Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic allies have turned Project 2025 into one of their most consistent tools against the campaign of former President Donald Trump. Now, they've taken the fight over the conservative-written handbook to a bigger new scale.
Repeatedly, speakers at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago brought out a giant copy of the roughly 900-page “Mandate for Leadership."
“They went ahead and wrote down all the extreme things that Donald Trump wants to do in the next four years,” Mallory McMorrow, a 37-year-old state senator from Michigan, said from the stage. “We read it."
DNC officials plan to talk about Project 2025 every night of the convention. McMorrow said in an interview Tuesday that there is a “keeper of the book” and that the book would be handed off to a new speaker each night.
On Wednesday, comedian and “Saturday Night Live” cast member Kenan Thompson took the stage in a sketch mocking “Project 2025."
Trump says Project 2025 is not related to his campaign and has denied knowing about the Heritage Foundation, which is overseeing its own transition effort with the help of dozens of his allies and former aides. Democrats have for months tried to pin Trump to Project 2025's most sweeping proposals.
Politics
But what exactly is Project 2025, who is behind it and what should you know?
Here's an explainer:
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What is Project 2025?
The 922-page plan proposes a dramatic expansion of presidential power and a plan to fire as many as 50,000 government workers to replace them with former President Donald Trump loyalists who will carry out a hard-right agenda without complaint, according to the Associated Press.
Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025 in recent days, and Project 2025 said in a statement it is not tied to a specific candidate or campaign, though the proposals inside it would center largely on a Trump win in November.
Project 2025 suggests reviving the Trump Schedule F policy that would try to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, which could enable mass dismissals — although a Biden administration rule seeks to make that more difficult.
The plan includes things like a “top to bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice, which would involve ending FBI efforts to combat the spread of misinformation; heightened prosecution of those providing or distributing abortion pills by mail; abolishing the Pentagon's recent diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which the project calls the “woke” agenda; and reinstating service members discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, the Associated Press reports.
The playbook also calls for far-reaching changes in government, like rolling back protections for the LGBTQ community and infusing Christianity more deeply into society.
The plan says the Department of Health and Human Services should “pursue a robust agenda” to protect “the fundamental right to life.”
Project 2025 has also been preparing its own 180-day agenda for the next administration that it plans to share privately, rather than as part of its public-facing book of priorities for a Republican president.
Democrats have falsely claimed that it also proposes to “gut Social Security.” The document contains no proposals to cut Social Security, even though the Heritage Foundation that oversaw it has long pushed for changes to the entitlement.
Who is behind Project 2025?
The plan was created and released by the Heritage Foundation think tank.
Some of the people involved in Project 2025 are former senior administration officials. The project’s director is Paul Dans, who served as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under Trump. Trump's campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt was featured in one of Project 2025's videos.
John McEntee, a former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump administration, is a senior adviser. McEntee told the conservative news site The Daily Wire earlier this year that Project 2025's team would integrate a lot of its work with the campaign after the summer when Trump would announce his transition team.
A key Trump ally, Russ Vought, who contributed to Project 2025 and is drafting a final pillar of the plan, is also on the Republican National Committee’s platform writing committee.
What has been said about Project 2025?
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said on an episode of Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast that Republicans are “in the process of taking this country back." Former U.S. Rep. Dave Brat of Virginia hosted the show for Bannon, who is serving a four-month prison term.
“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts said.
Roberts’ remarks shed light on how a group that promises to have significant influence over a possible second term for Trump is thinking about this moment in American politics.
His call for revolution and vague reference to violence also unnerved some Democrats who interpreted it as threatening.
“This is chilling,” former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson wrote on the social platform X. “Their idea of a second American Revolution is to undo the first one.”
James Singer, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, pointed to the Fourth of July holiday in an emailed statement.
“248 years ago tomorrow America declared independence from a tyrannical king, and now Donald Trump and his allies want to make him one at our expense,” Singer said, adding that Trump and his allies are ”dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America.”
Roberts, whose name Bannon floated to The New York Times as a potential chief of staff option for Trump, also said on the podcast that Republicans should be encouraged by the Supreme Court’s recent immunity ruling.
He said the decision — which gives presidents broad immunity from prosecution — is “vital” to ensure a president won’t have to “second guess, triple guess every decision they’re making in their official capacity.”
In an emailed statement, Roberts reiterated his comments from the podcast, saying Americans “are in the process of carrying out the Second American Revolution to take power back from the elites and despotic bureaucrats.”
“These patriots are committed to peaceful revolution at the ballot box,” he said. “Unfortunately, it's the Left that has a long history of violence, so it's up to them to allow a peaceful transfer of power.”
Roberts pointed to the protests after the killing of George Floyd by police in 2020, some of which erupted into crime, vandalism and violence. Democrats, in turn, have accused their Republican counterparts of violence, using the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot in which Trump supporters tried to forcibly overturn his loss to President Joe Biden.
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said Roberts’ comments about a “second American Revolution” are “a bit terrifying but also elucidating.”
“Roberts, the Heritage Foundation, and its allies in Project 2025 want to reorder American society and fundamentally change it,” Beirich said. “He’s said the quiet part out loud.”
Is Donald Trump connected to Project 2025?
Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 and has denied knowing who is behind the plan.
Tom Homan, who oversaw U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration, has cautioned against blowing the project out of proportion, arguing Washington think tanks prepare plans for new administrations that aren't always followed.
Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, a key Trump supporter, criticized how much Democrats are talking about the plan.
“It’s not a problem for the president because the president is already on the record saying that he has nothing to do with it,” Donalds said. “Their focus on Project 2025 is insanity.”
The decision to make Ohio Sen. JD Vance his running mate was taken by some as one more connection to Project 2025. Heritage’s President Kevin Roberts has said he’s good friends with Vance and that the Heritage Foundation had been privately rooting for him to be the VP pick.
Vance penned the foreword to Roberts' own new book, which was set to be out in September but has now been postponed as Project 2025 hits turmoil. Roberts is holding off the release of his potentially fiery new book until after the November presidential election.
