Plus, Trump's appearance at the black journalists' conference.
I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”
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Today's read: 13 minutes.
Tomorrow.
We’ll be celebrating our fifth anniversary with a special Friday edition going out to all readers about the last year, and what we are doing next. Also, we’re going to introduce our 10 favorite reader essays from the last year. Keep an eye out for it!
Quick hits.
- Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former Marine Paul Whelan, and more than a dozen others were released by Russia as part of a multi-country prisoner swap involving 24 prisoners and at least six countries. (The swap)
- Democrats are beginning the process to formally nominate Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s presidential nominee with an online roll-call vote starting today. (The vote)
- Iran vowed retaliation for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh Wednesday, reportedly ordering a direct strike on Israel. (The comments) The Biden administration said it was "very concerned" the assassination of Hamas' political leader would derail negotiations over a hostage and ceasefire deal. (The concern) Separately, Israel confirmed that it had also killed Mohammed Deif, the leader of Hamas’s military wing and the architect of the October 7 attacks. (The news)
- The Pentagon reached a plea deal with Khalid Sheik Mohammed and two others accused of planning the September 11 attacks. (The deal)
- After a long delay, Ukraine received its first batch of F-16 fighter jets, delivered through Denmark and Norway. (The delivery)
Today's topic.
Trump and Project 2025. On Tuesday, The Heritage Foundation’s Paul Dans announced he was stepping down from his position as director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, also known as Project 2025. Dans’s exit comes after weeks of Democratic criticism of the project on the campaign trail and repeated disavowals from former President Donald Trump, who has insisted Project 2025 is not a blueprint for his second term. The Daily Beast reported that the Trump campaign was directly involved in orchestrating Dans’s ouster as part of an effort to shut the project down entirely.
Reminder: Project 2025 is a plan from the conservative Heritage Foundation for how the next conservative president can manage the administrative state once in office. It contains four pillars: a set of policy proposals, a database of personnel who could serve in the next administration, a "Presidential Administration Academy" to train those personnel, and a playbook for the next president’s first 180 days in office. The project has no official affiliation with the Trump campaign, but dozens of former Trump-administration staffers and advisers contributed to the final report.
We published a deep dive on Project 2025 in July, including an interview with Dans.
Heritage President Kevin Roberts said Dans’s departure was planned, writing, “When we began Project 2025 in April 2022, we set a timeline for the project to conclude its policy drafting after the two party conventions this year, and we are sticking to that timeline.” Roberts added that he will take over as Project 2025’s director.
In a note to his staff at Heritage, Dans echoed this message, saying, “We completed what we set out to do, which was create a unified conservative vision, bringing together over 110 leading organizations, united behind the cause of deconstructing the administrative state.”
Democrats have sought to tie Trump to Project 2025 on the campaign trail, arguing that the plan serves as a playbook for a second Trump term. Some controversial aspects of the project’s 900-plus-page “Mandate for Leadership” book include stripping protections for civil servants against being fired by the president, creating new restrictions on access to abortion medication, and significantly shrinking or eliminating the Education Department. Democrats, led by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, have made proposals like these a focal point of rallies, fundraising pitches, and social media campaigns as part of a concerted push to make Project 2025 a defining issue of the presidential election.
As these attacks have escalated, Trump has publicly and privately expressed frustration with the initiative and The Heritage Foundation. At recent rallies, he called some of its proposals "abysmal" and written by people on the “severe right.” In an interview with Fox News, he singled out the plan’s recommendation on abortion policy as going “way too far.”
After Dans’s exit was announced, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, two of the Trump campaign’s senior advisers, released a statement, writing, “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you."
Today, we’ll share reactions to the latest news about Project 2025 from the right and left. Then, I’ll give my take.
What the right is saying.
- The right says the saga shows Trump will sacrifice anyone he thinks could hurt his reelection effort.
- Some are critical of Dans’s ouster, suggesting that Trump fell for lies about Project 2025.
- Others say this story doesn’t matter in the long run but think Trump handled it well.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board said “Trump buries Project 2025.”
“You almost have to feel sorry for Kevin Roberts, the ambitious president of the Heritage Foundation. He steered the venerable think tank away from some of its longtime conservative principles to court Donald Trump, only to be spurned by the temperamental former President he and his institution courted,” the board wrote. “Democrats targeted Project 2025 as if it were the guide to Trump II, and Mr. Trump responded by tossing aside Heritage and its policy recommendations like so much junk mail.”
Roberts’s “mistake was thinking that Mr. Trump cares about anyone’s ideas other than his own. He governs on feral instinct, tactical opportunism, and what seems popular at a given moment. The Democratic attacks on Project 2025 were laughable because Mr. Trump is never going to have a governing platform,” the board said. “The lesson for Heritage, and other think tanks, is that it’s better to stick to your principles rather than court the political flavor of the day. And never trust a politician.”
