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Democrats
focus
attacks
on
right-wing
Project
2025
pushed
by Trump
allies
By Josh
Dawsey,
and
Hannah
Knowles
washingtonpost.com
WASHINGTON
-
President
Biden
and
other
Democrats
are
increasingly
focusing
their
attacks
on an
aggressive
right-wing
agenda
called
Project
2025
that is
being
pushed
by
allies
of
presumptive
GOP
nominee
Donald
Trump —
prompting
Trump
and his
team to
lash out
in
recent
days at
supporters
of the
effort.
Many
Democrats
have
assessed
that the
best
message
for
their
candidate
—
whether
it is
Biden,
who is
trailing
in polls
and
facing
calls to
drop out
after a
damaging
debate
performance,
or
another
candidate
— is to
focus on
what
Trump
might do
in a
second
term,
particularly
as it
relates
to
abortion
rights,
retribution
against
his
enemies,
mass
deportations
and the
environment.
They
hope to
make a
household
phrase
of
Project
2025,
which is
designed
as a
policy
and
personnel
platform
for a
Republican
administration,
Democrats
close to
Biden
say. The
group’s
website,
anchored
by the
Heritage
Foundation,
includes
30
chapters
—
written
by more
than a
dozen
former
Trump
appointees
and
others —
that
come
from
dozens
of
leading
conservative
groups.
The
exhaustive
plan
calls
for,
among
other
things,
dismantling
the
Department
of
Education,
passing
sweeping
tax
cuts,
imposing
sharp
limits
on
abortion,
giving
the
White
House
greater
influence
over the
Justice
Department,
reducing
efforts
to limit
climate
change
and
increasing
efforts
to
promote
fossil
fuels,
drastically
cutting
and
changing
the
federal
workforce,
and
giving
the
president
more
power
over the
civil
service.
Follow
Election
2024
It also
includes
building
an
“army”
of
conservatives
ready to
take
jobs
should
Trump
win in
2025.
The
project
was
partially
fueled
by a
desire
to be
ready
for “Day
One” of
a
conservative
presidency.
Vacancies
in key
jobs,
for
example,
contributed
to chaos
during
Trump’s
first
term.
“Our
goal is
to
assemble
an army
of
aligned,
vetted,
trained
and
prepared
conservatives
to go to
work on
Day One
to
deconstruct
the
Administrative
State,”
Paul
Dans,
the
project’s
director,
said on
the
project
website.
Amid
growing
news
coverage
and
Democratic
attacks
on the
plan,
Trump
sought
last
week to
distance
himself
from the
proposals
crafted
by his
former
appointees
— saying
on his
Truth
Social
platform
that he
knows
“nothing
about
Project
2025.”
“I have
no idea
who is
behind
it,” he
wrote
Friday.
“I
disagree
with
some of
the
things
they’re
saying
and some
of the
things
they’re
saying
are
absolutely
ridiculous
and
abysmal.
Anything
they do,
I wish
them
luck,
but I
have
nothing
to do
with
them.”
But
Trump
shares
many
policy
goals
with
Project
2025.
For
example,
he wants
to end
subsidies
for
electric
vehicles
and ramp
up
domestic
production
of
nonrenewable
energy,
to crack
down on
undocumented
immigrants
and to
empower
the
president
to fire
people
he calls
“rogue
bureaucrats”
in the
civil
service.
The
project’s
900-plus
page
“Mandate
for
Leadership”
goes
into far
more
granular
detail
than the
plans
laid out
on
Trump’s
website,
however,
and he
has
stayed
away
from
proposals
such as
sharply
curbing
access
to
abortion
medication.
Regardless,
Biden’s
campaign
and
allies
are
going to
make
what
they
characterize
as the
most
extreme
proposals
from
Trump
allies a
core
element
of their
campaign.
They
have
issued
dozens
of news
releases
mentioning
the
project
—
including
five on
Friday
alone —
and are
asking
surrogates,
allies
and
others
to talk
about
Project
2025 as
often as
they
can.
Democrats
also
plan to
couple
Project
2025
attacks
with the
sweeping
Supreme
Court
ruling
that
grants a
president
expansive
powers
in
carrying
out
“official
acts”
without
fear of
prosecution
for a
crime —
arguing
that it
would
turbocharge
Trump’s
ability
to enact
an
extreme
right-wing
agenda.
