CT Democrats target ‘Project 2025’ to counter messaging at RNC

As the Republican National Convention wraps up Thursday night with Donald Trump formally accepting the nomination, Connecticut Democrats are seeking to put a spotlight on “Project 2025” — a wide-ranging conservative presidential transition plan that they say would threaten American democracy.

The Democrats’ counter-programming to the GOP convention in Milwaukee comes as they seek to go more on offense in an election cycle that has been overtaken by intra-party turmoil over President Joe Biden for the past three weeks.

For each day of the Republican convention this week, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., posted daily videos on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, responding to the themes and issues highlighted in Milwaukee. Murphy warned of further limits to abortion rights, tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations and a possible repeal of the gun safety law he championed.

On Thursday, Murphy focused squarely on Project 2025, a conservative blueprint developed by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation. The nearly 1,000-page handbook was written a year ago and, if implemented, would dramatically overhaul the federal government and weaken its regulatory authority.

Trump maintains he “knows nothing” about the controversial plan, though many of those involved in drafting components of the Presidential Transition Project at Heritage worked in the former president’s administration.

Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025, served as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management during the Trump administration. Spencer Chretien, who serves as associate director, worked as a special assistant to Trump and associate director of the Office of Presidential Personnel.

“The people who are going to populate his administration and the Project 2025 plan — which is being passed around this week with enthusiasm at the Republican National Convention — is a blueprint to weaponize the Department of Justice and turn it into an agency that quells political dissent that persecutes Donald Trump’s political opponents,” Murphy said in the video.

Murphy believes democracy in a second Trump term would be at risk, pointing to some Republicans’ refusal to accept the 2020 presidential election, which culminated in the riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Republicans don’t like democracy. They don’t like democracy because democracy occasionally elects Democrats. That’s why Republicans attempted to overturn the 2020 election,” he continued. “This isn’t hyperbole. This isn’t a joke. This isn’t a drill. Republicans have put down on paper their plan to convert American democracy to American autocracy.”

U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5th District, has similarly used her social media this week to highlight several parts of Project 2025, including what it would mean for social services and programs that would likely see cuts like Medicaid and the Head Start program .

In Heritage’s 180-day playbook , it recommends eliminating the Head Start program — a federally funded early learning and education program for low-income families with infants through the age of 5 — citing “scandal and abuse.”

Democrats are using their criticism of Project 2025 as a way to blunt Republicans’ campaign messaging. But Republicans and even officials associated with the Heritage Foundation are trying to downplay how much of the blueprint would become reality in a potential Trump administration.

“I think that in the perfect world, from their perspective, they would love to drive the issue set. But they don’t get to do that,” Chris LaCivita, Trump campaign senior adviser, said in a Politico event in Milwaukee on Thursday. “The issues that are going to win us this campaign are not the issues that they want to talk about.”

At an event earlier this week in Milwaukee before primetime convention speeches, Andrew Olivastro, a senior executive at the Heritage Foundation, told Connecticut delegates that he sees a “realignment election” based on polling and other data shared with Heritage. And he sought to reassure them that Project 2025 is a collection of suggestions.

In response to a question about it from Dianne Yamin, a retired probate judge from Danbury who is at the RNC as a guest of Connecticut’s delegation, Olivastro said he expects Trump to choose what he wants from the playbook.

“Nobody’s gonna put words in Donald Trump’s mouth. And I don’t know who wants to try to do that. That was never our plan,” Olivastro said Tuesday.

That answer has so far satisfied Connecticut Republicans like state Sen. Stephen Harding, an RNC delegate who serves as GOP minority leader in the Connecticut Senate.

“He reasserted the fact that it’s a menu of different ideas that the party, the president, and other Republican officials can pick and choose from. They don’t have to utilize all of it,” Harding said.

But Democrats plan to keep hammering Republicans over Project 2025, especially as the party struggles to move on from questions over its own top of the ticket. Officials and lawmakers in the party worry that the intense focus on Biden’s political fate is taking away from their case against a second Trump term.

Questions remain over whether Biden, who has been sidelined from campaigning for at least the next several days after testing positive for COVID, will continue his reelection campaign. A number of rank-and-file lawmakers have publicly called on him to drop out, and leaders of the U.S. House and Senate have reportedly spoken with Biden about the drag he could have on Democrats in this election.

Democrats say they need to find consensus ahead of their own convention in Chicago next month after Republicans — including many who were once Trump critics like his former primary opponents and even his own running mate — spent the week rallying behind the former president.

CT Mirror staff writer Mark Pazniokas contributed to this story from Milwaukee .