Project 2025: What it Means for the Adult Industry (& Beyond)

The 920-page conservative agenda aims to criminalize pornography, roll back abortion rights and censor progressive terms.

With the 2024 U.S. presidential election now behind us, the adult industry, LGBTQ+ communities, and women’s rights advocates are bracing for the impact of a second Trump administration. Here’s a simple, detailed portrait to prepare you for what may come if the far right-wing backed president implements the controversial policies.

Project 2025, a policy blueprint developed by more than 80 conservative organizations, is set to guide the administration’s approach and bring sweeping changes that may profoundly alter digital content regulation, reproductive health policies, and civil rights protections. A roadmap for Trump’s first 180 days that promises to (re-)open many heated debates.

Understanding Project 2025

The Mandate for Leadership – The Conservative Promise, more commonly referred to as Project 2025, is a “presidential transition project” that defines the roadmap for the first 180 days of the second Trump administration.

Developed by a coalition of more than 80 conservative organizations, including the Heritage Foundation, the American Principles Project, the Family Research Council, and the Alliance Defending Freedom, the 920-page document aims to criminalize pornography, withdraw the public’s access to abortion pills and censor the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender equality,” among other things. 

In other words, Project 2025 is a conservative agenda that details a tremendous amount of policy proposals that would radically impact not only digital content production and consumption but also education, immigration, healthcare, voting access, reproductive rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights and racial equity.

To make this plan happen, the Trump administration wishes to restructure and empower the executive power branch at the expense of Congress, resulting in more direct authority over the civil service. The foundations of this agenda raise a number of democratic questions as Trump grasps unprecedented power and enjoys presidential immunity from criminal prosecution.

“We are sleepwalking toward theocracy. We must act with the urgency this moment demands,” Texas State Representative James Talarico commented.

@jamestalarico

We are sleepwalking toward theocracy. We must act with the urgency this moment demands.

♬ original sound – James Talarico

Adult Entertainment

“Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.” 

You can read these words on page 5 of Project 2025’s colossal conservative agenda.

Trump has been notoriously known for affairs with Playmate Karen McDougal and adult star Stormy Daniels, without mentioning his fondness for Playboy models and Melania Trump’s nude photo shoot in the POTUS’ private jet, which skyrocketed her modeling career.

Despite a blatant contradiction between rhetoric and practice, Project 2025 advocates for a clampdown on what it describes as “obscene” content, directly affecting the adult entertainment sector. Notably, Project 2025 declares any LGBTQ content as pornographic in nature.

Under the banner of protecting traditional values, the policy suggests enforcing stricter regulations around the access, production and distribution of adult content across states. Notably, the plan includes potential measures for expanding the scope of the 1873 Comstock Act, an archaic federal law that prohibits mailing “obscene materials.” Renewed enforcement could limit online content distribution and restrict creators’ ability to operate on popular platforms​.

Beyond content restrictions, some industry leaders fear Project 2025 could impose additional scrutiny and licensing requirements, likely forcing many independent creators out of business. 

Many in the adult industry are concerned that the government may also start targeting financial institutions or online service providers that facilitate payments for adult content, echoing the challenges seen when platforms like OnlyFans were pressured to restrict explicit content in recent years​.

“In my view, this is the Christian Taliban,” Talarico added in an interview.

Women’s Rights

Project 2025 also outlines an agenda to restrict access to abortion, potentially removing it from federal healthcare frameworks. Furthermore, it proposes criminalizing certain abortion-related information and medication, which could lead to limited access across the country, even in states where abortion remains legal​.

The potential elimination of these healthcare services poses broader health and economic consequences, especially for low-income women who may lack alternative options. 

Project 2025’s “Department of Life” proposal seeks to transform the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, potentially prioritizing anti-abortion agendas in federal health policy. 

This department would also collect and track data on abortions, a move reproductive rights advocates argue would stigmatize individuals seeking abortion care and reduce medical privacy​, if not American women’s safety.

Despite more positive proposals, including policies that would potentially improve maternal health outcomes, support pregnant and parenting students, and protect women from discrimination in the workplace and other areas, we are facing a two-speed discourse. And what’s implied shouts louder than words.

The document transpires an instrumental, biblically-based definition of women, reducing them to the submissive progenitors of yesteryear. Trans women are not women, and we shouldn’t be using words such as “trans women” or face prosecution.

LGBTQ+ Rights

Project 2025 also introduces policies that would redefine the federal government’s position on gender and sexuality, calling for a strict, binary interpretation of sex and the erasure of “sexual orientation and gender identity” from federal guidelines. 

Under these terms, gender-affirming care could face substantial cuts, with transgender identities classified as forms of “deviancy.” 

The policy also recommends that healthcare providers be allowed to refuse gender-affirming care based on religious beliefs, a move LGBTQ+ advocates argue would dismantle critical health services for trans individuals and reinforce stigmas within federal health systems​.

Reinforcing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is the chocolate-coated policy the far-right would use to ensure (Christian) individuals and organizations can exercise their religious beliefs, including the denial of LGBTQ+ rights.

For same-sex couples, Project 2025’s framework includes proposals to deny federal recognition for LGBTQ+ families and enforce a traditional, nuclear-family definition in adoption and foster care services. Such a shift would impact the lives of thousands of LGBTQ+ families who rely on these services and would likely result in legal challenges should these proposals be enacted​.

A dramatic trans rights rollback could also take place and result in systemic discrimination against transgender people and Medicaid defunding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming medical care to trans adolescents.

“Project 2025 explicitly refers to any efforts that support gender equality, gender equity, abortion, reproductive rights, and federal welfare programs as direct threats to American well-being that need to be exterminated,” Kim Fuentes, Director of research and services for SWOP LA, told The Nation.

The potential impacts of Project 2025 are tremendous and would reshape American society in multiple aspects. The American Civil Liberties Union invites US citizens to sign its petition to stop Project 2025 which “threatens our rights, and is rife with proposals that would harm real people.”