Department of Labor Gets Religion with Project 2025

The Heritage Foundation’s blueprint is alive and well

If you’re willing to believe press releases from the Trump/Vance campaign, Project 2025 is extinct. They’ve even gone so far as to say it won’t end well for entities that continue to link the campaign with the Heritage Foundation’s guide to taking over the government.

People hopefully are learning that, if Trump, et.al., are making a claim, they are lying. That’s what they do for a living. 

So the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint is alive and well. A group associated with it is still vetting MAGA warriors to replace civil servants. Another group has stockpiled plans for contesting election results. Trump still has the “secret” 180 day plan for kickstarting his administration. Not to mention that Project 2025 was drawn up by an overwhelming number of ex-Trump administration employees and appointees.

The New Republic has reprinted Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance’s introduction to Dawn's Early Light, a soon-to-be-published book by Heritage Foundation president and Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts. (It’s likely undergoing some revisions, as the text has been removed from an online source used by reviewers and booksellers.)

In that introduction, Vance articulates the rationale behind Project 2025, namely that the government must be excised of its demons before reducing it to rubble.

• The old conservative movement argued if you just got government out of the way, natural forces would resolve problems—we are no longer in this situation and must take a different approach. As Kevin Roberts writes, “It’s fine to take a laissez-faire approach when you are in the safety of the sunshine. But when the twilight descends and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to circle the wagons and load the muskets.”

• We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.

Department of Labor and Related Agencies. By Johnathan Berry* Agencies covered in this chapter include the Department of Labor (DOL), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the National Mediation Board (NMB), the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).

The very concept of independent organized labor is something reactionaries have opposed since the industrial era created conditions where people felt obliged to protect their interests as different from that of their bosses.

The struggle between organized labor and industry has largely taken place in the context of governmental oversight in recent years. Conditions relevant to wealth growth (for already rich people) have changed, with manufacturing outsourced or deemphasized as charging fees for ongoing use has risen as a path. 

Unions (outside of government employees) no longer have the economic and political power they once enjoyed, and despite recent job action and organizing successes, conservatives are poised for the kill. (There are a few union leaders who are seeing past the next contract negotiation and acting accordingly.)

The Project 2025 chapter on the Department of Labor assumes the inevitability of extinction (or irrelevance) and looks forward to a new era. What they envision is a government agency dedicated to encouraging the nuclear family, and workplaces where the religious views of employers are dominant.

Number one on their do list is getting rid of anything that smacks of tolerance or equity. Unions are no longer primarily the province of white males, and those who don’t fit in that category are more likely to be trouble makers.

What the authors propose to do is two fold: stop talking about the people they fear as part of the Great Replacement and stop counting “those people.”

Therefore, DEI and CRT and the like must be eliminated, not only in federal agencies, but with any private industry contractor that does business with the government.

• “Eliminate OFCCP. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) exists to enforce Executive Order (EO) 11246.2 That order was originally signed in 1965 to require federal contractors (and subcontractors) to commit to nondiscrimination…”

If you can’t measure it, racism does not exist. The justification used is that there are too many mixed race marriages and children…. Can’t tell ‘em apart anymore…And the same rule applies to gender and any other groups perceived as non-majoritarian.

However, one type of counting would be permitted: family units.

The Employment Economic Opportunities Commission “should reorient its enforcement priorities toward claims of failure to accommodate disability, religion, and pregnancy.”

P2025 also directly calls for: “Rescind(ing) regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.”

Once this social nirvana in the workplace is achieved, then it’s time to start knocking down the silly rules protecting workers. After all, if an employee doesn’t like conditions, they can always just quit.

One truly amazing rationale mentioned in this quest for “freedom” is that young people should be able to work in “inherently dangerous jobs.”  We’re to believe the youngsters are crying out for the opportunity to toil in roles currently not permitted due to significant safety concerns. 

(Never mind that underaged workers are already working in dangerous conditions throughout the south and central parts of the country. They don’t count because they’re immigrants.)

Where unions exist, employers should be able to put everything, regardless of legality, on the negotiating table. Overtime, breaks, basic safety measures, and more should be fair game, according to P2025.

Company unions would be permitted once congress authorizes “employee involvement organizations.” Standards for union recognition would be raised, employer interference in organizing campaigns would be legal, and the process of decertifying a union would be less stringent.

Speaking of overtime, getting paid extra for working more than forty hours in a week is such an outdated concept for the Heritage Foundation visionaries. Certainly the recently raised “overtime threshold” needs to go away, so more than four million workers can go back to working long hours because a boss says they’re “managers.”  

Since so many people require side gigs to make it, the rules that employers like Uber use to maintain the pretense of benefits would be the law of the land.

There would be some protections, like an executive order protecting religious employers and employees, making it clear that religious employers are free to run their businesses according to their religious beliefs. (I assume they’ll be okay with pastafarians)

P2025 would also like Congress to clarify Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to make it more explicit that those employers may make employment decisions based on religion regardless of nondiscrimination laws. Religious organizations would be encouraged to participate in apprenticeship programs.

• “Congress should encourage communal rest by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)9 to require that workers be paid time and a half for hours worked on the Sabbath. That day would default to Sunday, except for employers with a sincere religious observance of a Sabbath at a different time (e.g., Friday sundown to Saturday sundown); the obligation would transfer to that period instead. Houses of worship (to the limited extent they may have FLSA-covered employees) and employers legally required to operate around the clock (such as hospitals and first responders) would be exempt, as would workers otherwise exempt from overtime. “

Project 2025 aims to extend the Dobbs decision to the workplace, interfering with a business’s decision to provide workers with benefits that allow them to legally obtain an abortion.

