Biden campaign takes aim at Project 2025, a set of conservative proposals

WASHINGTON – Hours before

the presidential debate on June 27

(June 28 Singapore time), US President Joe Biden’s campaign launched a website targeting Project 2025, a policy and staffing playbook assembled by allies of former president Donald Trump that proposes an overhaul of the government under a new Republican administration.

The Biden campaign’s website associates

Project 2025

– a transition agenda compiled by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, and dozens of similarly aligned groups – with Trump, saying it would enable him to “gut democratic checks and balances, and consolidate power in the Oval Office”.

Project 2025 is not Trump’s official platform; his campaign instead points to Agenda47, which focuses on substantially curtailing immigration and encouraging economic growth. But Project 2025 has nonetheless raised Democratic fears about what a second Trump term would look like.

Conservative policy groups in 2016 were largely unprepared for Trump’s win. Since its announcement in 2022, these groups prepared Project 2025, a 920-page document outlining a radical transformation of the executive branch. The platform proposes replacing many federal civil servant jobs with political appointees who would be loyal to the president. The plan also proposes cracking down on abortion rights, criminalising pornography, cutting climate research funding and eliminating the Commerce Department.

Detailed policy proposals rarely attract much attention, but Project 2025 has resonated in liberal social media circles. TV host John Oliver released a Last Week Tonight With John Oliver segment on Project 2025 last week that has more than five million views on YouTube. US podcaster Charlamagne tha God has told his fans that the platform would enshrine an “authoritarian state” in America. Excerpts from Project 2025 have also gone viral on TikTok.

Ms Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for the Biden-Harris campaign, said that Project 2025 underscored the stakes of the 2024 election.

“The American people are tuning in to just how extreme and unpopular Donald Trump’s second-term playbook is – and they’re ready to stop him this November,” Ms Chitika said in a statement.

It remains to be seen if Mr Biden will make Project 2025 a focus of his comments at the debate on June 27. NYTIMES