Texas has long been the laboratory for the radical conservative policies driving Project 2025.
Over the past decade, the Lone Star State has tested measures that erode individual rights, weaken democratic institutions, and centralize power. Now, Texas Republicans aim to cement these initiatives into state law, transforming Texas into a model for the authoritarian governance outlined in Project 2025.
Together, Project 2025, the Texas GOP Platform, and the Contract with Texas represent Project 2025 For Texas — a coordinated effort to reshape Texas into a bastion of extremist conservative authoritarianism, with the Lone Star State serving as a model for similar efforts nationwide.
Both Project 2025 and the Texas GOP systematically undermine individual rights, with a focus on dismantling protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, reproductive rights, and bodily autonomy. These attacks reflect a broader conservative agenda to impose rigid social norms at the expense of personal freedoms.
Reproductive Rights
Project 2025 aggressively pursues the criminalization of abortion nationwide, including through federal "personhood" laws that would confer legal rights on embryos, effectively banning abortion in all cases. It also targets contraception and IVF, using conservative judicial appointments to ensure these restrictions hold.
Texas Republicans have already enacted some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, eliminating nearly all access and pursuing further limitations on contraception and IVF. The Texas platform mirrors Project 2025's goal to strip away reproductive autonomy, pushing the state toward even harsher anti-abortion, anti-women measures.LGBTQ+ Rights
Project 2025 advocates for rolling back protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, framing these actions as a return to "traditional values". It pushes for federal policies that would limit or eliminate anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people, especially in employment, education, and healthcare.
The Texas GOP aligns closely with this agenda, explicitly calling for prohibiting any legal recognition of same-sex marriages and opposing legislation that protects against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Texas Republican platform also seeks to block transgender individuals from participating in sports and accessing gender-affirming healthcare.
Gender and Bodily Autonomy
Project 2025 expands its assault on bodily autonomy by proposing new restrictions on gender-affirming care, particularly targeting transgender youth. These policies aim to ban healthcare practices like hormone therapy and surgeries, framing them as "child abuse."
The Texas Republican platform closely mirrors this, explicitly banning all forms of gender-affirming care for minors and labeling such treatments as forms of "mutilation". Both plans rely on state sovereignty to implement and enforce these draconian measures, using federal overreach to justify stripping individuals of their rights.
Both Project 2025 and Texas Republicans are united in their attack on public education, advocating for voucher systems that defund public schools in favor of religious and conservative indoctrination through unaccountable private schools.
Vouchers and Defunding Public Schools
Project 2025 promotes a nationwide expansion of school vouchers, diverting public funds to private and religious institutions under the guise of "school choice." This effort weakens public schools, particularly in rural marginalized communities, by draining their resources.
Texas Republicans are pushing a similar agenda, advocating for the expansion of voucher programs and "school choice" as a means to undermine public education and redirect funds to unaccountable religious and conservative private schools. This mirrors the national agenda, with Texas serving as a testing ground for further defunding public education.
Religious Education Replacing Public Schools
Project 2025 seeks to funnel federal and state funds into religious schools that teach a Christian-dominated curriculum, exempt from standard regulations like inclusivity and non-discrimination. This move further entangles government with religious institutions, eroding the separation of church and state.
The Texas Republican platform champions similar initiatives, advocating for taxpayer funding to be funneled into religious schools. This effort is intended to replace secular public education with religious indoctrination, mirroring Project 2025's goal of reshaping education to align with conservative Christian values.
Both Project 2025 and Texas Republicans aim to centralize power, eroding democratic norms and moving toward one-party rule. This consolidation of authority is designed to suppress dissent and push through a radical conservative agenda without checks or balances.
Concentrating Executive Power
Project 2025 seeks to vastly expand the power of the executive branch by dismantling regulatory agencies and weakening oversight mechanisms. This shift would allow the President to push forward an unimpeded conservative agenda, with minimal interference from Congress, the judiciary, or federal agencies.
In Texas, Republicans mirror this strategy by concentrating legislative power in the hands of the GOP leadership. The Texas GOP has worked to limit the influence of Democrats, removing them from key positions and pushing for more centralized control over the state legislature, moving toward effective one-party rule.
One-Party Rule in Texas
The Texas Republican platform pushes aggressively for consolidating power, ensuring that Democrats are effectively sidelined. Their Contract With Texas includes steps to prevent Democrats from holding committee chair positions, ensuring that only GOP priorities are advanced.
This is in line with Project 2025, which also promotes the concentration of conservative power at the federal level. Both initiatives aim to silence opposition, whether through legislative maneuvers in Texas or by weakening federal checks on the executive branch.
Both Project 2025 and the Texas GOP are focused on dismantling democratic norms by undermining checks and balances, restricting voting access, and rigging electoral systems to ensure permanent conservative control.
Dismantling Federal and State Checks and Balances
Project 2025 seeks to dismantle the independent regulatory and judicial bodies that provide checks on executive power. By gutting these agencies, Project 2025 aims to ensure that the President and his allies can govern without meaningful oversight, paving the way for authoritarian control.
The Texas Republican platform echoes this sentiment, working to limit the influence of non-GOP actors in state governance. Texas Republicans push for reducing judicial oversight and stripping powers from agencies that may act as checks on their agenda, ensuring GOP dominance in both legislative and executive actions.
Restricting Voting Access
Project 2025 disguises its efforts to restrict voting access under the guise of "election integrity." In reality, these measures are aimed at disenfranchising marginalized communities and ensuring conservative control, regardless of demographic changes.
