In Chicago, Democrats bring a new enemy to the stage: the Project 2025 book

CHICAGO - On the Convention podium at the United Center, the Democrats brought an unexpected and unwieldy protagonist. A gigantic volume, dragged under the spotlight by one speaker after another, day after day. It is the hundreds of pages of Project 2025 of the American conservative movement, in a maxi version to amplify its effect. The aim: to offer a sketch of the agenda inspired by Donald Trump and which, they say, must shock voters.

Quotations of paragraphs followed one another on stage, like preachers would do with Bible verses. And like a veritable Republican 'bible of extremism' they treated its almost 900 pages, composed by an unprecedented coalition of dozens of think tanks that want to be ready from day one of a second Trump advent in the White House. It is a summation of often radical ideas to dismantle and reconfigure the so-called 'deep state', or 'administrative state', the de facto modern government machine born with the New Deal.

So that the 'enemy' would not escape anyone's notice, they projected Project 2025 HQ (headquarters) in large letters on the facade of the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. Above all, they created that gigantic copy of the volume circulated at the United Center, officially titled Mandate for Leadership. The first to bring it to the stage was Mallory McMorrow, 37-year-old state senator from Michigan and one of the creators of the gesture, who slammed the volume on the lectern on Monday at the opening of the convention. "They put in writing all the extreme actions that Trump intends to decide and we read them.

The volume, physically or metaphorically, then passed like a burning baton from hand to hand to new speakers. On Monday, Michigan Senator Gary Peters spoke about it again: 'Trump and Vance's Project 2025 eliminates protections for workers, the union, cuts welfare, and gives tax breaks to billionaires'. On Tuesday, among others, it was Pennsylvania Congressman Malcolm Kenyatta's turn to bring it into the spotlight: 'Usually the Republicans want to ban the books, in this case they want to impose it on us'. On Wednesday, it was Colorado Governor Jared Polis who leafed through the volume in public. And then comedian Kenan Thompson, who ran a series of themed mini-interviews with citizens 'put at risk' by Project 2025. Speaking to a gynaecologist, he recalled that 'page 529 revives the Comstock Act of the nineteenth century', a federal anti-obscenity law challenged to criminalise abortion. Speaking to a teacher, she quoted: 'Page 319 calls for the end of the Department of Education'. He concluded: 'We can stop that from happening by electing Kamala Harris'. Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz also targeted the Project's designs in his acceptance speech as "disturbing and dangerous".

Trump is actually aware that Project 2025 is a problem because of its ideological overtones. The authors are several of his former associates and allies in an effort coordinated by the Heritage Foundation, a traditional Republican thinking powerhouse converted to Trump's America First. Trump's deputy, JD Vance, is very close to the Heritage leadership. Trump has formally disavowed the agenda, saying he 'doesn't know what it is' and that he considers it 'too strict' anyway. He has also distanced himself in part because he resents anyone, friend or foe, suggesting what to do. The detachment, at least in words, has caused an upheaval at the top, but Trump has not been able to shake it off.