Project 2025's 'Department of Life' and the Ongoing HHS Restructuring
Project 2025 envisions transforming HHS into a 'Department of Life' that rejects abortion as healthcare, replaces the reproductive health access task force with a pro-life task force, and erases protections for LGBTQ+ people—while consolidating the Assistant Secretary for Health and Surgeon General roles. As of late 2025, the restructuring is partially implemented, but the explicit pro-life task force and 'Department of Life' rebranding have not yet been enacted.
Project 2025's blueprint for HHS is not a distant threat—it is a set of instructions being executed in real time. The March 2025 HHS restructuring consolidated multiple agencies into the 'Administration for a Healthy America,' eliminating the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health as a standalone entity, partially mirroring Project 2025's call to merge the ASH and Surgeon General. What remains unexecuted, as of this writing, is the explicit 'pro-life task force' to replace the Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force, the official rebranding of HHS as the 'Department of Life,' and the formal rejection of abortion as healthcare. These would embed anti-abortion dogma into every HHS program, from maternal health to family planning funding—endangering the lives of pregnant people, especially in states with restrictive bans, by removing federal support for evidence-based reproductive health services.
The family agenda goes further: HHS antidiscrimination policies have already been stripped of protections for sexual orientation and gender identity via Executive Order 14168, which replaces inclusive language with a 'biological reality of binary sex' framework. Project 2025 wants to extend this to bar any federal contract or regulation from using terms like 'abortion,' 'reproductive health,' or 'gender equity'—effectively censoring public health language. This data suppression compounds the already alarming disappearance of federal health disparities data documented by KFF, undermining research on maternal mortality, LGBTQ health, and environmental justice. The rollback path is clear: rescind EO 14168, reverse HHS guidance, and legislatively restore inclusive data collection—but every day without action hardens the administrative state against the very people it is supposed to serve.
Rollback path — how this gets undone
This action has already been implemented. These are the concrete levers that could reverse it.
- Rescind EO 14168 and EO 14151 New President rescinds the executive orders that removed sexual orientation and gender identity from HHS antidiscrimination policy and ordered data removal; HHS reissues inclusive policy statements and data-collection directives.
- Reverse HHS consolidation of OASH into AHA Future HHS Secretary reverses the March 27, 2025 restructuring to restore OASH as a standalone office; Congress may pass legislation requiring statutory reorganization to prevent future abolition.
- Restore Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force HHS Secretary reestablishes the task force and replaces any pro-life task force created in the interim; Congress should codify the task force in statute to prevent unilateral elimination.
- Codify Surgeon General independence Congress passes legislation affirming the Surgeon General's statutory duty to issue public-health advisories without prior political clearance, and prohibiting the merger of the ASH and SG roles into a single position.
- Restore ATSDR independence and environmental health data collection HHS Secretary reverses any gag orders or data-removal directives affecting ATSDR; Congress appropriates dedicated funding for environmental health surveillance by race, ethnicity, income, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
Reversing it is step one. The forward agenda — what we build so it can’t recur — is in Answers to this entry →
Grounded in
- HHS Announces Transformation to Make America Healthy Again
- HHS Begins Reorganization: Actions Focus on Efficiency
- Project 2025 Has Bad Medicine for HHS
- Subject-by-Subject Breakdown of Trump's Project 2025
- Trump's team is using Project 2025 as a blueprint to make changes
- HHS Public Health Policy Actions Under the Trump Administration
- Tracking the Attacks on Reproductive Freedom Under Trump 2.0
- The Reorganization of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 16: Department of the Interior (pp 522-523)"— 489 — Department of Health and Human Services 1. Colluding with Big Tech to censor dissenting opinions during COVID. 2. Colluding with abortion advocates and LGBT advocates to violate conscience-protection laws and the Hyde Amendment. The Life Agenda. The Office of the Secretary should eliminate the HHS Repro- ductive Healthcare Access Task Force and install a pro-life task force to ensure that all of the department’s divisions seek to use their authority to promote the life and health of women and their unborn children. Additionally, HHS should return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care and by restoring its mission statement under the Strategic Plan and elsewhere to include furthering the health and well-being of all Americans “from conception to natural death.” The next Administration should create a dedicated Special Representative for Domestic Women’s Health. In the Trump Administration, there was a Special Representative for Global Women’s Health that focused on international issues, but this position lacked authority to be the lead on international policies because of overlapping issues with t…"