Susan Wild: Project 2025 a ‘mission’ for many GOP House members

Congresswoman Susan Wild warns voters that Republicans in the US House see Project 2025 as “their mission” in an interview with The Keystone. 

Congresswoman Susan Wild (D-Lehigh) is clear that democracy and reproductive rights are both on the ballot this November. 

She points to Project 2025, a right-wing plan for Donald Trump to govern, as a clear reminder of that. 

The goals of Project 2025, which was written by many former members of Trump’s policy team, include ending abortion nationally, significantly undermining public schools, terminating the Affordable Care Act and gutting all environmental protections.

And it isn’t just Donald Trump who will enact this, according to US Rep. Wild, a Democratic member from eastern Pennsylvania. He’ll have a lot of help from elected Republican members of the House of Representatives. 

“I serve with a whole bunch of members in the House of Representatives who see this as their mission – Project 2025 is their mission,” said Wild in an interview with The Keystone.

“And it’s not just what we refer to as the Extremist Caucus or even in a less dignified way, the Wacko Caucus. I mean, there are a lot of people on the other side of the aisle who are very committed to taking away women’s reproductive rights.”

“So Donald Trump or no Donald Trump, we have to be very, very aware. There are many, many people, many politicians who want to see this happen.”

While Donald Trump has recently claimed of Project 2025 that “I know nothing about it” and “I have no idea of who’s behind it,” 38 of the people who compiled and edited the 920-page mandate were appointed or nominated by him to positions in his administration or transition.

The overall effort to create Project 2025 was spearheaded by a right-wing organization called the Heritage Foundation, at whose events, Trump has been a keynote speaker.

Wild sees the Project 2025 agenda, which will eliminate birth control access for millions of women, end IVF nationally and allow Donald Trump to use the Justice Department to seek revenge on his opponents, as a huge threat to democracy.

“Sometimes a concept like democracy seems nebulous,” the Congresswoman noted. “But I’m here to tell you that I work with people who are committed to overthrowing our democracy. They showed that on January 6th, 2021 and it is absolutely clear that given another opportunity, we will be right back there and they will probably have learned better ways to go about it.”

Project 2025 provides a blueprint for overthrowing democracy by consolidating far more power under a president Trump, who would fire a minimum of 50,000 non-partisan civil servants responsible for running all of the expert federal agencies that exist to protect and benefit all Americans. 

Their positions will instead be filled with Trump/ MAGA sycophants who will be more loyal to Trump than the Constitution. 

John McEntee, Trump’s former head of the White House personnel office who now has a senior advisor position on Project 2025, has been busy vetting MAGA candidates to take over the formerly non-partisan civil service positions.

Project 2025 also takes a very direct aim at laws which prevent discrimination. Protections for women, minorities, LGBTQ people and the disabled, in the workplace and elsewhere in society, will be eliminated. Many unions will also be disbanded. 

All of this is why Wild is warning Pennsylvanians about the dangers of giving far more power to a president than was ever set out in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers.

“You never want somebody to have so much power as president of this country, that they essentially are an authoritarian dictator,” Wild stressed. ”We have a system of checks and balances in this country that we need to have as the hallmark of democracy and we’re really, really close to losing that.”

“It’s really, really terrifying.”

Project 2025 sets out a very detailed program for Trump that would vastly increase his power – including by ending the independence of federal agencies like the FBI, the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission and placing them directly under his control.

To protect democracy, which includes maintaining a balance between the president, Congress and an independent judiciary, Wild urges Pennsylvanians to vote for Democrats up and down the ticket in November.

“The Democratic Party is not perfect and obviously we have our own set of challenges this year. But I will tell you this, the Democratic Party stands for democracy. It stands for equality. It stands for equal rights in this country, regardless of your gender, your race, or your ethnicity.”

Trump has already vowed to bring back his first term Muslim ban, promising that if re-elected it will be “even bigger than before and much stronger.”

It makes Wild sad to think that her dad, who served in the Air Force during WWII and in the Korean War, would be “utterly bewildered” by Trump’s actions, including that Trump is proud to be friends with dictators.

“All of the years that have been put into creating a great democracy, saving a great democracy, fighting for it in wars, would suddenly be rendered non-existent by the election of someone like Trump,” she said sadly.

She urges people to exercise their right to vote in November. 

“Not enough people exercise it, by the way … The fact that we would give it away to a party (the Republicans) that has seen fit to erode and eviscerate those rights is just hard for me to comprehend and something that I will spend the rest of this year fighting to make sure people understand how vital it is.”