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

Text of Letter (PDF)

WASHINGTON – Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) and Congressman Jared Huffman (CA-02), co-founders of the Stop Project 2025 Task Force, led their colleagues on 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,” Pressley, Huffman, and colleagues wrote in their letter. “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, Pressley, Huffman, and their colleagues expressed alarm about the harmful impact 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 lawmakers 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 16^th.

Joining Reps. Pressley and Huffman in sending the letter are Reps. Mark Pocan, Sean Casten, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Hank Johnson, Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Nanette Diaz Barragán, Jasmine Crockett, Lloyd Doggett, Dan Goldman, Barbara Lee, Suzanne Bonamici, Rashida Tlaib, Jamie Raskin, Sylvia García, Seth Moulton, Becca Balint, Diana DeGette, Shri Thanedar, Gerry Connolly, Delia Ramirez, Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jim Costa, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Judy Chu, Jill Tokuda, Gabe Amo, Cori Bush, Seth Magaziner, Maxwell Alejandro Frost, Terri Sewell, Summer Lee, Frederica Wilson, Brendan Boyle, Ted Lieu, and Robert Garcia.

A copy of the letter is available here.

Rep. Pressley is a founding member of a Congressional Task Force designed to stop Project 2025, a thousand-page blueprint for Donald Trump to seize “supreme” powers and radically undermine reproductive rights, LGBTQIA+ equality, racial justice, free speech, and other democratic institutions and freedoms. The Task Force was announced by Rep. Huffman in June and its members are leaders on many of the issues currently under attack by Project 2025.

As a member of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Pressley has repeatedly sounded the alarm on Project 2025, a bucket list extremist policies that would uproot every government agency and disrupt the lives of every person who calls America home.

• On July 30, 2024, Rep. Pressley issued a statement on reports that Paul Dans is stepping down from his role as the head of Project 2025.
• On June 27, 2024, Rep. Pressley discussed the importance of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which combats discrimination in the workplace, and sharply criticized the harmful impact that far-right manifesto Project 2025 would have on the Department of Labor, the EEOC, and vulnerable workers.
• On June 17, 2024, Rep. Pressley joined Rep. Jared Huffman on a letter decrying the FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr for crafting part of Project 2025 in his official capacity as an executive-level employee of the federal government.
• On June 14, Rep. Pressley was announced as a founding member of a Congressional Task Force designed to stop Project 2025 which was founded by Rep. Jared Huffman (CA-02).
• On June 12, 2024, Rep. Pressley outlined the damning link between Project 2025 and the Supreme Court’s corruption.
• In a May 2024 committee hearing, Rep. Pressley highlighted the harm of Project 2025’s plans to replace tens of thousands of civil servants with partisan sycophants and destroy government infrastructure.

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