Project 2025 has Trump’s fingerprints all over it, NC Democrats say

Project 2025 calls for restricting abortion access and enacting political vengeance and though Trump has tried to distance himself from it, he once said it detailed ‘exactly what our movement will do.’

Over the last few weeks, Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from his own extremism.

Trump’s second administration would likely be defined by Project 2025, a vast document written by Trump associates that lays out more than 900 pages worth of far-right dreams, including implementing national abortion restrictions, replacing non-partisan civil servants with political ideologues, dismantling Medicare, eradicating all efforts to fight climate change, and giving states free range to discriminate against LGBTQ citizens. 

But in the run-up to the Republican National Convention (RNC) this week, where Trump will formally accept his party’s nomination Thursday night, he has tried to soften the message.

This image of a more moderate candidate, however, is as convincing as a wolf in your grandmother’s pajamas, North Carolina Democrats said in Raleigh on Wednesday. 

“Donald Trump and his allies, including Mark Robinson, convene in Milwaukee to lay out their second term an extreme agenda that rolls back American’s rights and freedoms, hurts working families, and threatens our democracy by giving Trump unchecked controlled power,” Anderson Clayton, the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, said in a press conference downtown.

Republicans’ years-long record on these issues far outweighs any last-minute change in political messaging, Clayton said.

“I’m not so certain that we have to be questioning whether or not they believe or that they’re going to enact what’s in Project 2025, when they’ve already said it,” she said. 

Who is behind Project 2025?

Trump now says that he has never heard of Project 2025 and does not know the people who wrote it. 

But he knows at least 140 of them, CNN reported, because they used to work in his administration. 

“It is not a pie-in-the-sky policy agenda full of bold but empty promises,” Vox writes. “It is crafted to be a list of things the next president’s appointees really can do, put together by many people who served in top posts under Trump last time and could well do so again.”

And as Project 2025 was being written in 2022, the 19th points out, Trump said the Heritage Foundation—a far right group that served as a chief author of Project 2025—would “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do, and what your movement will do, when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

Voters have “a clear choice,” in this election, the Democrats said, and the platforms and records of the candidates speak clearly, even if Republicans are now trying to smear mud on the glass. 

“Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Republicans want to lead us down a path that endorses legal discrimination, restricts access to healthcare, and goes back on promises to our seniors,” Jonathan Melton, a Raleigh City Council member, said at the news conference. 

In contrast, he said, the Biden-Harris administration has “proven to be allies that fight for equality, protect our healthcare, and expand economic opportunity for all.”

Abortion bans and birth control restrictions

Trump’s choice of running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, also has a detailed record calling for severe abortion restrictions, including calling for a national abortion ban and suggesting that rape and incest were inconveniences that a woman would have to just endure if she got pregnant. 

As he campaigned for Senate in 2021, Vance said he did not support exceptions for rape and incest in state abortion bans because “two wrongs don’t make a right.” 

“It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society,” Vance said, referring to cases of rape and incest. 

Vance’s record also reflects many of the views Project 2025 lays out on abortion. 

Under Project 2025, the federal government would utilize an obscure law to block access to medication abortion, the most common method of abortion care; prosecute state district attorneys who refuse to pursue criminal cases against doctors who provide abortions or women who seek them; and seek to allow emergency rooms to refuse to provide life-saving abortion care. 

The plan also defines life as beginning at conception, offering several ways to block access to IVF treatments and some forms of birth control.

“There are some good ideas in there,” Vance said. 

Vance is also close to Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation. Upon finding out Trump had chosen Vance, Roberts told reporters that “we were really rooting for” him to be the nominee

“You will see a broad smile on my face,” Roberts said.

A threat to the ‘rule of law.’

Scott Peoples, an Army veteran and former Republican, said in the press conference that Project 2025 is a “slap in the face” of everything the armed forces are sworn to protect.

“As bad as Trump’s first term was, his second term agenda would be even worse,” he said.

