- This is Project 2025. - A radical agenda. - The extreme MAGA Republican effort. - To return America to a dark past. - [Narrator] Project 2025 has grown into one of the most hotly debated controversies of the presidential race. It has become a rallying cry for Democrats, while Donald Trump has distanced himself from the far-right policy playbook. - I have nothing to do with Project 2025. - [Narrator] Here's an inside look at how Project 2025 is shifting campaign strategies and voter decisions ahead of the election. Project 2025 is a conservative governing blueprint for a future Republican administration. It gained little notice when it was first published in 2023 by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy group. But more than a year later, the document went viral. - Project 2025. - It's a blueprint for a radical far-right takeover of everything in the US government.

- And everyone's talking about it. It's really having a brat summer. - [Narrator] Since May, views on Project 2025-related posts have increased more than tenfold, spiking at 27.5 million daily views in July. The 900+ page document attracted negative attention over its ultra right-leaning policies, from its detailed plans for tougher restrictions on abortion to overhauling or eliminating some government agencies and firing thousands of civil servants. - Project 2025 has become a major target for Democrats in criticizing the MAGA movement and Donald Trump. It's just given them a lot of details to push back against on abortion, on education, on civil rights. - [Narrator] Keynote speakers seized on the policy document at the Democratic National Convention, tying it to Trump's plan for a second term in office. - Let's talk about Project 2025. Donald Trump's roadmap to ban abortion in all 50 states.

- I coached high school football long enough to know, and trust me on this, when somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they're gonna use it. - We hear often about Kamala Harris as a new candidate and people not knowing what she would do and who she is, and she needs to put forward more details about her policy agenda. Project 2025 kind of shows what can happen when you do fill in all the details. By being so comprehensive and so conservative across so many areas of government, Project 2025 gave the Democrats an opportunity to say, Hey, you have something at risk. - [Narrator] It's called Project 2025, a 922-page blueprint to make Donald Trump the most powerful president ever. - [Narrator] Less than 10 minutes into their first presidential debate, Harris zeroed in on the project again. - What you're gonna hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025.

that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again. - [Narrator] Trump, meanwhile, has made numerous efforts to separate himself from the policy book. - I haven't read it, I don't wanna read it purposely. I'm not going to read it. I don't know anything about it. I don't wanna know anything about it. - He has disavowed it. He has said he has nothing to do with it. Not only is he saying that in his campaign, but we know in looking at his direct mail, mailings that go to people's mailboxes, that a lot of that mail is built around an effort to say Project 2025 does not speak for Donald Trump. That's true and not true at the same time. Some of the policy people close to Donald Trump were very involved in creating Project 2025. - [Narrator] Kevin Roberts is the president of The Heritage Foundation,

and one of the driving forces behind the policy plan. In July, he spoke with the Wall Street Journal about the overlap between Trump's policies and Project 2025. - There are millions of Americans who are very supportive of what President Trump wants to do, who in part are supportive because of what Project 2025 offers. They're very excited about the possibility for those areas where President Trump and Project 2025 significantly overlap. The closing of the border, the revitalizing of the American economy, the deregulation of the energy industry, and to almost quote President Trump verbatim, to eliminate the US Department of Education. - [Narrator] As controversy around the document grew, Paul Dans, the director of the project, left The Heritage Foundation in July. Dans and Heritage disagree about the circumstances surrounding his departure. - Because of the controversy over it, the Heritage Foundation says that they've kind of wound down the policy work on this project.

- [Narrator] The Heritage Foundation also launched a new website to counter what they say are the left's lies about Project 2025. But the radical blueprint is still providing political fodder for liberals. In late September, House Democrats organized a hearing to discuss the consequences of some of Project 2025's proposals. - It would make overtime pay unlawful, and it would also mandate government surveillance of pregnancies and miscarriages. - [Narrator] But amid all this scrutiny, is Project 2025 and the rhetoric surrounding it affecting voters? - The Wall Street Journal polled on Project 2025 in August and asked, Do voters have a favorable or unfavorable view of it? And we had two really remarkable findings in that poll. The first is people knew about it. More than 2/3 of people felt that they knew enough about Project 2025 to answer our question. The second thing we found is

that it is overwhelmingly unpopular. - [Narrator] In the poll, 57% of voters had a negative opinion of the agenda, including 53% who said their opinion was very negative. - Even Republicans have a negative view of Project 2025 if they're people who feel like they know enough about it to have an opinion one way or another. - [Narrator] And when it came to undecided or persuadable voters... - About half of up-for-grabs voters, who could be the ones who decide this election, had a negative view of Project 2025, and only 4% had a positive view. So among the people who might decide this election, Project 2025 is a liability. - [Narrator] Pollsters say the forward-looking nature of the agenda combined with its detailed policy breakdown helped cement some voters' fears of what a second Trump term might look like. - People who are happy and complacent may or may not vote,

but people who are agitated and fearful, they tend to vote. The idea that you have something, and if you don't vote to protect it, you will lose it. - [Narrator] Policy experts say Project 2025 also carried weight because it's a document voters can read themselves. - On page 465, (audience clamoring) Project 2025 calls for millions of people like yourself to pay more for prescription drugs like insulin. - It's there in black and white, and it created a lot of targets for Democrats to aim at. - I can't believe they put that Project 2025 in writing. (audience laughing) They literally put it in writing. They bound it, (audience laughing) they handed it out. - [Narrator] But there are still voters that don't know about the playbook, and that's providing an opening for both parties. - In this election, both campaigns are trying

to portray the other as outside of the mainstream and too extreme. Republicans and Donald Trump are trying to say that Kamala Harris is a Marxist and that her policies are socialist. Project 2025 is part of the Democrat's effort to say that Donald Trump is outside of the mainstream. That both his policy agenda and his personal style are too extreme. (bright gentle music)

How Project 2025 Became Such a Political Target for Democrats | WSJ

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