Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D) stood on the stage of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night in Chicago with an oversized prop that spells out Project 2025: a think tank document of 900-plus pages largely viewed as an aggressive right-wing blueprint for a second Trump administration.
Kenyatta — the second DNC speaker to home in specifically on plans outlined in the Project 2025 policy agenda — focused on the document’s economic policies, calling it “a radical plan to drag us backwards, bankrupt the middle class and raise prices on working families like yours and mine.” He said the plans outlined in the document would raise federal taxes on middle-class families, stop Medicare from negotiating to lower the price of prescriptions and cut overtime pay.
Democrats have spent months zeroing in on the Heritage Foundation-led plan — known as “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” — to remake the government if Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump wins in November. Kenyatta used his time in the convention spotlight on Tuesday; Michigan state Senate Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow (D) held up the book Monday night and issued similar warnings. And in his speech, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called Project 2025 “radical.”
In response to Project 2025′s notoriety, Trump has tried to distance himself from the blueprint, even as its origins are with his political allies and former administration officials.
Trump has repeatedly denied knowing about the policy blueprint or the people behind it. “Have no idea who is in charge of it,” he wrote in a social media post in July. But in April 2022, Trump shared a 45-minute private flight with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts to a conference where Trump delivered a keynote address that gestured to Heritage’s forthcoming policy proposals.
“They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do,” Trump said in the speech.
And a week ago, a British journalism nonprofit released footage of Project 2025 author Russell Vought, Trump’s former Office of Management and Budget director, boasting about the program’s ties to the former president.
The exhaustive plan calls for, among other things, dismantling the Education Department, 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.
It also includes building an “army” of conservatives ready to take jobs should Trump take office 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.
The project’s work has begun winding down in recent weeks. But Democrats in Chicago this week remained steadfast in their efforts to sound the alarm and publicly link Trump to the project’s plans.
Toting the larger-than-a-library-reference-book copy of “Mandate for Leadership,” Kenyatta declared at the convention, “Usually, Republicans want to ban books, but now they want to shove this down our throats.”
McMorrow lifted the oversized copy of the Project 2025 book above her head and then dropped it onto the lectern with a loud thud, telling conventiongoers Monday night that Republicans “went ahead and wrote down all the extreme things that Donald Trump wants to do in the next four years, and then they just tweeted it out, putting it out on the internet for anybody to read. So we read it, and whatever you think it might be, it is so much worse.”
McMorrow specifically cited the project’s efforts to expand Trump’s executive authority, control the federal justice system and fire civil servants.
Emily Soong, a convention spokesperson, said in a statement that “every night of convention programming will feature speakers and fact-check videos that underscore exactly how disastrous Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda would be for our freedoms, our families, and our future.”
The Democratic National Committee cycled through a number of jabs at Trump projected onto the facade of the Trump International Hotel & Tower located on the banks of the Chicago River. One projection read: “Project 2025 HQ.”
Gov. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) will deliver remarks Wednesday night focused on Project 2025′s plans related to “freedoms,” according to a person familiar with the convention planning, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the schedule. Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) will deliver a convention speech Thursday focused on the document’s national security proposals.
Harris advisers and allies have said they believe their effort is increasing voters’ awareness of Project 2025 — and that Trump will never be able to dissociate himself from it because his administration officials and allies wrote it and said they were going to have a major role in preparing for his administration.
“You can try to scare people with a lot of things. That doesn’t mean it’s a reality,” said Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who held a news conference on Trump’s behalf Tuesday. “Their focus on Project 2025 is insanity because they have nothing to run on.” Donalds called it a “boogeyman” and claimed Trump has “nothing to do with it.”
After Kenyatta concluded his remarks at the convention Tuesday night, he wrote on X, “I just got off the stage at the DNC, and I hope I made you proud. Pennsylvania is the key battleground state and it is going to take all of us to win in November.”
