House Democrats will hold their own hearing next week to illustrate potential impacts of Project 2025 under a hypothetical Trump administration, according to people involved with the planning.
The hearing, which will be held by a committee made up only of Democrats, will feature lawmakers and testimony from people across the country who have been or could be affected by far-right policies like those proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation in a 922-page policy document that former president Donald Trump has disavowed. Democratic lawmakers view the hearing as a scene-setter for their closing arguments against Republicans before hitting the campaign trail.
The hearing, slated for Tuesday in the U.S. Capitol, is being held by House Democrats’ Steering and Policy Committee in conjunction with a group of lawmakers leading the Stop Project 2025 Task Force.
It is expected to be in the style of the hearings hosted by the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and will include multimedia elements. Some people who worked on that committee, including one of the filmmakers, have been brought on as consultants, according to people involved with the planning.
Lawmakers assigned to bring to life proposals included in Project 2025 will present witnesses who will share how the proposals might affect their lives. Some of the presentations will involve stories related to abortion. House Democrats held a field hearing through the Steering and Policy Committee earlier this year in Broward County, Fla., where the topic of discussion was threats to reproductive rights.
The hearing will rely in part on the work of the Stop Project 2025 Task Force started by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) earlier this summer. The group launched a confidential tip line on Thursday morning to solicit information from the public or those with knowledge of Project 2025’s plan for a transition to a second Trump presidency. Huffman said lawmakers will share any tips they receive in future hearings, some of which could take place in different parts of the country.
“We’ve developed a growing body of substantive information through briefings with experts digging deep into 2025 and how the different parts of it link together,” Huffman said in an interview with The Washington Post. “This was a very strategically written document — not just some thought piece that people threw up against the wall. So some of that is going to come out.”
Democrats have sought to link Trump to Project 2025 by highlighting its policy proposals, many of which have been written by Trump administration alumni. They devoted time each day of the Democratic convention last month to broadcast policy proposals in the report to reach a larger audience.
The proposals include eliminating the Department of Education, weakening tenure protections for career civil servants and conducting large-scale immigration raids. Some of the proposals overlap with policies officially supported by the Trump campaign, including ending affirmative action, repealing temporary protections for some migrants and undoing the Biden administration’s environmental regulations.
A New York Times-Siena College poll released earlier this month found that three-quarters of likely voters knew about Project 2025 and that 63 percent of that group opposed it. While Democrats allege Trump would work to implement its proposals if reelected, Trump has denied supporting or even knowing about the blueprint, whose authors include some people who formerly served as his advisers. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts told The Post Trump had been briefed about the group’s proposal earlier this year and had known about their efforts to create the report since 2022.
Given Democrats messaging success in amplifying the conservative report, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) came back from the August recess framing House Republicans’ plan to fund the government as a pursuit to institute Project 2025.
In an interview earlier this month, Jeffries said that House Democrats would spend September working in Washington trying to persuade undecided voters by contrasting their time in the majority instituting major policy laws to “the chaos, dysfunction and extremism” by House Republicans over the last two years.
Jeffries, who has been ramping up Democrats in the Capitol to hammer Project 2025, took to the House floor Wednesday to condemn a now-failed GOP bill to fund the government until March 2025 and include an unrelated measure that would require people to present documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when they register to vote.
“It’s Project 2025 week because at the end of the day, my extreme MAGA Republican colleagues are determined to jam Trump’s Project 2025 down the throats of the American people,” Jeffries said.