'Project 2025' raises genuine concerns

The Heritage Foundation unveiled its so-called Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project as early as April last year. But it was not until Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had to respond to the Democrats' attack on him, citing what the conservative think tank claims is a 922-page blueprint for the next president of the United States, that the project rang any alarm bells for the public.

Reportedly more than 140 people working in the former Trump administration took part in the project, dozens of whom hold posts in the conservative organizations behind the project, including Trump's former senior advisers Mark Meadows and Stephen Miller. That prompted the Democrats to cite the report — which calls for an overhaul of the US governance system to centralize power in the hands of the president — as highlighting the prospective threat to US democracy if Trump wins the White House this year.

In her first public remarks as the leading Democratic presidential candidate, US Vice-President Kamala Harris vowed to defeat two enemies: Trump and "his extreme Project 2025 agenda". In response, the former US president said on social media that he knows nothing about the project. "I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of what they're saying is absolutely ridiculous and abysmal... I have nothing to do with them."