US President Joe Biden lashed out at the 2025 Presidential Transition Project - commonly known as Project 2025 - during his campaign event in the battleground state of Michigan on July 12.
"Do you think democracy is under siege based on Project 2025?" Biden said, linking his Republican contender Donald Trump to the project run by a coalition of American conservative organizations headed by the DC-based think tank the Heritage Foundation.
The Biden campaign also launched an advert slamming the former president, while Vice President Kamala Harris called the project's agenda a blueprint for Trump's potential second term.
"Project 2025 will destroy America," Biden warned in a social media video on July 10.
The project's 900-page policy proposal calls upon Americans to counter the push of the "radical Left" and, among other things, seeks:
to recruit conservative Americans to fill federal government jobs;
overhaul the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which the proposal alleges are used by liberal Democrats against their "political enemies";
eliminate the Department of Education and Department of Commerce;
reorganize immigration services;
halt diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within the Department of Defense among other measures.
While Trump has claimed he has nothing to do with the conservative initiative, CNN has argued that it found that at least 140 people who worked in his previous administration are associated with Project 2025, including Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and adviser Stephen Miller.
The Trump campaign rejected the claims and fired back at Team Biden, calling the unfolding "coordinated attack" from the White House and its subservient media a "distraction" in the aftermath of the incumbent president's disastrous debate performance.
"Agenda 47 and President Trump's RNC [Republican National Committee] Platform are the only policies endorsed by President Trump for a second term," Trump campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez told Fox News, referring to the package of proposals that the Republican frontrunner vowed to implement if elected the 47th president of the US.
"Team Biden and the DNC [Democratic National Committee] are lying and fear-mongering because they have nothing else to offer the American people. Remember this is the same group that lied to Americans and hid Joe Biden’s cognitive decline all these years," Alvarez added.
The timing of the Biden campaign's attack on Project 2025 raises questions given that the Heritage Foundation's initiative was launched in 2022 and has been circulating for almost two years.
On the other hand, the sudden fuss over the conservative program comes amid mounting pressure on Biden to drop out of the presidential race from influential media pundits, Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and liberal donors.