Congressman Dan Goldman Joins Stop Project 2025 Task Force Colleagues to Demand Heritage Foundation President Come Before Congress, Release Project 2025's Secret 180-Day Plan

Undisclosed “Playbook” of Early Executive Actions Remains Shrouded in Secrecy

Read the Letter Here

Washington, DC – Congressman Dan Goldman (NY-10) today joined Congressman Jared Huffman (CA-02), Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), and his Stop Project 2025 Task Force colleagues in sending a letter to Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, requesting that he come before Congress to discuss Project 2025 and release its undisclosed “180-Day Playbook.”

Project 2025 is a far-right, over 900-page policy blueprint that aims to monopolize power for a Republican President, with plans to dramatically transform reproductive freedoms, public education, LGBTQIA+ rights, the economy, and more. In addition, the authors of Project 2025 have deliberately kept several of their proposals hidden through an undisclosed 180-Day Playbook, which authors describe as a roadmap of comprehensive, concrete, early actions for each federal agency.

“You have conspicuously declined to publish or disclose any of the prioritized early actions that we believe would obviously be the most important parts of Project 2025,” the members wrote. “The immediate executive orders, emergency declarations, presidential directives, and other measures are likely to have profound impacts on the American people and their government. Therefore, we believe it is overwhelmingly in the public interest for you to actually keep your ‘open book’ promise by disclosing the ‘Fourth Pillar’ of Project 2025, and we hope you’ll consider explaining why, unlike the first three pillars, you have been keeping it secret for so long.”

In their letter, the members expressed alarm about the harmful impact that Project 2025 would have on our democracy, reproductive freedoms, public education, LGBTQIA+ rights, economy, environment, public health and more, and argued that Congress and the American people deserve to have a complete and fully informed understanding of how Project 2025 would impact them.

“It is time to stop hiding the ball on what we are concerned could very well be the most radical, extreme, and dangerous parts of Project 2025,” the members continued. “If we are wrong about that – if your secret ‘Fourth Pillar’ of Project 2025 is actually a defensible, responsible, and constitutional action plan for the first days of a second Trump presidency – then we hope you will publish it, without edits or redaction. Allow the American people to see it and scrutinize it. Allow members of Congress to see it, so that we can discuss it with you and with the growing number of our constituents who seek to understand what Project 2025 portends for their government and their lives.”

The lawmakers requested Mr. Roberts come before Congress for a substantive meeting with lawmakers to discuss Project 2025 and to share an unredacted, unedited copy of the secret 180-day action plan. They requested a response to their letter by no later than Friday, August 16th.

Read the letter here or below.

Dear Mr. Roberts:

We write to invite you to meet with Members of Congress to discuss the Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project, elements of which you have published in coordination with 110 other conservative groups. The content within this transition plan will permanently damage federal administrative operations and have a direct impact on all our Districts.

The 920 pages and materials you have chosen to publish address Pillars One, Two, and Three of Project 2025. These published pages have been illuminating as we seek to understand the scope and implications of this sweeping policy and personnel plan. Publishing these portions of Project 2025 would appear to honor the promise on your website about being “an open book, with our materials available online,” except for one glaring problem: the entire “Fourth Pillar,” the “180-Day Playbook” which you describe as a roadmap of comprehensive, concrete, early actions for each federal agency, remains shrouded in secrecy.

You have conspicuously declined to publish or disclose any of the prioritized early actions that we believe would obviously be the most important parts of Project 2025. The immediate executive orders, emergency declarations, presidential directives, and other measures are likely to have profound impacts on the American people and their government. Therefore, we believe it is overwhelmingly in the public interest for you to actually keep your “open book” promise by disclosing the “Fourth Pillar” of Project 2025, and we hope you’ll consider explaining why, unlike the first three pillars, you have been keeping it secret for so long.

Our offices are increasingly hearing from constituents worried about the impact of Project 2025 on the future of our nation. Many of them see it as an extreme takeover plan to dismantle checks and balances, amass unprecedented presidential power, and exercise total control over our government and our daily lives. A growing number of Americans are concerned that Project 2025, which you describe as “a second American revolution,” poses an unprecedented threat to our democracy, reproductive freedoms, public education, LGBTQIA+ rights, our economy, environment, public health and more.

With so many concerns about the published parts of Project 2025, there is growing interest in understanding the secret 180-Day Playbook so that members of Congress and the American people can have a complete and fully informed understanding of how Project 2025 would impact them. You have intimated that the reason for keeping this “Fourth Pillar” of Project 2025 secret is that it is too controversial for the public to see. With all due respect, if the published part of your “second American revolution” is so extreme that it has alarmed millions of Americans, including many conservatives, what additional controversy are you worried about? Your secrecy invites, and perhaps concedes, the worst negative inferences.

The American people deserve to know, for example, the extent to which your secret 180-Day Playbook uses extraordinary emergency authorities like the Insurrection Act as a means to usurp local control and deploy the US military or federalize National Guard troops to be used as domestic police forces to stifle protests, or even to declare martial law. If you continue refusing to disclose your plan, Americans would be wise to presume the worst.

Americans also deserve to know the full extent to which Project 2025 would continue the rightwing attack on reproductive freedom and erode access to healthcare services. Project 2025 ominously states, “The Dobbs decision is just the beginning.” Does your secret 180-day plan include specific early policy actions to criminalize reproductive healthcare, ban medication abortion, restrict access to contraception, and prohibit certain fertility treatments, as called for in the published portion of Project 2025? Again, your refusal to disclose your 180-day action plan invites Americans to presume the worst.

Another example where the details in your 180-day action plan are critically important is Project 2025’s call for completely eliminating the Department of Education and Head Start. This draconian action would exact unprecedented harm on public school students and destabilize our entire public education infrastructure. We are interested to know how the 180 Day Plan and Project 2025’s promise to eliminate critical civil rights protections for students and end essential Title I funding for K-12 schools. We believe these extreme policies would greatly diminish America’s future by stifling our youth’s potential and undermining their parents ability to maintain employment. If your secret early administrative policy actions include abruptly upending public education and childcare programs, we believe millions of American families urgently need to know about that.

There are many other ways in which the secret 180 day policies in Project 2025 could have profoundly harmful impacts on millions of Americans – including the 2025’s many provisions stigmatizing and rolling back basic rights for the LGBTQIA+ community, denying overtime benefits for workers who depend on them to support their families, and selling out the middle class through higher taxes and healthcare costs while giving a huge $325,000 tax windfall to those earning $5 million a year or more.

It is time to stop hiding the ball on what we are concerned could very well be the most radical, extreme, and dangerous parts of Project 2025. If we are wrong about that – if your secret “Fourth Pillar” of Project 2025 is actually a defensible, responsible, and constitutional action plan for the first days of a second Trump presidency -- then we hope you will publish it, without edits or redaction. Allow the American people to see it and scrutinize it. Allow members of Congress to see it, so that we can discuss it with you and with the growing number of our constituents who seek to understand what Project 2025 portends for their government and their lives.

Since you have been actively promoting Project 2025 as a comprehensive plan to implement extreme changes early in a new administration and since you have promised to be “an open book” about Project 2025, we trust that you are not afraid to discuss it with interested members of Congress and to finally reveal the secret Fourth Pillar. Toward that end, please respond no later than Friday, August 16th to our request for a substantive meeting regarding Project 2025 and for an unredacted, unedited copy of your secret Fourth Pillar 180-day action plan. We look forward to hearing from you.

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