Summary
- White
House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded Friday. - Trump
previously distanced from Project 2025 on the campaign trail. - Now he
openly embraces its agenda amid shutdown. - Leavitt
deflected detailed questions on Trump’s change.
The conservative Heritage Foundation think group created
Project 2025, a nearly thousand-page policy proposal, during the 2024 election
campaign.
In her response, Leavitt did not address the policy idea,
stating that the “president and his team and his Cabinet secretaries
ultimately decide” whether to lay off federal government employees or
reduce federal programs.
“During the campaign, President Trump said that he did
not know anything about Project 2025. Now, he knows about it. Is that the
blueprint for shrinking the government?”
Fox News senior White House
correspondent Peter Doocy asked Leavitt during the press briefing Friday
afternoon.
“And the president trusts his Cabinet secretaries to
identify where there is waste, fraud and abuse. We pointed out this morning —
or Russ Vought tweeted about this morning — a Chicago rail project that was
canceled,”
Leavitt said.
“We paused $2.1 billion in Chicago infrastructure projects, specifically
the Red line extension and the Red and Purple modernization projects, and it’s
because the administration is concerned that the Biden administration was
handing out taxpayer dollars to pay for this construction based on
DEI.”
The Department of Transportation “is reviewing
race-based contracting on unconstitutional grounds,” she said.
“And
in the meantime, the Department of Transportation funds for these projects are
on hold. So I guess this answers both of your questions. This would be an
example of that.”
Project 2025 became a lightning rod of criticism among
Democrats during the 2024 election, as the Harris–Walz campaign claimed it was
rife with “dangerous” policies stretching from abortion to the
economy.
Trump denied knowing details about the policy blueprint from
the campaign trail.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,”
Trump said in
July 2024.
“I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the
things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely
ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing
to do with them.”
On Thursday, after the government shutdown, Trump posted to
Truth Social that he was set to meet with Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
chief Russell Vought, describing him as the man of “PROJECT 2025
Fame.”
Vought was one of the architects behind the Project 2025
policy proposal.
How Republicans in Congress reacted to Trump citing Project
2025?
Multiple congressional Republicans assert they don’t know
much about Project 2025 or label it “a nothing burger.” For instance,
Rep. Byron Donald (R-Fla) stated that he was mostly oblivious to it and deemed
it unremarkable.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) admitted he has not gone
through the lengthy plan but said he appreciates the organizations that support
concepts that lay behind it.
Senators Bill Cassidy and John Cornynn, for their part,
heralded a note of caution, saying policy ideas in the plan shouldn’t be
interpreted literally and think tanks occasionally want to put forward ideas
that will never be enacted into law.
