evidence: The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a right-wing blueprint for Donald Trump’s return to the White House, is an ambitious manifesto to redesign the federal government and its many administrative agencies to support and sustain neo-conservative dominance for the next decade. One of the agencies in its crosshairs is the Department of Labor, as well as its affiliated agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Project 2025 proposes a remake of the Department of Labor in order to roll back decades of labor laws and rights amidst a nostalgic "back to the future" framing based on race, gender, religion and anti-abortion sentiment. But oddly, tucked into the corners of the document are some real nuggets of innovative and progressive thinking that propose certain labor rights which even many liberals have never dared to propose. [...] Project 2025 advocates that Congress pass legislation allowing waivers for states and local governments to escape from enforcement of crucial federal labor laws, like the foundational Fair Labor Standards Act (which bestows the right to a minimum wage and time-and-a-half for overtime pay, and prohibits employment of minors in oppressive child labor) and the National Labor Relations Act that guarantees the right of workers to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining and take collective action such as strikes. This provision alone would enact an ominous, far-reaching threat to eviscerate the most important labor laws of the past 75 years.