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The Harris-Walz campaign is targeting Asian American voters in battleground states with two new ads that build on its attacks on Project 2025, a multimillion-dollar political initiative spearheaded by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.
Project 2025 lays out its vision for the next GOP presidency and has gained attention for what Democrats condemn as extreme policy positions. Goals outlined in its strategic document include banning abortion nationwide, stopping Medicare from negotiating drug prices, and promoting “traditional” families.
Though former President Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the project, saying that he’s “not going to read it” at the first presidential debate, the Harris campaign has sought to continue President Joe Biden’s strategy of linking the right-wing playbook to Trump by referring to it as “Trump’s Project 2025 agenda.”
The Harris campaign’s latest ads “Disaster” and “Set us back” emphasize potential harms to Asian American families based on Project 2025’s agenda for education, immigration, reproductive rights, health care, and gun control—all issues that are top of mind for AAPI voters this election. The ads will roll out Tuesday across digital channels like Meta, YouTube, Connected TV and iHeart Radio, as well as nearly 70 different Asian American-serving broadcast outlets.
“Trump vilified Asian Americans, incited a devastating wave of anti-Asian violence during the pandemic, and failed them as president,” Andrew Peng, the Harris campaign’s Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander spokesperson, said in a statement shared first with The Yappie. “From fostering hate to coming after our health care, voters deserve to know the ways Trump’s Project 2025 agenda would take our families and communities backwards.”
Targeting voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, both ads mention Project 2025’s proposed crackdowns on birth control, increased costs for health care, and weaker gun laws.
“Disaster” further highlights the political initiative’s proposed reductions and reforms to the H-1B visa program, which issues temporary nonimmigrant visas that allow companies to hire foreign workers for specialty roles in industries like technology, engineering, and medicine.
The Project 2025’s strategic document calls H-1B an “oft-abused program” and recommends that “the diversity visa lottery should be repealed, chain migration should be ended while focusing on the nuclear family, and the existing employment visa program should be replaced with a system to award visas only to the ‘best and brightest.’”
These working visas have historically benefited Asian immigrants by a large margin—especially those coming from India or China.
Meanwhile, “Set us back” points to another proposal that aims to disband the Department of Education, which oversees financial aid, funding for children with disabilities, cases of discrimination in classrooms, and more. Project 2025, however, claims that the agency is filled with bureaucrats who “inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms.”
Its architects also believe funding for higher education institutions should be narrowed to historically Black colleges and universities and tribally controlled colleges, which would effectively exclude Asian American- and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions (AANAPISI). Half of AAPI students across the U.S. attend an AANAPISI, according to OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates,
The new ads—the Harris campaign’s fourth ad buy targeting Asian American voters in battleground states—launch at a critical moment, with just over a month until Election Day. A recent survey from AAPI Data and APIAVote found that Asian American voters currently view Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris more favorably than Trump. She leads him by 38 points—66% say they plan to vote for Harris and 28% say they plan to vote for Trump.
The candidates’ running mates reflect a similar, though slightly closer, trend in voter support, with 56% of surveyed Asian American voters reporting a favorable view of Harris’ VP pick Tim Walz, and 21% reporting a favorable view of Trump’s pick JD Vance.
The Biden campaign made Trump’s relationship to Project 2025 a core part of its messaging with Asian American voters prior to Biden’s exit from the race. A social media blitz released in March focused on the potential economic and health care costs of a second Trump term.
Though Trump himself has attempted to disavow Project 2025 and was not one of its authors, the project’s leaders include some of Trump’s former advisors and current allies, such as his ex-budget director Russell Vought and ex-White House presidential personnel office director John McEntee.
Shawna Chen contributed reporting.
Editor’s note: Andrew Peng co-founded The Yappie but left his role as president prior to joining the Biden-Harris campaign earlier this year. He is no longer involved with The Yappie’s operations.
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