If you’ve been waiting for the Democrats in Congress to take on Project 2025, today’s edition of the newsletter is for you! Democrats have created a task force. Today’s guest for “Five Questions” is California Congressman Jared Huffman, founder of the task force, who is here to share the details with us.
Representative Jared Huffman represents California’s Second Congressional District, which spans the North Coast of the state from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border. He currently serves on the Committee on Natural Resources and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. He is the Ranking Member of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries. Most importantly for our purposes today, he is the founder of the Stop Project 2025 Task Force on Capitol Hill. Prior to his election to Congress, Jared served for six years in the California State Assembly and worked as a Senior Attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). We are fortunate to have him with us tonight. Although “Five Questions” is normally a Friday night feature that’s exclusively available to paid subscribers as my thank you to them, I wanted to make today’s column available to everyone. Raising awareness about Project 2025 is critical to our country’s future. I hope you’ll share this and other pieces about Project 2025 as widely as possible. Happy July 4th! Joyce: I was delighted to learn that you’ve created a Congressional Task Force for Project 2025. Tell us your goals, who is involved, and anything else we need to know to understand the work you plan to do here. Congressman Huffman: The response has been incredible thus far. We started by getting leaders from groups across the political spectrum of our House Democratic Caucus to sign on – Progressives, New Dems, CHC, CBC, API, Pro-Choice, Labor, LGBTQ Equality, and, of course, the Congressional Freethought Caucus I co-founded with Jamie Raskin! From there, several other members signed on, including two from leadership (Joe Neguse and Ted Lieu). Our ranking Appropriator, Rosa DeLauro, just joined us this week, bringing the Task Force to 15 members, including some of the most effective communicators in Congress. We’re working closely with experts from more than a dozen leading advocacy groups, including Accountable.US, Democracy Forward, Center for American Progress, ACLU, Protect Democracy, Court Accountability, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and more. Our work plan starts with over half a dozen subject matter briefings for Task Force members and staff by the end of August. We’ve already had the first two: last week on messaging/communications, including some recent polling on Project 2025, and this week, an ominous briefing on how the various elements of Project 2025 link together in a very strategic attack on democracy and civil liberties. As we complete these “deep dive” briefings, we’re developing and pushing out messaging materials for Task Force members, outside partner groups, and the media. In September, we will have a big, congressional hearing-like event where we publicly roll out highlights of the various briefings in conjunction with the outside groups. The hearing will feature testimony from leading experts and different Task Force members will take the lead in presenting different parts of Project 2025. We believe this event will get a lot of attention and will distill Project 2025 for the American people in a way that helps them understand how radical and destructive it is, why it must be taken very seriously, and how we can stop it. Joyce: What can we expect to see happen next? Congressman Huffman: For the next eight weeks or so, you’ll see more and more members of Congress talking about Project 2025, informed by our briefings and the messaging materials we’re developing. I’m already doing tons of interviews, podcasts, and Zoom appearances. At the end of July, I’m looking forward to joining you, Rep. Jamie Raskin, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley for an online event with several Democratic groups that will include thousands of activists from all over the country. Other Task Force members are stepping up with similar events, including cable TV and other media appearances. So are the outside groups we’re partnering with. There’s already been an uptick in media coverage and a groundswell of interest at the grassroots level because of the rollout of our Task Force, and I expect that to intensify in the weeks ahead. All of that sets up nicely for our big public hearing-style event in September, which we hope will get widespread coverage and help put Project 2025 squarely into the national conversation in the critical days before the election. Joyce: What are your biggest concerns about the policies in Project 2025? How do you think Project 2025 would impact our country if Trump was re-elected? Congressman Huffman: This is harder than you might think to answer, because Project 2025 is a sweeping attack on our democracy, our fundamental freedoms, our health, social justice, the livability of our planet, and a lot more. If I had to pick a “biggest” concern, I would point to the way it aims to systematically dismantle our democratic checks and balances and consolidate unprecedented power in a second Trump presidency. It’s truly a roadmap to make Trump, already an aspiring dictator, into a real one, and to impose a radical social/religious order on all of us. It exudes an “any means necessary” philosophy, including the explicit embrace of dystopic authoritarian measures like domestic military deployments, detention camps, mass deportations, an unprecedented political purge of the federal workforce, political weaponization of federal law enforcement, and more. These are my greatest concerns because they would end American democracy as we know it. There are certainly other worrisome parts of Project 2025, including dramatically weakening public education (with a goal of ending secular public education), sweeping attacks on the environment and rollbacks of climate action, clear threats to our social and retirement safety net, and privatization schemes and other reckless giveaways to powerful special interests. But much of that is standard fare for the Kochs, Mercers, and others in Leonard Leo’s rolodex; we’ve seen it before. What is new, different and alarming about Project 2025 is the way it openly and very strategically targets democracy and fundamental rights. Joyce: Project 2025 reads like a political party’s convention platform. Led by Trump, the Republican Party didn’t have a platform in 2020, instead just expressing support for his agenda. How do we know that Project 2025 is connected to Trump and not just the work of a conservative think tank? Congressman Huffman: Both Heritage and the Trump campaign want people to suspend disbelief and think their respective efforts are disconnected. To protect Heritage’s nonprofit (c)(3) status, they pretend Heritage is just an independent, non-profit, conservative “think tank” putting out some ideas. And separately, without any coordination, the Trump campaign is developing action plans for Trump to implement if he wins. Good luck with that! These efforts are one and the same. Heritage boasts of working with over 100 extreme rightwing groups that are the heart of Trump’s political base. And the authors and collaborators on Project 2025 include some of the most trusted MAGA members of the prior Trump administration – including former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Senior Advisors Stephen Miller and Peter Navarro, and many more. I don’t know if the GOP will formally adopt a “platform” at their convention this year, but if they do, it will likely be something like “Agenda 47,” the compilation of rambling Trump speeches laying out ideas and positions on the campaign website. It’s not nearly as detailed as Project 2025, and in some cases it’s weird and not serious enough to be in Project 2025 (e.g., flying cars), but there are no conflicts between the two. For all intents and purposes, the GOP platform is Project 2025, which Steve Bannon and other Trump confidants openly proclaim as their “war plan.” Joyce: What can we do? It’s a frustrating time for people across the country, many of us living in red states, wondering what we can do to make a difference. As your work on Project 2025 moves forward, what opportunities do we have to practice the art of civil discourse and fight for our democracy? Congressman Huffman: Please follow the work of our Task Force, and our individual members, on social media, and keep supporting trusted sources of information like Joyce Vance. The groups our Task Force is working with also deserve support, and many of them are putting out outstanding summaries and analyses on Project 2025 which you can find on their websites: Share this stuff with your family, friends, and contacts! By far the most important thing all of us can do is win the upcoming elections. Hopefully the information we’re bringing forward will help all of your readers and listeners make good voting decisions and engage in volunteerism and activism that helps others do the same.
I hope our conversation with Congressman Huffman provides some much-needed inspiration after a couple of very tough weeks. In the middle of ongoing debate, at least in the media, about whether Joe Biden should continue as the candidate after a lackluster debate performance, my North Star is making sure we stay focused on the importance of keeping Donald Trump out of the White House. “Have you heard about Project 2025?” is a great opener at Independence Day festivities. Let’s educate Americans about Trump’s plans if he wins and what they mean for the rest of us. We’re in this together, Joyce You're currently a free subscriber to Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance . For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Thursday, July 4, 2024
Five Questions with Congressman Jared Huffman
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