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kevin roberts
Watchdog of Far-Right GOP Issues 'The Definitive Guide to Project 2025'
"It's a clear threat to our democracy, as our government could be weaponized against us as part of a concerted effort to control how we live our live," said the vice president of Media Matters for America.
Aug 08, 2024
A watchdog organization that monitors the Republican Party and the far-right movement at its core released a document Thursday characterized as "the definitive guide to Project 2025," a sweeping policy agenda crafted by more than 100 conservative groups and alumni of former President Donald Trump's administration.
The 67-page report published by Media Matters for America lays out in detail Trump's close ties to Project 2025 and examines specific policy proposals included in the agenda, which—if implemented—would affect every area of American life, from the workplace to the environment to reproductive rights and other fundamental freedoms.
"Project 2025 lays out an extreme far-right agenda that would impose draconian restrictions to the lives of everyday Americans," Media Matters vice president Julie Millicansaid in a statement. "If enacted, not only would it gut the checks and balances that our country relies on, but it's a clear threat to our democracy, as our government could be weaponized against us as part of a concerted effort to control how we live our lives."
"Project 2025's extremist goals make clear what's truly at stake," Millican added.
"Project 2025 looks like an albatross that Trump will find hard to get rid of."
Contrary to the Republican presidential nominee's claim that he "knows nothing about" Project 2025 or who's behind it, Media Matters noted that "Trump and his allies are deeply connected" to the initiative spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation.
The new report points to Trump's remarks at a 2022 Heritage event, where the former president declared that the group would "lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do." The Washington Postrevealed Wednesday that Trump traveled to the event via private jet with Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation.
"CNN reported that there are 'nearly 240 people with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump,'" Media Matters observed in its new analysis. "The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee nominated Project 2025 author Russ Vought as the policy director of the RNC's 2024 Committee on the Platform... John McEntee, a Project 2025 senior adviser, said in April he would 'integrate a lot of our work' with the Trump campaign later this year."
The report spotlights plans outlined by Project 2025 and the Trump campaign to purge the federal workforce and replace career civil servants with Trump loyalists dedicated to implementing the far-right movement's assault on abortion rights, climate regulations, labor protections, and more. Trump allies have already begun screening "thousands of potential foot soldiers" to replace federal employees across the U.S. government.
"This posture toward witch hunts against federal bureaucrats recalls the days of disgraced Sen. Joe McCarthy's anti-communist crusade, which resulted in massive purges of left-wing federal employees as well as those perceived to be gay or gender-nonconforming," Media Matters noted, adding that "MAGA media, including Project 2025 allies, have openly celebrated McCarthy's destructive legacy."
The report also points with alarm to "a blog published to The American Conservative, a Project 2025 partner, [that] advocated for repealing the 22nd Amendment to allow Trump to serve a third term."
The Media Matters report came as the University of Massachusetts Amherst released new national survey data showing that Project 2025's policy proposals are "deeply unpopular" with U.S. voters.
Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the poll, said Thursday that "Project 2025 looks like an electoral liability" for Trump and the GOP, which has been accused of injecting Project 2025 policies into government funding proposals currently before Congress.
Nteta said that given the results of the new survey—conducted between July 29 and August 1—"it is no surprise that the Democratic Party has sought to link" Project 2025 with Trump or that the GOP nominee has attempted to "move away from any and all association with the unpopular 900-page playbook."
"Large majorities of Americans oppose the key pillars of Project 2025, such as the replacement of career government officials with political appointees (68% opposed), restricting a woman's right to contraception (72% opposed), and eliminating the Department of Education (64% opposed)," said Nteta. "While our politics are usually divided by class, generational, racial, gender, and partisan identities, among these groups we find strong opposition to many of the policies associated with Project 2025."
"Even former Trump voters exhibit opposition to many of these policies," Nteta added, "a bad omen for the Republican Party and Trump campaign."
Just 8% of Trump 2020 voters support Project 2025's proposal to strip emergency contraception access from tens of millions of women across the U.S., according to the new poll. Only 18% of Trump voters said they support "firing federal employees and replacing them with political appointees loyal to the president."
More than half of Americans say they have heard about Project 2025, the new survey shows—a finding that UMass Amherst professor Jesse Rhodes described as remarkable given that Heritage Foundation reports are "usually incredibly obscure."
"For the most part, Americans don't like what they are hearing," said Rhodes, a co-director of the new poll. "It's no wonder Trump is trying to distance himself from Project 2025, but unfortunately for him, because dozens of his former administration officials worked on the report, this is going to be hard to do. Project 2025 looks like an albatross that Trump will find hard to get rid of."
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'They're Going to Lay the Groundwork,' Trump Said of Group Leading Project 2025
The Washington Post revealed that the former president took a private jet flight with the head of the think tank behind Project 2025.
Aug 08, 2024
Republican nominee Donald Trump's claims that he "knows nothing about" Project 2025 and has "no idea who is in charge" of it were further exposed as lies Wednesday as The Washington Postrevealed that the former president shared a private jet flight with the leader of the Heritage Foundation, the think tank spearheading the far-right agenda.
The Post published a photograph of Trump posing on the 2022 flight with Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who has faced national scrutiny in recent weeks over his role in crafting Project 2025 and his comments suggesting bloodshed could follow if the left refuses to capitulate to "the second American revolution" led by the former president.
Citing unnamed people familiar with the trip, Trump traveled with Roberts to a Heritage Foundation conference where the former president delivered a keynote address.
