- Just ahead on "Black Issues Forum."

Election season is here, and a new initiative is shaking up the political landscape.

Project 2025 is a bold plan that's got everyone talking, asking questions like: "How is it going to impact the race for the White House?"

What do the candidates have to say about it?

And what does it mean for the future of our nation and North Carolina residents?

We'll get those questions answered next.

Stay with us.

- [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[upbeat music] ♪ - Welcome to "Black Issues Forum."

I'm Kenia Thompson.

As the race for the White House intensifies and we wait for word on Trump's official opponent for the presidential race, Project 2025 has emerged as a significant point of debate and discussion.

This ambitious initiative with its bold vision and potentially impactful proposals has captured the attention of candidates, analysts, and voters alike.

But people are asking, what exactly is Project 2025 and why is it generating so much buzz?

To help us better understand what's at stake, we've invited today's guests to provide insight on the issues.

I'd like to welcome to the show Antoine Marshall, associate attorney at SCV Law Firm, and Devin Freeman, North Carolina's 4th District delegate.

Welcome to the show.

- Thank you for having me.

- Of course.

You know, there's a lot of talk about 2025.

It's like we cannot escape it in the news, it feels like.

Antoine, when we think about what we've heard, not a lot of people have read the document.

I myself skimmed through it 'cause it's a lengthy document.

- [Antoine] Yes, it is.

- Can you summarize what are the goals to this document?

Why was it even created?

- So the Heritage Foundation, who is the organizing body who created Project 2025, every presidential cycle since Reagan, they have instituted what's called a mandate for leadership.

Project 2025 is the ninth mandate that they've done or a version of this that they've done.

It is far more expansive than any of the other mandates for leadership, except for the first one that they did with Ronald Reagan.

The goal of it is pretty simple.

They're trying to lay out what the conservative ideology is for their hopes for the next Republican commander-in-chief is.

Now it's important to notice, and I know Trump has come out and said that he's not associated or affiliated with Project 2025, but because they're a nonprofit organization, they can't officially coordinate with the campaign.

So they can't officially say this is the plan for Trump or for a Trump presidency, even though that's exactly what it is; they're planning for the next Republican president to get in office.

- So, you know, you've made a great point.

They've made an argument that it's not necessarily a Republican thing.

But Devin, in your opinion, well, let me ask this question.

Why is it even more important, I guess, this election cycle?

'Cause you said this is the ninth iteration of something like this.

Why is this so important this time?

- So like, as you just said, like, every election cycle, each election cycle is important, but this is the most important one.

When we talk about what the Republican agenda, you see something similar to this document back in 1921.

You also have 1973 as well as 1981.

And what you see during these times and during those Republic administrations was something similar to this document.

And the thing is, this is when people look at it, this 900-page document of Project 2025, when you hear that quote, you know, "The more things change, the more they stay the same," this is what is happening.

So you've had similar documentations like this in the past that was a mandate for leadership for the Republican party.

And they use some of this as a strategy for going to the administration.

But, however, by grace of God and luck, that these principles never actually got carried out to the full extent.

And so for instance, in the case that, which it probably wouldn't happen, Donald Trump becoming president, he wouldn't be able to take in all these initiatives, such as like taking out FEMA, taking out the Department of Education, as well as all these other initiatives that are such, deregulation and pullbacks of the American agenda.

So when I look at that in itself, it's like this is just a Republican strategy that pulls us back rather than puts us forward.

And that's why we need Kamala Harris in office so that her being president could push us forward.

- Actually, I know you had talked about why this is so important and why there's so much emphasis on this mandate versus the other ones.

Again, you talked about the length of it.

I think this is probably the broadest stroke they have, like I said, going back to the Reagan administration.

I mean, it is over 900 pages of policy ideas.

And again, though they tried to distance themselves from it, Project 2025 is broken down into 30 chapters, each one covering a different department within the administration.

25 of them were written by somebody who served in either the first Trump administration or his transition team.

So as much as he distances himself from it, the odds are that these are gonna be the same people who would serve in a second Trump administration.

- Correct, and then also what you see is JD Vance, he also wrote a forward for the next book that also talks about Project 2025 as well.