H-2A and H-2B visa programs allowing non-citizen employment would be capped and phased out. No mention is made of the EB-5 (millionaires visa) program.

Those pesky government contracts including Project Labor Agreements would go away, as well as the standard by which “fair wages” are measured by. Lower pay would be okay in southern markets and states with ancient minimum wage laws.

When it comes to pension plans, P2025 would disinvest from companies engaged in Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) policies. They are especially concerned about investment decisions that discourage participation in ownership of companies producing or selling dirty energy.

Finally, P2025 would reduce agency budgets. The Employment and Training Administration and health and safety inspections would be appropriate places to cut budgets.

I’ll end this where I started, with commentary about JD Vance forward for Kevin Robert’s upcoming book by Heather Cox Richardson:

• Today, The New Republic published the foreword Vance wrote for Kevin Roberts’s forthcoming book. Vance makes it clear he sees Kevin Roberts and himself as working together to create “a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics.” Like others on the Christian right, Vance argues that “the Left” has captured the country’s institutions and that those institutions must be uprooted and those in them replaced with right-wing Christians in order to restore what they see—inaccurately—as traditional America.  

• That determination to disrupt American institutions fits neatly with the technology entrepreneurs who seem to believe that they are the ones who should control the nation’s future. Vance is backed by Silicon Valley libertarian Peter Thiel, who put more than $10 million behind Vance’s election to the Senate. In 2009, Thiel wrote “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” 

• “The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics,” he wrote. “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” 

*Jonathan Berry. Former acting Assistant Secretary for Policy at the US Department of Labor. At the US Department of Justice, he assisted with the nominations of Justice Neil Gorsuch and dozens of other judges. He previously served as Chief Counsel for the Trump transition and earlier clerked for Associate Justice Samuel Alito and Judge Jerry Smith of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. 

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This series on Project 2025 will resume on August 14 as I'm taking some time off.

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Previously:

(Intro) Digging Deep into Project 2025 - (a multi-part Series)
Going Deep into Project 2025 - Partisan Priorities for Civil Servants
Project 2025: Christian Soldiers Marching Off to Land Wars
Homeland Security’s Authoritarian Role in Project 2025
What Can You Do For Trump Today? Project 2025’s Diplomats, Spies and Spokespersons
No Soup For You: Project 2025’s Foreign Aid Program
Project 2025’s National Nightmare for “The General Welfare”
Project 2025: Junk Food and Parents Rights
Make America Dirty Again: Project 2025 on Energy and the Environment
Project 2025: Some (Christian) People Are More Equal Than Others
Public Land for Sale, Cheap: Project 2025
Revenge Drives Project 2025 Justice Department
Don’t Let Trump Fool Ya: Project 2025 Lives

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Wednesday News to Peruse

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Olympic Women Are Pushing the Limits of the Human Body by Jill Filipovic

• Take Simone Biles, the best-known American athlete competing in Paris this year. Women’s gymnastics has long been the realm of prepubescent girls, so much so that one gymnastics physical trainer recently told the LA times that college used to essentially be a “retirement community” for female gymnasts. At the 2016 Olympics, gymnast Aly Raisman was considered so unusually old that her teammates nicknamed her “grandma.” She was 22.

• This year, Biles is 27 and at the top of her game, making her the oldest female gymnast to compete in the Olympics since the 1950s. And yes, Biles is an absurd and unusual talent, the undisputed greatest gymnast of all time. But she’s also at the helm of a team where four of the five women are in their 20s — not old by normal-person standards, but practically elderly by gymnastics ones. This US gymnastics team is also one of incredible strength and power, evidenced by the groundbreaking skills the young women display, a marked shift from the days when being extremely thin and lithe were considered precursors for success in the sport.

• Female athletes in other sports are also competing well beyond ages that seemed possible even a few years ago. Women in their 40s are playing basketball and running races and rowing boats at the Paris Olympics. Women in their 50s and 60s are Olympic equestrians.

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Meet the conspiracy theorist and anti-LGBTQ extremist pulling the strings at major American corporations by Rebecca Crosby at Public Information

• Starbuck was able to successfully pressure Tractor Supply without prompting any real scrutiny about his own extremist beliefs. Starbuck then repeated the process with farm equipment company Deere & Co., posting dozens of times about the company's diversity policies. On July 9, Starbuck criticized the company’s “LGBTQ & race based identity groups,” “total commitment to DEI policies,” and policy asking employees to list their “preferred pronouns.” Shortly after Starbuck began posting, the company announced it would be eliminating some of its diversity initiatives. Starbuck celebrated the partial win, but argued that the company should go further and eliminate all corporate diversity efforts. 

• Starbuck is now going after his next target. On July 23, Starbuck called for a boycott of Harley-Davidson on X, citing the company's hosting "LGBTQ+ events at the corporate office" and facilitating "LGBTQ+ & race based" affinity groups. Starbuck appears to be demanding that corporations not engage in any acknowledgment of LGBTQ employees or customers. 

• In an interview, Starbuck said “he and his researchers have identified 20 companies that could be ripe for a similar boycott.” Starbuck said that he “definitely proved a model” that involves targeting companies that appeal to a conservative clientele. In a post on X, Starbuck wrote, “DEI is poison and we won’t rest until the public knows how companies have strayed from American values.” 

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‘Nuff Said.