You Can Run From Project 2025, But You Can’t Hide – Mother Jones

Illustration from Mother Jones; Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP

The excitement of Chicago festival This week, Democrats have several goals: channeling enthusiasm for Vice President Kamala Harris, now the front-runner and hoping to capitalize on that momentum; honoring and thanking President Joe Biden for passing the torch; and, of course, attacking former President Donald Trump while offering Americans a contrast to his potential second presidency. Among the many side events and roundtables scheduled this week, one of the common threads in elected officials’ speeches and appeals has been the specter of Project 2025, the conservative manifesto and blueprint for a new Trump administration, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation.

In the hallways of the DNC, delegates carried signs declaring “Fuck Project 2025,” and prime-time speeches derided the plan as draconian and radical. Mother Jones Pema Levy recently wrote that the right-wing initiative “outlines a radical restructuring of the federal government that combines the authoritarian goals of the MAGA movement with the deregulatory dreams of America’s plutocrats.” Under the proposal, government agencies would be used to end access to abortion, prosecute Trump’s enemies, dismantle EPA regulations, and shut down the Department of Education. Mother Jones Julia Métraux recently announced that the 2025 plan would significantly reduce protections against discrimination in the workplace. Aware of the unpopularity of this roadmap for his presidency, Trump has continually tried to distance himself from it.

Democrats won’t give up that easily. Michigan Sen. Mallory McMorrow even brought a giant Project 2025 prop to the DNC stage Monday night, warning of an “unprecedented expansion of presidential powers” ​​if Trump wins the White House.

Mother Jones I met with several delegates and officials to explore Democrats’ strategy for highlighting the Heritage Foundation document as a threat to democracy, and asked how they planned to discuss it with voters in the weeks leading up to the November election.

“Project 2025 is about turning back the clock,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) told us, but she cautioned that it’s not new. “It’s only now coming to light. So people need to know that it’s real and they want to do it. So we’re not going to let that happen.”

“This is part of the extremist agenda of the Trump-era MAGA Republican Party, and here he is denying it,” Lee added. “I mean, it’s like, come on, please. Pathological liar.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) stressed that Trump can run, but he can’t run away from Project 2025, and Democrats like Khanna are eager to continue to emphasize that point. “His entire transition team and all the people he’s going to staff the government with are fundamentally Project 2025 believers,” he said. Mother Jones“But voters know that this is the program that his appointees would implement.”