So as much as you see the Republican campaign like distancing itself from Project 2025, and also, Donald Trump coming on air saying that he's not a part of it at all is a lie.

Because more than anything is that.

- You have part of your administration from before that's connected to project 2025.

You also just saw recently that the president of the Heritage Foundation just stepped down because of issues that project 2025 has done for the Republican campaign.

And that's what you're starting to see because the DNC is starting to combat that, talking about what is Project 2025 and landing it, being aware, because this has to be put on notice.

Like this is something that not only pushes African Americans but also other coalitions and also other minorities.

And it crosses more than just race, but also class.

- Right.

- So when you're putting the working class man and woman behind, rather than pushing for and actually protecting labor rights, this is an issue for all working Americans.

- Well let me ask a question.

So like you said, Trump's camp has distanced themselves, Kamala, and before Biden stepped down, he as well, were acknowledging it, talking about how obviously this would not be a thing if they were to hold office, but let's break it down.

If we have more right wing representatives in the house, can this still be adopted even though we choose a Democratic president?

- So yes, it can be adopted in certain ways and we've actually seen some of Project 2025 being enacted in other ways.

- [Speaker] Right.

- This past Supreme Court term, one of the major goals of Project 2025 is to dissolve what they call the administrative state.

And so the way that the federal government has run since probably the eighties has been through the administrative state.

The departmental agencies would help regulate things.

So just take like the Clean Air and Clean Water Act, it would give the EPA broad power to enact, you know, to control and make sure that we get clean air and clean water.

So basically the Clean Water Act would say, you can't dump pollutants into the river.

And then it's up to the EPA to say, okay, what's a pollutant?

You know, how much is legally safe for people?

And so that's been the administrative state that we've operated under for a long time.

This recent Supreme Court decision, which again is not associated with the presidential race at all, but they overturned what was called the Chevron doctrine, which basically gave those administrative agencies the right to say, hey, this is a pollutant, you can't dump this and have the authority.

And then basically the Chevron doctrine says, we're going to defer to the EPA to decide what's a pollutant and how to we interpret these congressional statutes.

The Supreme Court overturned that and basically said judges will now have the ability to determine.

And so there was another case that came before the Supreme Court in which they were talking about the Clean Air Act and Neil Gorsuch basically said that the EPA doesn't have a right to say whether or not nitrous oxide is a pollutant.

- [Speaker] Right.

- And those are the decisions that are going to have massive impact even outside of who wins office as far as the executive, just as far as the judicial branch.

So while Project 2025 talks about the playbook for what the executive can do, because again, they're doing a lot as far as hiring at those agencies or undermining or getting rid of some of those agencies, as Devin talked about, they're still also talking about putting people on the bench.

And the Heritage Foundation has been very influential as far as getting our judges.

So even outside of, who's the executive, 'cause this is the playbook for what the executive can do.

There's still policy ideas as far as how conservatives want to run the country, how they want to run governance.

- Well let's start digging into some of the ideas around policy.

So the first one I wanna talk about is cuts to social security and Medicare, which you know, there's rumors that by the time I'm ready to retire, I might not be able to retire because there may not be any funds unless I've saved some on my own.

So let's talk about some of the specific changes that are being suggested for Social Security and Medicare.

- So when you look at social security first, what you see within the document for Project 2025 is the increase of age for people to retire in order to take out on social security.

So what you're gonna see is age of 70.

The proponents of this, the reason why they want this is regards to when you increase the age in regards to requirement, you're gonna have less and less people be able to get to that and be able to use the advantage of it in regards to just being able to take it out.

And then when we talk about Medicare and Medicaid, and particularly what you start seeing for Medicare is the instance of not being able, you're starting to see 21 million people is gonna be affected if we end Medicare or take away some of the regulations of it.

And then what you're also gonna see is that preexisting conditions.

- Yeah.

- So you're gonna see 100 million people affected by that as well.

- Yeah.

- And so when you talk about these two entities, these are two major entities that Americans rely on.

And so what does it look like?

'Cause even myself, I have family members and friends who would be affected by this.

