After mounting voter backlash to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, Dan Paul, the director of the controversial project, stepped down yesterday.
It’s undeniable that the Donald Trump presidential campaign was seeing rising negatives because of its association with the right-wing playbook. But Trump is denying he had anything to do with Paul leaving Project 2025. And Trump continues to disavow any connection to the crafting of the document.
Trump has been trying to distance himself from Project 2025, saying he has nothing to do with the proposal to gut the federal government. However, many of the people who wrote the plan served in the first Trump administration. And Trump has given many of the elements in Project 2025 his full-throated support in his campaign rally speeches.
San Antonio Congressman Joaquin Castro said Project 2025 is bad public policy but he said despite this recent move it isn’t going away unless the majority of voters rise up and reject it.
“I don’t see this as the demise of Project 2025. I still think that’s Donald Trump’s plan and the Republican plan. Make no mistake that is what they are going to do if Donald Trump wins the presidency. A nationwide abortion ban. Tracking women who have abortions. Cutting taxes for wealthy people by taxing the middle class. I’m honestly surprised that they shared that document in public. It’s so bad,” Castro said.
Castro also called out recent Republican distortions about the record of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now the Democratic party’s presumptive presidential nominee. The San Antonio Democrat said Harris was never the “border czar.”
“One of the lies that they’ve told about Kamala Harris is that she was somehow the border czar. The person who is responsible for working the border is the Secretary of Homeland Security and the person who heads up Customs and Border Protect and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for example,” said Castro.
“Kamala Harris was asked by President Biden to get to the root causes of migration, and over the last three-and-a-half years she has worked hard and earnestly in doing that,” he said.
However, Castro admitted that there could be a new wave of immigration coming from Venezuela after their tainted Sunday presidential election. The government of Venezuela has been violently cracking down on mass street protests against the disputed presidential election in the South American socialist country.
The U.S. has condemned the lack of transparency of the election that keeps President Nicolas Maduro in power. Castro said the U.S. needs to keep an eye on what is happening in Venezuela.
“Making sure that there are free and fair elections has a real consequence, not only for the people of Venezuela so they can pick their own leader, but also for the United States. Because if Maduro continues, you’re going to have a lot of people who give up and flee that country. And they’ll try to come to the United States, they’ll go to Columbia, they’ll go to Chile, and they’ll go to other countries in the region,” he said.
Because of economic hardship and the brutal dictatorship, almost 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2014, the largest exodus in Latin America’s recent history.
Guest:
Rep. Joaquin Castro is the congressman from the TX-20th.
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