Congressman Hank Johnson (center) and state lawmakers Derrick Jackson and Sonya Halpern held a press conference Wednesday to condemn Project 2025, which is the conservative Heritage Foundation’s controversial presidential transition plan. Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder
Georgia Democrats are joining their national colleagues in sounding the alarm about an influential conservative think tank’s presidential transition plan called Project 2025.
The plan stirring controversy is a dense 922-page policy agenda from the Heritage Foundation that calls for overhauling government agencies, passing the most stringent abortion ban the next Republican administration can get through Congress and lowering the corporate tax rate, among other major changes.
The Heritage Foundation promoted the platform Tuesday near the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Former President Donald Trump, who is the GOP nominee for president this year, has denied any connection to the document.
“While Trump is desperate to distance himself from Project 2025, the American people won’t be fooled,” Congressman Hank Johnson, a Lithonia Democrat, said at a Wednesday press conference held by the Biden-Harris campaign at Atlanta’s National Center for Civil and Human Rights.
“Project 2025 rolls back Americans’ rights and freedoms and radically remakes our government into a MAGA organization promoting Donald Trump,” Johnson said, calling the document “an extreme right-wing manifesto.”
State Rep. Derrick Jackson, a Tyrone Democrat who said he was working his way through the document, said the policy proposals would take a “sledgehammer against our democracy.”
“I cannot recall not one page, one paragraph or one sentence good. If you’re white, Black, old, young, straight, gay, military, non-military, not one page, not one paragraph, not one sentence good for you,” Jackson said.
The Biden-Harris campaign has been highlighting the document as evidence of what’s at stake in this year’s election, but public awareness received a boost last month when actress Taraji P. Henson issued an urgent warning about Project 2025 while hosting the BET Awards.
The Georgia Democrats at Wednesday’s press conference said they intend to keep talking about the conservative policy agenda.
“Georgians will come out and we will make sure that we turn out in record numbers this November to reelect President Biden and reject Trump’s out-of-touch project 2025 agenda that will rip away our rights,” said state Sen. Sonya Halpern, who is an Atlanta Democrat.
But as the campaign tries to focus on Trump, Biden continues to weather doubts over whether he should stay at the top of the ticket after an alarming debate performance last month.
Biden was dealt a setback Wednesday when the most prominent Democrat to date, California Congressman Adam Schiff, who is running for the U.S. Senate, told The Los Angeles Times that he has “serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November.”
A new poll also shows that nearly two-thirds of Democrats say Biden should withdraw from the race and allow the party to choose a different candidate.
In Georgia, Democrats have largely stuck with Biden. And on Wednesday afternoon, Johnson dismissed concerns about Biden as a narrative being driven by the media.
“You can try to infer that the president is not up to the task, but he’s been up to that task for the last three and a half years. I like what I’ve seen, and I’m not alone in that. And I want it to continue. So, I’m not one of those who are buying that line,” Johnson told reporters.
Jackson argued that Biden’s performance at last week’s NATO press conference showed his strength as a candidate after he fielded a wide range of questions from reporters for nearly an hour.
“His record demonstrates everything,” Jackson said. “And then for those who keep talking about polls, the best poll is 2020. That’s the best poll when you’re comparing Trump and Biden.”
Biden narrowly won Georgia by just under 12,000 votes in 2020, but Trump now holds an edge in polling over Biden here.
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