In PJ Media, Catherine Salgado asked “why does Trump believe Dem lies about Project 2025?”
“Donald Trump has an excellent record in some ways, but he also has a tendency to shoot himself in the foot. A clear example of that now is his persistence in disavowing Project 2025 on the basis of Democrat lies,” Salgado wrote. “The lies about conservative coalition Project 2025 got so ridiculous that even leftist NewsGuard fact-checked them, and yet Trump cannot seem to do the most basic research. Why would he or anyone on his side believe anything Kamala Harris and her media lackeys say anymore? Have we not learned to distrust whatever propaganda the leftists screech?”
Project 2025 “is a coalition of conservative organizations that developed a policy agenda aimed at undermining leftism and implementing practical solutions. The basis for the project’s agenda is the very Heritage Foundation ‘Mandate’ previously embraced by the Trump administration,” Salgado said. “This is EXACTLY what Trump should be focused on. Instead he’s buying into Democrat soundbites and falling into Democrats’ traps… Let us hope that Trump gets his head on straight and stops attacking the very individuals most qualified and determined to help him succeed.”
In RedState, the blogger streiff called Dans a “scapegoat.”
“In terms of substance, Project 2025 or something like it was necessary. The project brought together over a hundred veterans of Trump's administration, and center-right organizations were involved in the project,” streiff wrote. “Should he win, Trump will be faced with a virulently hostile federal bureaucracy… It is imperative that Trump has people waiting in the wings to take control and that they have an action plan for accomplishing things.”
“What is instructive about this episode is that Trump refused to spend any time fighting over what the project did and didn't say. He walked away from it; the project finished its work, and that work will be available if Trump takes office. He refused to get bogged down in a fight over a document produced by a think tank that was plausibly not sponsored by the Trump campaign. I'm not sure 2016-2020 Trump could have resisted the urge to go to war.”
What the left is saying.
- The left sees the fallout from Project 2025 as a predicament of Republicans’ own making.
- Some say Trump’s efforts to distance himself from the project aren’t convincing.
- Others dispute that Dans’s departure will make the issue go away.
In The Boston Globe, Kimberly Atkins Stohr wrote about “how Project 2025 backfired on the GOP.”
“The reports of the ‘demise’ of Project 2025 — reports that are coming from even Donald Trump’s campaign — are greatly exaggerated. According to the conservative playbook’s own architects, it is just getting started. And, as Trump knows, it’s already backfiring on Republicans,” Stohr said. “But it’s easy to understand why Trump and his team want to pretend that the plan has disappeared. They learned the hard way that in a post-Roe world, such a boldface plan that focuses largely on rolling back the rights of women and other marginalized Americans was a bad idea. It has enraged — and engaged — Trump opponents from the grass-roots up.”
“Harris has now made the plan a key part of her pitch to voters. And there is plenty of fodder within it to rev up her base to defeat Trump and other Republicans down the ballot,” Stohr wrote. “The plan is only adding to the urgency Harris supporters feel, and that has Trump fuming… But it’s too late now. What was meant to be a conservative secret is now a household name. Trump can’t distance himself from it now, no matter how hard he tries.”
In Salon, Heather Digby Parton argued “Trump's attempted rebrand of Project 2025 is failing.”
The Trump campaign’s “frustration with the group has been obvious ever since the Democrats jumped on the 900-page manifesto and made it into another Trump-branded product. No matter how hard the Trump campaign tried they couldn't get people to stop talking about Project 2025,” Parton said. “Dans' departure was immediately interpreted to mean that the Trump people had engineered his ouster and had successfully gotten the Heritage Foundation to back away from it. But is that really the case?”
“Pretty much everything else from policies on law enforcement to trade to education and immigration are all listed on [Trump’s] own Agenda 47 website with very little to distinguish them from Project 2025, except for the level of detail. In other words, they see Project 2025 as a branding problem, not a substance problem,” Parton wrote. “Trump has every intention of implementing its vision. It's his vision, too. Not only would it be terrifying and dangerous, but it would also be dangerously incompetent.”
In The Fulcrum, Kristina Becvar and David L. Nevins said “rumors of Project 2025’s demise are greatly exaggerated.”
“The Trump campaign released a statement celebrating ‘Project 2025's Demise’, but there is no reason to believe that the news is anything but damage control… Project 2025 remains quite relevant,” Becvar and Nevins wrote. “There is good reason to believe that pressure from Trump's campaign, which has sought to disassociate itself from Project 2025 in recent weeks, played a role in Dans' departure. The project has faced significant backlash for its proposals, which include drastic policy changes that many view as authoritarian and detrimental to civil liberties.”
