Project 2025: What is the potential impact on Maryland?

If you’ve tuned into any election coverage this year, you’ve probably heard references to something called Project 2025.

It became a bit of a shortcut for a bigger one the proposed presidential transition plan for the future Republican president. Many of the plans for the next “Conservative administration” that have been talked about come from a more than 900-page book called “Leadership Mandate: The Conservative Promise.”

Although the book is not officially Donald Trump’s platform, it was written or edited by multiple people with ties to the Trump administration or campaigns. Kamala Harris and others in the Democratic Party worked to connect the Trump campaign with some of the more unpopular ideas presented in the book, including a nationwide abortion ban, a ban on TikTok and a ban on pornography.

But there are some elements of the book that haven’t been discussed as much — including ones that could have distinct, specific effects on Maryland. We read the “Leadership Mandate” to find out what they are.

Dismissal of federal employees

About 158,475 federal employees live in Maryland, according to data from the state last year. Many of them could be out of a job if Trump follows through on Project 2025’s suggestions.

Several parts of the plan call for cutting federal employees, restructuring federal agencies and, in some cases, privatizing parts of the government.

The plan also calls for replacing non-political career employees with political appointees. That could mean Marylanders who work for federal agencies would lose job protections or be fired. He promises to explain how to fire “supposedly ‘unfit’ federal bureaucrats” (p. 9) and says that “fundamentally” a new conservative administration “must fill its ranks with political appointees” (p. . 20) and not cede any authority to non-partisan “experts” (p. 21).

Eliminating crab gatherers?

Many Maryland companies rely on international, seasonal workers who harvest and process crabs for crabmeat. Those workers use H-2B visa programwhich allows employers to bring in temporary, non-agricultural workers for short-term work.

And in previous years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed support for the program, including former GOP. Governor Larry Hogan and Rep. Andy Harrisa Republican who represents the East Shore.

But Project 2025 calls for phasing out and eventually eliminating the H-2B visa program, which could make it even harder for producers who sell crabmeat to find employees.

The “mandate for leadership” calls on the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to “clarify” that they will not increase the number of H-2B seasonal visas above the statutory cap (p. 138) and calls on Congress to cap the program at existing levels and to- phase it out in 10 years (page 612).

NIH, Cyber ​​​​Command and the Naval Academy

The authors of Project 2025 suggest that course offerings at all military academies – incl Annapolis Naval Academy — be audited and purged of “Marxist indoctrination,” and that mandate should be removed for academics (p. 104).

The National Institutes of Health in Bethesda is also being considered in the plan. As written, the plan would have Congress ban research on fetal tissue and end the embryonic stem cell registry, which allows other researchers to gain access to the cells for research.

It would also impose “term limits” on “career leaders” at NIH (p. 462) and require NIH Foundation to be dissolved.

The US Cyber ​​Command, which is based in Fort Meade, could also see its work redirected. For example, Project 2025 calls for Cyber ​​Command to cease its activity around election hardening (p. 120).

Alimony and loan forgiveness

Project 2025 calls for reimplementation of work requirements for food stamps and reform of categorical eligibility for food stamps (pp. 299-300). Conformable to the latest federal dataabout 772,700 — or about 1 in 8 — Marylanders received SNAP in fiscal year 2022. Potential changes to how SNAP is administered would come at some point when enrollments are down and the application for food assistance remains high as families cope with rising food prices.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which forgives outstanding balances on Direct Loans after 10 years of eligible payments for people working for any level of government or nonprofit programs—public school teachers, for example—would be eliminated as proposed in Project 2025 (p. 354).

As of June 2023, more than 20,000 Marylanders have discharged their loans through the program, according to data from the Department of Education. Maryland has the fifth highest rate of residents with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the country and is therefore also in the ranking top 10 states for college debt per capita.

The Heritage Foundation does it all Project 2025 available online for further reading.