Project 2025 Implementation: Executive Orders 26 - 30

Of this administration's first 30 executive orders, there are only three with no connection to Project 2025. Of those three, only one is in opposition to policies and goals stated in Project 2025. This is still a 90% correlation between Trump's executive orders and Project 2025, which he claimed during his campaign to know nothing about. This overlap is not a coincidence. I will continue to cover this correlation and have plans to catch up completely by the end of April.

EO#26: Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness - This order returns Mt Denali to Mt McKinley, and the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. 

• We’ve found our third executive order with no ties to Project 2025.
  The people who have lived around Mt Denali in Alaska have referred to it as Mt Denali for centuries. In 1896 a prospector decided it should be named for the then-president McKinley, which was formalized by Congress in 1917. Alaskans and Indigenous groups tried for decades to get the name returned back to the original Mt Denali. In 1975, the state of Alaska did change the name back, but this wasn’t federally recognized until 2015. Trump didn’t issue an executive order on this subject from 2016 through 2020 during his first term, so I'm not sure what triggered this action as such a high priority in this term.
  The Gulf of Mexico has been called the Gulf of Mexico since the 1600s and the attempt to re-name it is genuinely embarrassing. It comes up on google and apple maps in the US as Gulf of America, while the rest of the world still shows it as the Gulf of Mexico, because that is its true name. I have seen speculation that this was a move to get around an order Biden signed to limit resource mining in the gulf; the restrictions were on the Gulf of Mexico, not the Gulf of America. This justification strikes me as a toddler's approach: "Mommy told me to get out of the kitchen, but I'm not in the kitchen! I'm in Narnia!"
  I don’t know about you, but I will continue to refer to these geographic wonders as Mt Denali and the Gulf of Mexico.

EO#27: Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based-Opportunity - This order instructs federal departments to have no contracts with private organizations that have DEIA (diversity equity inclusion and accessibility) programs, and revokes the equal employment opportunity executive order signed by Lyndon B Johnson in 1965 which mandated equal employment opportunities for federal employees and federal contractors. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs is instructed to cease all investigative and enforcement activity around Equal Employment Opportunity, and to stop promoting diversity. Every contract or grant awarded by each government agency is required to specify that the contracted organization does not operate programs promoting DEI. 

• Page 4: “The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. 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.”
• Page 584: "The President should eliminate OFCCP by simply rescinding EO 11246." EO 11246 is Lyndon B Johnson's Equal Employment Opportunity Executive Order. This order has sweeping implications about government contracts and grants, as well as equal employment opportunity. The 5th EO banned DEI and intentional diversity in federal agencies. This one zeros in on private businesses and organizations. ALL new contracts and grants contain language barring the recipient from having any form of diversity or DEI policies or programs. 30% of non-profit organizations in the US receive federal grants. If they expect to continue to receive that funding, they need to scrub their diversity plans. Diversity is a GOOD thing, and being less intentional about attaining a diverse workforce is a BAD thing.

EO#28: Revocation of Certain Executive Orders - this order revokes two executive orders Biden signed in reference to COVID. The first was to ensure that federal contractors abided by COVID safety protocols, and the second required federal employees to receive the COVID vaccine.

• Page 475: “Announce nonenforcement of the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate on Medicaid and Medicare hospitals and Revoke corresponding guidance and regulations.” This is specific to healthcare workers, but Project 2025 repeatedly rails against COVID safety protocol and vaccine mandates writ large.
  The national emergency for COVID ended in 2023. Covid is still circulating, vaccines are still protecting against serious illness and death. Still, more than 9000 people have died from COVID already this year. But apparently it was imperative to enact this executive order on day 2 of the new administration.

EO#29: Designation of Ansar Allah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization - This order re-designates Houthi rebels in Yemen as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Trump established this designation late in his first term but Biden revoked it a month later because of concerns that it would impede humanitarian aid to people in Yemen suffering from the impacts of a long ongoing civil war, economic collapse, and climate disasters.

• Pg 270 - refers to Houthis as terrorists while describing a practice of diverting humanitarian aid.
  
  I know very little about Yemeni history, and the positioning of Houthis in modern Yemen. I do know that where people are starving, the richest countries in the world have a responsibility to help, and I will maintain that position 10/10 times. But there does seem to be a history of Houthis diverting aid according to several watch groups. I would love any recommended reading on the topic, but at this point I don’t know enough to have confidence in any one position. Either way, we’re still sitting at a 90% rate of alignment with project 2025 for Trump’s executive orders.

EO#30: Declassification of Records Concerning the Assassinations of President John F Kennedy, Senator Robert F Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr - This order is pretty straightforward. This is a process Trump initiated in his first term, was continued by Biden, and is now being brought into fruition. 

• Project 2025 doesn’t talk specifically about the declassification of these cases but they do lay out the position that the government overdoes the whole classification process and should modernize and streamline the declassification process on page 223. I have no problem with the declassification of this information, and there has been a lot of reporting to suggest that the US government engages in over-classification. They basically err on the side of caution and often default to classifying information but this bogs down the system. I do question why this was such a high priority to take place in the administration’s first week, but I think there are far more important questions to focus on from that first week.