Senate Republicans On Project 2025: Huh? Project What Now?

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans have long had ties to the Heritage Foundation, one of the most influential conservative think tanks based in Washington, D.C. with deep connections to the Republican Party, congressional lawmakers and the broader conservative movement.

But if you ask them about the group’s Project 2025, a radical, 900-page policy blueprint that would dramatically restructure the federal government under a second Donald Trump presidency, GOP senators say they don’t know much about it at all.

“All I’ve been doing is reading about it from afar,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told HuffPost. “I haven’t really gotten into it.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who delivered a keynote speech on congressional oversight at the Heritage Foundation in April, said he knew nothing about the group’s massive presidential transition plan.

“Heard about it in the newspapers, but that’s all I know,” Grassley said. “I read two articles.”

Trump has claimed not to know much about Project 2025 or who is behind it. In fact, he’s been trying to distance himself from anything to do with it, as people learn more about what exactly the Heritage Foundation is teeing up for his administration to do starting on day one.

Among other things, Project 2025 calls for limiting the use of the abortion drug mifepristone; basing government social services on “biblical” values; eliminating research into climate change; getting rid of the Department of Education; privatizing student loans; nixing LGBTQ protections generally andtransgender people’s rights in particular; carrying out raids and mass deportations of immigrants; and allowing Trump to install loyalists in government by making it easier to fire thousands of federal workers.

But at least 140