The Texas Republican platform similarly focuses on voter suppression tactics, advocating for stricter voter ID laws, purging voter rolls, and limiting early voting. These efforts disproportionately affect communities of color and low-income voters, further entrenching GOP power in the state. Both Project 2025 and Texas Republicans use the banner of "integrity" to justify actions that erode democratic participation.
Both Project 2025 and Texas Republicans are weaponizing state sovereignty to defy federal law and impose extreme conservative policies. This strategy threatens to fragment the country, allowing individual states to disregard national standards in favor of radical, unchecked governance.
Weaponizing State Sovereignty to Defy Federal Law
Project 2025 seeks to weaken federal authority by empowering states to disregard federal laws, particularly on issues like gun control, healthcare, and immigration. This decentralization of power would allow conservative states to pass draconian laws that undermine national protections.
The Texas Republican platform reflects this approach, aggressively asserting state sovereignty as a way to resist federal oversight. Texas Republicans push to nullify federal laws they disagree with, positioning Texas as an independent entity that can defy the federal government when it conflicts with conservative goals. This tactic, mirrored in Project 2025, aims to create a patchwork of radical state-level policies without accountability.
The Consequences of Allowing States to Pursue Radical Policies without Oversight
By encouraging states to ignore federal laws, Project 2025 sets the stage for a fractured nation, where rights and freedoms vary drastically depending on geography. This approach undermines the concept of equal protection under the law, particularly for marginalized communities who could lose federal protections in conservative states.
Texas Republicans fully embrace this vision, using state sovereignty to pass extreme laws on issues such as abortion, voting rights, and LGBTQ+ protections. This fragmented approach not only divides the nation but also leaves vulnerable populations without consistent legal protections across state lines. Both Project 2025 and Texas Republicans use sovereignty as a tool to impose radical policies without federal oversight, risking the creation of a divided and unequal nation.
Both Project 2025 and Texas Republicans are systematically dismantling government institutions, eroding regulatory safeguards, and allowing corporate interests to dominate governance. This effort leaves communities vulnerable by stripping away protections designed to ensure fair labor practices, environmental standards, and consumer rights.
Tearing Down Regulatory Agencies
Project 2025 prioritizes the deconstruction of federal regulatory agencies, particularly those focused on environmental protection, labor rights, and financial regulation. By gutting these agencies, Project 2025 enables unchecked corporate control over industries that would otherwise be regulated for public safety and environmental health.
Texas Republicans are following this lead by advocating for the reduction or elimination of state-level regulatory oversight, particularly in areas like environmental protections and labor laws. Both Project 2025 and Texas Republicans seek to weaken institutions designed to protect the public, leaving industries free to prioritize profit over safety and sustainability.
Allowing Corporate Interests to Dominate Governance
Project 2025 envisions a government that serves corporate interests by rolling back regulations and enabling businesses to operate without oversight. This shift would empower corporations to influence policy-making directly, creating a system where business interests dictate governance at the expense of public welfare.
The Texas GOP mirrors this by pushing for a deregulated market that benefits large corporations, particularly in industries like energy and finance. Texas Republicans argue that reducing government oversight will lead to economic growth, but in reality, it prioritizes corporate profits over community well-being. Both plans allow corporations to shape governance, eroding democratic safeguards and leaving vulnerable populations exposed to exploitation.
A New Way Forward For Texas
Texas stands at a crossroads, caught between the promise of a future rooted in freedom and equality, or a descent into a dystopian vision defined by fear, division, and authoritarian control. The dangerous blueprint laid out by Project 2025 and its co-conspirators — the Texas Republican Party, the “Reform Caucus” and their Contract With Texas, and the far-right Texas Public Policy Foundation — threatens to dismantle our most cherished democratic institutions.
Their vision for our state is not a future we can afford to accept. The Texas they envision is one where your rights — whether to choose, to vote, to live freely without government-imposed moral codes — are stripped away. It is a future where personal freedoms are trampled under the guise of "liberty," and where public education is replaced by a system designed to indoctrinate, not educate. This authoritarian project seeks to cement inequality, silence opposition, and ensure the permanent dominance of their radical agenda. They aim to make Texas a beacon of oppression for the rest of the country.
Together, we can chart a new way forward for Texas — one where the values of freedom, equality, and democracy are upheld. But it requires all of us to act. The future of Texas is on the line, and the time to defend it is now.
Project 2025
Project 2025, led by the Heritage Foundation and co-sponsored by the far-right Texas Public Policy Foundation, envisions a federal government dominated by the executive branch, free of regulatory oversight, and focused on advancing a deeply conservative social agenda.
This blueprint for national governance is already being implemented in Texas, where the Republican-controlled legislature is moving to solidify one-party rule and dismantle key public institutions, such as education and voting rights protections.
Texas GOP Platform
The Republican Party of Texas Platform reflects this radical agenda, advocating for extreme measures to restrict reproductive rights, suppress LGBTQ+ protections, and eliminate democratic safeguards.
These goals align seamlessly with the objectives of Project 2025, as Texas Republicans seek to continue forming the state into a proving ground for these authoritarian policies.
Contract With Texas
The Contract with Texas reinforces this effort, laying out specific reforms to consolidate power within the Texas House by sidelining Democrats and enforcing GOP control.
This manifesto mirrors the broader national strategy of Project 2025, which seeks to eliminate opposition and implement an unchecked conservative agenda.