Project 2025 threatens thousands of Virginia workers

The conservative policy playbook tied to Donald Trump would threaten the livelihoods of thousands of Virginia’s federal workers and hurt the state economy. 

Many of Virginia’s federal workers are bracing themselves for another Trump presidency, which they know from experience will make their lives harder. 

Project 2025, the unpopular conservative playbook for a Republican presidency, calls for the elimination of large parts of the government, threatening tens of thousands of Virginia-based federal workers. Trump and his campaign are trying to distance themselves from Project 2025, despite reports showing how Trump and his running mate JD Vance have ties to the document’s authors. 

Regardless of how it’s branded, Trump has long been open about his disdain for the government and desire to politicize the kinds of nonpartisan jobs that keep America functioning. While in office, Trump cracked down on federal workers’ unions and sought to turn thousands of career civil servants into political appointees. 

“They’re crooked people, they’re dishonest people,” Trump said of government workers in a recent interview, according to a Government Executive report. “They’re going to be held accountable.”

The bad memories of the Trump years and the potential he and Vance will build on that dark legacy has put federal workers like Stacy Shorter, a Hampton VA Medical Center social worker, on edge and rallied them around the Harris-Walz ticket. 

“They almost destroyed my union, and I’ll never forget it,” Shorter said of the Trump administration. “And I’ll never forget that Joe Biden, day one, started writing his own executive orders to reverse all the damage that was done to us.” 

Project 2025 and Virginia’s federal workers

There are about 140,000 federal civilian employees who live in Virginia, including corrections officers at a Petersburg federal prison and thousands of civilian defense department workers in Northern Virginia. 

Many of their jobs would be threatened by Project 2025’s goal to eliminate federal jobs and Trump’s desire to relocate thousands of jobs from Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. 

An op-ed by The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press editorial board said the aims of Project 2025 would “shake the commonwealth’s foundations” and “wallop the state economy, potentially putting thousands of Virginians out of work.”

The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing workers in nearly every agency of the federal government, estimates the proposals in Project 2025 would eliminate up to a million federal jobs; declare public unions illegal; gut the pay and benefits of federal workers; and increasingly privatize the federal government. 

One of the biggest threats to federal workers is a Project 2025 proposal that would make workers’ performance appraisals much more subjective, which would open the door to discrimination based on race, gender, and even workers’ political beliefs, according to Jacqueline Simon, the public policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees.

“Two people in the same occupation could get very different pay raises if one is viewed as not sufficiently loyal to President Trump – not sufficiently eager to carry out President Trump’s political agenda. That person could get a pay cut,” Simon said. “The other one, who might not be very good at his job but loves President Trump’s agenda, could get a big pay raise.” 

For workers like Shorter, the anti-union and anti-federal worker policies of Trump present a sharp contrast with Kamala Harris who has walked a union picket line. 

“She supports worker rights,” Shorter said of Harris. 

Watch: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin Downplays Project 2025 

@vadogwoodnews Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin doesn’t want you take Project 2025’s far-right proposals seriously. Maybe that’s because the more voters learn about what Republicans really want for America, the less they like what they are finding out. #project2025 #virginianews2024 #glennyoungkin #youngkin ♬ original sound – The Dogwood