A small group of House Democrats launched a task force in June to counter Project 2025, the fascistic, dystopian blueprint for a second Donald Trump administration. Now that the specter of the very unpopular scheme has broken through to the general public, Democrats ranging from leadership to the local level are ramping up their efforts to make the issue central to elections up and down the ballot.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries started coordinating with the group before the August recess and is working on shaping a strategy for House Democrats to tackle in the remaining weeks before the election, including field hearings and forums. But they’re not waiting for Congress to come back into session to go on the attack.
Leaders of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee issued a challenge to members to use the rest of the August recess to hold information sessions with constituents and warn about the danger of a second Trump term, which could make the very scary goals of Project 2025 a reality.
It’s working.
In Pennsylvania, Rep. Susan Wild is talking to local media.
“I serve with a whole bunch of members in the House of Representatives who see this as their mission – Project 2025 is their mission,” she told The Keystone.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington held a town hall meeting this week to talk about it, after holding another town hall in late July that included fellow Washingtonians Rep. Adam Smith and Sen. Patty Murray.
Even Democratic candidates for state races in Indiana are using it as a campaign issue.
“People want to talk about it as though it’s this abstract thing; it’s not,” state House candidate Heidi Beidinger said in a forum earlier this month. “They’re talking about getting rid of the Department of Education. What are we doing here in Indiana? We’re crippling public education. They want to get rid of veteran’s rights and healthcare. It’s not so great here in Indiana.”
The Democrats on the House Budget Committee are using their bully pulpit to send out fact sheets about the plan’s tax cuts for the rich and goals to slash health care. And a group of members are trying to highlight how much of the plan has been kept secret from the public, particularly Project 2025’s so-called “Fourth Pillar,” the yet-to-be-released outline for the first six months of a second Trump administration.
“This is the Insurrection Act. This is potentially deploying the military in different parts of the United States, domestically, possibly even invoking martial law,” Rep. Jared Huffman, one of the members asking for information about the Fourth Pillar, told The Hill. “I mean, none of this is out of the realm of authoritarian possibility for these people.”
House Democrats are also using social media to get the word out, like in this tweet commemorating the 89th anniversary of Social Security.
“This is a deeply resonant issue with the public because everyone stands to be impacted by it, and it’s a matter of life and death for our democracy and our communities,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts told The Hill. The plan essentially wages war on abortion rights, public education, health care, and the LGBTQ+ community, among other things.
While Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, it was written with the help of 140 current and former members of his campaign and White House staff. The plan was produced by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, and its leaders have been tripping over each other in a clumsy effort to mitigate the public fallout.
“They’ve just given us this awesome opportunity to paint full contrast on every single issue of importance and we intend to continue totally taking advantage of it,” a senior aide told The Hill.
Expect Democrats to push that advantage hard at the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which will be their biggest stage yet to lay out the stakes for this election.
