Over the past year, American progressives have acted with alarm, then focused organizing and messaging, to educate many communities targeted by Project 2025 about its threats, both here and globally. That was our campaign’s early mission, and we remain laser-focused on that goal, along with a giant wave of progressive groups and leaders of all stripes across the country. That is one silver lining of the otherwise extremely dangerous threat of Project 2025: it has alarmed, engaged, and united Americans of different political beliefs and agendas in common cause to protect our democracy.

Congratulations to all who’ve joined this effort. Since spring, a broad, intersectional resistance front has emerged to counter Project 2025’s planned assault on our civil rights and freedoms. As we eye the November election with alternative emotions of worry and hope, many groups are pivoting to focus on protection and prevention strategies and building intersectional coalitions.

Priority Resistance: Prevent & Protect

Since spring, Democratic members of Congress and dozens of frontline pro-democracy civil society groups, among others, began urgent conversations and organized themselves to develop strategy plans and a counter-resistance legislative agenda to Project 2025. These efforts are focused on prevention – proactively priority actions (legal, legislative) to block implementation of Project 2025’s assault on the federal government – and protection – priority steps needed to protect the civil rights of Americans and vulnerable communities. Given the sweeping scope of Project 2025’s agenda, and plan to reverse key civil rights, that covers a lot of people and issues.

The Democratic Congressional Task Force on Project 2025

In July, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) led an urgent call to form a Democratic Caucus Task Force on Project 2025 to raise Congressional attention and action to its threats to the federal government and workforce, and to highlight needed legislative and political leadership to prevent its implementation. Huffman and Rep. Ayana Pressley (D-MA) serve as co-chairs of the Task Force, working with a sub-structure of topic working groups on key areas of needed legislative action. Huffman’s team contacted numerous ally civil society and watchdog groups responding to Project 2025 prior to launching the Task Force and remains in touch with the Working Groups on Project 2025 (see below).

Founding Task Force members reflect its diversity and include: Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (CA-36); Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Nanette Barragán (CA-44); Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chair Judy Chu (CA-28); Equality Caucus and Labor Caucus Chair Mark Pocan (WI-02); Pro-Choice Caucus Co-Chair Diana DeGette (CO-01); Co-Chair of the Congressional Freethought Caucus and Ranking Member of Oversight Jamie Raskin (MD-08); and Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (WA-07). Among them, Huffman, Pressley, Raskin, Jayapal and Sean Casten remain outspoken in the media and on social media. Top Democratic leadership including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have also joined the call to arms.

These efforts are focused on prevention – proactively blocking Project 2025’s planned attacks – and protection – what steps can be taken to protect the civil rights of Americans

“Constitutional patriots and democracy defenders must have proactive and aggressive strategies to fortify our democratic institutions through 2025 and beyond,” noted Raskin when the Task Force launched. “I thank Representative Jared Huffman for rallying our Task Force colleagues around this essential cause: to reject the path of right-wing authoritarianism and defend constitutional democracy and personal freedom in America.”

To date, the Project 2025 Task Force has organized Congressional and public committee hearings, leadership press conferences, chamber-floor debates, and private hallway conversations to mobilize bipartisan and public responses, imploring Republicans to join them. They’ve invited outside experts to brief congress on issues such as Schedule F, a Trump Executive Order that Project 2025 seeks to resurrect to mass-fire 50,000 federal employees, and replace many with hand-picked Christian conservative loyalists. When Trump repeatedly denied awareness of, or connection to, Project 2025 this summer, Task Force members forcefully called out this lie, reminding everyone that Project 2025’s key authors are former Trump campaign officials, and his official campaign platform, Agenda 47, closely mirrors Project 2025.

Building pro-active bipartisan commitment to certify elections: The Task Force also joined a civil society call demanding that Republican leaders commit in advance to supporting fair elections and certifying the vote.  As of mid-September, six GOP leaders had done so, backing a bipartisan Unity Statement, led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Don Bacon (R-Neb) and supported by 32 House members. Other GOP Reps. are: Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), Nick LaLota (R-NY), and Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY).

Pre-emptive Actions: In September, the Task Force sent a letter to Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, and the leader of Project 2025, demanding that he make public its still-secret “180-Day Playbook” of “Day One” instructions for carrying out Project 2025’s agenda. It was ignored, but served to put the world on fresh notice about the possible un-Constitutional actions the Playbook may include. The Task Force also launched a confidential “tip line” inviting anyone with knowledge of what’s in the Playbook to contact it. (Note: Stop The Coup 2025 organized a public petition signed by hundreds of people across the country backing the Task Force letter that remains open for signatories on Change.org. The letter was sent to Heritage signed by hundreds of people and met with silence. Other groups also launched petitions.)

The Task Force confidential “tip line” seeks leads on the 180-Day Playbook

Protecting the Civil Service: The Task Force has met regularly to review its evolving strategic plan of action, focused on priority areas of concern. These have focused on identifying the government’s vulnerability to attack and the consequences of policy reversals, what divisions or members of government are most likely to be targeted for firing or investigation by a vengeful Trump 2.0 administration (see related story, The Politics of Retribution), and what regulatory and legislative steps can be taken to put a pre-emptive brake on planned Project 2025 attacks. This work is not made public, but some aides to Task Force members participate in the civil society-led Working Groups on Project 2025. (see below).

Highlight events: In late August, Task Force members organized sessions at the Democratic National Convention featuring a range of speakers to amplify public awareness of Project 2025. It held a livestreamed multimedia hearing on September 24th featuring top government officials including Jeffries, Barbara Lee, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, and others, and featuring testimonies by ordinary Americans about its threats and impacts on their lives. Available here.