So you're telling me that you're taking away their right.

That they should be able to, being able to have affordable healthcare from them.

And then it's just so interesting because now we talk about social security and I think about my parents.

My parents are in their mid fifties and to think that my mom's gonna have to work all the way to her seventies.

- Yeah.

- And then it's interesting because even my grandparents, they're still around, thank God, but they're able to retire at 50 and because of that, I was able to like enjoy their time even when I was younger.

I remember them who they are and I swear to God, if they were working, I don't think I'd be able to see them as much as I do now.

So, I mean, indeed we have to talk about how this not only affects our generation, but also our kids and our grandkids in the future.

- Yeah.

Talk about quality of life, essentially.

- And I think it's important that this being in the black issues forum, when we talk about how these policies impact African Americans, that raising of the age, it does have a racial impact because African Americans, on average, live about seven years less than our white compatriots.

So when we talk about raising that age, that means less African Americans are gonna enjoy the benefits of the money that they put into Social Security.

But privatizing social security has been a cornerstone of right-wing philosophy for a while.

It has been a goal to try to eliminate social security or to privatize it and basically make individuals responsible for their own retirement savings and plans.

- Right.

- And there was a reason why Social Security was put in place in the first place was because for a lot of people, they did not have the money to live out the rest of their days.

I mean, they ended up running out of money.

And that was the reason why Social Security was implemented, was to provide a quality of life for our seniors.

- Yeah.

- There's a saying, "You can always tell what a government does as far as taking care of the least among them," you know?

Their youngest and their oldest.

And so, I think by getting rid of Social Security, you're gonna impact a lot of lower income individuals.

You're gonna impact a lot of minorities.

Again, because statistically, we just don't live as long because of other reasons.

- And speaking of that impact to those individuals, millions of people are under the Affordable Care Act.

That's another piece that is proposed to be taken away.

You mentioned preexisting conditions.

That's gonna come back.

I remember struggling with that myself years and years ago, not being able to be approved for surgery or procedures, simply because it fell under preexisting condition.

What is that gonna look like if that goes away for these millions of Americans that are underneath the Affordable Care Act now, Black people in particular?

- You're going to see a lot of people who are denied access to health insurance.

I mean, again, these laws are put in place for a reason.

And sometimes, I mean, as we get further away from the problems, we forget about how bad our insurance or our insurance was 10, 15 years ago.

- Yeah.

- I think I was, when the Affordable Care Act was initially passed, I was allowed to stay on my parents' insurance until I hit 25, which allowed me to go to law school and not have to worry about what my health insurance looked like or covering that.

I do have a preexisting condition.

I have narcolepsy, which would prevent me from potentially getting insurance.

And we've seen cases where insurance companies have denied people for being childhood, or for childhood obesity.

- Yeah.

- And so, we saw the impact of Covid, and people with preexisting conditions were the ones who were hardest hit by Covid.

And so, we know what the impact of this is going to be, if we remove millions of people off of health insurance, if we allow insurance companies to decide who gets health insurance.

Because again, while health insurance is a great option, it's a necessary for society, we also realize that insurance companies, they're designed to make money.

- Yeah.

- And the easiest way to make money is to cut the people who end up being the most expensive.

And those are people with preexisting conditions.

People who are going to, you know, the lifetime cap is another aspect of the Affordable Care Act that people don't realize, that prior to the Affordable Care Act, if you used too much healthcare, if they said, you know, you were too expensive, they would cut you.

- Yeah.

- And so the people who need it the most would have the least access to it.

- And while we're talking about all this, I just wanna make sure if you always understand that the purpose of today's conversation is just to clearly pull out some of the proposals that are being put out with this project 2025 document.

We're not leading one way or the other.

Obviously there's, you know, feelings around a lot of it.

But this is just simply stating what's been proposed.

Nothing has been enacted, nothing is in motion quite yet, officially.

- There's some bills out there, - But some things, and so that brings me to abortion, right?

- Okay.

- So we did see the overturn of Roe v Wade a couple of years ago.

Abortion has been a hot topic conversation over and over again, ever since.

It's part of the proposal.

It is in there.

