One Year Later: Countering Project 2025 With Love

One year ago, the UCC Office of Public Policy & Advocacy released a collaborative resource titled “Countering Project 2025 with Love: A UCC Response,” which outlined how Project 2025, at the time a compilation of policy proposals launched by the Heritage Foundation, stood in direct opposition to the United Church of Christ’s values.  
 
Now, just over a year later, the implementation of Project 2025 is well under way. We remain in steadfast opposition to the values of this project which is grounded in xenophobia, racism, nationalism, corporate greed, and misogyny. We condemn the use of our religious texts to justify the kidnapping and detention of immigrants, the targeting of vulnerable populations, the silencing of public figures, the dismantling of medical research, the pillaging of our public lands, and the rescission of foreign aid. We stand with our siblings and neighbors in bold resistance to this cruel vision of America. 
 
This resource is not meant to be a comprehensive documentation of every injustice since January. Instead, it documents the policies that are both explicitly listed in the Project 2025 policy proposal and were fully implemented by this Administration and this Congress.

It also outlines the UCC vision for our world and explains what we’re doing to resist on the following issues: Disability & Mental Health Justice | Education | Environmental Justice | Foreign Policy | Healthcare & Economic Justice | Immigration | LGBTQ+ Rights & Gender Justice | Racial Justice | Reproductive Care and Abortion

---

Mental Health and Disability Justice 

The Education Department has ceased resolving disparate impact claims, which prohibits parents of children experiencing a visible or invisible disability from pursuing a successful legal claim. The budget reconciliation bill imposed work requirements on Medicaid which will only kick disabled folks off the program as they struggle to navigate a confusing and decentralized exemption process. The bill also reduced federal incentives for states to expand Medicaid, which decreases the ability for disabled people to receive comprehensive home care, and cut federal funding for Medicaid ultimately increasing the number of disabled people who cannot afford lifesaving care. 

God calls us to create a just world for all people living with disabilities and mental health experiences. Together, with God’s help, we can create a world without stigma, invisibility, discrimination, ableism, and marginalization by church and society. With over 8 active General Synod resolutions on Mental Health and Disability Justice, the UCC is called to work to ensure that church and society reduces the stigma faced by those living with disabilities and mental health experiences. Join the United Church of Christ Disabilities Ministries and the United Church of Christ Mental Health Network in building a just world where all, where all people can flourish. 

Read More Mental Health and Disability Justice

Education 

The administration has consistently and repeatedly tried to implement Project 2025’s threats to public education by threatening programs that it claims promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The administration has delayed or tried to cancel funding again and again for many programs Trump officials define as DEI in the nation’s K-12 public schools and colleges and universities. The Trump administration has also canceled many federal grants without warning. The driving ideology behind the administration’s education policy is that the civil rights programs designed originally to help Black, Hispanic, disabled students and students marginalized for their sexuality are programs that hold back students in the white majority. 
 
Additionally, the reconciliation bill replaced all income-based student loan repayment plans with the “Repayment Assistance Program” which raises payments for most borrowers, hits the lowest-income borrowers the hardest, and extends the maximum repayment term from the current 10-25 years to 30 years. The Education Department has ceased resolving disparate impact claims, expanded federal funding for private schools, and placed restrictions on federal funding for schools that use materials in their classrooms that reflect LGBTQ or racial diversity, or provide instruction on inclusion.   

The United Church of Christ believes that as a people called to love our neighbors as ourselves, we are called to protect and improve public schooling as a matter of justice. In 1985 the UCC passed a pronouncement that reaffirmed our responsibility to support quality public education and urged the maintenance of school systems that are accountable to local and regional electorates, financed by public tax revenues, and responsible to State standards for curriculum and teacher certification.

Education

Environmental Justice 

The budget reconciliation bill zeroed out all clean energy tax credit programs, mandated increased offshore oil and gas land leasing, and removed funding for the protection of sensitive marine life. The Administration opened marine sanctuaries to commercial fishing, rescinded the rule prohibiting road construction through National Forests, lifted the moratorium on land leasing for coal mines, and repealed energy efficiency standards for appliances and reduced fuel economy standards. The Administration also terminated all EPA grant agreements and downsized the EPA including closing the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. Finally, the Administration rescinded USAID funding to address climate change, increased logging, reversed support for ESG principles in investing, lifted regulations against the killing of migratory birds, and withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement.

Multiple UCC resolutions passed at General Synod, such as a 2015 resolution calling for a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy by 2040, have called for strong action at the federal level of government to address the climate crisis. 

Read more enviornment

Foreign Policy 

The Administration shut down USAID, and cut foreign aid across the board, including blocking food aid to Yemen and Afghanistan. The Administration withdrew funding from the UNRWA, withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council, and withdrew from the World Health Organization.

As a Just Peace Church, the United Church of Christ is committed to working towards peace with justice at home and around the world. As such, we are committed to the eradication of all nuclear weapons and promoting peace, not war. We believe that God calls us to love our neighbor and to act in ways that recognizes the inherent dignity of every person, like hearing and responding to the needs of others (providing food, shelter, water, etc.) and caring for all of God’s creation. While humans and the systems and coalitions we create are not perfect, we believe that only by communicating and working together can we bring about God’s kin-dom on Earth.  

