Exclusive: Democrats call for answers on Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation

(WASHINGTON) — At least 38 members of Congress signed a letter sent Monday to the president of the Heritage Foundation requesting he meet with lawmakers to discuss Project 2025 and release the undisclosed fourth pillar of the project called the “180-Day Playbook.”

“Our offices are increasingly hearing from constituents worried about the impact of Project 2025 on the future of our nation,” read the letter obtained exclusively by ABC News.

“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,” it said.

Project 2025, a 922-page playbook of controversial policy proposals intended to guide the next conservative administration, has continued to garner attention as the presidential election campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump heat up.

It includes plans to expand presidential power, eliminate the Department of Education and Department of Homeland Security, privatizing other federal agencies, taking the abortion pill mifepristone off the market, restricting insurance coverage mandates, cutting federal funding for clean energy research, restricting welfare programs and more.

This letter comes as Democrats try to paint Project 2025 as a warning of what is to come under a second Trump term. However, Trump has tried to distance himself from the policy proposals.

“They are extreme, seriously extreme,” said Trump in a July 20 rally. “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want to know anything about it.”

While Trump has said that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, dozens of the former president’s current and former advisers and appointees have authored or have been connected to the project, including former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson and former Acting Secretary of Defense and Special Assistant Christopher Miller.

Project 2025 officials previously told ABC News that it does “not speak for any candidate or campaign.”

However, Trump’s official campaign plan called Agenda47 aligns with several proposals in Project 2025.

Its unpublished so-called fourth pillar, the “180-Day Playbook,” is described on the Project 2025 website as “a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of the new administration to bring quick relief to Americans suffering from the Left’s devastating policies.”

“Project 2025’s policy book is nothing new,” the Project 2025 website reads. “Mandate for Leadership has been published regularly since the 1980s. In it, respected conservative authors espouse conservative policy ideas for incoming administrations to consider. Progressive organizations do the same thing.”

The letter cites concerns over potential executive orders, emergency declarations, presidential directives, and other measures that could be implemented under the “180-Day Playbook,” which is not published on the project’s website.

The letter to the Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, predicts that the playbook contains the “most radical, extreme and dangerous parts of Project 2025.”

It 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.”

ABC News has reached out to the Heritage Foundation for comment concerning the controversy and the letter from members of Congress.

“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,” the letter reads.

The letter campaign was led by Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Congressman Jared Huffman, D-Calif., who founded a congressional task force aimed at putting an end to the hopes laid out in Project 2025.

The letter was also signed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Cori Bush, D-Mo., and others. No Republican lawmakers signed the letter.

It asks Roberts to respond to the request for a meeting, in which no official congressional power is being used to compel his presence, by Friday, Aug. 16.

The Heritage Project and Project 2025 saw a leadership change in July when Project 2025’s director Paul Dans stepped down amid intense scrutiny of the conservative blueprint.

Roberts said at the time that the move was based on the timeline for the drafting of the project, which concluded after the two party conventions.

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