do believe that action is a direct manifestation of that group feeling emboldened by the conservative right’s anti-DEI push.”
Overall, he says this is the apt time for working millennials like himself to empower and educate themselves about the future of work, and how the upcoming election could affect it.
“Be willing to learn more about the policies that can affect your life and do something about it,” Jones advises. “Use that as a motivation to stay the course. Never stop having the important conversations because it could be the difference between living the life you worked for, or having it shift in ways you could never imagine.”