In Greensboro, Kamala Harris denounces Project 2025, Trump’s call to ‘terminate’ the Constitution 

Harris highlighted Trump’s intentions to further restrict reproductive rights and make healthcare more expensive. “Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate?” Harris said.

Donald Trump, who called for the “termination” of the Constitution and pledged to act like a dictator if he returns to the White House, should “never again stand behind the seal of the president of the United States,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a campaign speech in Greensboro on Thursday.

Harris, in North Carolina for the sixth time this year, spoke before a raucous crowd at James B. Dudley High School, warning supporters that a second Trump administration would be disastrous for the state and the nation. 

“In this election there can be no doubt, no doubt who you can count on to fight for you when it counts. It’s simple: President Biden and I fight for the American people; Donald Trump does not,” Harris said. 

Harris sought to highlight the divide between the record of the Biden-Harris administration and Trump’s stated intentions of a second term.

And from the fight against climate change, to abortion rights, to health care policies, the divide is a chasm, she said. 

More than 100 far-right groups closely aligned with Trump have issued a 900-page policy proposal called Project 2025 that makes it clear they would dismantle most of the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, pursue a national abortion ban and end efforts to make healthcare more affordable. 

Trump or his allies have also said they would remove the Biden-Harris administration’s cap on insulin costs, derail North Carolina’s Medicaid expansion and subvert the Constitution in favor of Trump’s best interests.

“I know many of us have been involved in these elections every four years and nearly every time we say ‘this is the one,’” Harris told the crowd. 

“This here,” she said, pausing for emphasis, “is the one.”

Harris reminded the crowd that, in 2022, Trump said on social media that even the Constitution should be “terminated” in order to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“Let us be very clear, someone who suggests we should terminate our Constitution should never again have the chance to … stand behind the seal of the United States.”

The crowd roared in agreement.

Project 2025

Trump, who has said he would be a “dictator on day one,” has been closely tied to Project 2025 for months.

Though he has tried to suggest recently that he is backing away from the most stark plans included in the document, they mirror many of his public comments over the years, and many of the authors are expected to be key policy decision-makers in his next administration

The document suggests pushing for a national abortion ban, targeting birth control access, abolishing the Affordable Care Act, and undermining or outright eliminating federal housing, education and health care agencies.

It would also, by design, flood the entirety of the federal government with far-right ideology. 

Project 2025 is all the more ominous, Harris said, in light of the recent US Supreme Court decision that would give immunity to any president who commits a crime while performing official duties of the office.

That, Harris said, would leave no checks to Trump’s self-interest. 

“The Supreme Court basically told this individual who had been convicted of fraud, that going forward he will be immune,” Harris said.

“Donald Trump has openly vowed, if reelected, he will … weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, round up peaceful protesters and throw them out of our country.”

Project 2025, she said, is the roadmap on how to do so.

‘Make no mistake’

Project 2025 also vows to target birth control and IVF access.

“If implemented, Project 2025 would be the latest attack in Donald Trump’s full-on assault on reproductive freedom,” Harris said.

“Make no mistake, if he gets the chance, he will sign a national abortion ban and outlaw abortion in every single state.”

The plan also calls for limits on contraception, “with or without an act of Congress,” Harris said. 

But if Democrats gain control of Congress and the Biden-Harris administration wins a second term, Harris said, they would quickly restore reproductive freedoms into federal law.

‘You remember what that was like?’

Trump has often said he would end many of the Biden-Harris administration’s initiatives to make health care more affordable, and would also again try to erase the key healthcare legislation under the Obama administration, the Affordable Care Act, which, among other things, blocked insurers from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions.

“When Donald Trump was in the White House,” Harris said, “he tried more than 60 times, 60 times to end the Affordable Care Act to take healthcare back from millions of Americans, including 3 million Black Americans.”

Without the ACA, many sick people would again be unable to get health insurance.

“You remember what that was like,?” she said.

“People were being denied healthcare because of a preexisting condition. Children with asthma, women who had survived breast cancer, grandparents with diabetes.”

The Biden-Harris administration, however, she added, “defended the Affordable Care Act and made it stronger.”

The administration also capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month. While Trump tried to take credit for the cap in the debate last month, Project 2025 would remove it.

‘We were born for a time such as this’

With just over 100 days until the election, “we each face a question,” Harris said.

“What kind of country do we want to live in? … Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate?”

She added:

“Here’s the beauty in this. We each have the power to answer that question. We have the power. And North Carolina, we were born for a time such as this.”

 

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