A new report by the Center for American Progress details how Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda to gut checks and balances and give himself unprecedented power would be devastating for rural communities across America.

Not only does Trump’s Project 2025 agenda include plans to slash farmers’ safety nets, gut crucial investments in rural connectivity, and cut off disaster recovery programs for small businesses – but it could also defund public schools and eliminate childcare options that rural communities depend on. 

Center for American Progress: Project 2025’s Plan To Gut Checks and Balances Harms Rural America

Key Point: “Project 2025 is a plan to gut America’s system of checks and balances in order to enact an extreme, far-right agenda that would hurt all Americans. The plan proposes taking power away from everyday people to give politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives. Here are specific ways that Project 2025 harms Americans in rural communities.”

Putting farmers at increased risk of financial harm and stunting their ability to grow: “Project 2025 proposes eliminating the Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs, which “[protect] farmers from substantial drops in crop prices or revenues” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The plan would also “ban farmers from receiving ARC and PLC payments the same year they also receive crop insurance indemnities,” undermining farmers’ ability to plant the next crop.”

Eliminating child care options: “Project 2025 proposes to make this shortage even worse by eliminating Head Start, which… would wipe out a critical supply of child care in rural communities. A previous CAP analysis found that Head Start accounted for between 21 and 59 percent of all child care slots in rural communities across 10 states.”

Defunding public schools that serve rural students: “Project 2025 calls for eliminating the U.S. Department of Education and the Title I program, which provides vital resources to schools that serve low-income students, including in rural areas.”

Eliminating free school meals that disproportionately benefit rural students: “Hence, Project 2025’s proposal to end the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP)—which provides free school meals to those attending schools serving a student body wherein at least 25 percent of students are eligible for free- or reduced-price school meals—would be an acute threat to students in rural America. Nearly 20 million students attending more than 40,000 schools in the United States are currently eligible to benefit from free school meals under the CEP.”

Undermining recovery efforts for small businesses from natural disasters in rural areas, which are more susceptible to extreme weather events: “Project 2025 proposes to end the Small Business Administration’s direct lending program… Doing so would be particularly harmful to rural communities that ‘lack the basic capacity to access competitive federal [recovery] grants” due to lack of manpower, financial resources, expertise, and time.’”

Gutting rural connectivity: “Project 2025 calls for repealing all unspent funds provided through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, otherwise known as the bipartisan infrastructure law (BIL). Rural communities have benefited tremendously from the law, including through upgraded roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, ports, and waterways. The BIL also provided an unprecedented $65 billion to deploy broadband in all communities and make internet access more affordable. Prior to the law’s passage, rural communities were nearly 15 times more likely to lack access to reliable broadband than those in urban areas, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Thus, repealing the bipartisan infrastructure law’s broadband investments would disproportionately harm people living, working, or going to school in rural America.”

Limiting air travel service in rural areas: “Project 2025 slams the Essential Air Service (EAS) program, which helps ensure commercial air carriers can serve small airports in rural communities. The plan blames EAS for ‘distorting the commercial market’ and calls for ‘finally ending the program.’ Specifically, Project 2025 proposes allowing the market to dictate commercial service in all regions, including rural communities that would otherwise not be served in the absence of EAS.”