Watch GLAAD’s Ad Attacking “Project 2025”
GLAAD's commercial depicts a potential future America in which children are indoctrinated into right-wing, autocratic ideology.
GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, has launched a national ad campaign to warn about “Project 2025,” which lays out a policy agenda for the next Republican president to pursue within the first six months after being sworn into power.
The aim of Project 2025 is to completely remake the U.S. government, shaping it into a right-wing autocracy, with a unitary executive in the White House, a suppliant federal workforce full of appointees loyal to the president, and the erosion of checks and balances by weakening the power of the judicial and legislative branches of government.
The conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, along with more than 100 other right-wing organizations, is promoting the agenda.
Project 2025 seeks to impose policies that would eliminate the social safety net, end worker protections, restrict reproductive freedom, curb freedom of the press, and eliminate any existing legal protections for LGBTQ individuals.
The plan calls for the erasure of mentions of sexual orientation and gender identity from all existing federal laws, agency rules, and regulations, as well as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives, gender, gender equality, gender equity, reproductive rights, and “any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights.”
GLAAD’s commercial, “The Pledge,” features a federal government representative overseeing a teacher who is leading her students in reciting a revised Pledge of Allegiance.
The words of the pledge read more like a loyalty oath to the country’s leader, and are reminiscent of the types of patriotic demonstrations or ideological indoctrination occurring in current-day right-wing regimes.
It also echoes the types of oaths schoolchildren were forced to swear to under fascist governments in Europe and South America, and under Communist regimes, both past and present.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag and the President of the United States of America,” the children in the commercial chant. “And to the biblical values for which our country stands, and the natural order of man and woman under God, loyal to the President at all times, with liberty and justice for all.”
The ad is running on MSNBC during the week when the Republican National Convention is being held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It will air again during MSNBC’s Morning Joe program on Friday, July 19, and is currently running nationally on digital channels.
At the end of the commercial, red and white text appears on screen: “Project 2025. Read it. Stop it.”
It provides the web address of www.StopProject25.com, which redirects to GLAAD’s website containing swaths of information about the contents of the more than 900-page agenda.
“Project 2025 is an assault on every American,” Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of GLAAD, said in a statement. “It would create an America where the freedoms that are hallmark to our Democracy are replaced with authoritarianism and the progress we have made for LGBTQ people, people of color, women, and other marginalized communities is stripped away.
“From ending marriage equality and abortion access to nondiscrimination laws, Project 2025 is a roadmap to a weaker America where liberty and justice are not granted to all Americans,” Ellis continued. “But it doesn’t stop there — it would harm every American by giving tax breaks to corporations while raising taxes on the middle class, including a new tax on our health insurance; allowing employers to eliminate overtime pay; and banning Medicare from negotiating drug prices.
“It even calls for government employees who are not loyal to the President to be fired from their jobs. Shame on us if we don’t do everything we can to stop this dangerous plan to turn the clock back,” Ellis concluded.
Watch GLAAD’s “The Pledge” below:
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