“It is
really
important
that
voters
understand
that
Donald
Trump in
a second
term
would be
far
worse,
far more
dangerous
and far
more
extreme
than he
was even
in his
first
term,”
said TJ
Ducklo,
a senior
adviser
on the
Biden
campaign.
“That is
a core
argument
that we
are
making
and must
continue
to make
to
voters,
and
Project
2025 is
one of
the most
effective
ways we
can make
that
point.”
A tight
focus on
Trump’s
agenda
is all
the more
necessary,
some
Democrats
said,
amid
turmoil
over
their
ticket.
One
Democratic
strategist
close to
the
Biden
campaign,
who
spoke on
the
condition
of
anonymity
to speak
frankly,
said
Democrats
need to
do
something
that, in
their
view,
Republicans
have
usually
done
more
effectively:
“Instill
fear in
the
American
people.”
“We have
to get
them to
think
the
threat
to their
fundamental
way of
life is
worse
than the
president
dying in
office,”
the
strategist
said.
Biden
said the
words
“Project
2025”
for the
first
time in
the
campaign’s
most-viewed
TikTok
video of
the
president
in June.
After
the
debate,
a post
on the
Biden HQ
TikTok
account
explicitly
pushed
back on
suggestions
that the
president
would
drop out
while
raising
alarms
about
Project
2025.
“When
you go
home,
Google
Project
2025,”
Wisconsin
Gov.
Tony
Evers
(D) told
a Biden
rally
audience
in
Madison
on
Friday.
“Project
2025 is
a
political
gift
from the
heavens,”
said Dan
Pfeiffer,
a former
adviser
to
President
Barack
Obama.
“Donald
Trump’s
political
strength
is that
he is a
Rorschach
test to
a lot of
voters,
and the
Heritage
Foundation
did
[Democrats]
the
favor of
filling
in the
details
of his
agenda
in
incredibly
vivid
and
clarifying
terms.”
Trump
aides
have
long
viewed
Project
2025 as
unhelpful
and have
sought
distance
from the
plan,
saying
Trump
doesn’t
embrace
many of
the
proposals.
They
have
privately
lashed
out at
aligned
groups,
telling
them to
stop
promoting
such
work,
people
familiar
with the
calls
said.
Still,
some of
Project
2025’s
architects
have
been
appointed
by his
campaign
to work
on the
Republican
Party’s
platform
and have
met with
Trump.
Trump
advisers
are
discussing
whether
the
former
president
should
denounce
the work
more
forcefully
on a
regular
basis,
fearing
that it
will be
an
albatross
this
fall.
For
months,
Trump
advisers
Chris
LaCivita
and
Susie
Wiles
have
privately
and
publicly
attacked
the
effort.
On at
least
five
occasions,
they
have met
and
talked
with the
groups
involved,
asking
them to
tamp it
down,
according
to
people
familiar
with the
calls,
who
spoke on
the
condition
of
anonymity
to
describe
private
discussions.
LaCivita,
in
particular,
has
gotten
particularly
animated
about
his
opposition,
the
people
said.
Trump
has
gotten
angry,
four
advisers
said,
when
others
have
claimed
to know
what he
would do
in a
second
term.
“It
makes no
sense to
put all
the
crazy
things
you’ll
be
attacked
for down
on paper
while
you’re
running,”
a Trump
adviser
said.
“Who
thinks,
let’s
put it
all down
on paper
so we
can get
attacked
in
advance,
even
though
we
haven’t
run it
by the
president?”
Vince
Haley
and Ross
Worthington,
two
Trump
aides,
have
tried to
ratchet
up the
campaign’s
own
policy
proposals.
A
spokeswoman
for the
Trump
campaign
referred
to
Trump’s
post on
Truth
Social
and said
only
agenda
items on
the
Trump
campaign’s
website
should
be
considered
to
represent
his
views.
His
campaign
has also
tried to
downplay
some of
the more
incendiary
things
Trump
has
said,
while
focusing
on
policies
they
believe
test
well
with
voters.
Campaign
advisers
have
sought
to avoid
calling
for a
federal
abortion
ban in
the
Republican
Party
platform,
encouraged
Trump to
stop
saying
he is
out for
“retribution,”
tried to
limit
his
praise
of
defendants
convicted
in the
Jan. 6,
2021,
attack
on the
Capitol
and
urged
him not
to make
false
claims
that the
2020
election
was
stolen.
The
efforts
have had
a
limited
effect
at best.
