DCCC seeks to tie House Republicans to Project 2025 with 100 days left until election day
Ken TranWASHINGTON – House Democrats’ campaign arm is seeking to tie swing district Republicans to Project 2025 with 100 days left until election day.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is circulating a memo on Sunday morning, obtained by USA TODAY, accusing vulnerable House Republicans of embracing “the tenants of (former President) Donald Trump and his radical Project 2025 agenda throughout the 118th Congress.”
“Their enthusiastic embrace of these policies will be the anchor the DCCC will use to sink the campaigns of the phony moderates who refuse to stand up to Trump and his extreme agenda in the final sprint towards election day,” the memo reads.
Project 2025 is a sweeping 900-page playbook of policy proposals authored by a coalition of more than 100 conservative groups led by the Heritage Foundation.
The memo takes aim at Republicans on several issues tied to Project 2025, including taxes, reproductive rights, Medicare and Social Security and the plan’s outline to reform the executive branch.
The plan is backed by several of Trump’s allies and former advisors. Its proposals mirror Trump’s past and current policy agendas but his campaign has long sought to distance itself from the plan.
Trump called Project 2025 “seriously extreme” and said he does not “know anything about it,” at a July 20 rally in Michigan.
Democrats have consistently tied Trump and other Republicans to the controversial plan as they seek to find a winning message as the election draws near. The memo is emblematic of that effort as Democrats hope to reclaim the House which is narrowly controlled by the GOP.
Several vulnerable House Republicans are named in the memo including Reps. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., Tom Kean Jr., R-N.J., Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., David Schweikert, R-Ariz. and Ken Calvert, R-Calif. Those GOP lawmakers represent districts President Joe Biden won in the 2020 election.
The memo derides Trump’s 2017 tax cuts which significantly lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and claims “Project 2025 takes the Trump Tax Scam a step further by explicitly raising taxes on millions of working families.”
The document also goes after Republicans on reproductive rights, noting Project 2025 calls the Dobbs decision “just the beginning.” Beyond abortion rights, the memo mentions GOP efforts to restrict access to mifepristone, an abortion pill, along with in vitro fertilization.
The DCCC claims “under Project 2025, House Republicans would reshape the government to serve one person: Donald Trump,” singling out the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for significantly reshaping the executive branch. The plan recommends the reinstatement of Schedule F, a Trump-era executive order (which Biden quickly repealed after taking office) that made it easier for the president to fire civil servants and replace them with loyalists.
“While MAGA extremists wrote Project 2025 to outline their far-right fantasies, it is in fact the blueprint for the DCCC to defeat House Republicans across the country and retake the majority to make Hakeem Jeffries the next Speaker of the House,” the memo concludes.