Stop Project 2025
Floor Speech
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, earlier this year I founded the Congressional Task Force to Stop Project 2025.
Some people might be curious as to why I did that.
I have served in Congress for almost 12 years, and throughout that period, I have seen a lot of wild and extreme antics from across the aisle.
I have seen some of my colleagues try to chip away at our civil rights and roll back decades of progress.
I have seen the chaos and the division that Donald Trump has infused into our politics, including violent rhetoric and extreme policies that are completely beyond the pale of anything that has ever tried to pass for conservatism.
However, in this entire time, I have never seen anything that compares to the threat to our democracy, to our individual rights, and to the well-being of most Americans, the threat that is posed by Trump's Project 2025.
I encourage people to look it up and to read it because anyone who familiarizes themself with Trump's Project 2025 can see for themselves what an unprecedented takeover plan this is, to gut critical checks and balances that hold our democracy together, to roll back fundamental rights, to erode church-state separation, impose draconian policies that are deeply unpopular with most Americans, all so that MAGA politicians can take unprecedented governmental control over the lives of every person who calls America home.
Most Americans want nothing to do with this dystopic authoritarian scheme, but our House Republican colleagues are so excited about it that the majority is not even waiting for a potential second Trump Presidency. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are moving ahead right now to implement many parts of his Project 2025.
Everywhere we turn in this Congress, extreme MAGA Republicans are working straight out of the Project 2025 playbook. We are seeing it in committees, in press conferences, and every single day right here on the House floor.
Climate action, protections for the middle class, social safety nets, and abortion rights, these have all been on the chopping block in this Republican majority. It is like the majority lifted their legislative agenda right out of the pages of Project 2025.
Mr. Speaker, we believe sunlight is the best disinfectant, and that is one of the most important parts of our task force's work. Our Stop Project 2025 Task Force and many other Members of the House Democratic Caucus, as well, have been focused on doing something very simple but very important: showing people what Project 2025 actually says, bringing it out of the shadows, making sure every American knows the truth about what Trump and his allies here in Congress are planning and, in many cases, already trying to do.
It is important to think about how a potential second Trump Presidency would be very different. He now has absolute immunity, thanks to his extreme radical Supreme Court. We know that he will not have adults in the room next time around. His administration would not have any institutionalists pushing back against his dangerous agenda or his authoritarian impulses.
Unlike the chaos and lack of planning that marked his first Presidency, he now has Project 2025, a detailed, strategic blueprint for not only advancing extreme policies, but for clearing away all checks and balances and guardrails that might stand in his way.
Mr. Speaker, as disturbing as all of this is, it is important to remember we have only seen the tip of the Project 2025 iceberg because, on top of the 922 pages that they have actually published, which everyone can look up on the internet, they also have an extensive personnel program, including a resume database chock full of MAGA loyalists, a training academy to indoctrinate their self-described army of political operatives.
These are the people that they hope to repopulate the Federal workforce with after they have purged tens of thousands of civil servants. These things are happening right now.
Perhaps the most concerning part is the secret fourth pillar of Project 2025 that acknowledged its existence. Members of The Heritage Foundation have described it as being too controversial to actually share it with the public, so they haven't published it. It is the unreleased playbook outlining the steps that Trump would take in his first 180 days in office.
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and I have reached out to Heritage in recent weeks demanding that they come before Congress to discuss this secret part of their plan and release it so that the American people can actually read it. To no one's surprise, the architects of Project 2025 have ignored our request. We think the public deserves to know what executive orders, emergency declarations, and other Presidential directives have been secretly prepared for Trump to make good on with respect to his vow to be a dictator on day one.
Today, our Stop Project 2025 Task Force has launched a tip line to gather any and all information we can about the hidden fourth pillar of Project 2025. Given the extremism we have already seen in the published parts of this plan and the evasiveness of Heritage and its coalition, we think it is important to turn to the public to get more information on this.
Anyone who may have seen or authored or come across any part of the secret fourth pillar of Project 2025 is encouraged to share what information that they may have access to through our dedicated tip line.
