DETROIT — False claims that Donald Trump supports Project 2025 are common among Michigan Democrats. Even the state’s attorney general repeated the lie on the campaign trail in hopes of convincing voters the former president backs the deeply unpopular policy tome a conservative think tank developed.
But the erroneous talking point got even louder last month when Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) co-chaired a hearing on “the dangers of Project 2025.”
The House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee hearing involved only Democrats, who repeatedly claimed Trump has embraced Project 2025 and intends to implement it if elected.
This spectacle was not meeting of the House Steering Committee, which can refer legislation to the full House. It was merely a one-party showcase, carried out on the public’s dime.
Despite Democrats’ insistence in the hearing and on the campaign trail across the country, Trump has emphatically distanced himself from Project 2025 more than once, including on the debate stage Sept. 10.
“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said that night when Kamala Harris declared he “intends on implementing” it. He’s called some of it “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
The Project 2025 website links prominently to a USA Today fact check that confirmed it as the work of the Heritage Foundation, not the Trump campaign.
Nevertheless, the claims persist.
At the hearing, the Democrats heard from a Michigan autoworker and UAW member, J.J. Jewell, who expressed fear his overtime pay would be taken away as a result of Project 2025.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) referred to the project’s “not-so-secret plan to eliminate pay” and called it “a generous gift to corporations and an insult to workers.”
“If they’re able to calculate the overtime period over a longer number of weeks, they essentially destroy the standard workweek and my ability to earn what I’m owed for working overtime,” Jewell said. “It’s not just the loss of income that worries me. It’s the fact that people could be working 60- or 70-hour workweeks without the extra compensation that we really count on.”
What Jewell is referring to is the Working Families Flexibility Act. This would not do away with overtime pay but rather would let workers choose between taking their time-and-a-half in cash or in paid time off.
Next up was Detroit teacher Rodney Fresh Jr., who claimed Project 2025 would dismantle public education.
“At its core, Project 2025 is a well-funded attempt to privatize public education and kick the ladder of opportunity from under those who need it the most,” Fresh told the panel.
This is in reference to the project’s proposal to make the DC school-voucher program universal, which would allow taxpayers’ education funds to follow students to private and religious schools.
In Michigan, this plan would face a constitutional roadblock. By a 69% to 31% vote in 2000, Michiganders banned school vouchers. This has never been repealed.
Multiple times in the hearing, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Project 2025 a “dangerous, dastardly and diabolical plan.”
Kildee, a co-chair of the aforementioned all-Democrat committee, joined in.
“Trump and the architects of this plan aren’t ashamed of it. They posted it online for all of us to see, 900-plus pages,” he said. “Under Donald Trump and House Republicans, you’ll have less money. You’ll have less freedom. Trump’s Project 2025 takes America and all Americans backwards,”
There was just one problem: The entire hearing, and every word spoken in it, were all based on the falsehood that Trump supports Project 2025 and would enact the platform if elected.
CNN, Politfact and others have fact-checked specific claims about Project 2025.
But the basic lie lives on, and last month it was perpetuated further by the Democrats — and paid for by the American people.
The left-leaning New Republic covered the hearing under the headline “House Democrats Are Going All In on Tying Project 2025 to Trump.”
As the story explained, Democrats went out of their way to give the hearing the weight of legitimacy and the flourish of highly produced political theater.
“It bore more than a passing resemblance to the hearings held by the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, featuring slickly produced videos and other multimedia elements. This was more than mere homage: As The Washington Post first reported, one of the filmmakers involved with the January 6 committee also worked on the videos for Tuesday’s presentation, which highlighted the connections between Trump, other Republicans, and the Project 2025 platform.”
Kildee’s seat is up for grabs this November as the pol retires at year’s end. The 8th District race for his open seat is getting national attention as Democratic state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet looks to fill Kildee’s shoes. Republican challenger Paul Junge hopes the third time’s the charm in his latest bid for Congress.
Two of Cook Political Report’s 26 toss-up races are in Michigan; the other is the 7th District, a race that pits Republican Tom Barrett against Democrat Curtis Hertel Jr.
