Why it’s so hard for Trump to run away from Project 2025
By Michael Jones
It was clear from the moment I walked into the room, one usually reserved for House Democrats’ weekly private meetings, that this wouldn’t be your standard-issue congressional hearing.
The caucus’s top leaders and policy wonks were assembled on Tuesday to discuss their topic du jour: Project 2025, the conservative governing blueprint former President Donald Trump’s political allies created ahead of what they hope will be his second term come January.
The hearing featured testimony from everyday Americans whose stories added a human touch to the members’ aggressive attacks on Project 2025’s proposals to impose a nationwide abortion ban, cut taxes for wealthy individuals and big corporations, and threaten the future of earned benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare.
The event’s production value was tantamount both in style and substance to the 10 televised congressional hearings by the House January 6th Committee from 2021 to 2023, which were critically acclaimed for their sharp use of multimedia, revelatory witness testimony, and the oratory skills of the committee’s members—all elements typically absent from standard congressional hearings but present in the Project 2025 gathering.
Turns out, there was a method to the madness.
“I just think that we learned a lot from the January 6 hearings and how effectively the American people understood what had happened here at the Capitol on that day,” Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL), a member of the House Democrats’ messaging arm who presented on how Project 2025 would impact health care, told me after the hearing. “Project 2025 is obviously an important policy document for the American people to be aware of and we had an opportunity to tell the story in a visually compelling way.”
“Trump can run, but we will never let him hide”
The hearing culminated a months-long effort led by congressional Democrats, the Biden administration, the Harris campaign, and national allies to the groups to tether Trump and his supporters to the plan while characterizing it too extreme for contemporary society.
“Extreme MAGA Republicans don’t simply have concepts. They have a plan,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said at the hearing, referring to former President Trump’s response during the debate when asked if he had a replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act. “And it’s called Project 2025—a dangerous, diabolical and dastardly plan that, if implemented, would destroy our democracy as we know it.”
House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) called the document a top-to-bottom overhaul of American life that reserves its most vicious attacks for women and girls.
“The MAGA playbook is as simple as it is devastating,” Clark added. “Less freedom for you, more control for them. Less money in your pocket, more tax breaks for their rich friends.”
While Trump previously claimed to know nothing about Project 2025, it was developed by several former members of his administration—including six former Cabinet secretaries—and advisors close to his political operation.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” he wrote on his Truth Social app in July. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
As I wrote in August, Democrats think Project 2025 is so toxic for two reasons: First, it’s because voters no longer give Trump the benefit of the doubt on policy since he has a record from his first term. And two, members don’t have to craft a persuasive message against Project 2025—all they have to do is point to what’s inside.
“Extreme MAGA Republicans and Donald Trump can run from Project 2025,” Jeffries told reporters on Wednesday morning. “But we will never let them hide.”
Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation and the group’s political arm, said after the hearing that every task force member embodied the Biden-Harris record on immigration, inflation, and the affordable housing crisis.
“Rather than addressing the concerns of families across the nation who are increasingly worried about the country’s direction, these Members of Congress choose to mislead Americans with political theatrics,” Roberts said. “While Americans are looking for real solutions, these Democratic leaders offer nothing but empty rhetoric and distractions.”
Project 2025’s four pillars
Project 2025 is structured into four pillars, the first of which I’ll discuss in a moment.
The second is a personnel database that Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), who launched the Stop Project 2025 task force this summer, likened to a LinkedIn for MAGA.
“It’s all about repopulating the federal workforce with Trump loyalists after they’ve purged hundreds of thousands of professional civil servants,” Huffman added.
Pillar three involves the creation of the presidential administration academy or an extreme MAGA Republican basic training taught by some of Trump’s closest advisors.
The fourth pillar includes a secret 180-day plan to implement the policy proposals across the federal government from the day Trump takes the oath of office.
But the pillar you’re likely most familiar with is the first: The 922-page document created by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation to institutionalize Trumpism if the former president is elected to a second term.
In previous columns, I’ve written about how Trump could institute a backdoor abortion ban without congressional action through a Project 2025 proposal to pressure the FDA to revisit and withdraw its initial approval of medication abortion. It also provides a roadmap for the executive branch to misapply the Comstock Act, an 1873 anti-obscenity law that bans mail-order drugs and instruments related to abortion. (The law, while not currently enforced, is still on the books, allowing it to be implemented under a Republican administration.)
In a recent edition of my newsletter, I outlined how Project 2025 would impact public education with its call to eliminate the Education Department. This move would defund public schools and redistribute taxpayer dollars to private schools free from the regulations imposed on traditional schools. It would end Title I funding for high-poverty schools, which would cost an estimated 180,000 teachers their jobs. Project 2025 would also get rid of universal free school meal programs—including summer meal programs, and end the Public Service Forgiveness Program, the Bush-era federal program that forgives the remaining balance of federal student loans for veterans, nurses, teachers, law enforcement officials, and other public servants who meet specific requirements. It would halt current income-driven repayment plans that calculate monthly student loan payments based on income and privatize all student loans, which could increase interest rates and force students to take out predatory loans.
I wrote in April about how Project 2025 would push to eliminate the independence of the Justice Department, Federal Communications Commission, and Federal Trade Commission; direct Main Justice to pursue those Trump considers disloyal or political adversaries; give way to the largest domestic deportation operation in US history; and encourage the repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes the most significant climate investment in world history.
