Politics and views in the United States.

The authors of Project 2025 say they'll carry out a hard-right agenda, voting rights advocates raise alarm over Trump's pick to lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, and conservatives aim to cut federal funding for public broadcasting. 

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to 2024 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

What we're doing is systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army of aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle.

Conservative political operative Paul Dan says Project 2025 will help President-elect Donald Trump to carry out a hard-right agenda.

The 900-page roadmap calls for national abortion and contraception bans, an expansion of presidential powers, and firing any federal employees seen as disloyal.

During the campaign, Trump denied knowledge of it, despite some top advisors working on the project.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Trump's pick for Secretary of State, downplayed it as just the work of a think tank.

They come up with ideas, they say things, "Look, I like Heritage Foundation.

I agree with some of the things they stand for, but there's a bunch of scholars and people that turn around and work on different projects.

But our candidate for president is Donald Trump."

Democrats call it a threat to democracy.

They also pointed to Trump's calls for jailing those who served on the House January 6th committee.

California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff says the threats are less about revenge than removing constitutional limits on the White House.

"This is about sending a message that no one better hold him to account in his second term.

No one better look at what he does, do their congressional job."

President Joe Biden is reportedly considering preemptive pardons for committee members, but some Democrats say that would only undermine their work.

Project 2025 could also change how elections are run, even criminalizing some voter registration errors and ending federal aid for state registration drives.

One provision sees feds getting access to state voter rolls, which critics say could mean voter purges.

Trump's pick to lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, attorney Harmeet Dhillon, has repeatedly sued to roll back voting rights.

"Our governments, because of the way that we do elections, are sending ballots to people who aren't entitled to vote.

They're registering people who aren't entitled to vote."

Vote fraud almost never happens, but if confirmed, Dhillon would oversee hundreds of civil rights attorneys handling anti-discrimination and voting rights cases. 2025 also calls for aggressive investigations of leaks to the press and the defunding of public broadcasting, including NPR and PBS.

Nicole Hannah-Jones with the Center for Journalism and Democracy says that would be bad for an independent press.

"We exist to serve as a check on power, to be a watchdog.

And so when, in fact, an administration is attacking the press, they are attacking the public's right to know."

Trump has routinely threatened any press he considers critical.

He said he'd pull the federal licenses from networks he doesn't like and bring the FCC under presidential authority.

I'm Katherine Carley for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

Find our trust indicators at publicnewsservice.org.