Reading List 2/5 - Project 2025 Updates You Should Probably Know
Slightly different format this time around
Coverage of Project 2025 has gone silent in most media outlets, but it is still well underway.
Turning immigration into an elite mechanism exclusively to bring in the ‘best and brightest’. H1b visa program is that mechanism. The administration imposed a $100,000 fee on new petitions for H-1B visas.
Trump is coming for science funding. But luckily, Congress and the Courts have largely put a stop to it.
Federal contracts, set asides and grants for minorities have effectively ended under Exec. order 14151.
Since 2025, 352,000 federal employees have lost their jobs. Another 50,000 have been stripped of job protections.
The Trump Administration has been quietly shaking down universities, and raised the endowment tax to 8% of their endowments. In the Project 2025 document, they want to tax entire endowments.
Project 2025 tracking tool I use to keep tabs. 51% of stated goals in the original Mandate for Leadership, much to our dismay, have been completed since Trump was elected.
The 51% completion rate is the stat that really matters here. Most coverage treats Project 2025 as hypothetical when the playbook is actively running. The H-1B fee hike being framed as "elite mechanism" is esp interesting considering how it contradicts the stated tech labor shortage narrative that's been used for decades.