And while these proposals were theoretically crafted for the next GOP administration, Democrats argue House Republicans have spent much of this Congress eschewing legislation on issues with bipartisan support to enact Project 2025 policies before ballots are even cast in the election.
Case in point: Project 2025 revives a push to add an unconstitutional citizenship question to the US Census that could result in a recount due to suppressed participation from immigrants. But in May, the House passed a bill that would have codified this idea if not for the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House.
How Project 2025 became Democrats’ ace in the hole
Believe it or not, the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025, formerly known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, in the spring of 2023.
But the policy agenda didn’t start to saturate the public discourse until earlier this spring when elected Democrats recognized how it energized the grassroots when voters were unenthusiastic about the prospect of a Biden-Trump presidential rematch.
Huffman launched the Stop Project 2025 task force in June, about two weeks before the Biden campaign launched a website critical of Project 2025 hours before his June 27 debate with Trump.
“If we make sure that every American knows the truth about what Trump and his allies here in Congress are planning and doing, we believe that is the best way to stop this dangerous agenda,” Huffman said about the task force last week.
Democrats took their anti-Project 2025 message home to their districts and states during the August recess. During each night of the Democratic National Convention, a prominent Democrat dismantled a specific aspect of the document in prime time.
And when Congress returned to Washington this month, Democrats flooded the zone with Project 2025 programming: Schumer and nearly a dozen of his senators held press conferences in consecutive weeks to examine ten of the most harmful provisions of the plan, Jeffries attempted to rebrand House Republicans’ “anti-woke week” last week as Project 2025 week and the Stop Project 2025 task force launched a tip line for people with information on the most fourth pillar of the plan.
“It’s really hit home,” Schumer told me when I asked him earlier this month if the attacks on the plan are resonating with voters.
The data backs him up: A Navigator Research survey released in late July found that Project 2025 became significantly more unpopular the more he tried to distance himself from the plan. A new NBC News poll released this week shows that nearly six in 10 registered reported feeling negatively about Project 2025. Among the subjects tested during the survey—including capitalism, both presidential and vice presidential candidates, the Republican and Democratic parties, Taylor Swift, Elon Musk, and even socialism—Project 2025 was the least popular.
Dems painting in broad strokes on their agenda
Project 2025 has helped Hill Democrats define who and what they’re against in the upcoming election. But for a party historically known for drowning itself in the policy weeds, Democrats have focused on promoting sweeping themes instead of drilling down on legislative details.
Jeffries told reporters last week that the decision on which bills would be brought to the floor during the first 100 days of a potential Democratic-led House would emerge after a caucus-wide discussion. However, he did mention the enhanced and expanded Child Tax Credit, affordable housing, restoring reproductive freedom, and enacting voting rights reform as critical priorities.
Meanwhile, outside groups have ideas on how to push back against Project 2025 too.
During the Congressional Black Caucus’s annual legislative conference earlier this month, the Black Innovation Alliance, a coalition dedicated to closing the racial wealth gap for Black entrepreneurs, unveiled Declaration ‘26, a 24-page counterplan to Project 2025.
Unlike Project 2025, which reinforces traditional policies, Declaration ‘26 asserts that economic empowerment and entrepreneurship are essential for securing national prosperity and centers the groups most marginalized by the Heritage Foundation’s plan.
Declaration ‘26 is anchored by three core assumptions: First, inequality stifles economic growth. Second, entrepreneurs and innovators are the key drivers of growth. Finally, innovation deserts must be transformed into thriving productivity and creativity hubs. At the heart of the plan is an innovator’s bill of rights that guarantees a right to education, intellectual property protection, and access to capital and funding opportunities.
“As we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we must confront the challenges of our time and recommit to building a future economy that reflects the ideals of our founding document,” Kelly Burton, CEO of the Black Innovation Alliance. “By fostering an inclusive economy where prosperity is broadly shared, we can uphold the spirit of the Declaration and ensure that the American Dream becomes a reality and is within reach for all.”
The future of Trumpism if Project 2025 is defeated
Trumpism, the political movement comprising the ideologies associated with Donald Trump, has proven durable over the last nine years. While Project 2025 is deeply unpopular and former President Trump hasn’t meaningfully expanded his coalition, he’s more popular with his political base than ever.
What remains to be seen is whether Vice President Harris defeating him at the ballot box in 40 days will be enough to, as she often says on the stump, turn the page to a new way forward.
House Assistant Minority Leader Joe Neguse (D-CO) hesitated to comment on the election under the dome of the Capitol.
“I would say House Democrats are focused on a hopeful, optimistic agenda. That’s what we’ve been focused on from day one of the 118th Congress: Putting people over politics, growing the middle class, lowering costs, building safer communities—ultimately, the values and the issues that Americans care most about,” he said. “And that will remain our focus. Beyond that, I don’t know that I want to delve into the election.”
Schumer was more forthright when I posed the same question to him.
“I would hope that should Donald Trump lose, and I believe he will, that Republicans will realize that following Trump is a path fraught with terrible consequences for the nation, but also bad political consequences for themselves.”
And as Congress adjourned on Wednesday until after the election, it’s clear that Democrats seem unlikely to stop talking about Project 2025 anytime soon.
“I’m just very excited for people to understand their power in this key election,” Underwood said. “And if they already don’t know their power, they’re going to hear it from me throughout October.”
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.
