'Lab rats?' GOP's Project 2025 looks to have been test-marketed in Florida

Almost 900 pages, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 isn’t an easy read.

But the document, which has been cast as a conservative roadmap for a second Donald Trump presidency, is driving fiery exchanges in the rebooted race for the White House.

Project 2025 proposes a dramatic overhaul of the federal government, replacing thousands of civil employees with political hires, expanding the power of the president, abolishing the Department of Education, enacting a flurry of tax cuts, banning pornography and halting sales of the abortion pill.

For Floridians, the document's themes and policies may sound familiar. After all, Gov. Ron DeSantis advanced many of the same ideas, pushed along by hard-right think tanks in his first six years as governor.

“You guys in Florida are living in the future,” said Nick Beauchamp, a political scientist at Northeastern University. He has written on Project 2025 and its proposals, powered by Heritage and a host of other conservative, billionaire-funded think tanks.

“The states are always the test cases for all these things. Maybe the billionaires behind these think tanks all talk to one another,” Beauchamp said.

More from USA TODAY: What is Project 2025? Inside the conservative plan Trump claims to have 'no idea' about.

Florida: 'Lab rats' for conservative experiments?

Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried is among those warning of Project 2025, saying her home state has been divided by much of DeSantis' policy-making.

“We have been the lab rats for the Heritage Foundation here in the state of Florida, so we understand the threat that is coming with Project 2025,” Fried said.

Trump has disavowed any knowledge of Project 2025. But Democrats led by newly-minted presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris portray it as the dystopian America just down the road if Trump wins in November.

Among other things, the document also calls for ending diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the workplace and across education, limiting worker rights to organize through unions, and promotes book restrictions, all reflective of laws enacted in Florida by DeSantis.

Florida’s expansive private school voucher program, which may lead to the closure of dozens of public schools across the state, is cited by Project 2025 as one that should be mirrored nationally.

Florida under DeSantis also is praised by the authors for the state’s “parents bill of rights.” The measure first enacted in 2021 during the COVID-19 era has been enhanced to restrict classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender.

As the governor said in his second inaugural address, Florida is where “woke goes to die.”

Related coverage: From student debt to Title IX reform, how Project 2025 could alter these people's lives

'Anti-woke' themes abound in Project 2025

Project 2025 proposes that the “next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke cultural warriors.” Trump in a second term also would be urged through the document to eliminate from laws and regulations such terms as “sexual orientation,” “gender equality,” “abortion,” and “reproductive rights.”

DeSantis earlier this year struck the term “climate change” from Florida law.

Republicans dismiss any Trump attachment to Project 2025. They argue the conservative wish list document is now just being used by Democrats to fire up support for Harris as she steps in to replace President Joe Biden as their party’s nominee.

“I’m not an extremist at all,” Trump said, labeling Project 2025’s authors as part of the far right, although he remains deeply connected to several of them.

GOP leaders say Democrats are just amping up fear

Republican Party of Florida chair Evan Power also said the document’s primary role now is as a weapon used by Democrats.

“Project 2025 is an idea of a think tank that is being pushed in an organized manner by the left to distract from the disastrous administration of Biden and Harris,” Power said.

Instead, he added, “let’s focus on the issues that matter to Florida voters.”

While Heritage and a host of conservative think tanks were central to the development of Project 2025, similar organizations helped craft many notable laws enacted during the DeSantis years.

The Foundation for Government Accountability in Naples, the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee and the American Legislative Exchange Council, headquartered in Virginia, are just some of the groups behind ideas and legislation that have flourished in Florida under DeSantis.

They also are proof of the close bond between wealthy donors, the think tanks they finance and policies ultimately enacted by GOP leaders.

How laws are made – helped by conservative think tanks like Heritage Foundation

For example, the Foundation for Government Accountability, founded in 2011, was behind a new law signed by DeSantis that lets kids who are at least 16 work more than 30 hours a week if their employer gets permission from their parents.

The legislation began as a far more serious weakening of child labor laws but eventually was scaled back.

FGA is active nationwide on the issue, and also has been influential with Florida Republicans, making it more difficult to get ballot measures before voters. It continues to bolster Republican leaders’ opposition to expanding Medicaid, with Florida among only 10 states not to do so.

The organization draws significant funding from the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, whose Richard Uihlein – an heir to the Schlitz Brewing Co. – was a contributor to DeSantis’ presidential campaign, which ended in January.

Another big FGA funder is conservative legal activist Leonard Leo’s 85 Fund. Leo is a driving force behind the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, which DeSantis relied on in appointing a majority of new justices to the Florida Supreme Court.

The Texas-based Cicero Institute, another conservative policy research group, spearheaded a new Florida law banning cities and counties from allowing homeless people to camp or sleep on public property. Joe Lonsdale, a tech investor, chairs the Cicero Institute and hosted a Texas fundraiser for DeSantis during his presidential campaign.

Republican megadonor and billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, a mentor of Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance, also promotes wide-scale crackdowns on homeless.

Anders Croy, spokesman for DeSantis Watch, a website backed by progressive nonprofit groups critical of the governor, said Project 2025 needs careful monitoring. Florida, he said, is an example of how conservative ideas become law.

“Under Gov. DeSantis we have seen what happens when extreme policies are put in place that only benefit the wealthy and connected corporate elites, while workers and seniors are left to pick up the bill,” Croy said.

John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @JKennedyReport.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: What is Project 2025? Florida seems like test site for Republican plan