CHILDREN

PAGE ONE

Panel 1

A group of kids of various ages, genders, and races play on a playground, looking happy.

CAPTION: Everyone thinks kids deserve the chance to be happy and safe, right?

Panel 2

The kids look up towards the sky, concern and fear coming over their faces.

CAPTION: Even the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership says they want to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.” [2025, p. 3]

KID: What the…

Panel 3

A huge slab, probably close to 100 feet tall, slams into the ground with a giant KTHOOM! Kids are thrown into the air from the force of the crash. The slab reads “Project 2025 vs. Kids.”

KIDS: AAAAGH!

CAPTION: But let’s see what Project 2025 would actually do to kids and their families…

Panel 4

This panel is broken into two parts. In the first, we see a close up of a hand holding a can of baby formula. In the second, a father looks dubiously at the back of that baby formula bottle. He’s holding a hungry, crying baby.

CAPTION: Deregulate baby formula.

CAPTION: Project 2025 says “labeling regulations and regulations that unnecessarily delay the manufacture and sale of baby formula should be re-evaluated.” [2025, p. 302]

FATHER: Hang on, what’s in this stuff anyway?

Panel 5

A kid puts her hand to her face in horror as she watches two men in red suits throw the PBS KIDS logo into the back of a garbage truck.

CAPTION: Defund educational PBS programs.

CAPTION: Project 2025 calls for defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcast. [2025, p. 246]

CAPTION: They specifically claim PBS educational programs like Sesame Street are “biased to the Left.” [p. 247]

GIRL: Nooo…

PAGE TWO

Panel 1

This panel is broken into two parts. The first zooms in on a kid’s hand lifting a spoonful of goopy, indeterminate food. The second shows kids siting in a cafeteria, staring down dubiously at their lunch trays. More figures in red suits and red ties loom behind them.

CAPTION: Eliminate USDA dietary guidelines.

CAPTION: Project 2025 claims that concerns about “climate change and sustainability” have “infiltrated” dietary guidelines that affect school lunches.

CAPTION: Their preferred solution?

CAPTION: “The USDA should help lead an effort to repeal the Dietary Guidelines.” [2025, p. 309]

KID: What is this?

MAN IN SUIT: Shut up and eat.

Panel 2

The red suited figures pick up the lunch trays, taking them away from the children. A boy is still staring at his spoon full of goop, while a girl turns around in shock as her lunch is stolen.

MAN IN SUIT: On second thought…

GIRL: Hey!

CAPTION: Reduce of the number of free school lunches.

CAPTION: The Community Eligibility Program (CEP) “allows schools or school districts with high rates of poverty to offer meals to all students without having to qualify each student individually.”*

CAPTION: Project 2025 states “Congress should eliminate CEP.” [2025, p 303]

FOOTNOTE: *https://firstfocus.org/resource/how-project-2025-would-leave-kids-babies-hungrier-less-healthy/

Panel 3

We look over the shoulder of a red suited figure who is pointing at some kids lined up outside a school. The kids look shocked and hungry, and they are clutching empty lunch trays.

CAPTION: Eliminate summer meals for many kids.

MAN IN SUIT: Scram!

CAPTION: Furthermore, Project 2025 says “the USDA should not provide meals to students during the summer unless students are taking summer-school classes.”

CAPTION: They call summer meals for hungry kids “a federal catering program.” [2025, p 303]

Panel 4

A group of happy preschoolers sit on the floor, raising their hands in class. A teacher with her back to us is holding a book. To the right, ominously, a man in a red suit starts to open the classroom door.

CAPTION: Eliminate Head Start.

CAPTION: The Brookings Institute says “Head Start improves educational outcomes–increasing the probability that participants graduate from high school, attend college, and receive a post-secondary degree, license, or certification.”

CAPTION: But Project 2025 says it wants to “eliminate the Head Start program.” [2025, p. 482]

Panel 5

The red suited man points toward the door, and the teacher leads her students out of the classroom.

CAPTION: It cites instances in which Head Start children were “abused, left unsupervised, or released to an unauthorized person.” [2025, p. 482]

CAPTION: But it does not address how eliminating the program would support the approximately 800,000 children currently enrolled.

MAN IN SUIT: And stay out!

PAGE THREE

Panel 1

A man in a police uniform knocks on a front door above a red Notice of Eviction that’s been taped to it.

CAPTION: Evict more families.

CAPTION: Project 2025 wants to “rescind legal analysis that authorized HHS to impose a moratorium on rental evictions during COVID.” [2025, p. 492]

Panel 2

A family stands on a sidewalk amid their destroyed furniture, implicitly the things that were tossed out of their apartment when they were evicted. A stressed mother holds a worried child, while two elderly people hold each other. Two men in red suits carry away a low table.

CAPTION: Furthermore, Project 2025 wants to “prohibit noncitizens, including all mixed-status families, from living in all federally assisted housing.” [2025, p. 509]

CAPTION: So Project 2025 would evict a US citizen child because the grandmother she lives with is undocumented–or even a legal resident with a green card!

Panel 3

Two children cling to a chain-link fence, staring grimly. Behind them we see a sea of tents.

CAPTION: Put immigrant kids in tents.

CAPTION: Project 2025 calls for a revision of rules for “family and unaccompanied” immigrants that “allow for large-scale use of temporary facilities (for example, tents).” [2025, p. 148]

Panel 4

Two young teenagers work in a filthy slaughterhouse. One sweeps the floor; the other, standing on a box to be tall enough to reach the table, is sorting animal carcasses.

CAPTION: Relax child labor laws.

CAPTION: Recent news articles have documented an underage worker being killed in an industrial accident.

CAPTION: But Project 2025 says “with parental consent and proper training, certain young adults should be allowed to learn and work in more dangerous occupations.” [2025, p. 595]

PAGE FOUR

Panel 1

A line of kids of various races and genders regular, sit against a wall in a school yard. They have wary, ambivalent expressions on their faces as they gaze out toward us.

CAPTION: Project 2025 also states that “the noxious tenets of ‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology’ should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country.” [2025, p. 5]

CAPTION: It never recognizes that millions of children suffer every day from racism, homophobia, sexism, and transphobia.

Panel 2

An ambulance and fire truck have pulled up to a school. In the foreground, looking at the school, we see the line of kids from the previous panel. Between the kids and the school is a line of tape that reads “Police Line Do Not Cross.”

CAPTION: But just as important is what Project 2025 doesn’t mention.

CAPTION: Nowhere in the 887-page document do the phrases “school shootings” or “gun control” appear.

Panel 3

A wide shot of that big slab on which “PROJECT 2025 VS. KIDS” is carved.

CAPTION: Project 2025 says it wants to “protect our children.”

Panel 4

The slab, now in close up, starts cracking in half with a giant CRAAAAK sound effect.

CAPTION: But maybe our children should be protected from Project 2025.

Panel 5

The kids from the first panel of page 1 happily climb over the rubble of the destroyed slab, escaping its destruction.

KIDS: Ha haaa!

CAPTION: End.