op-ed

Claudia Yoli Ferla: Project 2025 Didn’t Start with Trump — Texans Have Been Living It for Decades

By Claudia Yoli Ferla

Lately, as Americans across the country discuss the implementation of Project 2025 into President Trump’s MAGA agenda as a looming threat to our democracy, I can’t help but think: Welcome to Texas. Here, we’ve been resisting a slow-moving authoritarian takeover for years — one voter suppression bill, attack on immigrants, or abortion ban at a time. While the rest of the country wakes up to what’s coming, Texans have been wide awake and fighting like hell for decades. 

Let’s be clear: Project 2025 isn’t new for Texans. It’s just going national.

Texas has long served as a testing ground for the same extremist policies that are now being scaled nationally. From SB 1 in 2021, which got rid of drive-through voting, drop boxes, and 24-hour polling locations, to voter identification laws that disproportionately targets Black and brown communities at the ballot box, the far-right in Texas leads the charge in voter repression. 

In fact, Texas has led the charge in regard to many regressive policies. The current legislative session has only reaffirmed that trend. Lawmakers pushed bills like the proof of citizenship bill introduced in Texas, called Senate Bill 16, which now has a national counterpart in Congress known as the SAVE Act, as well as HB 2197which would classify abortion as murder, leaving pregnant people without any kind of protections in a post-Roe reality.

However, in spite of the odds we face and an extremely hostile political environment, Texas organizers fought back. We built coalitions. We sued. And we won — like when MOVE Texas was a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the state of Texas and secured online voter registration options through our Department of Public Safety, leading to over a million new registered voters in its first year. Or when we flooded committee members’ offices with messages in opposition to the anti-abortion HB 2197 bill after it was scheduled for a hearing, resulting in lawmakers quietly pulling the bill from the agenda.

In 2013, Texas passed one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the U.S. at that time, and many people were terrified. Then came the People’s Filibuster – hundreds of people packed the state Capitol, and over 100,000 watched online as State Senator Wendy Davis stood for 13 hours to filibuster this bill. The moment was electrifying and was met with a roar in the gallery so loud it drowned out the final vote.

Texas youth organizers have faced what others are only beginning to see: a government that isn’t just conservative, but extremist — one that rewrites rules to silence young people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ folks, and communities of color. But we adapted, organized smarter, stayed rooted in community, and delivered clear wins: paid sick leave in San Antonio, defeating an abortion travel ban in Amarillo, and passing Prop R to decriminalize marijuana in Dallas. We’ve shown the country what young people can do when they are organized, and you can do it too.

But let’s be clear: The fight won’t be easy. We will all win and lose — often. But our losses prove our wins scare them. Remember: dogs bark loudest near the gate. In Texas, it often feels like we’re losing. But in reality, we have been slowly winning in hostile territory. That’s because we organize year-round, educate our communities, and center impacted voices.

If you’re just waking up to the scale of what’s coming, take heart — and take notes. The playbook already exists. We’ve survived and resisted a GOP dictatorship in Texas, and now we’re offering our strategies to you:

– Organize locally. 

– Build coalitions across movements — immigration, gender justice, education, anti-war, and voting rights.

– Build power for grassroots movements – donate, volunteer, 

– Show up year-round, not just in election cycles.

– Invest in joy and in young people.

– Never stop telling the truth, even when they change the rules to silence you.

And most importantly: your failures aren’t yours alone. They are evidence the opposition is scared of your power. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be fighting back so hard.

As an immigrant from a mixed-status family on the Texas border, I’ve lived under policies targeting my community for as long as I can remember — from attacks on DACA to efforts to criminalize asylum seekers. And yet, I’m still here. I am building a future where our communities are safe, seen, and powerful.

That’s why when people say young folks are disengaged, I laugh. Texas youth turned out in record numbers — in 2018, 2020, and 2022. Again, we are not disengaged. We just need something real to vote for. And we’re in it for the long haul. Let’s make democracy hot again. Let’s make it ours.


Claudia Yoli Ferla is the Executive Director at MOVE Texas. Drawing on her power and unique experience as a Dreamer and queer Latina, she advocates on behalf of young Texans everywhere looking to find their voices to affect change in their communities.

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