Trump
aides
are
particularly
annoyed
at the
Heritage
Foundation’s
role in
pushing
Project
2025,
two
senior
advisers
said.
“We say
knock it
off, but
there is
just
more,” a
top
Trump
adviser
said.
“Poke
the Bear
you are
going to
be bit:
Trump
torches
Heritage
Foundation’s
Project
2025,”
LaCivita
posted
Friday
on X.
Heritage
Foundation
President
Kevin
Roberts
said in
a
statement
that
Project
2025
does not
speak
for
Trump or
his
campaign
and that
it is
“no
surprise
that
[the]
political
consultant
class
has
joined
their
allies
in the
corporate
media in
promoting
a false
narrative”
about
the
effort.
“The
proposals
in
Project
2025 are
designed
to
restore
self-government
to the
American
people,
an
overwhelmingly
popular
proposition.
We
welcome
the
attention,”
Roberts
said.
In a
recent
interview
with
Real
America’s
Voice,
Roberts
said
liberals
are
“apoplectic”
because
the
political
right is
winning.
“We are
in the
process
of the
second
American
revolution,
which
will
remain
bloodless,
if the
left
allows
it to
be,”
Roberts
said — a
sound
bite
that was
promptly
clipped
and
shared
by the
Biden
campaign.
In
recent
weeks,
Biden
advisers
have
been
surprised
at how
much
traction
“Project
2025”
has
gotten.
Google
searches
for the
term
have
spiked,
along
with
mentions
by
left-leaning
influencers,
according
to a
Washington
Post
analysis
of
political
influencers’
discussions
on
social
media,
podcasts
and
newsletters.
The
campaign
has done
some
outreach
to
influencers
about
Project
2025,
but
others
have
raised
the
topic on
their
own, a
Biden
adviser
said.
Mentions
began to
soar in
June and
have
been
increasing
every
week —
overwhelmingly
on the
Democratic
side.
Celebrities
including
Mark
Hamill
and
Lizzo
posted
about
the
effort
recently.
The
topic
also got
exposure
at last
weekend’s
BET
Awards,
where
the
actress
Taraji
P.
Henson
warned
about
Project
2025
from the
stage
and
reached
some of
the
Black
voters
that the
Biden
campaign
is
desperate
to win
over and
motivate.
Other
Black
influencers,
including
radio
host
Charlamagne
tha God,
helped
produce
an
earlier
spike in
mentions.
Voters
in swing
states
sometimes
brought
up
Project
2025
unprompted
in
recent
interviews.
“Project
2025 is
scary,
Trump
himself
is
scary,
the
whole
Republican
Party
is,”
said
Cynthia
Carlson,
a
54-year-old
resident
of
Madison,
Wis. She
said she
heard
about
Project
2025 on
podcasts
she
likes
and
calls it
an
effort
at
“dismantling
government
as we
know
it.”
The
Biden
campaign
has
found
that
Project
2025
content
does
especially
well on
social
media.
On
Facebook
— where
mentions
are
tailored
to an
older
audience
with
topics
like
Social
Security
—
Project
2025 is
in the
campaign’s
top 10
percent
of
topics
in terms
of
impressions
and
engagement.
On
TikTok,
users
are more
and more
likely
to find
the
campaign’s
Project
2025
content
organically
rather
than
because
they
follow
Biden’s
account.
Outside
groups
opposed
to Trump
are deep
into
discussions
about
how they
would
try to
stymie
potential
second-term
policies
laid out
in
Project
2025 and
elsewhere.
Democracy
Forward
— a
legal
group
that is
working
with
more
than 150
like-minded
organizations
to
prepare
pushback
to a
Trump
administration
— has
been
analyzing
Project
2025’s
proposals
and is
already
hunting
for
plaintiffs
for
lawsuits.
“It’s
well
beyond
politics.
It’s
well
beyond
candidates.
… We are
really
in a
crisis
for the
heart of
our
country,
for what
it’s
stood
for,”
Democracy
Forward
President
Skye
Perryman
said.
Ben
Wikler,
chair of
the
Democratic
Party in
battleground
Wisconsin,
argued
that
Trump’s
first
term
provides
only
“clues”
about
what a
second
administration
would
look
like
because
elements
of the
government
refused
to carry
out so
many of
his
ideas.
“In
2024, we
can see
that
there’s
actually
an army
of
right-wing
extremists
ready to
implement
the most
extreme
versions
of his
plans,”
Wikler
said.
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