This week, House Democrats are launching a concerted campaign to counter Project 2025, a sweeping conservative effort to advance right-wing policies and expand presidential powers in the event voters elect former President Trump to a second term in the White House.
The Democrats are alarmed by the extent of the Project 2025which touches on virtually every aspect of American life, and the policy changes it proposes, including closing certain federal agencies, restructuring others, and filling all departments with supporters of conservative causes.
Critics say the conservative maneuver, which originated at the Heritage Foundation, poses a threat to the functioning of government and democracy that has prevailed in Washington since the nation’s founding, and that an orchestrated counterstrategy is needed to ensure it never gets off the ground. With that goal in mind, they are forming a novel task force.
“Americans don’t understand how far we are on the path to a dystopian, right-wing theocracy,” said Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California, who is leading the initiative. “And that’s the priority for me at least: making sure people know that and making sure we’re prepared to oppose it.”
The idea came about, Huffman said, after members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus were briefed on the details of Project 2025 by several liberal advocacy groups. Those groups, including Accountable US and the Center for American Progress, will coordinate with the Democratic task force to spread their message in the run-up to the November election.
“It just occurred to me that this issue is so important and so urgent that we really need to do more to bring it into the spotlight, certainly to the American people in the coming months, but also to Congress,” Huffman said. “Because in the unthinkable event that Trump wins the presidential election, this issue is going to move very quickly. And if we react to it, we lose.”
Launched two years ago by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 aims to dismantle the federal government and replace it with a smaller, more agile version – staffed with right-leaning officials at every level who would work to advance the agenda of the next conservative president, be it Trump or someone else. The project emerged as part of the outcry among conservatives that “deep state” bureaucrats across federal agencies had sought to block Trump’s policy agenda in his first term, including his efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.
The project aims to abolish the so-called administrative state and fill the vacancies with conservative loyalists. It consists of four “pillars”: developing a right-wing policy roadmap for the next conservative president, providing a political strategy to implement that program within 180 days, recruiting an “army” of conservatives who will work in that government, and offering a training component to ensure that political appointees are “ready from day one.”
The group says it does not promote any particular candidate or advise Trump, the likely Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election, on any specific policies.
“Project 2025 does not endorse any particular candidate or campaign, and it is ultimately up to the President to decide what actions to implement,” a Project 2025 spokesperson said in an email Monday.
However, outside of Heritage, the coalition includes more than 100 conservative groups, several of which are led by former Trump administration officials. They include the Center for Renewing America, led by Russell Vought, who once headed Trump’s Office of Management and Budget and is now being mentioned as a possible second-term chief of staff; America First Legal, led by Stephen Miller, a former speechwriter and senior adviser to Trump; and the Conservative Partnership Institute, where Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, is a senior partner.
“When a president takes office today, he finds a sprawling federal bureaucracy that too often implements its own policy agendas and preferences – or, worse, the policy agendas and preferences of a radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country,” Vought writes. wrote as part the comprehensive manual setting out the vision of Project 2025.
Democrats are aware of the people behind this campaign and see it as a plan for Trump to dismantle those parts of the government that oppose anything he might try in a second term.
“These are not fringe issues or things that Trump and his team don’t like,” Huffman said. “They are: They’re telling us what they’re going to do.”
The Democrats’ exact strategy to counter Project 2025 is still unclear. Huffman said it will likely consist of a series of public forums, held in coordination with liberal outside groups, to educate the public “on the various elements of Project 2025 that are most problematic.” That’s a long list, in his opinion.
“It’s a difficult thing in terms of prioritization. Each of these things is a top priority,” Huffman said.
The Project 2025 spokesman rejected criticism from Democrats that the document expands executive powers in a way that would allow a future president to abuse them.
“This is pure projection,” the spokesman said. “President Joe Biden is the one abusing executive power and we are currently living under his dictatorship.”
Huffman, who is unique on Capitol Hill for questioning the existence of an all-powerful God, suggested he would focus on the elements of Project 2025 that aim to promote religious principles as policy guidelines – “which is really nothing more than this Christian nationalist agenda,” he said.
He will be joined on the task force by a number of other prominent Democrats who bring their own policy priorities, including Representative Diana DeGette (Colorado), chair of the House Pro-Choice Caucus; Mark Pocan (Wisconsin), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus; Ted Lieu (California), vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus; Pramila Jayapal (Washington), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; Nanette Díaz Barragán (California), chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus; Judy Chu (California), chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus; and Jamie Raskin (Maryland), a former constitutional law professor who led Trump’s second impeachment trial after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“This is not a leadership task force, but they are aware,” Huffman said. “And we will certainly convey our recommendations and concerns to them.”
Democrats face a rocky road as they try to counter the message of Trump and the conservative groups that support him, including fundraising giants, but Huffman is confident his party’s message will prevail in the end.
“They are preparing to push forward plans that are deeply unpopular with the majority of the American people,” he said. “We just need to make sure that is known and understood.”
