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Remember Project 2025? Hill Democrats do

By Michael Jones

Following the bipartisan confirmation of several Trump cabinet nominees last week—from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe—several senior-level picks are poised to face grueling paths to confirmation in the days ahead due to questions surrounding their fitness to lead the posts they’ve been tapped for.

Among this group: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s respective picks for Secretary of Health and Human Services and FBI Director. Both nominees will face tough inquiries from the Senate committees with jurisdiction over the two agencies. And even if RFK Jr. and Patel advance out of committee, they’ll likely endure a nailbiter of a final confirmation vote in the Senate.

At the heart of what’s expected to be opposition from virtually all Democrats to the nominees are concerns that they’ll run roughshod over the law and years of precedent to implement the policies proposed in Project 2025, the conservative policy agenda developed by the Heritage Foundation and allied groups to “institutionalize Trumpism,” as Heritage President Kevin Roberts once put it. 

Despite disavowing Project 2025, Trump signed a flurry of executive orders based on recommendations from the conservative roadmap, including disempowering the government from negotiating prescription drug prices, ending civil rights and DEI protections, deregulating Big Oil, and even attempting to subvert the Constitution by ending birthright citizenship.

And Democrats have taken notice.

“Here’s my assessment of what happened with respect to Project 2025: Last year, Republicans across the country lied to the American people by claiming that they knew nothing about Project 2025 and have spent the first few weeks of this year implementing Project 2025,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told me last week. “They were not truthful with the American people.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) shared a similar outlook from the Senate floor this weekend.

“Remember last year, Donald Trump seemed to go out of his way to distance himself from the wildly unpopular Project 2025?” Schumer said. “Now, one week into Donald Trump’s presidency, that has all gone out of the window! Under Donald Trump, it’s the dawn of a Golden Age for Project 2025. And this should infuriate working people from one of America to the other.”

RFK Jr.’s potential leadership of HHS is controversial due to his prominent anti-vaccine advocacy, which includes debunked claims linking vaccines to autism and his spread of COVID-19 misinformation, including criticisms of vaccine mandates and masking. He’s attacked institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA and alienated both Democrats and Republicans by espousing conspiracy theories and straying from the public legacy of the Kennedy family.

Supporters of RFK Jr.—including those in the Senate—apply the same argument to him and Patel as other controversial picks like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, whose nomination had to be confirmed by a tie-breaking vote by Vice President JD Vance on Friday night: They bring an outsider perspective and a skepticism of large institutions that would enable much-needed reform at HHS, FBI, and the Pentagon.

Key Project 2025 proposals would raise costs for seniors and eliminate the $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket drug expenses, forcing many to forgo medication. The plan also calls for repealing the $35 insulin cap, cutting enhanced ACA premium assistance, nearly doubling premiums for millions and threatening coverage for 80 million low-income Americans by slashing Medicaid funding. Additionally, it eliminates free vaccines for Medicare recipients, reinstates unchecked price hikes by pharmaceutical companies, and jeopardizes the financial stability of hospitals and providers serving vulnerable communities.

Project 2025 seeks to further restrict access to reproductive health care by criminalizing abortion care providers and limiting access to medication abortion, including through enforcement of an 1873 law to regulate mail (which would hinder the ability to send abortion pills to those in need of them). It seeks to reverse FDA approval of mifepristone, eliminate insurance coverage for reproductive healthcare and defund clinics offering comprehensive services if they also provide abortions.

Public health experts and lawmakers worry RFK Jr. would provide little to no resistance to Trump loyalists carrying out these recommendations.

Then there’s Patel, who received a chilly assessment from Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, following their meeting on Capitol Hill last week.

“[He] has neither the experience, the judgment, or the temperament to serve as head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

The Justice Department, in general—and the FBI, in particular—are recognized for their independence from political influence. But Patel’s close ties to Trump and role in discrediting the Russia investigation raise concerns about his impartiality in overseeing politically sensitive investigations, including those involving Trump. Before Trump was reelected, Patel was one of MAGA’s loudest critics of the FBI, which has fueled fears that he would weaken or politicize the agency.

What’s more is that Patel was involved in the development of Project 2025, which calls for placing the Justice Department under direct presidential control, imposing stricter sentencing guidelines, expanding the death penalty, and politicizing the FBI by aligning its leadership with the president. It ends policies and investigations that conflict with the president’s ideology, undermining the legal system’s independence.

There’s an argument to be made that Democrats poorly made the case against Trump and Project 2025 last year based on the election results. But Jeffries told me that the party would keep calling attention to how the administration shepherds Project 2025 proposals into federal policy.

“We’re going to make sure consistently and authentically that we hold Republicans accountable, particularly here in the House of Representatives, when they were running away from Project 2025 and acting like it didn’t exist, and now they’ve fallen in line,” says Jeffries.”


Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.

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