People Are Saying This New GOP Bill Is Straight Out Of The Project 2025 Playbook

Lee’s bill has striking parallels to Project 2025, an initiative from the conservative Heritage Foundation that laid out policy blueprints for President Donald Trump’s second term. Despite Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025, he has placed key architects of the project into influential positions in the federal government.   

In the 920-page playbook, the Heritage Foundation claimed pornography “has no claim to First Amendment protection” and should be outlawed, MSNBC reported.

“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,” text from Project 2025 reads. 

Lee’s bill would broaden the legal definition of “obscenity,” which is not protected by the First Amendment, to any material that “appeals to the prurient interest” in nudity or sex, “depicts, describes or represents” sexual acts and “taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

Any content that lawmakers feel meets the criteria could be defined as obscenity, meaning its transmission across state lines, including on the internet, could be criminalized under federal law. 

The bill’s definition of obscenity is “so broad” that it could apply to media like the HBO Max show Game of Thrones, Ricci Joy Levi, president of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, told Reason.