How Democrats learned to love Project 2025

CHICAGO—When Democrats arrived on Sunday night for their party’s national convention, they were greeted with a special message projected onto the exterior of the Trump International Hotel and Tower.

“Project 2025 HQ.”

It was another sign of how the Democratic Party has worked to co-opt and weaponize a conservative action plan for Trump’s second term as a rallying cry and organizing tool for their supporters. The plan is playing a prominent role in the speeches and programming at the Democratic National Convention this week.

Nearly a year ago, Democrats began working to raise awareness of Project 2025, an obscure document written by conservatives and for conservatives, to make it into a household name.

How Project 2025 entered the mainstream

The message reached North Carolina voter Ina Schuner, who had voted Republican her entire adult life until former President Donald Trump came on the political scene.

Earlier this year, she printed out the entire document and put it in a massive three-ring binder. It took more than a ream of paper.

“This is it,” Schuner said, pulling the binder out from the back seat of her SUV. “It’s very thick as you can see, 900 pages.”

“This is the destruction of democracy,” she said. “They literally wrote it down.”

TikTok explainers played a major role

Project 2025 was produced by the Heritage Foundation, with contributions from former Trump administration officials. It includes plans for everything from cutting off access to medication abortion to “deconstructing the administrative state” by replacing tens of thousands civil servants with political appointees.

The fact that regular voters like Schuner know about it is a triumph for Democrats, who have been working to inject it into the American