Heritage Foundation touts controversial Project 2025 plan on RNC outskirts

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts speaks to reporters July 15, 2024, at the organization’s all-day Policy Fest at the Bradley Symphony Center in downtown Milwaukee, just blocks from the Republican National Convention. (Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

MILWAUKEE — Despite former President Donald Trump’s denial of any connection to the conservative presidential transition plan known as Project 2025, the initiative’s driver, the Heritage Foundation, promoted the platform mere blocks from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, attracting officials and personalities from the party’s most conservative wing.

The project has taken heat from Democrats in recent weeks, who are warning of the plan’s ambitions — among them passing the most stringent abortion ban the next Republican administration can get through Congress and lowering the corporate tax rate — and Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, has sought to distance himself from the proposal.

The multi-pronged project, featuring a 922-page policy prescription and a training academy, received praise from conservatives who traveled to attend the RNC and ancillary events.

The hundreds of pages in Heritage’s mandate promise to overhaul government agencies and “restore the American family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.”

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts described the comprehensive policy plan as the unification of the conservative movement at the organization’s all-day Policy Fest near the convention Monday.

“For once in modern American history, we have a plan among a unified movement to speak on behalf of the everyday American, the forgotten American,” Roberts said.

“The reason progressive Democrats hate these ideas so much is because they are a threat to their power,” Roberts continued from the stage at the Bradley Symphony Center in downtown Milwaukee, five blocks from the Fiserv Forum where the RNC was just getting underway.

The foundation’s event on the first day of the convention featured a slate of conservative speakers including Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, former presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy and media personality Tucker Carlson.

Awaiting a Trump presidency

Those who traveled to Milwaukee for the RNC packed the auditorium in collective anticipation of the possibility of a second Trump presidency and the promise of traditionalist priorities emanating from the Oval Office.

“I think President Trump has learned a lot over the last few years about where the movement is, where the country is, and also some real hot spots around the world that didn’t exist when he left office,” Roberts told reporters. “I’ve been very impressed during the campaign by signals that President Trump’s involving a lot of voices. I think this is going to be an administration that is very efficient.”

Stitt told the audience during the afternoon session that “we’re here this week to fight for the American dream, and really our way of life.”

“You know, to our founders, the American dream meant freedom to worship, for you to assemble, freedom to speak one’s mind,” Stitt said. “It meant that there was no limit to what someone could accomplish, and freedom from a government not controlled by the government.”

Democrats warn

The Democratic National Committee, President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign and Democratic lawmakers have seized on Project 2025 in recent weeks — a unifier for the party message after Biden’s poor debate performance unearthed party fractures.

The Biden campaign and its surrogates continued their weeks-long focus on the project Tuesday at a “counter convention” press event around the corner from where Trump is staying at The Pfister Hotel downtown.

“It’s all written down in Project 2025,” Ben Wikler, Wisconsin’s Democratic Party chair, said at the event primarily focused on economic policies outlined in the plan.

“Donald Trump and J.D. Vance want to ransack the public treasury to hand out massive tax cuts to billionaires and stick working Americans with the bill,” Wikler said.

Trump announced Monday he had chosen Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, as his running mate.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey joined the event and warned that Project 2025 would affect Social Security.

“When you’ve worked all your life and paid into Social Security, and you hear what Republicans are trying to do, from their policy groups, in Congress, all the way to what you’ve heard and read in Project 2025, folks that want to limit benefits,” Booker said.

Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said, “I think you should ask yourself, ‘does this project 2025 agenda make my life better if it were to become law?’ ”

Trump denies

Trump has denied any connection to the project.

“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it,” Trump wrote Thursday on his social media platform Truth Social.

“The Radical Left Democrats are having a field day, however, trying to hook me into whatever policies are stated or said. It is pure disinformation on their part,” he continued. “By now, after all of these years, everyone knows where I stand on EVERYTHING!”

Degrees of conservatism

Roberts navigated the tug-of-war over Project 2025 by telling reporters Monday that the plan is meant to be “a menu of options.”

“It is impossible for any individual conservative, I think, to agree with everything that’s stated in the project,” he said.

The platform adopted by the RNC ahead of the convention, short in length, drew criticism from some conservatives, particularly for shying away from supporting a nationwide abortion ban.

When asked about any potential friction among Trump, the RNC platform and Project 2025, Roberts said despite differences he sees “very positive” conversations ahead.

“Presidential campaigns are (in) one lane, the RNC is in another lane, Heritage and Project 2025 and the conservative movement writ large is in another lane,” Roberts said.

“There will always be differences of opinions. We will work on those when we’re talking about specific legislative vehicles in January, and we know that those conversations are going to be very positive,” Roberts said. “We may not always agree, but I think the time now for the center-right in this country is to recognize the American people want one thing to happen and that is for power to be devolved from Washington, D.C.”

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