Devin, share with us what that proposal looks like when it pertains to abortion.

- Right, so abortion is an important topic across the country as of now.

And it's interesting was, I was there when Roe versus Wade was overturned back in the summer 22.

I was working in Congress, actually.

And what was so interesting is, from then until now, what we're starting to see within this proposal is that what they're first, first and foremost, they're trying to get away with the abortion pills.

So doing roll backs and deregulation, that aspect.

Another thing too is the Comstock Act that they're trying to impasse.

So what that specific would do would be like, say for instance that you get some of your medication through the mail, they'll roll back on that too because you have a good percentage of Americans that rely on that.

You rely on US meds as well as other entities in order to get that and be able to use that medication.

- Right.

- And so we talk about that.

And then also having more of an increased reasons of abortion across the country.

So the thing is this, is that why is it that we're retaining the woman's right to choose when it should be in her decision, rather than putting in politician decisions.

'Cause I think about, you know, if I have a future daughter or even just my wife in itself, and I just can't imagine of just current Americans that are dealing with it now, just like not being, having abortion.

And that puts in.

The risk of the woman itself.

So now we're just talking about life over death.

- And so you brought up the Comstock Act, which is a, it's already a law.

It's an unused law, has not been used in a long time, but they're trying to utilize the Comstock Act to prevent, as you said, abortion medication from being shipped across state lines or being shipped at all.

It's also illegal to transport it across state lines.

So if you drive across the border in order to, a state border in order to get an abortion medication and bring it back to your own state, you are now committing a felony.

And just to be clear, these are all things that are currently- So Comstock Act is a current law, it's just not utilized, so it's not used.

So they're trying to utilize that in order to create, essentially make it impossible to get an abortion because it would be illegal to ship it, again, if a doctor's office were to order it from another state, it would now be illegal, if you were to drive across the border, if you're in a state that does not allow access to abortion and you drive across to a state that does, and you bring that, and I think it's important to, most abortions in this country are medical, are medicated.

It's through a pill, it's not an invasive surgery or anything like that.

And so that is the, and again, relating this back to how it impacts African Americans, we have the highest maternal mortality rate in the world.

And for Black women, it is three times higher than for our, their counterparts.

And so when we talk about, as you said, a woman's right to choose, a woman's right to choose her healthcare, we have major problems in Black women being able to deliver children safely in this country.

I was reading a statistic and they said that if you made, if you compare a Black woman giving birth to any other job in America, it would be the second most dangerous job in the country, just from the mortality rate of how many African American women passing away.

So I think that it's important to realize the danger that women face, particularly Black women, in their reproductive choices in healthcare.

And so when we start talking about limiting access to abortion medication, limiting access to family planning, because part of the Comstock Act and what they define as an abortion medication, some of it is just birth control.

Plan B would be considered under strict reading of the statute, and so we're not just talking about abortion we're also talking about access to family planning medication.

- About five minutes left in the show.

And I wanna make sure that we kind of talk about the voter impact, 'cause there's a lot, if we wanted to sit here and talk about proposal, I mean, we have education that we hadn't touched, Critical race theory is in there, banned books in there, and then when we talk about safety, there's a lot in there.

So we encourage you, if you haven't taken a look for yourself, please, go read the document, take a look.

But let's talk about what this information is gonna do to voter turnout, Black voter turnout.

Before Biden stepped down, there was conversation about our Black people going out to vote.

We've seen Kamala change those numbers drastically, even without an official announcement that she is going to be running.

How do you think Project 2025 is going to impact or is it going to impact voters at all in their decision making?

- I think the more people know about Project 2025, the more it influences them to go out and vote.

I think that's why you see Trump and JD Vance trying to distance themselves from it at this point because they know that a lot of those ideas are very, very unpopular.

The more they talk about the ideas, the more people, and I think it's going back to when Trump was, in his first term when he tried to get rid of Obamacare, and when they rolled out what their plan was, it was very unpopular and that's why it never went through, because people realized how bad it was.

And so when we see, when we see the Trump campaign out on the campaign trail, he speaks very vaguely about policy.

Now what I don't think, he's not really in-tuned in policy.