We are going to keep doing everything that we can to uncover their full agenda and to stop this government takeover scheme on behalf of the majority of Americans who want nothing to do with this dystopic plan.
I yield to my colleague, the assistant Democratic leader, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse).
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse) and agree with him. Many of our Republican colleagues have been trying to disown Project 2025. Certainly their nominee, Donald Trump, has been trying to do that in ways that are quite implausible, but it seems to me that anyone who wants to show that they do not support this radical authoritarian scheme, Project 2025, we are giving them a chance to do that with this resolution. We invite them to join us.
At this point, I yield to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett).
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett) for her support.
As I prepare to yield to the gentlewoman from Vermont (Ms. Balint), I will just observe that my colleague's comments caused me to think about the fact that we are gathered here on what our Republican friends have dubbed Anti-Woke Week. Nothing is more Project 2025 than demagoguing and using wokeness as a pretext to try to roll back individual freedoms and civil rights and take away decades of progress.
Our Republican colleagues can't seem to figure out how to fund the government and do the basics of governing, but they sure are good at finding time to demagogue on wokeness.
Balint).
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her remarks.
I am mindful of the fact that many are saying that the American people this year are facing a choice of going forward or backward. Nothing speaks more to that than the fact that Trump's Project 2025 would dust off the old morality codes of the 1870s and impose them against the popular will on all Americans. It just tells us everything.
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is exactly right about what Project 2025 calls for with respect to the VA, but it is more than just the VA.
If you read this 922-page manifesto, this theme of privatizing and monetizing runs throughout their authoritarian scheme. It applies to our public schools, our public lands, the National Weather Service, and so many other things.
The American people don't want this exploitation, this privatization, enrichment, and monetization obsession that the architects of Project 2025 have.
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I now am proud to yield to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania, Mary Gay Scanlon.
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman very much, and I am glad she spoke to the so-called civil service reform element of Project 2025.
They call it Schedule F. It is an innocuous-sounding thing, but again, like so many parts of Project 2025, when you understand what it actually calls for, it is far more extreme than anything we have ever seen in this country.
It calls for going through the entire Federal workforce to root out anyone who has been associated with a DEI program in our Federal Government.
Climate scientists and others are going to be purged, anyone who somewhere in their life maybe donated to a Democrat.
It is a complete scorched earth political purge that they described as involving more than 50,000 people in the Federal workforce and then to repopulate the government.
If their problem is political people in government, they are going to repopulate with even more political people from these training academies.
As the gentlewoman concludes, I just want to ask her if she thinks that this is something that the people of Pennsylvania want to see?
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, food inspectors, air traffic controllers.
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, maybe a nonpolitical civil service is actually a good idea, just like Teddy Roosevelt concluded that it was a century ago.
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman very much.
I now yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson), a man who you might say has civil rights and social justice in his blood. I am sure he has some things to say about Trump's Project 2025.
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for speaking to the extremism and cruelty of Trump's Project 2025 so eloquently, and he is exactly right. Healthcare is in the crosshairs.
One of the many ways in which Project 2025 would take us backward on healthcare is by mandating that the default for Medicare would be Medicare Advantage.
They like that because they can monetize it, make a lot of money on it, right, but it absolutely is expensive. It is accelerating the demise of the Medicare trust fund.
They want to repeal the prescription drug reforms that we have been able to pass, the first time we have been able to stand up to Big Pharma in decades.
We are saving Medicare billions and billions of dollars. We are saving consumers so much money already, and those savings are going to grow and grow in the years ahead.
All of that goes away under Project 2025. It is bad for the pocketbooks of the American people, bad for healthcare, and bad for the Medicare trust fund and Medicare itself. The gentleman is exactly right.
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, House Democrats are going to continue to shine a bright light on this document. The American people don't need to take our word for it when we talk about the extremism and cruelty and other impacts that Trump's Project 2025 would have. They can read it themselves.
It is online. Look it up. The more people read it, the more they understand it, the more we know they are going to want nothing to do with it. The best way to stop this terrible agenda is to just make sure people know about it and understand it.
We are grateful for this opportunity to discuss it, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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