Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally July 9 at the Trump National Doral Golf Club in Doral, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

“They are seeking to erase and are seeking to take us backward,” Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis told theGrio.

While Donald Trump, the former president and current presumptive Republican nominee, has distanced himself from Project 2025 – a conservative policy agenda billed as a playbook for his potential return to the White House – political leaders and elected officials are escalating their rhetoric about it and its implications, particularly for Black and brown communities. 

On Wednesday, while delivering the keynote address at Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.’s 71st Boulé in Dallas, Vice President Kamala Harris warned that the 900-page document of proposals includes cutting Social Security, repealing the Biden-Harris administration’s $35 cap on insulin, eliminating the Department of Education and ending federal programs like Head Start. 

“Let us be clear: This represents an outright attack on our children, our families, and our future,” said Harris.

“I do believe this is the most existential, consequential, and important election of our lifetimes,” she added.

“When our constituents become familiar with Project 2025, I believe they will stand in line to vote blue,” Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., said of Democrats’ chances in the November elections – including the reelection of President Joe Biden and Harris.

Wilson told theGrio she and her Congressional Black Caucus colleagues have a “responsibility” to engage and educate Black voters about the agenda that the Heritage Foundation’s president described as a mission to “institutionalize Trumpism.” If necessary, the congresswoman said, lawmakers should “even strike fear in our people, to let them know what Trump is planning for the world, but especially for our children.”

Wilson excoriated Project 2025 as “pure evil,” saying, “It is racism at its core, and it is anti-everything we believe in as a country.” 

That is why she firmly supports Biden and Harris, even as the president faces calls to step aside as the Democratic Party’s nominee. During a Monday night virtual Black Caucus meeting, which was joined by Biden, who laid out his second-term plans to boost economic opportunities for Black Americans, Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., flagged the dangers of Project 2025 with members, according to Wilson.

“It’s a gift to us from MAGA for a big, big win … I believe Biden and Harris can win,” she exclaimed.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris hold hands during a May 9 ceremony at the White House to celebrate the WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces. The Biden-Harris administration and others are sounding the alarm on Project 2025. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) –

Austin Davis, Pennsylvania’s first Black and youngest lieutenant governor, told theGrio that elected officials must be “clear-eyed about what a second Trump term will mean for Black Americans.”

The 34-year-old said the conservative agenda laid out in Project 2025 will “destroy diversity, equity and inclusion programs, affirmative action programs, [and] many of the things that have helped push Black families to the middle class.” 

He continued: “They are seeking to erase and are seeking to take us backward.”

Many of the policy proposals in Project 2025 are likely unpopular with Black Americans and other marginalized groups. The project calls for eliminating programs and federal rules related to racial and gender equity and discrimination, eliminating tens of thousands of federal jobs, and undertaking mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. 

The agenda, crafted by former Trump administration officials, also calls for centralizing the presidency’s power over historically nonpolitical and independent agencies like the Department of Justice. 

“If we’re not outraged, then we’re not awake,” said Maya Wiley, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. She spoke during a Tuesday panel hosted by the Center for American Progress about the myriad ways Project 2025 will “dismantle American democracy.”

Panelists decried numerous policy proposals in the Heritage Foundation plan, including further restricting abortion care, eliminating worker protection rights and undoing decades-long programs to advance civil rights.

Wiley especially bemoaned Project 2025’s threat to the civil rights of Black Americans, noting the recent 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that “gave federal agencies the power to create the regulations that say you can’t actually discriminate against Black people.”

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“That’s how we integrated schools. That’s how we told hospitals they had to treat people of color,” she explained. “Project 2025 explicitly says we don’t want you to be able to stop employers from doing things that may make it hard for a whole category of people not to get treated fairly because it might hurt white people.”

Democratic strategist Joel Payne said that while “a lot of the recent conversation has been about the reaction to what happened after the [presidential] debate a few weeks ago … the story that I think is starting to gain some attention as maybe something that was happening beneath the surface was a greater understanding and greater awareness of Project 2025.”

As Project 2025 grows in the public consciousness – evidenced by the increasing Google searches of the term – Trump and his campaign have sought to distance themselves from its political residue.

“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, last week. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Payne said Trump “will do his level best to deflect from the truth that appears in plain sight, which is that this is something that’s blessed by Trump world, even if it’s not something that is run out of the Trump campaign.” 

A recent CNN report found that at least 140 people who worked for Trump are involved with Project 2025.

“These are people who will staff a Trump administration, people who will advise on a Trump administration,” Payne contended. “This is the blood and guts of the next Trump presidency.”