Project 2025 would give the next conservative president control over the American economy on day one. They won’t need Congress. They won’t give public notice or allow comments. They will use federal grants and contracts to attack abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs – affecting thousands of businesses employing tens of millions of Americans. 

The strategy is laid out in one of Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy videos, some of which were recently published by ProPublica. In “How to Get Your Policy Through the Agency,” Dan Huff, a former legal adviser in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel in the Trump Administration, explains how political appointees in a conservative administration can bypass the lengthy rulemaking process required by the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) using an exemption.

“Matters relating to agency grants, or contracts, or benefits are exempt from the notice and comment requirements of the APA,” Huff tells the viewers. (27min) That means a potential Trump administration could, on day one, change all federal grants and contracts however they would like. Huff talks about banning DEI programs as an example of how this exemption can be used.

Huff tells political appointees to remove language promoting DEI programs from all federal grants and contracts. After that, they can add new requirements to federal grants and contracts banning recipients from holding “diversity trainings” and from considering race in hiring or admissions processes. Additionally, federal grant recipients and contractors would be required to have a “meritocracy officer,” who would file quarterly reports to ensure they are in compliance with the new requirements.

“[This exemption] could be used to take down the entire DEI apparatus across all sectors of the economy,” Huff says. He is right. 

The Obama administration said federal contractors employed 28 million people in 2014, which accounts for nearly 20 percent of all jobs in the U.S. that quarter – and that’s without including grant-funded organizations. 

This year, the U.S. government awarded over 4 million contracts and nearly 375,000 grants to businesses, state and local governments, and nonprofit organizations. Together, these grants and contracts are worth trillions of dollars and touch every part of the economy.

If the president can set company policies for that much of the economy, then the president can effectively control the economy.

Of course, the plan doesn’t stop with just ending DEI programs. Huff specifically says this is just one example of how this exemption can be used. Project 2025’s policy book, the Mandate for Leadership, calls for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to use “government contracts to push back against woke policies in corporate America” on page 48.

Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership tells us what other policies the next conservative administration could pursue using this exemption. 

One way the Trump Administration limited abortion access was by changing the rules for Title X grants, which help fund clinics that offer family planning and preventative health care services for free or reduced costs. Their new regulation, which effectively banned clinics that provide abortion care or referrals from Title X funding, cut Title X coverage in half. 

Their regulation was reversed by the Biden Administration in 2021, but on page 491, Project 2025 calls on the next conservative president to “reinstate the Trump Administration regulation for the program” and “do this quickly” – and it will happen fast.

Huff’s plan isn’t just theoretical – he’s already done it once. In the video, Huff explains that he used the APA’s exemption to end an Obama-era regulation, the “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule” in 14 days. The AFFH rule took about two years to finalize through the normal practice involving notice and commenting periods, but was revoked in just two weeks.

Project 2025 also targets LGBTQ+ rights on page 477, directing the Department of Health and Human Services to “repeal the unnecessary 2016 regulation that imposes nonstatutory sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination conditions on agency grants” to adoption agencies. This would let adoption agencies discriminate against LGBTQ+ couples again.

Proposals like these are common in Project 2025, which, by page three, says the next conservative administration needs to delete anything related to DEI, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ+ rights “out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”

If they follow through on these plans, it would be hard for the public to fight back. As Huff points out in his video, organizations that rely on government contracts and grants for revenue have little choice but to follow the requirements set by federal agencies, even if it would hurt them – and ending DEI programs would, given that companies that are more diverse outperform their competition. If an organization doesn’t want to make those changes, they would have to file a lawsuit.

Huff has a few plans for that as well.

Huff suggests adding another requirement to federal grants and contracts: the recipient is not allowed to sue the federal government over changes to the requirements. He admits that this change would itself be challenged in court, but if it’s allowed to stand, it would become impossible to challenge any other changes to the requirements. 

After all, you can’t sue unless you have what’s called “standing,” which means you can’t sue unless you or your organization are affected. The easiest way to show standing for changes to grant or contract requirements is to be one of the recipients. If recipients are banned from suing, it will be extremely hard for anyone else to prove standing.

Even if that gets struck down, Huff wants the federal government to start demanding “injunction bonds.” An injunction bond is required when someone filing a lawsuit wants the courts to set an injunction. The group filing the lawsuit would have to put money in an account – enough to cover damages if the court eventually rules against them. 

In this case, an injunction would temporarily block the government from enforcing their new requirement. Damages, according to Huff, would be in the millions of dollars. Anyone trying to sue the government would need to have that kind of money on hand, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to ask for an injunction.

Historically, courts have set injunction bonds at zero dollars in what they consider “public interest” lawsuits – those that serve the good of the public, rather than benefiting one person or organization. Huff even admits that, if that practice were to end, “it would stop all this public interest litigation.”

“If we could stop [public interest lawsuits] by requiring them to post bond, it would be fantastic,” Huff continues. (44:45)

In short, Huff is proposing a plan to let the executive branch control the American economy without any checks or balances to stop it. 

If either of his anti-litigation strategies work, they get to bypass the courts. The exemption gets around Congress and public input. Congress would need to amend laws before anyone could do anything about this plan at all. 

Even then, a president abusing this tactic would almost certainly veto any bill trying to take away their power – opponents would need a supermajority in both the House and Senate to override the veto. It’s extremely unlikely that a conservative wins the presidency, but loses a supermajority to progressives in both chambers of Congress.

If the next conservative president follows Project 2025’s plans for the economy, there will be nothing that can stop them.