The Paw Print

By Madeleine Spanbauer, Editor-In-Chief

Throughout former President Trump’s 2024 campaign, there has been a looming idea hanging over the heads of Americans: Project 2025. Democrats, fighting against a future that strips away the rights of citizens, spoke at the Democratic National Convention about why the project would be detrimental.

Project 2025, according to CBS News, comprises four pillars, but the one Democrats focus on most is the nearly 900-page policy guide for the next conservative president. The book covers every aspect of the executive branch and offers ideas such as less government involvement in education, securing the border with stricter immigration laws, mass deportation and the restriction of Plan B, a pill commonly used to prevent unwanted pregnancies. 

The plan additionally poses an uncertain future for the transgender community. According to Them, Trump’s Agenda47, where he said in his new term he hopes to eradicate “radical gender ideology” in schools and ban gender-affirming care for trans youth, is almost indistinguishable from Project 2025’s plans for the trans community. The project aims to end all federal protections for trans people, and explicitly states, “married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure,”  showing its stance on same-sex marriage.

While many have thought, or even assumed, that former President Trump was behind Project 2025, he has actually been working to distance himself from the project, saying, “I know nothing about Project 2025,” and, “I have no idea who is behind it.”

Trump does likely know who is behind the project, as several of his direct associates created the infamous 900-page policy guide. In fact, according to CNN, as many as 140 people who worked under the Trump administration contributed to the document.

While campaigning in Michigan, Trump said, in an effort to separate himself from the policy guide, “The other side is going around trying to make me sound extreme, like I’m an extremist. I’m not; I’m a person with great common sense, not an extremist. Some on the right, the severe right, came up with this Project 25, and I mean some of them I know who they are but they are very, very conservative. They’re sort of the opposite of the radical left, okay?”

Democrats are trying to make the public afraid of the right’s project by spelling out exactly what it would mean for the future. In a video that played during the commercials at the DNC, a message was broadcast which said, “Do you know about Project 2025? The far right’s playbook is Trump’s vision for the future. It will ban abortion nationwide, raise taxes for middle-class families, gut Medicaid, strip rights from LGBTQ+ people, cut overtime pay, give him unchecked power, and it begins his first day back in office.”

Some celebrities are involved in the battle against the project as well. On night three of the DNC, actor and comedian Kenan Thompson of Saturday Night Live came on stage with a large prop book made to represent Project 2025. “Have you ever seen a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time?” he said. “Here it is. You know when you download an app and there are hundreds of pages there that you don’t read because it’s the terms and conditions and you just click agree, right? Well, these are the terms and conditions of a second Trump presidency. You vote for him, you vote for all of this.”

Gov. Tim Walz spoke on the conservatives’ plan in his speech, emphasizing how Project 2025 will affect the middle class. “It’s not just what they’ve done, it’s what they’re gonna do. One of the goals of their Project 2025 is to screw the middle class, making it harder for workers to collectively bargain, allowing employers to drastically cut overtime or eliminate it, slash taxes for the ultra-wealthy by imposing a national sales tax on the rest of us…Project 2025 is a plan to reshape what America looks like, moving away from the middle class and putting it right back on the oligarchs at the wealthy top.”

Since Project 2025 was such a heavy topic at the DNC, one might assume that the same would be true at the RNC, held in Milwaukee. However, according to MSNBC, Republicans did their best to hide the project during the convention. 

Even though people didn’t talk about the project, the subtext of it existed in all of the speeches made. In fact, Donald Trump name-checked an official with ties to Project 2025 in his speech, saying, “The invasion at our southern border, we will stop it and we will stop it quickly. You heard Tom Homan yesterday; put him in charge and just sit back and watch.” Tom Homan is the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration and is one of the contributors to the policy guide.

Throughout Vice President Harris’ campaign, she has repeated one phrase: “We are not going back.” The public will likely see more pushback on Project 2025 from her team in the future as she fights for a future where all are treated with fairness and equality. Despite former President Trump’s efforts to distance himself from the project, this is not the last time he will speak on the issue, and it is likely to be an important point of contention during their debate on Sept. 10, 2024.