Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis denounces Project 2025 in Pittsburgh speech

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis speaks at an event Thursday, July 18, 2024, with community leaders in Pittsburgh where he denounced Project 2025, a conservative policy proposal linked with former President Donald Trump's re-election campaign. (Capital-Star photo by Abigail Hakas)

PITTSBURGH — Lt. Gov. Austin Davis on Thursday, the final day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, spoke out against a possible second term for former President Donald Trump, a nationwide abortion ban, and a recently released conservative policy proposal.

Davis and other leaders spoke at a news conference in the city’s South Side days after Trump’s attempted assassination at a rally Saturday in Butler , his appointment Tuesday of J.D. Vance as the Republican vice presidential nominee, and the unveiling of Project 2025 , the nearly 1000-page policy proposal.

Acknowledging the shooting that claimed the life of a spectator and injured Trump and two others, Davis said political violence has no place in the United States. He then shifted the attention to the impact Project 2025 could have on Pennsylvania.

President Joe Biden denounced Project 2025 as “ the biggest attack on our system of government, our personal freedoms, that has ever been proposed in the history of this country” during a rally in Detroit on July 12.

While Trump has disavowed Project 2025 as a reflection of his agenda, Davis cited a CNN review that found at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration contributed to Project 2025, including six of his former cabinet secretaries.

“The Project 2025 agenda was created for Trump by those closest to him, and it should concern every single American,” he said. “We’re here in Pittsburgh to send a clear message to the folks in Milwaukee. The people of Pennsylvania will not let Project 2025 happen.”

On the opposite end of the commonwealth, Democratic county commissioners from Philadelphia’s collar counties echoed a similar sentiment a few hours later, condemning the assassination attempt in Butler, warning about the prospects of a second Trump term and the impact they believe Project 2025 would have, if implemented.

“As the Republican National Convention comes to a close, I want to take a moment to talk about the former president’s record,” Chester County Commissioner Marian Moskowitz said during the event in Lower Merion Township. “Even with a Republican Congress, Donald Trump was only able to achieve two things. A tax system rigged for the rich and a radical conservative super majority on the Supreme Court.”

Moskowitz’s colleague, Chester County Commissioner Josh Maxwell, said if elected to a second term, Trump would weaponize the Department of Justice and pardon those charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. He also emphasized that the future of the Supreme Court is at stake in the upcoming presidential election.

“Let us not forget, the next president will have the opportunity to appoint, … as many three Supreme Court justices,” Maxwell said. “We don’t want the Heritage Foundation picking the people serving on that bench.”

Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija made the case that Project 2025 “has already been in action,” and pointed to a recent Supreme Court ruling on the Trump immunity case, arguing that ruling sets a legal precedent where Trump would be “completely unaccountable” if elected to a second term.

Project 2025 was drafted by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The proposal calls for dismantling the Department of Education, ending the sales of abortion pills and a sweeping expansion of presidential power, including placing the Department of Justice under presidential control.

Trump said that he had nothing to do with it on his social media platform Truth Social, but the proposal is described by its authors as a roadmap for a conservative Republican presidency.

In Pittsburgh, City Controller Rachael Heisler discussed the future of reproductive rights under a Trump-Vance administration. Vance has said that “two wrongs don’t make a right” when asked about abortion law exemptions in the case of rape or incest.

In 2022, he said he supported a national abortion ban. Vance has since walked back those comments , saying that abortion laws should be up to the states, a reflection of Trump’s own shift away from a national ban.

Heisler pointed to Vance’s comments on abortion law exemptions and Trump’s comment in 2016 that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who get abortions.

“This is disgusting, and it’s appalling. It must be rejected at the ballot box in November,” Heisler said. “President Biden has outlined his positive vision for this country. He wants to protect women and their rights and expand opportunities for all of us.”

The day after his State of the Union address, Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited Delaware County and emphasized his commitment to once again making Roe “the law of the land again.”

Moskowitz invoked Biden, quoting his commitment to once again making Roe “the law of the land again” at a Delaware County middle school the day after he delivered an energetic State of the Union address.

“As Joe Biden said … women are not without electoral or political power,” she said. “And they will use their power to defeat Trump and restore abortion rights.”

Following Biden’s poor debate performance in late June, 19 Democratic members of Congress and one Democratic Senator have called on Biden to not seek a second term.

Pennsylvania Democrats like U.S. Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman, plus Gov. Josh Shapiro have defended Biden in the midst of these calls. U.S. Rep. Susan Wild (D-7th District) has expressed concerns about Biden’s electability this November.

Four of the southeast Pennsylvania county commissioners, who are delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August, reiterated their commitment to Biden’s candidacy on Thursday.

“President Biden is our presumptive nominee and I know that there have been a lot of calls for him to step aside, but we have a responsibility as leaders in our party to standby President Biden and that’s an inherently personal choice that he has to make,” Montgomery County Commissioner Jamila Winder said. “My point of view here is that we need to support our presumptive nominee and that’s President Biden.”

An AP-NORC poll released on Wednesday showed that 65% of Democrats think Biden should not run for president in November.

Winder said it’s their responsibility to remind voters about the accomplishments of the current administration, while Moskowitz said those polls are just a specific moment in time and made the case that people won’t really start focusing on the presidential election until September and they’ll be reminded that Biden is the right choice in the election.

When asked if Project 2025 would make her job as controller more difficult, Heisler said that the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority has received $79 million in federal funding for lead drinking water line replacements, which Project 2025 could threaten.

“Project 2025 is a drastic, indiscriminate, and severe cut to the entire federal apparatus,” she said. “I’m not confident that that money would continue under Project 2025, in fact, I’m pretty certain it would be gone.”

Community leader Holiday Adair concluded the event with a passionate condemnation of Project 2025.

“Make no mistake, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s Project 2025 will not save America,” Adair said. “It will hurt America, and it will certainly hurt Pennsylvanians.”

The backdrop of the Republican National Convention loomed large during the press conference, with Adair contrasting it to Biden’s recent campaign events.

“We’ve seen Donald Trump and the Republican Party put forward their dark vision for America, and it stands in really stark contrast with President Biden, who’s traveling the country, presenting his own record and positive vision that moves us forward, not backward,” she said.

She added that Republicans will not stop targeting abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade , which led to statewide abortion bans across the country.

“The people on stage at the RNC brag about overturning Roe v. Wade , which has already unleashed extreme abortion bans across the country, and as Project 2025 expresses clearly, they plan to go further,” she said.

Throughout the press conference, the speakers tied Project 2025 to the Trump-Vance agenda, with Davis referring to it as the “Trump-Vance Project 2025.” While answering questions after the conference, Davis responded to Trump’s public disavowal of Project 2025.

“When you elect a president, you also don’t just elect one person, you elect an entire administration,” he said. “If you look at the people he’s going to stack with his administration …he could say that he doesn’t have any insight in it, but if his chief of staff, his secretaries, his department heads, that he’s empowering are all going off of that playbook, it doesn’t really matter.”

(This article was updated at 6:36 p.m. on Thursday, July 18, 2024, to include reporting by John Cole from a Biden campaign event in Montgomery County.)

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