Project 2025

Project 2025, a wide-ranging blueprint for a second Trump presidency created by many people with close ties to the ex-president, has become a weight around Republicans’ necks and a sort of byword for Democrats’ concerns about an extremist future in a second Trump administration. Amid a barrage of criticism of its goals — which include the elimination of the Department of Education, mass deportations and new restrictions on abortion — Trump distanced himself from the program in July. That same month, Project 2025’s leader left Heritage, and the group ceased new policy work…

The files and other items inside weren’t hugely revelatory. The bag and most of its contents appeared to be part of a Heritage internship program, including a document with pictures and lengthy biographies of its interns. Still, the fact that Harris discovered the documents on the streets of Washington could be a minor embarrassment for the think tank, at a time when both Heritage and Project 2025 are under intense scrutiny…

But Harris’s plans for the bag would soon run into D.C. police. After seeing Harris’s tweets, a woman who describes herself on LinkedIn as a Project 2025 staffer called the police and filed a complaint for theft, according to a police report obtained by The Post.

In the account she gave to police, the bag disappeared in the late afternoon of Friday, Aug. 9, when she and another Heritage staffer “left a bag in a parking space while getting into their car,” in a public area a block from Heritage’s headquarters on the 200 block of Massachusetts Avenue NE. When they returned to get it 30 minutes later, the bag was gone…

On Thursday morning, after learning more about the ongoing police investigation, Harris decided to end the dispute himself. With his wife and 7-month-old baby (who was dressed in a police-abolition onesie), Harris walked to Heritage’s office to return the bag.

At no point in the process, Harris said, had anyone from Heritage just emailed him to ask for the bag back, but he was eager to be rid of it…

Inside Heritage’s lobby, Harris and a man who identified himself as Heritage’s head of security sorted through the items in the bag, so the man could give Harris an itemized receipt that he hoped would put the police case to rest. The security chief said he didn’t need to verify the bag’s contents, given that the internship documents inside were not exactly “the keys to the kingdom.”

In a statement to The Post, a Heritage spokesperson said they were glad the bag had been turned over.

“We are pleased that our intern’s property was returned and hope that in the future our neighbors will exercise basic decency so that the police need not be involved,” the statement said…

@ProjectLincoln

The @USNatArchives definitely needs to acquire one of those Project 2025 duffle bags to include in the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library next year.

Future generations need to know the truth about this failed presidency.

— Robert Smith (@NebraskaSower) August 16, 2024

These leaked Project 2025 training videos aren't helping conservatives beat the "weird" allegations pic.twitter.com/7p1HZhZ36R

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) August 15, 2024