ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
So that was the road to get to Chicago for the DNC. And here in the city, if you walked by the Trump Hotel last night, you would have seen the words Project 2025 HQ projected on the outside of the building. It's just the latest move by Democrats to draw attention to a conservative action plan for Trump's second term. NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith reports.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: This is the story of how Democrats took an obscure document and turned it into a household name. It became clear to me that something was happening when I met Ina Schuner back in May. We were in her SUV in a Home Depot parking lot in Charlotte, N.C., talking about how she planned to vote in November.
INA SCHUNER: And they literally - like, let me show you.
KEITH: She turned around and grabbed a massive black binder from the back seat.
SCHUNER: This is the destruction of democracy. They literally wrote it down.
KEITH: She had printed the entire Project 2025 document and put it in a binder so she could study it. It took more than a ream of paper.
SCHUNER: This is it. It is very thick, as you can see, 900 pages.
KEITH: 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 replacing tens of thousands of civil servants. The fact that regular voters like Ina Schooner know about it is a triumph for Democrats, who have been working for nearly a year to inject it into the American political bloodstream. Schooner isn't sure where she first learned about it, but she thinks it may have been TikTok, where there are thousands of explainer videos.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
ELLE: Hey, girly. My name's Elle. I'm a fem lesbian. I read all 920 pages of the Project 2025 playbook, so you don't have to.
UNIDENTIFIED TIKTOKER #1: Project 2025 is a 922-page proposal to dismantle...
UNIDENTIFIED TIKTOKER #2: Because I did not know about Project 2025 and the seriousness of it until TikTok.
KEITH: Harris Campaign Communications Director Michael Tyler says back in the spring, they noticed online conversations bubbling up organically and saw a chance to make Project 2025 a shorthand for all things Trump.
MICHAEL TYLER: They're not necessarily going to go and Google every single, like, policy proposal. But you say, hey - Google Project 2025. That is a very easy way for folks to dig in and understand writ large the threat that Trump poses to our economy, our democracy and our way of life.
KEITH: Then on June 30, the host of the BET Awards, Taraji P. Henson, told viewers to Google it.
(SOUNDBITE OF BET AWARDS 2024)
TARAJI P HENSON: They are attacking our most vulnerable citizens. The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look it up.
KEITH: And look it up they did. The campaign even created a website for people to land on if they did Google it. Then former President Donald Trump added rocket fuel by disowning it. In this interview with Fox News, Trump insisted he didn't know anything about it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DONALD TRUMP: I have no idea what it is. It's a group of extremely conservative people got together and wrote up a wish list of things, many of which I disagree with entirely. They're too severe.
KEITH: Trump hasn't been clear about which parts he supports and what he thinks is too extreme. Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson says the denials aren't working. Public awareness of Project 2025 has increased dramatically in just the past couple of months. The overwhelming majority view it unfavorably, and most associate it with Trump.
JESSE FERGUSON: This plan has escaped from being simply a policy white paper in Washington into a household brand and a well-known blueprint.
KEITH: And it is now a regular part of Vice President Harris' stump speech.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Donald Trump has a different plan. Just look at his Project 2025 agenda...
(BOOING)
HARRIS: ...Which I keep saying, I can't believe they put that in writing.
KEITH: Heritage has been drafting plans for Republican presidents since the time of Ronald Reagan, but they've never entered the mainstream, says Frank Luntz, a pollster who's spent most of his career on GOP messaging.
FRANK LUNTZ: The Democrats were successful in defining and demonizing Project 2025 before anyone even knew what it was.
KEITH: And you can expect to hear plenty more about it this week while all eyes are on the Democratic National Convention. Tamara Keith, NPR News.
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