Kenan Thompson, the longest-tenured cast member in “Saturday Night Live” history, strode on to the stage Wednesday night with an oversize book and thumped it heavily onto the lectern: an exaggerated version of Project 2025, a controversial set of conservative policy proposals outlining an agenda for the next Republican president that Democrats have brandished all week.
“Y’all remember this big old book, from before?” Thompson asked to roars of laughter from the auditorium. “You ever see a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time? Here it is.”
Former President Donald Trump himself is not behind Project 2025, and he and his running mate, JD Vance, have been seeking to distance themselves from the specifics inside the 900-page plan.
But that has not stopped Democrats from wielding it as cudgel. Speaker after speaker has referenced the blueprint in Chicago this week, underscoring its sweeping proposals to reshape the federal government, curb abortion rights and climate protections, and drastically reduce immigration into the United States.
“If Donald Trump has his way, he’s going to push through their extreme agenda — Project 1825,” Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said Wednesday, joking about what Democrats have called its backward policy. “I mean — I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I roll that back. I got that wrong. Project 1925 — oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Project 2025.”
Onstage later, Thompson took calls from several regular Americans who appeared on a screen behind him. He riffed about how their lives would fare under the policy proposals in the book. The bit got off to a bumpy start when Matt, an AV tech from Nevada was, perhaps ironically, muted.
Next came Becky, who has been married to her wife for eight years.
“Very, very cute,” Thompson said. “But I have got some bad news for you. On page 584, Project 2025 calls for elimination of protections for LGBTQ+ Americans.”
“That’s terrible,” Becky responded.
In a statement, a Trump spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said Democrats were “lying” in tying Trump to the project because they had “no good policy of their own to stand on” and that Trump was most trusted on the issues that matter most to Americans.
“The truth is President Trump has said repeatedly Project 2025 has nothing to do with his campaign,” she said.
Some of Trump’s allies, however, were involved in its crafting, and Vance wrote a foreword for a forthcoming book by its principal architect. The publication of that book has been delayed until after the presidential election.
Hence, the prop. On the first day of the Democratic National Convention, Mallory McMorrow, a state senator from Michigan, hoisted the book in the air and slammed it onto the lectern. “This is Project 2025,” she declared.
The next day, the book made another appearance, this time in the hands of Malcolm Kenyatta, a state representative from Pennsylvania. “Usually Republicans want to ban books,” he said, “but now they are trying to shove this down our throats.”
Project 2025 has been referenced at least a dozen times Wednesday.
Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado said that it reflected — “right here on page 562” — how Trump could use an obscure law from the 1800s to single-handedly ban abortion in all 50 states and put doctors in jail. “Page 486 puts limits on contraception,” Polis said.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida described the harrowing story of a woman who had to carry her son to term, even though doctors told her he would not survive, because she could not get an abortion. She watched him die in her arms, she said.
“This is 2025 in practice,” Wasserman Schultz said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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