Project 2025 would fundamentally change the way government works, replacing a service-first mindset with a Trump-only ideology.

“One of the greatest things about serving in the military is that it’s a merit-based system. You’re rewarded for your experience and for doing the job, not for your connections or political affiliations, but if Trump and his Project 2025 cronies have their way, they will replace the [Department of Veterans Affairs’] independent civil servants with MAGA loyalists who will carry out their extreme agenda.”

Peoples says he voted for John Kasich in the 2016 Republican primary and switched to an independent after Trump, who mocked John McCain’s time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, won the nomination. 

“After Jan. 6th, I registered as a Democrat,” he said in an interview after the press conference.

“I didn’t leave the Republican party, the Republican Party left me,” Peoples said.

@cardinalandpine

Donald Trump may now be trying to distance himself from Project 2025, a 900-page document written by close associates, but he can’t escape his own record, North Carolina Democrats said on Wednesday. Scott Peoples, an Army veteran, said he left the Republican Party after Donald Trump insulted John McCain in 2016. And when Trump refused to concede the 2020 election and incited the Jan. 6 riot, Peoples said, he became a Democrat. 👉🏼 Watch here. #RuleofLaw #NCPolitics #TrumpPolitic #trumppolitics #Trump

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“I signed up to serve during a time of war because I wanted to defend our institutions and our rule of law. And when I saw Donald Trump be the first president not to concede for free and fair elections, and spread lies to incite an insurrection, for me that’s kind of a slap in the face to all veterans.”

He added: “I always feel like as a country, we should feel safe that in four years we’ll have another free and fair election and both parties will respect those outcomes. And I feel like only one party does that now.”

‘We still have the opportunity to set the country on the right course’

The current Republican platform is one of the most antagonistic to LGBTQ citizens as any in recent memory, advocates warn.

Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor and a headlining speaker at the RNC, has a long history of hateful rhetoric against the LGBTQ community, and Project 2025 wants to define marriage as between a man and a woman and define families as a straight married couple with children. 

Such news may seem overwhelming and disheartening to young people, but Melton, the Raleigh City Council member, said after the news conference that while he and his husband are alarmed, there’s power in the voting booth.

“I know that hearing things, details about Project 2025, seeing some of the things that’s coming down from the Supreme Court, it can be scary, it can be deflating and dejecting, but we have to remember that we still have the opportunity to set the country on the right course,” Melton said in an interview. 

“Right now, in this moment, we have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the White House working for us every single day wanting to protect and expand our rights, and we can keep them there if we show up,” he said.

“Every vote matters, and even if you are planning to vote, talk to people in your life, talk to your friends and family and coworkers. Explain to them why you’re scared, how it impacts your daily life. That’s how we change hearts and minds,” Melton added.

Dr. John Purakal, an emergency physician in Durham, writes his priorities on a chalkboard at a North Carolina Democrats press conference on Wednesday. (Photo by Michael McElroy/Cardinal & Pine)

‘HOPE’

The Democrats held their press conference in an open work space. A security guard manned the entrance.

Inside, advocates signed up volunteers and passed out Biden-Harris signs. A chalk board displayed a message urging visitors to write “Why do you support NC Democrats?”

“For public education,” someone wrote in green chalk. “Our reproductive freedoms,” another wrote in purple. “HOPE” was written in blue.

Dr. John Purakal, an ER doctor in Durham, spoke at the press conference of the threat the state’s 12-week abortion ban poses to his patients and the larger dangers waiting in Project 2025.

After the press conference, however, he spoke of his children.

“I have two daughters and in the [2016] election, when Trump won, I didn’t feel like I did enough to speak out about the things I was worried about,” Purakal said.

“I wanted to do more this time around to be involved.”

Purakal, being careful not to get too much chalk on his white coat, went to the chalkboard to answer the question it asked.

“For my daughters,” he wrote.