MILWAUKEE – At the edge of the cordoned-off perimeter around the Republican National Convention on Monday, hundreds of conservatives filed into the ornate home of the Milwaukee Symphony to hear a parade of luminaries talk policy and Project 2025.
Project 2025 is the term for the Heritage Foundation's nearly 1,000-page handbook for the next Republican administration, which has become a cudgel Democrats are wielding against former President Donald Trump, who on Monday officially became the GOP's presidential nominee. That's because the book proposes sweeping changes in the federal government, including altering personnel rules to ensure government workers are more loyal to the president.
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The Heritage event was called “Policy Fest” and was not technically part of Project 2025, but the endeavor constantly came up. Speakers both downplayed it and pumped it up. Heritage's President Kevin Roberts called it “unprecedented in the history of the conservative movement,” but also tried to tone down his rhetoric from earlier this month when he promised it would lead to a “second American revolution.”
“How many of you are ready to very steadily, calmly and peacefully take our country back?” Roberts asked the crowd Monday.
Tom Homan, who oversaw U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration, told reporters they shouldn't blow the project out of proportion. He said Washington think tanks often prepare plans for new administrations — and indeed, Heritage's project is modeled on prior ones it has done stretching back decades.
“I know the president pretty damn good,” said Homan, who contributed to the project's immigration proposals. “He's not going to read any plan and say ‘OK, I’m going to do this.' ... He's going to do what he's going to do."
Trump has distanced himself from the project, which is run by several top appointees from his previous administration. But he's also spoken warmly about it, and the connection was further cemented by Trump's selection of Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate
Roberts said he's “good friends” with Vance and that the Heritage Foundation had been privately rooting for him to be the VP pick. The Ohio senator, Roberts said, recognizes that “we have a limited time to pursue policy.”
Democrats pounced on Vance's past praise for Project 2025.
“JD Vance embodies MAGA — with an out-of-touch extreme agenda and plans to help Trump force his Project 2025 agenda on the American people,” Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement referring to Trump's Make America Great Again movement.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and former GOP primary contender who has since become a Trump surrogate, said on the stage that conservatives aren't entirely on the same page about what should happen in a second Trump term.
“Do we want to replace the left-wing nanny state with a conservative nanny state?” he asked. “Or do we want to dismantle the nanny state?”
Some of the project’s recommendations, including further taxes on tips, conflict with some of what Trump has pledged on the campaign trail. It also proposes changes to Medicare, a program Trump has promised to protect. Trump’s campaign has stressed that he will make decisions on what he does if he returns to office.
Roberts said that doesn't bother him: “It is impossible for every individual conservative to agree with everything in the document,” he said.
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This story was first published July 15, 2024. It was updated July 17, 2024, to make clear in the next-to-last paragraph that the document proposes changes to Medicare.