Republican U.S. Senate candidate Larry Hogan called Project 2025 “absurd and dangerous” in an op-ed for The Washington Post on Friday.
The proposed presidential transition project is led by two of former President Donald Trump‘s administration officials and spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. It also includes an advisory board that features many familiar names from the Trump administration, including six of his former Cabinet secretaries.
The controversial project focuses on reducing federal regulations, reforming government agencies, and promoting conservative values across economic, social, and environmental issues, seeking significant changes by 2025, if Trump, the Republican nominee, is reelected.
Project 2025 also outlines dozens of proposed actions on immigration in its nearly 1,000-page handbook. It calls for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to be allowed to carry out “civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the United States, without warrant where appropriate.”
However, in a post to Truth Social earlier this month, Trump wrote: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it.”
Hogan, a moderate former governor of Maryland, wrote on Friday that those “absurd and dangerous” policies, along with “disbanding the Education Department, potentially abolishing the Federal Reserve, and withdrawing the abortion medication mifepristone from the market,” must be rejected.
“This radical approach is out of touch with the American people. Most Americans — regardless of party affiliation — have more in common than many realize. They want common-sense solutions to address the cost of living, make our communities safer, and secure the border while fixing the broken immigration system. Instead of addressing these problems, Project 2025 opts for total war against the other side, making it impossible to find common ground,” wrote Hogan, who did not attend the Republican National Convention (RNC).
When reached via email on Saturday morning, Hogan’s campaign spokesperson Blake Kernen told Newsweek, “Governor Hogan has never been afraid to speak out and call it exactly like he sees it. In the Senate, he will be the same independent leader Marylanders know and trust. He will stand up to extremism and defend the core American values that Project 2025 targets.”
Newsweek has emailed The Heritage Foundation Saturday morning for comment.
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Hogan, who is facing Democrat Angela Alsobrooks in the state’s U.S. Senate race, seemed to take personal aim at Project 2025’s plans for a top-to-bottom overhaul of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the federal bureaucracy.
This includes curtailing the FBI‘s program against what it deems misinformation; the reinstatement of former service members who lost their jobs after refusing the COVID-19 vaccine; and the abolition of what is described as the “woke agenda” within the Pentagon.
“My father was an FBI agent who believed deeply that this work should not be infected by politics. It was that approach that gave him credibility when he became the first Republican in Congress to come out in favor of the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon. It’s true that the ideal of impartial justice that my father embodied has not always been realized. But that does not mean it should be abandoned by choice and design,” Hogan wrote in his op-ed.
He also said the conservative blueprint is a “threat to our way of life” as Americans.
Hogan, noting there are approximately 150,000 federal workers living in Maryland, said Project 2025’s plan to remake the federal bureaucracy is also cause for concern.
The plan includes the reclassification of tens of thousands of federal employees under a proposed “Schedule F” to facilitate easier firing and hiring of personnel aligned with conservative values. The goal is to ensure that federal agencies are staffed by individuals who will implement the president’s agenda without resistance from career civil servants.
“The goal is to remove nonpartisan civil servants, most of whom patriotically do their jobs without fanfare or political agendas, and replace them with loyalists to the president,” the former governor wrote.
In an op-ed for Newsweek last week, Jeffrey H. Anderson, president of American Main Street Initiative, who helped author the Project 2025 proposals, rejected recent alarms about the proposed policies.
“These claims have things completely backwards. Project 2025’s proposals would reinforce our system of government, not depart from it. They would strengthen our checks and balances, not weaken them,” Anderson wrote.
In June, Hogan received a surprise endorsement when Trump said: “I’d like to see him win. I think he has a good chance to win. I would like to see him win. And we’ve got to take the majority.”
Asked whether he publicly rejects Trump’s endorsement in an interview, Hogan replied: “Well I just said I didn’t seek it, I didn’t want to have it and I have no interest in it. It’s not something we’re going to be promoting that’s for sure in a state Donald Trump lost by 33 points. It doesn’t really carry a lot of voters over to our cause so I don’t think we’re going to have any interest in accepting it.”
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