“Regardless of the Trump campaign's desire to distance itself from a plan lacking Americans' support, 31 of the 38 people responsible for Project 2025 served in Trump's first administration. Trump's campaign platform, 'Agenda 47', mirrors Project 2025's economic, national security, education, and healthcare policies,” Becvar and Nevins said. “Nothing has changed as a result of the Heritage Foundation's decision to back off of its public alignment with Project 2025.”
My take.
Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.
- I expected a falling out between Trump and Project 2025, though it happened much faster than I thought it would.
- Project 2025 is not ending, but they were always fighting for Trump’s approval.
- Once again, Trump is following his political instincts, and in this case he’s smart to distance himself.
I was surprised all of this happened as fast as it did, but not at all surprised by how it happened.
As a journalist, one huge part of my job is developing a truth-sense. It can be hard to tell how much of what people I interview say, or of what other journalists write, is true. But over time, you start to develop a sixth sense for it.
When I interviewed Paul Dans a few weeks ago, he told me that Project 2025 was genuinely working to convince Trump their outline for a future administration was worth pursuing. He delivered this to me in a way that I found credible and believable, despite the hysteria from a lot of people in the media about what he was working on. Of course, Dans worked for Trump. The two had a seemingly strong relationship. But when Dans was in the Heritage role, both sides understood that relationship: Trump was (and is) the leader of the party and the odds-on favorite to be president; Dans was leading a group of conservatives trying to convince him what to prioritize if he wins. So Dans’s insistence that Project 2025 is a set of recommendations to Trump — not a blueprint for his administration — fit with my understanding, and I believed him.
Now, is Dans’s departure the "end" of Project 2025? No. Heritage is going to continue their work, and if Trump wins in November I'm certain they'll have enough connection to the new administration to have leverage for their policy suggestions. And that’s always how it was going to be. Here is what I said in our deep dive:
"Simply put: Trump's agenda and Project 2025's are not the same, as evidenced by the differences in the agendas Trump has endorsed and the one Project 2025 has put forward... If Trump wins, I believe he will abandon or ignore parts of Project 2025. Other parts of the administration will not be competent or unified enough to pull off, and some of the aims a hypothetical Trump administration did take up would fail because of legal challenges."
I also think a dimension of Dans stepping down has been under-discussed. Liberals and conservatives disagree on a lot, but one thing they've both been saying over and over again is that a second Trump term is going to be much more organized and competent than the first one. Project 2025 was a symbol of that: a group of conservatives spelling out where Trump was disorganized, and laying out a plan to help him. Dans himself told me that Trump was very successful, but "encountered a lot of resistance, and it's incumbent on us as future conservative appointees to be able to know the landscape and be ready to go on day one."
But one of the reasons Trump might be ditching Project 2025 is that his team actually hasn't done the work necessary to implement it. Jonathan Swan, one of the best informed reporters in D.C., put it this way:
"There are 3 months until the election. Trump has done no real transition work. How do you think they are going to staff 4,000 political positions. It’s cost free to trash Project 25 now for political reasons & then take their database to pick & choose from after winning election."
That also sounds true to me. Though it happened more suddenly than I anticipated, this move to create further distance between Trump and Heritage is about what I expected. Most of Project 2025's recommendations were going to be impossible to implement anyway, either legally or because they required healthy majorities in the House and Senate. But their biggest obstacle was always going to be Trump himself, who has better political instincts than most in his party and understands what is and isn't popular. Heritage’s most visible proposals were too radical, Trump sensed this, and so he cut bait.
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Your questions, answered.
Q: So, what'd you think of Trump's appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists conference?
— Tim from Atlanta, Georgia
Tangle: For those who missed it, Trump was interviewed by three black journalists in front of a live audience at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference on Wednesday. It was... interesting. The NABJ lined up the interview after Vice President Kamala Harris’s scheduled appearance fell through due to scheduling conflicts, and the NABJ declined her offer to take part in a virtual talk. Before the interview, Karen Attiah, a prominent black journalist, resigned from her role as co-chair of the convention over the decision to host Trump.
You can watch the full interview here, but a few moments are going to generate the most discussion. One was Trump's comments on Harris's race in response to a question about Republicans attacking here as a “DEI candidate.”
“I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black... So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she black? ... I respect either one but she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a black person. And I think somebody should look into that, too.”
Trump also reiterated he'd pardon January 6 rioters, claimed he was the best president for black people "since Abraham Lincoln," and said he "saved" Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). It was a contentious interview from the start, with ABC's Rachel Scott opening by asking Trump about claiming Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S., calling black district attorneys "animal" and "rabid," and for "having dinner with a white supremacist" (Nick Fuentes) at Mar-a-Lago. Trump called the question one of the worst and most rude questions he'd ever been asked.
