MILWAUKEE — Despite former President Donald Trump’s denials of any connection to the conservative presidential transition plan known as Project 2025, the initiative’s founder, the Heritage Foundation, promoted the platform just blocks from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, attracting officials and figures from the party’s most conservative wing.
The bill has drawn criticism in recent weeks from Democrats who have warned about the plan’s ambitions — which include enacting the strictest abortion ban the next Republican administration can get through Congress and lowering the corporate tax rate — and Trump, the GOP presidential candidate, has sought to distance himself from the proposal.
A multi-pronged project, encompassing a 922-page recipe for politics and the training academy were praised by conservatives who attended the RNC convention and related events.
Heritage’s hundreds of pages of mandates promise to overhaul government agencies and “restore the American family to the center of American life and protect our children.”
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts described the comprehensive policy plan as a unifying force for the conservative movement during the daylong Policy Fest, which was held near Monday’s convention.
“For the first time in modern American history, we have a plan to speak as a unified movement for the average 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 of 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 series of conservative speakers, including Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and media personality Tucker Carlson.
Waiting for Trump’s presidency
Those in Milwaukee for the RNC convention packed the room in anticipation of the possibility of a second Trump presidency and the promise of traditionalist priorities flowing 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 some of the real trouble spots in the world that didn’t exist when he left office,” Roberts told reporters. “I was very impressed during the campaign by the signals that President Trump was engaging a lot of voices. I think this administration is going to be very productive.”
During the afternoon session, Stitt told the audience that “we are here this week to fight for the American dream and really our way of life.”
“You know, for our founders, the American dream meant freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom to speak your mind,” Stitt said. “It meant there were no limits to what someone could accomplish, and freedom from government that was not controlled by the government.”
Democrats warn
The Democratic National Committee, President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign and Democratic lawmakers have all focused on the 2025 Project in recent weeks, a unifying message for the party after Biden’s indigent performance in the debates exposed divisions within the party.
The Biden campaign and its representatives continued weeks of work on the bill at a “counterconvention” news conference Tuesday just around the corner from The Pfister Hotel downtown where Trump was staying.
“It’s all in the 2025 Project,” Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, said at an event that focused largely on the economic policies spelled out in the plan.
“Donald Trump and JD Vance want to loot the U.S. treasury to give massive tax cuts to billionaires and pass the bill on to working Americans,” Wikler said.
Trump announced Monday that he had selected Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, as his vice-presidential candidate.
New Jersey U.S. Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat, joined the event and warned that Project 2025 would impact Social Security.
“When you’ve worked your whole life and paid into Social Security, you hear what Republicans are trying to do, from their political caucuses, in Congress, all the way to what you’ve heard and read in the 2025 Project, about people wanting to cut benefits,” Booker said.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said: “I think you have to ask yourself, ‘Will this bill of 2025 improve my life if it becomes law?’”
Trump denies
Trump has denied any connection with the project.
“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, I have no idea who is behind it, and unlike our very well-received Republican Platform, I had nothing to do with it,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social social media platform on Thursday.
“The left-wing Radical Democrats, however, have a field day trying to drag me into every policy that is presented or spoken about. This is pure disinformation on their part,” he continued. “Now, after all these years, everyone knows where I stand on EVERY ISSUE!”
Degrees of conservatism
Roberts settled the dispute over Project 2025 by telling reporters on Monday that the plan was intended to be a “menu of options.”
“I don’t think any conservative can agree with everything that’s said in the bill,” he said.
The platform adopted by the RNC before the convention, brief, caused criticism from some conservatives, especially for their reluctance to support a nationwide abortion ban.
Asked about potential friction between Trump, the RNC platform and the 2025 Project, Roberts said that despite their differences, he foresees “very positive” conversations going forward.
“The presidential campaigns are in one lane, the RNC is in another, Heritage and Project 2025 and the entire conservative movement are in another,” Roberts said.
“There will always be disagreements. We will work through those as we talk about specific legislative instruments in January, and we know those conversations will be very positive,” Roberts said. “We may not always agree, but I think it’s time for the center-right in this country to recognize that the American people want one thing to happen, and that’s for power to be devolved from Washington.”
