Former U.S. President Donald Trump walks to speak to the media after being found guilty following his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30, 2024, in New York City. (Photo by Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images)
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Just a few hours before Donald Trump was scheduled to return to the campaign trail before an audience at Trump National Doral Miami, the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign held a conference call on Tuesday afternoon at which they again denounced the former president’s record on reproductive rights and highlighted “Project 2025.”
That’s the conservative manifesto written by the Heritage Foundation that calls for a massive overhaul of the federal government that Democrats have labeled as “terrifying.”
U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, vial U.S. House
“We are going to be talking about this issue and every issue outlined in the terrifying Project 2025 every single day,” said Texas Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, a co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign.
“The American public needs to understand what is at stake in this election, and this election is not about one debate night. This election is about everything that is going to be ripped away from the American people if Donald Trump and his cronies get in the White House.”
Among some of the plans included in Project 2025 are to downsize or dismantle federal agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Department of Homeland Security.
On education, the plan proposes a complete restructuring of governance at the federal level and the eventual elimination of Title I, which provides grants to schools with large populations of low-income students, according to Education Week.
On abortion, the plan calls for the Food and Drug Administration to reverse its 24-year-old approval of mifepristone, also known as the “abortion pill,” according to CBS News. It recommends that the U.S. Justice Department enforce the 1873 Comstock Act against providers and distributors of abortion pills. That law prohibits drugs, medicines, or instruments used in abortions from being sent through the mail.
“Sarah Parshall Perry from the Heritage Foundation has said that states can use police power to restrict or prohibit abortion, including particular methods of abortion such as by a pill,” said Escobar. “That’s what we need to be talking about every single day, because that puts women’s lives at risk, that puts our country at risk, that puts our future at risk that’s my focus.”
‘Second American Revolution’
Kevin Roberts, president of Heritage, received blowback last week after he said that Americans were in the process of carrying out a “Second American Revolution to take back power from elites and despotic bureaucrats,” and warned that “the Left may not allow a peaceful transfer of power.” The comment led to Trump claiming that he knew nothing about Project 2025.
The Republican National Committee on Monday released a draft of its party platform for the coming Republican National Convention that softens the GOP’s stance on abortion, no longer calling for any federal limits on the procedure. The platform calls on states, rather than Congress, to deal with abortion.
That prompted Jill Biden to say on the call that Trump is trying to pose as a “moderate on reproductive rights.”
“Does he think we forgot that his Supreme Court justices killed Roe v. Wade and that he brags about it?” she said. “Does he think we don’t know that he wants to roll back access to contraception and he could jeopardize IVF treatments? Does he think that he can pivot away from a career of diminishing and denigrating women? Well, women haven’t forgotten, and we can’t be fooled.”
The first lady went on to say that “women put Joe Biden in the White House and women are going to keep him there.”
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio. Credit: Rubio Senate webpage
Also participating on the call was Ana Navarro, a former GOP strategist based in Miami who has gone on to become a nationally known political commentator and is supporting Joe Biden for president. She was asked about the possibility that Trump could select Florida GOP U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio as his running mate.
Navarro played down the notion, saying that Rubio “could probably win an Olympic medal for sucking up and for turning into a completely different person,” a reference to how Rubio challenged Trump for president in 2016 but, like many other Republicans who previously criticized him, is now strongly backing his candidacy in 2024.
“I don’t think Donald Trump is going to appoint Marco,” she said, adding that loyalty is important to Trump, “and if you think Marco Rubio is capable of loyalty, just go ask Jeb Bush. He’ll tell you about it.”
Rubio and former Gov. Bush, both from the Miami area, were considered allies before Rubio decided to run for president in 2015-2016 against Bush, engendering “a sense of betrayal” among Bush supporters, as reported by POLITICO. Both men ended up falling short to Trump that election cycle.
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