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 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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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