(NewsNation) —One of Vice President Kamala Harris’ main points of attack on the Republican ticket is the controversial conservative Project 2025, which she warns will go into effect should former president Donald Trump get reelected.
The plan, written by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, has gained increased backlash in recent weeks. Harris has seized on the plan linking it directly to Trump, who has ties to people in the organization.
Trump is trying to distance himself by saying he has “nothing” to do with it and even going as far as issuing a warning to anyone connecting him to the plan. Similarly, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, has tried to steer clear of Project 2025 while campaigning, despite having close ties with the people who authored the book.
Harris has pushed back against Trump’s denials saying he will implement the conservative plan “hatched by people who used to work for Donald Trump that focuses on the first 180 days,” on her campaign website.
What is Project 2025?
Project 2025 is a nearly 1,000-page document laying out a multiprong blueprint to overhaul the federal government for the next Republican administration.
The conservative policy plan lays out changes that would affect women on multiple fronts, including access to reproductive care, workplace protections and government assistance requirements.
On abortion, Project 2025 calls for restricting the procedure through a limit on mail-order pills and penalizing providers. Other healthcare services and social services like Medicare and Social Security would be scaled back and privatized as well.
The plan also calls for the firing of as many as 50,000 federal workers who conservative groups say will impede the president’s agenda.
Under Project 2025, agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education would be “eliminated,” and others, like the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and Justice Department, would be put under the president’s control.
A so-called top-to-bottom “overhaul” of the Department of Justice would end FBI efforts to stop misinformation. The Pentagon would “abolish” diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives if Project 2025 is adopted, and service members discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine would be reinstated.
All of the Biden administration’s climate change policies would be reversed through Project 2025.
What Kamala Harris has said about Project 2025
Harris has spoken about Project 2025 numerous times both while campaigning for Biden and after she became the Democratic nominee for president.
Her campaign website has a page dedicated to Project 2025 calling it “Trump’s plan to take your power, your control, and your money.”
“Donald Trump’s plans for a full government takeover have been exposed,” it reads, adding “his Project 2025 agenda would strip away our freedoms.”
Harris has been particularly concerned with reproductive rights telling voters, “If implemented, Project 2025 would be the latest attack in Donald Trump’s full-on assault on reproductive freedom.”
At a campaign rally in Wisconsin last week Harris said Project 2025 was a “plan to weaken the middle class.”
“If he is elected, Donald Trump intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations. He intends to cut Social Security and Medicare. He intends to surrender our fight against the climate crisis, and he intends to end the Affordable Care Act,” Harris said, referring to several parts of the conservative document.
In a plea to Gen Z voters last month, Harris said that “Donald Trump has an extreme and divisive agenda for a second term. It’s called Project 2025 and it includes plans to ban abortion nationwide even without an act of Congress, to undermine LGBTQ rights, to roll back our efforts to fight climate change and they intend to eliminate the Department of Education, including Head Start.”
Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also has spoken out against the conservative guidebook.
The governor said, if implemented, the project’s recommendations would restrict freedoms, rig the U.S. economy in favor of the top 1%, cut social security, underfund public schools and hurt health care.
“Don’t believe him when he’s playing dumb about this Project 2025,” Walz said at a Glendale, Ariz. rally. “He knows exactly what it will do. They are not playing. They wrote their plan out.”
How Harris’ views differ on Project 2025
Harris has presented a diametrically opposite position on the issues Project 2025 aims to restructure.
Harris has been an outspoken defender of abortion rights since the June 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Her March trip to a Michigan Planned Parenthood made her the first president or vice president to tour a clinic that provides abortion services.
“How dare these elected leaders believe they are in a better position to tell women what they need,” Harris said at the time. “We have to be a nation that trusts women.”
On climate, Harris has long advocated ways to counter climate change and has called for urgent action as the world as the world continues to break heat records and head toward critical climate tipping points.
As a legislator and vice president, Harris has backed policies including the establishment of green banks, increased pay for clean energy workers, incentives for electric vehicles, electrification of school buses and efforts to remove lead pipes.
Project 2025 calls for eliminating the Department of Education, Title I and Head Start, a federally funded preschool program for children from low-income families during their first five years. It also wants to phase out
On the contrary, Harris has called for significant increases to both Title I and Head Start.
NewsNation’s Sean Noone and Patrick Djordjevic contributed to this report.
