Trump's Project 2025 already underway in Argentina

Milei has made an unprecedented cut to all public spending at close to 30%. He cut investment in education by 40%, denied increases to pensions, cut access to life-saving drugs for cancer patients, defunded the science and technology system and universities, and laid off almost 27,000 public employees.

He closed the public media and froze food distribution to soup kitchens. Now, he’s set to sell-off public companies in the fields of nuclear energy, aviation, fuel, mining, electricity, water, cargo transport, roads and railways.

Milei has eliminated nine ministries, including the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity and the Ministry of Education – something that the Mandate for Leadership mentions and Trump has also spoken about.

He has dismantled all gender policies and defunded services including those for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Last year, more than 170,000 people accessed these services, while official figures show that a femicide is committed every 35 hours in Argentina. It is now unclear whether anyone will continue to keep track of these statistics.

He also closed the Institute against Discrimination, Racism and Xenophobia, which he called a “sinister body used for ideological persecution”. Project 2025 authors would no doubt be delighted. Their blueprint for Trump goes to great lengths to explain how every diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policy, programme and fund must be removed.

The ‘Mandate for Leadership’ details the need to assemble an army of loyalists from day one to carry out this task of reducing the state. The Heritage Foundation has a database of some 20,000 people in the US who would make up a transitional staff for Trump. But it would require firing tens of thousands of career civil servants to replace them with people loyal to their ideology and ban public employees’ right to unionise.

Milei is actively persecuting civil servants who don’t follow his mindset. In a letter to the diplomatic corps, he demanded those who don’t align with his foreign policy ideas to “step aside”, specifically referencing his plan to repudiate the UN's Agenda 2030 which governments have signed to combat poverty, inequality and environmental destruction.

Days later, in a statement, he announced a purge: “The executive branch will launch an audit of the career staff of the foreign ministry with the aim of identifying promoters of anti-freedom ideas”.

War on gender

According to Project 2025, the next US president must “remove from every existing rule, regulatory agency, contract, grant, regulation, and federal law the terms sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights”.

Abortion is mentioned 199 times in the document, including proposing a federal ban, increased criminalisation, more restrictions on providing care for miscarriages and obstetric emergencies, defunding emergency contraception and strict surveillance systems on people who have abortions or suffer miscarriages.

Heritage also wants to impose its worldview across borders: restore the so-called ‘Mexico City policy’, which prohibits any US public funding to foreign non-governmental organisations if they include any abortion-related activity – even if they do so with their own funds.

The right to abortion, legalised in 2021 in Argentina, is in danger under Milei. His party introduced a bill to repeal abortion which he’s referred to as “aggravated murder”. He’s also defunded the distribution of abortion pills and contraceptives.

Milei eliminated a programme to prevent teenage pregnancy and has not set aside any funds in the 2025 budget for comprehensive sex education – which is mandatory by law and considered essential to prevent child abuse. Instead, authorities hired the Chilean Catholic organisation Teen Star, that promotes abstinence, for training teachers in charge of CSE.

Milei banned the use of gender inclusive language in public services, and put a Catholic lawyer, Ursula Basset, in the foreign ministry to review all the country's positions on gender and climate change. At the last Organisation of American States General Assembly, Basset stymied the negotiations by demanding the removal of “LGBTI people”, “gender”, “tolerance”, “climate change” and “families” from agreed intergovernmental statements.

“Argentina was the only G20 country to oppose the Ministerial Declaration on Gender Equality,” signed last month in Rio, Ávila-Guillén told me. The disagreement stemmed from the fact that “family care” was defined as work and the term “reproductive rights” was mentioned. Argentina ended up in a more extreme position than Saudi Arabia or Russia.