So, my thoughts? Here are five quick ones.
- In Part 2 of our deep dive on Harris, I listed her five strengths atop the ticket. One strength was that at any future debate, I could see Harris baiting Trump “into saying or doing something" that'd be bad for his campaign, and that people forget how often he hurts himself on stage because of how bad Biden was at the debate. Attacking Harris for "turning black" is a very good example. Not that it needs to be said, but she went to Howard University, an HBCU, and joined a black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha. So, she identified both as black and Indian as a college student, and for as long as she's been in public life. It was an idiotic thing for Trump to claim in any setting, but especially in front of black journalists at an event billed as him speaking directly to black voters.
- Trump is at his best when he is talking about you — the American people. This interview was "me, me, me." It was all about what he's done for black people, how great a president he was, and how unfairly he's been treated. He has a good case to make to black voters that his policies helped them economically, but he didn’t make it well. It’s worth saying this campaign is very different from the one he ran in 2016, and I think this kind of messaging is a great weakness for him this year. He needs to get back to talking about Americans, and what he's going to do for us.
- He's still complaining about how unfair Harris replacing Biden on the ticket was (to him). It has been almost two weeks now. The Trump campaign better get focused, quick. If they keep wasting time complaining about the switch rather than defining Harris to voters, they are going to be in big trouble in November.
- I do not think the NABJ came out of this looking good either. As many others have noted, they were disorganized, had technical issues on stage, asked several questions that were closer to political statements, and had audible jeering and heckling from the audience of professional journalists. Most importantly, the entire thing was delayed (which clearly frustrated Trump from the outset) and then ended early and abruptly without explanation. Trump made big mistakes, but from a media production perspective, I wasn't impressed by the NABJ, either.
- There has been a lot of controversy over the NABJ’s decision to invite Trump. My feelings in point #4 aside, I’m glad they did. This interview is exactly why you should never shy away from interviewing a former president, or anyone as influential and significant as Trump. Putting him on that stage created a newsworthy event that gave voters a look into his stance on issues that are relevant to them. It is silly and counterproductive for journalists to try to boycott open dialogue with people simply because they don’t like them or their views.
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Under the radar.
Young black voters now appear to be swing voters, according to new polling data. Black voters constitute at least 10% of the population in U.S. swing states, and while older black voters remain heavily loyal to the Democratic Party, younger black voters are breaking evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Before President Biden dropped out, polling showed a near even split between how black voters aged 25 to 34 were planning to cast their ballots. This shift in preference marks a major change from elections as recent as 2020. ABC News has the story.
Numbers.
- 18. The “search interest score” (out of 100) for Google searches of “Project 2025” on June 30.
- 100. The “search interest score” for Google searches of “Project 2025” on July 10.
- 42%. The percentage of U.S. adults who say they’ve heard nothing about Project 2025, according to a July 2024 YouGov poll.
- 35%. The percentage of Democrats who say they’ve heard a lot about Project 2025.
- 7%. The percentage of Republicans who say they’ve heard a lot about Project 2025.
- 44%. The percentage of U.S. adults who believe former President Donald Trump supports the proposals in Project 2025.
- 69%. The percentage of Democrats who believe Trump supports the proposals in Project 2025.
- 26%. The percentage of Republicans who believe Trump supports the proposals in Project 2025.
The extras.
- One year ago today we covered the new Trump charges.
- The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the hilarious broadcaster slip-up.
- Nothing to do with politics: “Pommel horse Superman” Stephen Nedoroscik reacts to his viral fame.
- Yesterday’s survey: 713 readers responded to our survey about the U.S. response to Venezuela’s election with 71% saying the U.S. should work with Latin American countries to pressure Maduro. “With anything the US does, we need to ensure the world doesn't think this is solely about us. This is a Venezuelan issue and we should support them in resolving it themselves and with their neighbors,” one respondent said.
Have a nice day.
In a study completed in South Africa and Uganda, researchers found that biannual shots used to treat AIDS were able to prevent new infections in women. Thandeka Nkosi, who helped to facilitate the study in South Africa, said twice-yearly shots would eliminate “the whole stigma around taking pills” to prevent HIV. While discussions regarding pricing of the shots are ongoing, academics and industry experts project the prices may decrease as the scale of use increases. HIV currently kills more than 600,000 individuals annually, primarily in Africa. The shots “are about as close as you can get to an HIV vaccine,” said Andrew Hill, a researcher from the University of Liverpool. NBC News has the story.
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