Civil Society Expert Working Groups

For months, a growing roster of civil society groups, government lawyers, and individuals have participated in Working Groups on Project 2025 convened by Democracy Forward. They include well-established pro-democracy organizations like the ACLU and People 

for the American Way, as well as sector-specific groups focused on immigration, education, LGTBQIA+ issues, democracy, regulatory issues and the weaponization of government. These groups have met via Zoom and taken a divide-and-conquer approach to the monumental task of developing a counter-resistance plan to stop Project 2025. Several groups have also produced primers on Project 2025 and key aspects of the right-wing attack, including The People’s Guide to the Anti-Democratic Legal Playbook, by Democracy Forward, a useful overview of critical SCOTUS cases that may pave ground for Project 2025.

Counter-engineering Project 2025: Luckily, the conservative blueprint provides a detailed guide to develop a strategic counter-resistance plan to its agenda. Given its enormous scop, the civil society Working Groups identified just the most important sectors and threats that demand proactive attention. An important one is the Weaponization of Government, where Project 2025 proposes “day one” firing of top Biden appointees and federal employees in key departments like Justice, the FBI, Homeland Security with a focus on immigration -- and regulatory agencies such as the EPA and the IRS and HHS. They have adopted a “threat matrix” to rank these threats in order of priority. Working Group participants have busily taken on different challenges. The results of this work remain confidential within its membership, but informs briefing papers and legislative action being advances on multiple fronts.

Protect Democracy is among groups developing tools to support agencies and individuals to respond to possible investigations under a Trump 2.0; the nonprofit has been a frontline actor in the building resistance to Project 2025. As more fight-back tools are made public, we will post them in our Resources section.

Legal Resistance on Election Integrity and Broader Democratic Attacks:

As growing number of progressive lawyers, Constitutional scholars, and think tanks are also using the unfolding right-wing attacks to plan legal counter-responses (see The Unfolding Agenda and SCOTUS and State Cases for examples). Among them, Democratic lawyer Marc Elias and States United are at the forefront of this effort. He launched Democracy Docket as an online forum to discuss court cases and challenges, and hosts a podcast to engage legal experts in debating the threats. Elias was recruited to head a and legal team for the Walz-Harris campaign and has assembled a crack team, he feels, who are prepared for the voting rights challenges.

In the 2020 election, Democrats won 64 of 65 election lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign —with Elias spearheading the majority. He’s so successful that even Steve Bannon speaks of him with admiration.

As Elias warns all who listen, America should anticipate the possibility that the November election fight will take weeks to play out, possibly past the electoral college deadline of November 19th, and says Republicans will seek to send the decision to the Supreme Court to declare a victor. He provides updates on his podcast and social media platforms – a daily tweet stream – and hosts webinars. On September 6, Elias reported that while the right-wing is doubling down on election litigation, it is not winning -- a note of hope from the battlefront. Here is a great overview of the frontlines with Constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe weighing in, along with Elias, and lawyers Joyce Vance and Maya Wiley.

Looking ahead, Court Accountability Action, American Oversight, and State Democracy Defenders are developing a comprehensive website with profiles of the people/ groups likely to implement Project 2025 plans, if Trump wins. Protect Democracy is among groups working to link groups engaged in litigation against right-wing attacks. CREW and American Oversight continue to file Freedom of Information requests seeking public records information from agencies about possible Trump appointees.

“On good days and bad, through thick and thin, we need to stay sharply focused on the stakes of this election, not the tactics. To defeat Trump and Trumpism, we must remain fearlessly pro-democracy,” Elias wrote recently for Democracy Docket. “This starts with being clear-eyed about the risk.” (See tips box below for What can you do to help resist Project 2025?)

Voting rights groups encourage people to engage local officials now to ask about steps being taken to provide security at local voting sites. Another tip: plan when you’ll vote, and consider there may be lines, so don’t wait until the last minute. Consider inviting neighbors or local friends over for a pre-vote coffee or social, then go together to vote to help assure your votes will be counted.

Taking to the Streets in November and Post-Election Resistance

Given the existential threat of Project 2025 and its unfolding agenda to our democracy and civil rights, it’s important to be publicly visible and unite with others in our collective resistance. Our campaign has held several rallies in New York and DC in recent months to call out Project 2025; so have allies. On noon on Saturday, November 2, we plan to join the planned Women’s March in DC to highlight the threats to women’s rights, including reproductive health, and give voice to the growing resistance. Our campaign will be there, marching behind a Stop Project 2025 banner. Join us!

As our campaign has stressed, the right-wing architects of Project 2025 have a long game in mind to retake America and reshape it to be a Christian nationalist nation. That calls for a counter-long game, and developing a progressive counter-strategy to address the legal and legislative attacks that won’t stop, even if their side loses the national election. There are myriad US progressive groups and grassroots coalitions who’ve developed vision papers that capture the progressive democracy we dream of building.

They include Gen Z activists who are allies in our campaign and mobilizing youth across the US and world to raise their voices. “Gen Z knows what kind of future we want to build, declares Voters for Tomorrow, a get-out-the-youth-vote group that produced Gen Z’s Guide to Project 2025, one where “all enjoy equal rights and protection under the law.” 

Post-Election Resistance: Looking ahead, we’re keeping our eye on how those most vulnerable or targeted by Project 2025 will need to be protected and survive if the GOP secure a victory in November. You can find a starter list of preparedness steps and tips for NGOs and individuals to consider in our online Toolkit for Community Organizers.

A final tip: Use your voice now. Our campaign is one of myriad groups who have developed messaging about Project 2025 for open use on social media. The hashtag is #StopProject2025. Our This is Personal video series on You Tube gives voice to how Project 2025 will hurt them. Trailer here. We invite you to add your voice to this campaign (self-record an ad on your phone, tag us). As we stress, this is personal. 

— Anne-christine d’Adesky