Scoop: House Dems blitz dozens of Republicans over Project 2025
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Photo courtesy of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
House Democrats' campaign arm is leaning hard into Project 2025 in the final stages of the election, launching billboards in more than two dozen districts blasting the conservative blueprint for a second Trump presidency, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Democrats have increasingly tried to tether Republicans to the plan as their polling shows it to be one of the most potent attacks on the GOP.
- Former President Trump has repeatedly disavowed and denied any links to Project 2025, with many Republicans also distancing themselves from it.
- "All of the data we have shows that Project 2025 just has huge interest and traction, more so than virtually every other issue," Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the leader of a task force on countering Project 2025, told Axios.
Driving the news: The static, digital and mobile billboards are backed by a five-figure investment from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and set to run in 27 House districts.
- 22 of the seats are held by Republican incumbents, and another five are being vacated by retiring Democrats or were created in redistricting.
- The billboards go after Project 2025's calls to restrict abortion access and government-sponsored health care, referring to it as "House Republicans' Project 2025."
Zoom out: Democrats up and down the ballot have gone all-in on trying to tie Republicans to Project 2025 in an effort to blunt the party's attempts to lurch to the center on issues like abortion.
- Several Democratic congressional campaigns are running ads tying their opponents to Project 2025.
- "Here's this blueprint they were stupid enough to publish where we can point to specific pages," Huffman said.
What they're saying: "The DCCC is holding [Republicans] accountable for their extremism and unpopular policies, making sure they are front of mind for voters as they cast their ballots," said DCCC spokesperson Viet Shelton.
- National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Will Reinert told Axios: '"When Democrats recognized their own open-border, pro-crime, and pro-inflation policies were hated by Americans, they fabricated a desperate and false attack."
- "Money talks: Hakeem Jeffries' Super PAC is slashing ad reservations as Democrats are driven on defense," he added. (An HMP spokesperson told Axios cuts were not being made and that the data highlighted by Republicans are a procedural quirk).
Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional information. A previous version of this story was corrected to show that the billboards are set to run in 27 House districts (not 26).
