WASHINGTON – Ahead of the November elections, Republicans are trying to distance themselves from Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s project. 900-page right-wing policy blueprint for the radical restructuring of the US government under a second Trump presidency.
For Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who is running for re-election in a very tight race: the exact moment he withdrew from it seems to have been between July and August, when he suddenly went from celebrating Project 2025 to pretending he didn’t know much about it at all.
The issue could come up — and prove tricky — during Perry’s Tuesday night debate with his Democratic challenger, former TV news anchor Janelle Stelson. It is their first and only debate before the November elections. The Cook Political Report’s rating for this seat in Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District is “lean Republican.” Perry and Stelson are nearly tied in the polls, according to poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight.
Perry was asked about Project 2025 in an interview on July 13 with conservative radio host Chris Stigall. Democrats and constitutional law experts have denounced the plan, which would expand presidential power and aims to impose an ultraconservative social agenda on the country. “extremist” and a “important step towards an authoritarian government.”
But in his interview, Perry said he agreed with Stigall in that there is nothing “secret or subversive” about Project 2025, which was put together by former Trump administration officials and calls for the purge of thousands of career civil servants of federal government agencies and their replacement. with vetted conservatives in a second Trump administration.
“It’s a coalition of different organizations that are generally like-minded, but not entirely, trying to prepare for a future Trump presidency,” Perry said of the people behind it.
“Making Trump the boogeyman hasn’t really worked in the last year and a half, so now [Democrats] They turn it into the Heritage Foundation and this thing, this is being prepared, the names are being vetted, the policies are being prepared, they make that the boogeyman,” he said.
The Republican congressman said the great thing about Project 2025 is that it would mean Trump could launch on the first day of his second term knowing that career government officials would be ready to “accept his agenda” and implement it to carry out.
“These people on the left are terrified that there might actually be some accountability, and that they can’t just promote their left-wing agenda and say: “Oh Mr. President, we don’t work for you. We’ll just wait four years for you and we’ll keep marching towards communism,” Perry told Stigall.
“They are terrified that there is actually a plan, and that the right is preparing to remove them from the halls of power and lose their agenda and shut down their agenda,” he added.
But a month later, during a tele-town hall on August 21Perry pretended he didn’t know much at all about Project 2025 when a voter asked him about it.
“To be honest with you, Anthony, I haven’t read through it,” Perry told the voter. “I mean, I saw the cover of maybe the first page or something.”
The Pennsylvania Republican said he suspected there were things in the policy blueprint that he “would be averse to,” but he just didn’t know.
“I don’t even know how many pages it is, Anthony,” Perry said. “I think it’s quite bulky.”
He suggested he would support parts of Project 2025 he liked and oppose the parts he didn’t if a future president used it as a road map. He also suggested that he didn’t know much about who was behind Project 2025, even though he knew all about it a month earlier.
“I know some people from the Her – it’s written, well, no, I don’t know if it’s managed or put together by the Heritage Foundation, but it’s not exclusive to the Heritage Foundation, or, to the Heritage Foundation, Perry said. “It also includes other organizations, as I understand it, and I probably don’t even know who some of those organizations are.”
He added that he is “always a little careful, or very careful” about what he draws without reading the details of it, because once you do, “you own it, and um, the good with the bad.”
A campaign spokesperson for Perry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why Perry went from praising Project 2025 to pretending he didn’t know much about it a month later.
Perry, a six-term congressman, is an election denier Phone was seized by the FBI in 2022 as part of its investigation into the events leading up to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. A federal judge later announced this Perry had tried to shield 2,219 files of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack — and its efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The Republican congressman initially sued the Justice Department for stealing his cellphone data, but quietly dropped his case.
