In launching Project 2025’s conservative strategy to win a second Trump presidency, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts took aim at leaders who he said use power “first to serve themselves and then to serve everyone else.”
He mentioned North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un who is ruling a poor country with ease, “billionaire climate activists” fly on private jets and criticize carbon-emitting cars, and two “COVID-19 shutdown politicians” seen hanging out in California — a hair salon And a fancy restaurant — and called on his voters to stay at home.
Naming U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Gov. Gavin Newsom in the conservative right’s plans for the White House was a way for Roberts to link them and California to the idea that coastal elites are ruining the country.
This notion — which is well entrenched in American politics — appears in the Project 2025 plan, a strange, 900-plus-page manifesto released last year by conservative thought leaders and Trump followers.
This idea is expressed more subtly in the 16-page Republican Party platform, led by Trump and adopted by party officials last week. It criticizes American politicians who have “shielded themselves from criticism and the consequences of their bad actions” while average Americans continue to suffer.
Roberts and other Heritage Foundation officials were not available for comment. A Heritage Foundation spokesman said Project 2025 is the product of more than 100 conservative organizations and “does not speak for any candidate or campaign.”
The conservative strategy of criticizing “woke” liberal ideas, many of which gained momentum in California, has become particularly useful in the current election cycle, according to political experts, as Trump’s base has proven particularly receptive to conservative virtue signaling on such issues AbortionClimate change, GunsImmigration and LGBTQ+ rights,
Experts said that strategy would only take off if President Biden steps down from the Democratic ticket and replaces him with a California politician such as Newsom or Vice President Kamala Harris, a former senator.
“This is an important aspect to look at,” said John Michaels, a constitutional law professor at UCLA who is writing an upcoming book on right-wing authoritarianism. “California becomes a convenient option, and the excesses of California are what Republicans can fight against.”
Issues
Conservatives have long viewed California — sometimes justifiably, sometimes unjustly — as a failed state, collapsing under the weight of unchecked regulation, crime and homelessness, and the 2024 race has sharpened those lines of attack.
“Examples of California going in a different direction than the Republican Party wants are everywhere in the (Project 2025) report — everything from diversity, equity and inclusion to ties to China, from high tech (companies) to homelessness,” said Bruce Cain, a political science professor at Stanford University. It aims to portray a state in disarray, an “undemocratic, protectionist state controlled by high-tech elites and completely isolated from the rest of America.”
Both Project 2025 and the GOP platform envision a second Trump presidency where federal bureaucrats would use the powers of the executive branch to roll back a range of California policies — including protections for undocumented immigrants, the environment, unionized workers, abortion seekers and transgender youth.
In his own words, the GOP platform is at times bombastic — just like Trump, who helped draft it — and unlike California’s leaders, offers a relatively clear outline for how he wants to govern.
“California becomes a convenient option, and the excesses of California are the ones Republicans can fight against.”
— John Michaels, professor of constitutional law at UCLA
For example, Los Angeles and other major California cities refuse to use their police forces or city personnel to enforce immigration laws. Trump’s platform promises to “cut off federal funding” for such areas.
California is in the process curb oil drilling In the state, leaders raised concerns about environmental and health impacts. The forum called on the nation to “drill, baby, drill.”
California requires LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum in schools, and the Democrat-controlled state legislature recently passed a law that prohibits school officials from notifying parents of children who identify as transgender at school if the child does not want that information shared. The platform says Republicans support it “Parental rights” and “funding will be denied to schools that give our children inappropriate political training” or promote “radical gender ideology”.
The Project 2025 plan offers even more scathing criticism of California’s policies.
In the preface to Project 2025, Roberts says a lot about American freedom, but defines it within clear boundaries. Christian Nationalists The framework states that the Constitution gives every American the freedom to “live according to the command of our Maker” — “not what we want to do, but what we ought to do.”
The plan calls on Trump to “make the institutions of American civil society harder targets for woke culture warriors” if he is elected — a process that it says should begin with removing all references to gay identities, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” Abortion or “reproductive health” is excluded from federal law and regulations.
Calling California and other liberal states “sanctuaries for abortion tourism,” the plan states that the Trump administration should “do as much as possible to protect unborn children in every jurisdiction in America,” work with Congress to enact anti-abortion legislation, and the federal government should mandate state reporting of abortion statistics — including patients’ state of residence and “reason” for receiving the procedure.
Critics say such actions would give conservative states that ban abortion the power to identify and punish offenders. Women moving to liberal states like California to perform those procedures.
The party platform does not call for a national abortion ban, which has angered some on the right, but it does support state policies restricting it and says Republicans “proudly stand for families and life.”
Both plans criticize the country’s shift toward electric vehicles, and Project 2025 says the federal government should repeal the waiver that allows California to set its own clean air standards regarding fuel economy, underscoring the state’s goal of shifting exclusively toward electric vehicles. Zero-emission vehicles By 2035.
Further battles
Though Project 2025 was largely created by Trump’s key advisers and former appointees, he has recently attempted to distance himself from the plan.
In an online post on July 5, Trump wrote that he “knows nothing about it,” but added that “some of what they are saying is absolutely ridiculous and disgusting.” Still, he wished those behind the scheme “good luck.”
“This isn’t Alabama or Mississippi. You’re up against a very powerful state that has a lot of resources — and a will to resist.”
— Bruce Cain, professor of political science at Stanford University
Trump’s campaign referred questions about Project 2025 and its relationship to the GOP platform and California policies to the Republican National Committee.
Committee spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the party’s platform includes “common sense policies like cutting taxes, securing the border, ending the absurd (electric vehicle) mandate, securing our elections, protecting our constitutional rights and keeping men out of women’s sports” — and that last point explicitly references transgender women.
“If reporters find these principles contradictory to the values promoted by California’s leaders, perhaps it’s time for Democrats to reevaluate how their state is run,” Kelly wrote.
Democrats, including Biden, have repeatedly linked Trump to Project 2025, saying his claims of distance from it are absurd because many within his circle are leading it. On Tuesday, Harris called out Project 2025. A campaign event in Las VegasIt said it called for dismantling the US Department of Education, cutting Social Security and banning abortion nationwide.
“If implemented, it would be the latest attack on reproductive freedom by Donald Trump,” she said.
Experts said that if Biden is replaced by Harris or Newsom — who are considered front-runners amid doubts about Biden’s age and ability to defeat Trump — conservative derision about California and its liberal policies would increase, and find a receptive audience in many parts of the country.
A The Times survey earlier this year found that 50% of American adults believe California is in decline, with 48% of Republicans saying it is “not truly American.”
If Trump wins, experts say, expect California to lead a liberal resistance to Trump’s agenda, as it did during his first term. Such efforts will be hampered, but not entirely thwarted, by California’s budget crisis and conservative-leaning Supreme Court, they said.
“California will strike back and has the means to strike back,” Cain said. “This isn’t Alabama or Mississippi. You’re up against a very powerful state that has a lot of resources — and a will to resist.”
