Protests targeting Project 2025 and President Donald Trump’s agenda, like this one in Concord, were planned for Feb. 5, 2025, in all 50 states. (Photo by William Skipworth/New Hampshire Bulletin)
Donna Ackerman believes the country is at an inflection point.
“Our government’s standing on the precipice of a huge change,” she said. “And we really got to make sure it doesn’t go the wrong way.”
Ackerman was one of hundreds of people protesting against Project 2025 and President Donald Trump’s agenda Wednesday in Concord. Chanting, holding up signs, and expressing their outrage in front of the State House, the protesters were part of a nationwide effort to hold demonstrations against the president in all 50 U.S. states.
“It’s frightening in a way,” she said about the newly inaugurated president’s early actions. “But it’s not fear that brings me here. It’s justice that brings me here, justice for human rights, justice for our Constitution.”
Among her biggest concerns was Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who after donating heavily to Trump’s campaign has had huge influence over his administration.
“He wasn’t an elected official,” she lamented.
She pointed to recent reporting that Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, which Trump named him head of, gained access to sensitive Treasury Department data, including the department’s payment system. (The New York Times first reported this news.)
“That’s a little scary,” she said. “Because maybe Trump himself isn’t gonna be able to stop him from what’s being accessed.”
Phoebe Pouliot, of Concord, said she came Wednesday for “a lot of reasons.”
She explained that she studies education and has worked as an elementary school paraprofessional. She’s concerned with Republicans’ efforts to control what teachers teach about Black history and other topics. She pointed to GOP-backed policies in place in other states.
“Florida has started to rewrite history,” she said. “They’re starting to tell Black children that they have benefited from slavery, which not only scares me about the racism that would develop in the white children that hear that, but also the negative impact for the mindset of the Black child.”
Pouliot is also concerned with his immigration policies, which include promises of mass deportations and ending birthright citizenship.
“I worked with so many children of color at the elementary school I worked at and with so many immigrant children,” she said. “And they deserve a future.”
She also explained she was bisexual and her brother is transgender. She’s concerned about what Trump’s agenda means for LGBTQ people like themselves.
“It’s appalling to think that many people think Mr. Trump is a good man,” said another protester, Frank Baker, of Andover. “He’s everything you shouldn’t be.”
Baker called Trump “a fascist” and “prejudiced” and criticized “how he treats women and the way he lies and lies and lies.”
Project 2025 was created in 2023 by the conservative Heritage Foundation as a “wish list” of what the group wanted a second Trump administration to pursue. The 900-page document published online included a number of far-right proposals that inspired shock and condemnation from the left. The proposals include the reclassification of thousands of federal employees as political appointees that can be replaced with Trump loyalists; banning pornography; rolling back protections against sexual or gender identity-based discrimination; and abolishing the Department of Education, the Consumer Protection Bureau, and the Department of Homeland Security, among others.
Many of its authors have close ties to Trump and served in his first administration. Paul Dans, the chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management in Trump’s first administration, was the founder and leader of Project 2025 until he left the Heritage Foundation in August. Other chief architects of Project 2025 include Russel Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget in his first term and has been renominated to the same role in his second term; Tom Homan, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump’s first administration who Trump has named “border czar” in his second term; and Stephen Miller, Trump’s hugely influential current deputy chief of staff and former senior adviser for policy.
On the campaign trail, as criticism of the strategy document grew, Trump denied involvement and distanced himself from Project 2025
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote on social media in July. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
However, since taking office last month, Trump has attempted – sometimes successfully – to enact several of the policies outlined in Project 2025, such as banning transgender people from the military; ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; enforcing the death penalty and executing death row inmates; and withdrawing from the World Health Organization, among others.