Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is preparing their first-ever ads targeting Project 2025, a massive constellation of controversial right-wing policy goals prepared for former President Donald Trump’s second term in office.
The 900-page blueprint, assembled by the Heritage Foundation, the Trump-aligned Center for Renewing America and other right-leaning think tanks, has become intensely unpopular. Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, even though he’s praised the groups responsible for it, key officials from his administration helped craft it and some of its components match his stated policy goals.
The first ad will start airing in swing states on Tuesday, the campaign said. The 60-second spot focuses on how Project 2025 would “make Donald Trump the most powerful president ever,” give him “the unchecked power to seek
vengeance,” and eliminate the Department of Education.
“He’ll take control,” a male narrator says at the end of the ad. “We’ll pay the price.”
In addition to the seven states at the core of the presidential battleground map ― Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada ― the ad will also air in the Palm Beach, Florida, market, which includes Mar-a-Lago, in a clear attempt to bait the former president, who has a penchant for binge-watching cable news.
Fears of Project 2025, which is centered around a plan to oust huge numbers of nonpartisan federal employees and replace them with conservatives loyal to Trump, are rampant in liberal circles. While most think tank documents remain obscure, public opinion surveys show Project 2025 has become relatively well-known and not particularly well-liked.
A poll from YouGov and The Economist conducted earlier this month found just 15% of the public had a favorable opinion of Project 2025, while 46% had an unfavorable opinion and 39% didn’t know enough to answer.
The unpopularity of the plan has led Trump to repeatedly try to distance himself from it, even though more than half of its authors worked for either his current campaign or administration, and he has pledged to hire some of its main architects.
In February 2022, he thanked the Heritage Foundation, which is running the project. “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America,” Trump said.
And earlier this month, another of the project’s authors told an undercover journalist Trump was “very supportive of what we do.”
The plan has become enough of an albatross for Republicans to deny Trump supports it in paid mailers sent to voters in swing states. The mailers claim Trump “didn’t write and does not support” Project 2025.
Trump’s efforts to distance himself from the plan do not appear successful so far. The same YouGov/Economist poll found 47% of Americans believed Trump either “completely” or “somewhat” supports Project 2025, while only 20% believe he supports it “slightly” or “not at all.”