Foreign Policy

Healthcare and Economic Justice 

Congress passed in July a budget reconciliation bill that imposed work requirements on Medicaid, reduced federal incentives for states to expand Medicaid, and cut federal funding for Medicaid. The Administration overturned the recent expansion of the overtime threshold, stripped bargaining rights from 18 labor unions, and sought to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

For nearly four decades, the United Church of Christ has advocated for health care as a human right and priority for all people. Led by Jesus, a renowned healer, the UCC stands proudly as a community of faith that believes all should have access to affordable, safe, and high-quality healthcare.  For decades, the United Church of Christ has passed numerous General Synod Resolutions committing us to push our elected leaders to concretely realize God’s dreams and pursue a just economy.

Read more healthcare

Immigration and Refugee Issues

Project 2025 suggests eliminating DACA protections for more than 500,000 recipients, allowing ICE to raid sensitive areas such as schools and religious institutions, integrating the Department of Homeland Security with the military, and supports mass deportation and detention of families. It calls for the Office of Refugee Resettlement resources to be redirected towards border enforcement and to slash the number of refugees resettled in the U.S. as required by the 1980 Refugee Act. 

The United Church of Christ has a long history of solidarity in the struggle for dignity and human rights for immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees regardless of their immigration status. The UCC has numerous General Synod Resolutions that call for humanitarian protection for migrants seeking safety and a pathway to citizenship for our immigrant siblings, including a 2017 resolution that made the UCC an Immigrant Welcoming denomination. Throughout our sacred texts and tradition, we’re called to welcome and love immigrants as our neighbors.

Read More Immigration Justice

LGBTQ+ Rights and Gender Justice 

The Administration banned gender affirming care for transgender members of the military and banned trans individuals from serving in the military. The Administration also issued an executive order that defined “sex” as a fixed biological fact and dictated that only two genders exist. The CDC ended data collection on gender identity, HHS reversed prohibitions on healthcare discrimination based on gender identity, and all agencies were instructed to remove “sexual orientation” “gender identity” and “gender equality” from all federal rules. The Education Department stopped collecting civil rights data on nonbinary individuals and will rescind federal funding for any school promoting “indoctrination” based on “gender ideology.” USAID stopped funding any “gender equality” programs abroad and the White House Gender Policy Council shut down. 

Spanning more than 20 years, the UCC continues to choose loving their LGBTQ+ neighbor over hatred, from supporting human rights related to sexual orientation and gender identity in 1979 to actively affirming the human dignity of transgender and non-binary persons in 2023. Attempts to disembody and oppress any of God’s kin-dom goes directly against the values and work of the United Church of Christ in our commitment toward building a just world for all. The United Church of Christ also believes that any societal distinctions which create an inferior-superior relationship among genders is contrary to the will of God. The UCC bears witness to this belief by standing vigilant with and actively supporting womyn and nonbinary individuals and has passed many resolutions to resist the reemerging cultural forces seeking to subjugate them.

How has the UCC Responded?

---

Racial Justice 

The Administration has removed all mention of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” from all federal rulemaking, banned USAID funding for DEI initiatives, stopped contracts to any entity that has a “woke agenda,” and eliminated all DEI programs across the federal government.

As members of the Body of Christ, we know that living as siblings means reckoning with historic harms of racism, colonialism, and all forms of cultural prejudice and creating repair together.  In the UCC’s resolution on becoming an Anti-Racist church, we committed to “examine both historic and contemporary forms of racism and its effects.”  Following Jesus remains a radical movement and working toward racial justice is the nerve center of our faith. At General Synod 31 in 2017, the UCC voted to mandate DEI training for authorized ministers saying, “the realization of Jesus’ prayer ‘that they may all be one,’ is impossible without self-reflection, serious study, and by engaging in safe, meaningful, substantive and bold conversations on the brokenness and divisiveness created within the body of Christ by the realities of institutional racism, and by the lack of understanding and the failure to nurture and lift up our cultural differences and gifts.”

Read more Racial Justice

Reproductive Care and Abortion 

The CDC is now promoting “family planning” rather than contraceptives and funding studies on the risks of abortion. HHS has withdrawn expanded HIPAA protections for reproductive care, rescinded the requirement that hospitals provide abortions to save the mother’s life during a medical emergency, and reversed protections against healthcare discrimination for pregnant people. The Department of Labor rescinded accommodations requirements for workers recovering from an abortion, and USAID stopped funding all reproductive health initiatives. The DOD rescinded funding for members of the military to travel for an abortion. The Administration banned federal funding for organizations that provide abortions or abortion education.  
 
Since 1971, the United Church of Christ has passed multiple resolutions supporting the freedom of choice regarding pregnancy, the right of each person to follow their personal religious and moral convictions regarding the completion or termination of a pregnancy and calling on the church in all settings to provide educational resources and programs to reduce unintended pregnancies and promote responsible sexual behavior. 

Read more repro

---

Conclusion 

To love this country right now is to remember its highest ideals – freedom, justice, and equality, and to recognize how the implementation of Project 2025 is only moving us further from this vision. 
 
In the year since the Office of Public Policy & Advocacy first warned of the damage Project 2025 would cause, we have seen this project, of authoritarian rule and subjugation, touch every one of us. But as people of faith living through dark times, our strength is our hope. If we continue to struggle against it, we will, through God’s grace, build a more just and generous world.  

Questions? Contact the UCC Office of Public Policy and Advocacy in Washington D.C.
UCCTakeAction@ucc.org