So we know that a lot of the policies that would come into a second Trump administration would come from these outside sources of people who are associated with Project 2025.

So we can see the details of policy, we see how unpopular they are, and I think the more people know about it, the more likely they are to show up to vote and which is why they're trying to distance themselves.

I think the Heritage Foundation two days ago said they're actually gonna shut down the policy wing of Project 2025.

And I think the other important part about Project 2025, yes, there's this 900 page document of their policies, but I think the other dangerous part that people are not paying as much attention to is Project 2025 is supposed to be creating kind of a LinkedIn for conservatives.

And so they're trying to vet over 10,000 potential federal employees based solely off of their adherence to conservative philosophy, and basically give them training so that once, if they do, or they are able to win the White House, that they have a list of federal employees that they can bring in because a lot of what Trump wanted to do in the first administration was stop by those career federal employees who said, "This isn't a good idea, we need to roll this back."

And so now they're trying to, again, part of Project 2025 is to kind of purge those people, the federal employment and try to bring in people with like-minded philosophy, so.

I hope more people learn the more incentivize them to vote.

- Devin, you represent our younger votes.

How do you feel like young votes are going to potentially change things?

- Right, to also speak on what Marcus said as well.

As what you saw last week and well after Kamala Harris, after Joe Biden, President Joe Biden stepped down and Kamala Harris entered the race.

What you started seeing was just a surge of new energy and then the energy was this is that you had older man Joe Biden to step down and say, hey, I'm gonna pass the baton to the next generation.

And you see Kamala Harris take off.

And so what's interesting is like you see a whole ship in regards to Gen Z and then as well as like other demographics other than Gen Z, you start seeing so many people, black women, 44,000 black women organized, raise millions of dollars.

You also see the black men come behind as well as raise just about over a million as well.

And then also you start seeing different Zoom strategy meaning such as like white dudes for Kamala Harris.

And then you start seeing white women for Kamala Harris, as well as other demographics as well.

And what you're starting to see is this generation, this overall amount of money, more than $80 million the campaign has been able to raise, you're starting to see that this by itself is what the movement is and it's led by a grassroots movement.

And so what you're starting to see, and you just saw this at the the other day at a Kamala Harris campaign rally back in in Houston or I mean Georgia, Atlanta, and you start seeing just like people talk about why did Megan Stallion, why they use her to be there.

And that's because you have to see what is the cultural relevancy.

And the campaign knows that.

And that's what you're starting to see youth get behind because they recognize that this is the platform unlike Trump doesn't have a clear policy platform.

You see Kamala Harris does.

You see what she's being able to do, being qualified, being able to be a district attorney, attorney general, US senator, and now being the vice president.

This woman is more than qualified and understands the youth.

The youth understands that and that's why they're getting behind and backing her.

And so when we talk about the voter turnaround itself, were about to push out in the different swing states and I believe we can win the election.

- Yeah, and you know, it's so important that people get out there and vote and a lot of voter misinformation is out there.

So we've got a graphic that we want people to take a look at, scan as election day gets closer and we get closer to making that vote, we want our viewers to know that PBS North Carolina wants you to be prepared so that you vote with information and you vote smart.

Voter registration information, day of vote information, deadlines, early voting, voter ID.

There's so much information if you go to pbsnc.org/vote for additional details or scan the QR code if you are able to do so.

It's so important that we exercise our ability to vote.

- It is.

- Any last thoughts or words, Devin, Antoine, that you guys have for those who just need to vote?

One person total of 35 seconds.

- I would say this more than anything is the change that we wanna see starts with our right to exercise our right to vote, as well as doing other things within the community to bring the community together.

When you see throughout the history of this nation is that when we show up, we can make change.

And that's what's all is about.

So that's the call to action, not only to the youth, but also the older generation as well, because we see through collective action itself, through collective bargaining, we can make a change and push us forward in the right direction.

- Devin Freeman, Antoine Marshall, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

And we thank you for watching the show.

If you want more content like this, we invite you to engage with us on Instagram using the hashtag Black Issues Forum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum and on the PBS video app.

I'm Kenya Thompson.

I'll see you next time.

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