During his remarks, which resurfaced last month as Trump's campaign attempted to distance itself from Project 2025, the Republican candidate said of Heritage that "they're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do."
The Post also cited an interview it conducted this year with Roberts, who told the newspaper that he had "personally" spoken to Trump about Project 2025—something a Trump campaign spokeswoman denied.
"The flight, Trump's speech, and Roberts' interview cut against the former president's recent efforts to distance himself from Project 2025 once Democrats turned some of its most controversial proposals into a frequent campaign attack," the Post noted. "The proposals came from alumni of Trump's first term and often overlap with his own official campaign pronouncements, such as eliminating the Education Department, weakening protections for career civil servants, ending affirmative action, and reversing restrictions on greenhouse gases."
Roberts and the Heritage Foundation appear to be actively aiding the Trump campaign's attempt to detach Project 2025 from the GOP nominee's agenda. Roberts announced this week that he would delay the publication of his book, which contains a forward by Trump running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), and Heritage recently issued talking points urging Project 2025 architects to stress that the agenda and Trump's White House bid are separate.
The efforts amount to a tacit acknowledgment of the far-right agenda's unpopularity with the American public, which has rapidly soured on Project 2025 as it has learned more about its proposals.
Democrats—including Vice President Kamala Harris, the party's 2024 nominee—have worked to connect Trump to Project 2025, releasing analyses highlighting the similarities between the agenda and the former president's campaign platform. In June, House Democrats launched a task force with the specific goal of "highlighting, preempting, and counteracting this right-wing plot to undermine democracy."
"The head of Project 2025 confirmed it and Donald Trump said it himself, Project 2025 will 'lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do,'" James Singer, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, said in response to the Post's reporting. "Just so everyone is clear, those plans include: banning abortion, monitoring women's pregnancies, raising costs on families, and firing public servants to install extreme Trump loyalists."
During a packed rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday, Harris called Project 2025 "a plan to weaken the middle class."
"If he is elected, Donald Trump intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations," Harris said to boos from the crowd. "He intends to cut Social Security and Medicare. He intends to surrender our fight against the climate crisis and he intends to end the Affordable Care Act."
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'Who Are They Fooling?' Project 2025 Leader Delays Book With Vance Foreword
"Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn't make it less real—in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding," said Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign manager.
Aug 07, 2024
Advocacy groups have rejected attempts by Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, to distance themselves from the far-right policy agenda Project 2025—and they vowed Tuesday that the latest effort to hide the GOP ticket's connection to the plan won't work, either.
Kevin Roberts, the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which spearheaded the drafting of Project 2025, told RealClearPolitics Tuesday that a book he authored, which includes a foreword by Vance, will no longer be published in September.
"There's a time for writing, reading, and book tours—and a time to put down the books and go fight like hell to take back our country. That's why I've chosen to move my book's publication and promotion to after the election," Roberts told the outlet, announcing a new publication date of November 12.
Madeline Peltz, deputy director of rapid response at Media Matters for America, said that even with a delayed publication date, Trump allies wouldn't succeed in hiding the contents of the book, which has already been seen by MMFA, or Vance's foreword.
"Well too bad, I already have a copy of it—[Roberts] rails against childless women, IVF, abortion, and yes, dog parks," said Peltz. "They're trying to hide how extreme JD Vance is by delaying Kevin Roberts' book."
"Well too bad, I already have a copy of it—[Roberts] rails against childless women, IVF, abortion, and yes, dog parks."
In the book, Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, Roberts writes that having children should be considered "a social expectation" rather than an "optional individual choice," and calls contraception a "snake strangling the American family."
As Peltz noted, Roberts also takes aim at Swampoodle dog park in Washington, D.C., saying the area set aside for dog owners and their pets is a result of "the antifamily culture shaping legislation, regulation, and enforcement throughout our sprawling government."
The book echoes comments by Vance that have been the subject of outrage in recent weeks, in which the senator attacked the Democratic Party for being led by "childless cat ladies" and said people should be "punished" with higher taxes for not having children.
In his foreword, which was printed in full by The New Republic last week, Vance calls on conservatives "to circle the wagons and load the muskets."
Vance doesn't explicitly address Project 2025 but praises Roberts for "articulating a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics" and says his ideas are an "essential weapon" for conservatives.
While Trump has claimed not to know who is behind Project 2025, at least 140 people who worked in his administration helped draft the document.
Vance has downplayed his support for the proposals in Project 2025, saying it contains "some ideas I like and lot of ideas I dislike," but in the foreword, he writes that the Heritage Foundation is "the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump."
Project 2025 calls for the abolishment of the Education Department, the firing of federal employees who would be replaced with Trump loyalists, an end to healthcare protections for people with "pre-existing conditions," and the centralization of power with the president, among numerous other proposals.
As Roberts announced the publication delay, Paul Dans, who directs the project at Roberts' organization, said he was stepping down amid criticism from the Trump campaign—but neither the resignation nor the book delay would fool voters, said Julie Chávez Rodríguez, campaign manager for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
"Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country," said Chávez Rodríguez. "Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn't make it less real—in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding."
As Common Dreams reported last month, a poll by Navigator Research found that a majority of Americans believe Project 2025 represents the priorities of both Trump and the Republican Party at large.
While Trump and Vance have sought to ensure they won't be associated with the policy agenda, said Brookings Institution senior fellow Norm Eisen, "delaying the [publication] of Kevin Roberts' book is an admission of guilt."
"Who are they fooling?" Eisen asked. "It won't work."
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