Talk about Project 2025 has been ruminating in Washington and on the campaign trail for a while.
But over the weekend, Oscar-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson referenced the 1,000-page manifesto at the BET Awards and caused a spike in Google searches about the proposed blueprint if Donald Trump regains the presidency.
“It has been fascinating to watch it enter pop culture the way it has with these entertainers and actors and other people talking about it outside of Washington,” Lisa Mascaro, The Associated Press’ chief congressional correspondent, said Wednesday on “Politically Georgia.”
The plan was put forward by a conservative think tank called the Heritage Foundation and not the Trump campaign. But it maps out a plan for the former president’s first 180 days in office if voters return him to the White House.
“Trump has made eliminating the deep state one of the major talking points every time he’s run for president” said Mascaro, who has been reporting on the proposal since last year.
Mascaro said that Trump was caught off guard by his victory in 2016.
“He didn’t come in with a solid plan for reshaping the federal bureaucracy,” she said. “But now there’s a detailed strategy that has been worked on for months.”
The document outlines a path for firing as many as 50,000 civil service workers and replacing them with Trump loyalists.
“It would give a new president people who would be more loyal, who would be more certain to impose his agenda,” Mascaro said.
The foundation’s plan would also direct the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division to “investigate and prosecute all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations and any other private employers” with diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
“In the Pentagon and the Education Department, there’s been efforts to bring in more DEI initiatives, really addressing the long-standing racism institutionally in the country,” Mascaro said. “And (Project 2025) would just be a massive rollback of all of that.”
Other areas of the plan include rolling back protections for the LGBTQ community; cutting deeply into funding for Medicaid, the state-federal public health program for the poor, disabled and elderly living in nursing homes; weakening environmental regulation; and overhauling immigration policies.
“I think one of the No. 1 priorities that has animated the Trump campaign from the very beginning and continue to this day is the immigration and border issue,” Mascaro said.
“Project 2025 talks about different ways to help implement that and goes far beyond what this country has seen in decades,” she added.
In Congress, Democrats are ringing alarms about the project. Last month, California U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman formed the Stop Project 2025 Taskforce.
At the time of the announcement, no members of the U.S. House’s Georgia delegation had joined the task force.
On the campaign trail, Trump has distanced himself from the agenda laid out by the Heritage Foundation.
“The Trump campaign says nobody speaks for former President Donald Trump and his agenda, except for him,” Mascaro said. “But you can hear and see a lot of overlap in the ideas.”
The Biden campaign has also begun talking more about Project 2025.
“I think you see Democrats really hand-wringing and trying to figure out the path forward right now,” Mascaro said in reference to the party redirecting after President Joe Biden’s lackluster performance during last week’s presidential debate.
“I think that the big picture does get lost in a lot of it for folks,” she said. “And, again, this is for the voters to decide.”
Thursday and Friday on ”Politically Georgia”: The team will observe the Fourth of July holiday. For our podcast listeners, you can check out this week’s episodes on Spotify and Apple or your favorite podcast platform. The show returns live Monday on WABE at 90.1 FM.
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