Nevada Democrats continue to assail Trump over Project 2025 and its effects on middle class
Nevada State Democratic Party Chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno, left, responds to a question from a reporter during a news conference at Clark County Democratic Party offices Friday, July 19, 2024. Speakers contrasted President Biden’s policies and the conservatives’ Project 2025.
Saturday, July 20, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Democrats in Nevada are warning that another Donald Trump presidency, with the Project 2025 right-wing manifesto as its bedrock, would “chip away at our fundamental freedoms piece by piece.”
Nevada Assemblywoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno gave that assessment Friday at the party’s headquarters in Las Vegas, while her capitol colleague, state Sen. Rochelle Nguyen, said that it didn’t matter that Trump didn’t directly reference a platform during his lengthy acceptance speech Thursday night at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“Trump didn’t spend any time on his agenda, and he doesn’t have to. We know what Donald Trump wants to do in his second term,” Nguyen said. “His Project 2025 agenda is extreme, deeply unpopular and out of step with the majority of American people.”
Project 2025, authored by the Heritage Foundation, is a nearly 1,000-page handbook for the next Republican presidential administration.
The “presidential transition project” proposes changes in the federal government like eliminating the Department of Education.
It also has clauses to ensure federal government workers remain loyal to the president.
The party leaders drew a bright line between Trump, his running mate JD Vance and Project 2025 and the policies of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
They listed the ways the nonwealthy would be adversely affected economically with tax cuts for major corporations and their chief executives, the elimination of overtime pay, a higher retirement age, and an inability for Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices.
They stressed how reproductive and women’s rights would be negatively transformed with the threatened nationwide abortion ban and criminalization of medication abortions, restrictions on contraceptives and a ban on in-vitro fertilization.
Freddy Viszneki II, business agent for the Ironworkers Union Local 433 in Las Vegas, said Project 2025 would destroy the middle class and strip worker rights
“We have one candidate this November who will be rebuilding the economy, lowering prices and providing good-paying jobs, and we have another candidate who will destroy the economy and eliminate the middle class again,” he said.
Nguyen — who said she was working with state Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro on a bill for next spring’s Legislative session to protect in-vitro fertilization in Nevada — said her young daughter asked her this week if she would lose her ability to go to the doctor under Trump.
“She’s 12 years old, and that’s what she sees,” Nguyen said. “The idea that my 12-year-old daughter in 2024 potentially has less rights than I had, and has potentially less rights than my own mother had, is beyond incomprehensible to me, but that’s exactly what Donald Trump would like to do.”
Nguyen said she understood why Trump would distance himself publicly from Project 2025.
“It’s not a very popular idea for our country, and I know that he sees that, but the fact that 140 of his closest associates and members of his previous Cabinet actually worked on creating Project 2025, and actually were creators of the RNC platform, the GOP platform — I say he can say whatever he wants, but the truth is in the pudding,” she said. “He knows it.”
Amid continued pressure on Biden from high-profile members of his own party to drop out of the race over age and fitness-related concerns, Monroe-Moreno said she supports any decision Biden makes about running; “as long as he is in the race, I have his back, and I’m in the race with him,” she said.
Monroe-Moreno, the chairwoman of Nevada Democratic Party, was among the welcoming party to meet Biden at Harry Reid International Airport on Monday when he landed to begin a three-day campaign swing through Nevada — a trip that was cut short on Wednesday when Biden tested positive for COVID-19.
“We must reelect President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in November. All roads to the White House, they go through Nevada, (and) all avenues to a Democratic majority in Congress start with (Sen. Jacky) Rosen, (and U.S. Reps. Dina) Titus, (Steven) Horsford and (Susie) Lee. We cannot win without winning Nevada,” Monroe-Moreno said. “So, we must reelect our president and our vice president, send Jacky Rosen back to the U.S. Senate, and send our entire Democratic delegation back to Congress.”
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