Project 2025 weighs on Trump's chances like an anchor — here's how it happened

Project 2025 has emerged as one of the most effective political liabilities that Donald Trump has ever faced, much to the surprise of Democratic strategists and the former president's allies alike.

The conservative Heritage Foundation published the 922-page document online last year in hopes that Trump would adopt their far-right wish list as his own policies, and voters quickly picked up on warnings issued by watchdogs, activists and then Democrats about the proposed plot to stock the federal government with loyalists to roll back regulations and personal freedoms, reported the Washington Post.

“Voters understand that this is an actual, written plan for extremist and dangerous ideas that are going to be implemented,” said pollster Jef Pollock, who runs the Global Strategy Group that works for the Kamala Harris campaign. “We know that voters have some Trump amnesia. They don’t remember all the bad things he did as president. Now it’s like, ‘Well, even if you’ve forgotten about what he did before, what he wants to do now is even worse.’”

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Social media users posted viral warnings about various proposals in the document, and HBO host John Oliver devoted an entire episode of his weekly series to Project 2025 in June, when actress Taraji P. Henson issued a warning while hosting the BET Awards that was viewed more than 8 million times in 48 hours.

“Every single focus group I’ve done since June, respondents have brought up Project 2025,” said Democratic pollster Matt Canter. “You have a significant majority of swing voters in these focus groups knowing what it is and having extremely unfavorable opinions of it. It is a very credible manifestation of what voters fear about the new face of the Republican Party and what Trump might do in a second term.”

Canter said he and other Democrats were "stunned" this summer when focus group participants began mentioning Project 2025 without prompting, and some Heritage Foundation members blame the Trump campaign for boosting the document's profile by responding to Democratic attacks. Trump himself insists he knows nothing about its proposals.

“It’s literally the definition of the ‘big lie’ theory — that if you say the same thing over and over and over again enough times, you can persuade people it’s true and they’ve attempted that,” said Trump spokesman Brian Hughes. “The only person deciding what President Trump will say or what President Trump will do as president is Donald Trump. What’s most ironic is that while they are spending all this time trying to lie about what policies President Trump has or will advocate for as president, we still have a Harris website that has a half-dozen or more donate buttons but no policy tab.”

The Heritage Foundation has launched a new website intended “to counter the left’s worst lies about Project 2025,” according to the group's president Kevin Roberts, but one reason why the warnings appear to have broken through the public consciousness is because they confirm many voters' prior fears about a second Trump presidency.

“The power here, again, is it confirms things that voters already suspected and had maybe hoped, ‘Well, maybe he’ll just focus on the stock market and business,’ and now it’s like, ‘He’s the same person he always was and surrounded by extreme people,’” said Patrick Toomey, a partner at the Democratic research and strategy firm BSG.

Several speakers at last month's Democratic National Convention held up oversized copies of the document and highlighted some of its contents, but it was a potent political weapon even before president Joe Biden exited the race.

“The whole Project 2025 thing — I don’t know how true that is,” said Tayla Cochran, a 27-year-old Michigan voter who was "super undecided" before. “But it just sounds crazy. … They’re really relentless with trying to strip us of every bit of freedom we have.”

Biden himself boosted searches for Project 2025 to their highest peak between July 7 and July 13 after criticizing the proposals at a campaign rally and accusing Trump of lying about his support for them, but attention to the document continued to climb and its name has become shorthand for voter concerns about the GOP nominee's extremism.

“It’s the first time we’ve actually been successful in holding him accountable for his policy positions,” Canter said.