Abhay Singh
According to the Washington Post, Donald Trump took a private trip with the leader of the rightwing thinktank behind Project 2025, and the newspaper published evidence including a photo of the two men in aircraft seats.
The plane was on its way to a thinktank-organized summit, where Trump promised group members they would “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do”.
Project 2025 is a 900-page plan
Project 2025, a 900-page plan by the Heritage Foundation, proposes aggressive rightwing reforms across the federal government, with Democratic attacks focusing on its threats to reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights, and other progressive concerns.
Since then, Trump and his associates have attempted to distance themselves from the project, with Trump declaring last month that he had “no idea who is in charge of” Project 2025, seemingly out of fear that Kamala Harris was using it as a powerful campaign issue.
Trump’s spokesperson denied Project 2025 accurately reflects his policies, but the Post published plane-tracking data and a picture of Trump with Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts in April 2022.
The two men were traveling to Amelia Island, Florida, for the annual Heritage meeting, by plane from Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, residence.
Last month, Project 2025 director Paul Dans stepped down
According to the Post, Trump told guests at the conference: “With Kevin and the staff, and I’ve met so many of them now, I took pictures with among the most handsome, beautiful people I’ve ever seen.”
Post also reported that Roberts in April said “I personally have talked to President Trump about Project 2025 because my role in the project has been to make sure that all of the candidates who have responded to our offer for a briefing on Project 2025 get one from me.”
Democratic attacks on Project 2025 have caused significant damage, leading to the resignation of director Paul Dans and attention being drawn to Roberts.
In July, he told Trump supporter Steve Bannon, “We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Controversy over comments made by Roberts has prompted attention to his forthcoming book, Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, with an introduction by Ohio senator JD Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential pick.
Vance calls the Heritage Foundation the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans, having produced policy plans for Republican administrations since 1980. Publication has been delayed until after election day.
Earlier this week, two House Democrats requested that Roberts divulge preparations for the first 180 days of a second Trump administration, which are currently under wraps.
Jared Huffman of California and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts sent an open letter. It stated “It is time to stop hiding the ball on what we are concerned could very well be the most radical, extreme, and dangerous parts of Project 2025,”
According to an unidentified Project 2025 source, some donors viewed the controversy over their work and Trump’s attempts to repudiate it as “a disaster, a catastrophe … the wishful-thinking school is that this will all blow over”.
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