Trump: Project 2025 goes 'way too far' on abortion
Former President Trump says Project 2025 goes “way too far” in its abortion policy recommendations, his latest attempt to distance himself from the plan drafted by many former members of his administration.
In an interview with Fox News’s Harris Faulkner that aired Monday, as the Republican National Convention kicks off in Milwaukee, Trump said Project 2025 was written by “a group of extremely conservative people” with whom he disagrees.
“From what I’ve heard, it’s not too far, it’s way too far,” he said. “They’ve gone, really, too far.”
Project 2025 is the conservative movement’s detailed plan for how the next Republican president should wield his power. It was written by the Heritage Foundation with input from more than 100 different conservative groups, independent of the Trump campaign.
It’s an agenda of very specific policy recommendations that the next president will be able to do through executive authority alone, crafted by people who served in top posts in the previous administration and who could be poised to do so again should Trump win in November.
Trump has been distancing himself from Project 2025, claiming he knows nothing about it, as Democrats try to make it a liability.
He’s also aware of the political vulnerabilities around abortion and has been trying to balance the realities of sounding more moderate on the issue while also appealing to the right-wing base.
Trump has settled on the position that abortion policy is up to the states, though he still takes credit for ending Roe v. Wade and eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion.
“I did a great job getting rid of Roe v. Wade,” the former president said in the interview. “I was able to get it back into the states.”
Project 2025's plan for the Department of Health and Human Services was written by Roger Severino, who served as the Trump administration’s director of department's Office of Civil Rights. It calls for revoking Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, which is used in more than half of abortions nationwide.
“Abortion pills pose the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post-Roe world,” the document states.
The plan says the FDA could also place restrictions on the pills by reinstating a requirement that patients obtain them in person rather than through the mail. It also suggests using a 19th century law called the Comstock Act to prosecute people who send abortion pills or other abortion tools through the mail.