CHICAGO—When Democrats arrived on Sunday night for their party’s national convention, they were greeted with a special message projected onto the exterior of the Trump International Hotel and Tower.
“Project 2025 HQ.”
It was another sign of how the Democratic Party has worked to co-opt and weaponize a conservative action plan for Trump’s second term as a rallying cry and organizing tool for their supporters. The plan is playing a prominent role in the speeches and programming at the Democratic National Convention this week.
Nearly a year ago, Democrats began working to raise awareness of Project 2025, an obscure document written by conservatives and for conservatives, to make it into a household name.
How Project 2025 entered the mainstream
The message reached North Carolina voter Ina Schuner, who had voted Republican her entire adult life until former President Donald Trump came on the political scene.
Earlier this year, she printed out the entire document and put it in a massive three-ring binder. It took more than a ream of paper.
“This is it,” Schuner said, pulling the binder out from the back seat of her SUV. “It’s very thick as you can see, 900 pages.”
“This is the destruction of democracy,” she said. “They literally wrote it down.”
TikTok explainers played a major role
Project 2025 was produced by the Heritage Foundation, with contributions from former Trump administration officials. It includes plans for everything from cutting off access to medication abortion to “deconstructing the administrative state” by replacing tens of thousands civil servants with political appointees.
The fact that regular voters like Schuner know about it is a triumph for Democrats, who have been working to inject it into the American political bloodstream.
Schuner isn’t sure where she first heard about it. But she thinks it may have been TikTok, where there are thousands of explainer videos.
@splashofteal There is so much to unpack #Project2025 #greenscreen ♬ original sound - SplashofTeal
Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler says back in the spring, the campaign noticed online conversations bubbling up organically, and saw a chance to make Project 2025 a shorthand for all things Trump.
“They're not necessarily going to go and Google every single policy proposal, but you say, ‘Hey: google Project 2025:’ that is a very easy way for folks to dig in and understand, writ large, the threat that Trump poses to our economy, our democracy, and our way of life,” Tyler said.
Trump disavowed Project 2025. That spurred more interest
Then on June 30, Taraji P. Henson hosted the BET Awards, and told viewers to google it.
“They are attacking our most vulnerable citizens. The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look it up!” Henson said.
And, look it up they did. The campaign even created a website for people to land on if they searched it.
Then, former President Donald Trump added rocket fuel by disowning the plan.
“I have no idea what it is,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News.
“It’s a group of extremely conservative people got together and wrote up a wish list of things, many of which I disagree with entirely. They’re too severe.”
Trump hasn’t been clear about which parts he supports and what he thinks is too extreme. But Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson said the denials aren’t working.
“There’s a wise phrase that describes how voters saw Donald Trump’s approach to Project 2025: he who denied it, supplied it,” Ferguson said.
Back in May, the Democratic-aligned polling group Navigator found fewer than a quarter of people knew what Project 2025 was, Ferguson said. But now, 59% of people know what it is. The overwhelming majority view it unfavorably and most associate it with Trump.
“This plan has escaped from being simply a policy white paper in Washington into a household brand and a well-known blueprint,” Ferguson said.
Now Project 2025 is part of Harris' stump speech
And it is now a regular part of Vice President Harris’s stump speech. As Harris toured swing states with her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, she used Project 2025 to contrast Democratic values against those of Trump.
“Donald Trump has a different plan: just look at his Project 2025 agenda,” Harris said on Aug. 10 in Las Vegas, drawing a chorus of boos from the audience. “I keep saying, ‘I can't believe they put that in writing,’” Harris said, prompting laughter.
Heritage has been drafting plans for Republican presidents since the time of Ronald Reagan. But they’ve never before entered the mainstream, said Frank Luntz, a pollster who spent most of his career on GOP messaging.
“The Democrats were successful in defining and demonizing Project 2025 before anyone even knew what it was,” Luntz said.
NPR’s Alejandra Marquez Janse and Jordan-Marie Smith contributed to this story.
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