TOMS RIVER – Members of the Manchester Democrats hosted a forum called “Defending our Democracy” at the Toms River branch of the Ocean County Library that examined the controversial and much talked about Project: 2025.
The proposal’s own website described it as “a historic movement, brought together by over 100 respected organizations from across the conservative movement, to take down the Deep State and return the government to the people.”
Published in April 2023, the document offers a menu of “policy suggestions to meet our country’s deepest challenges and put America back on track,” including:
- Secure the border, finish building the wall, and deport illegal aliens
- De-weaponize the federal government by increasing accountability and oversight of the FBI and DOJ
- Unleash American energy production to reduce energy prices
- Cut the growth of government spending to reduce inflation
- Make federal bureaucrats more accountable to the democratically elected president and congress
- Improve education by moving control and funding of education from DC bureaucrats directly to parents and state and local governments
- Ban biological males from competing in women’s’ sports
The forum was hosted by Gabe Franco who was the Democratic candidate for Senator last year in the 9th District election and featured several Democrat speakers including 4th District Congressional candidate Matt Jenkins, CWA Local 1088 President Diana Leon, 2nd Congressional candidate Joe Salerno, and MaryBeth Beichert of the New Jersey Education Association.
Congressman Andy Kim provided a video address as did 2025 gubernatorial candidate Sean Spiller. Each of the speakers talked about their concerns about Project 2025 to the approximately 120-member audience. It also served as a rally for federal and state Democratic candidates.
According to material provided at the forum, Project 2025 aims to ban medication abortion nationwide, limit access to birth control, pap smears, and sexually transmitted disease testing, restrict IVF (invitro fertilization), enforce a “biblically based” definition of “marriage and family,” remove federal protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, divert funding for public schools to private or religious schools, eliminate Head Start and the U.S. Department of Education, strike down key efforts to combat racism and housing discrimination, end efforts to fight climate change and disband the Environmental Protection Agency.
It also proposes to conduct mass deportation of immigrants, repeal caps on prescription drug prices, weaken national security by ending FBI efforts to combat disinformation and politicizing intelligence gathering, remove checks and balances to increase presidential power and replace federal experts and other civil servants with loyalists of former President Donald Trump, they said.
Trump has been distancing himself from the proposal stating he has never read the 900-plus page document but some voters are concerned that this plan could be used as a blueprint for the former president’s agenda should he win the presidential election next month as it was created by political allies and supporters led by the Heritage Foundation. His running mate JD Vance has praised Heritage president Kevin Roberts for helping to turn the organization “into the de facto institutional home of Trumpism” and has endorsed elements of Project 2025.
Jenkins called it “a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch. Though Trump is claiming not to be connected to it at all, we know 140 people who worked on it also worked in his administration. When you look at the Heritage Foundation the president is Kevin Roberts and he worked on Trump’s transition team in 2016 and he said the point of Project 2025 is to institutionalize Trumpism.”
Beichert, a former Jackson teacher, said she was especially concerned about the proposal’s plan to remove the federal Department of Education. “That is the only department that is solely devoted to working for students and making sure students are protected and have an education in this country.”
“Were they to eliminate the Department of Education they would get what is their ultimate goal which to get money from public taxpayers and put it into private and religious schools and anyone left standing you’d be on your own. That is what they will do if given the opportunity,” Beichert added.
When contacted for the GOP perspective on the subject for this article, Manchester Republican Club President Frank J Nicolato responded that “our official position is…who cares?”
“As conservative Republicans, we believe in lower taxes, less government intrusion in our lives, free and fair elections, freedom of expression, acceptance of all religions, cultures and political persuasions – whether we agree with them or not – and the God-given right of every American to live his or her life as they see fit, so long as it does not adversely affect others,” he added.
Nicolato said Democrats are obsessed with Project 2025 and repeatedly (and erroneously) claim it’s a Trump platform. “It is not. Donald Trump has stated emphatically he had no part in its creation. Democrats repeat the mantra because Democrats have nothing positive to say about their own platform. Project 2025 is the interesting distraction.”
For further details about the proposal visit project2025.org/ and redwine.blue/project2025.
