The Heritage Foundation building in Washington, D.C., in 2024.Andrew Harnik/Getty
Even Republicans hate Project 2025.
That’s according to a new NBC News poll released Wednesday, which found that only 7 percent of Republicans have positive views of the 900-page extremist guidebook for a second Trump term, backed by dozens of conservative groups and led by the Heritage Foundation—and more than 30 percent of them see it in a negative light. Among die-hard Trump fans, or self-described “MAGA Republicans,” the results were not much better: The NBC poll found that only 9 percent of them reported positive views of it, while 28 percent held negative views. Among voters overall, only 4 percent viewed Project 2025 favorably, while 57 percent viewed it negatively.
The low approval numbers are not because people don’t know what Project 2025 is. According to the new poll, less than a quarter of those surveyed—23 percent—had never heard of it or were unsure of how they felt. Polling released in July by progressive firm Navigator Research showed that more than half of Americans reported being familiar with Project 2025—double the amount who reported familiarity with it just a month earlier.
This all may have something to do with the fact that, as my colleague Pema Levy has written, Democrats have been successfully running on the dangers Project 2025 poses. As my colleagues and I have also written, its proposals include banning abortion pills nationwide and using big tech to surveil abortion access, rolling back climate policies, enabling workplace discrimination, and worsening wealth inequality. And as Pema writes, those dystopian proposals are essentially gifts that keep on giving for Democrats, who have continually reminded voters of these plans:
Project 2025 has done what Democrats tried to do for years: tie Trump to the unpopular policies of the MAGA coalition, from the Christian nationalists trying to ban abortion and IVF to the mega-rich trying to give themselves more tax breaks. “If you’re a person who is deeply upset by Roe being overturned in 2022, this is a roadmap of everything that can be done to further curtail reproductive rights,” says Bryan Bennett, a pollster at the progressive Hub Project, which works alongside Navigator on its surveys. “If you are an advocate for a more fair economy, this is a roadmap for raising tax on the middle class and working class while giving tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations. If you are a healthcare advocate, this goes into excruciating detail about how to roll back and undermine things like the Affordable Care Act.”
Essentially, the Heritage Foundation took all the unlikeable goals of the MAGA movement, put them in one place, and gave it an ominous title. To help make these goals into reality, the project also created an action plan covering the first 180-days of a new administration, a database of personnel ready to replace career civil servants, and a training program to prepare them for this massive restructuring.
Spokespersons for the Trump campaign and the Heritage Foundation did not respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones about the polling.
When Trump and his camp have addressed Project 2025, though, they have tried to distance themselves from it—despite clear statements he has made indicating his support and his ample connections to those involved. “I have nothing to do with, and know nothing about, Project 25,” Trump posted on Truth Social in July. “The fact that I do is merely disinformation put out by the Radical Left Democrat Thugs. Do not believe them!”
To which I say: Here’s a CVS receipt-length list that I compiled of all the positive comments Trump made about Project 2025, his connections to its creators, and their own admissions that Trump is on board with the plan. You’re welcome.
