South Carolina Representative James Clyburn on Friday during an interview warned that Project 2025 could herald "Jim Crow 2.0" if implemented.
President-elect Donald Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris this week resurrected concerns about the controversial Project 2025, a manifesto created by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation for the next Republican president.
Project 2025 received strong criticism from across the political spectrum, including Trump who hit out at some of the policies, such as a nationwide abortion ban.
Clyburn, seen by many as a "kingmaker" after backing President Joe Biden in the 2020 primary, has hit out at Project 2025 since it first came to light earlier this year, repeatedly slamming the raft of policies as "Jim Crow 2.0"—an allegation he repeated on Friday in light of Trump's win.
"I've studied history all of my life. I lived through Jim Crow, and I know that Project 2025 is Jim Crow 2.0," Clyburn said during an appearance on Friday's episode of CNN News Central. "I'm wondering whether or not coming out of this election the way the country came out of the 1876 presidential election, which led to the end of Reconstruction and led to the beginning of Jim Crow."
"Is that where we are today?" Clyburn said. "I used to tell my students when I used to teach this stuff—Anything that's happened before can happen again, and I can see us, if these kinds of Supreme Court decisions ... we are facing a court that could be a throwback to Plessy v. Ferguson rather than Brown v. Board of Education."
Newsweek reached out to Clyburn's office on Friday afternoon by email for comment and clarification on his comments.
Clyburn had made similar comments multiple times in October ahead of the election, trying to draw attention to Project 2025 even as the Trump campaign downplayed and distanced itself from it.
Trump said he knew "nothing" about the document and that he "purposefully" didn't read it, but later claimed that it contained some proposals that "everybody would like."
Clyburn first made his comments during the Democratic National Convention in August, appearing before President Joe Biden and issuing his warning.
Clyburn during an October appearance on CNN's State of the Union said, "We will expect Project 2025 to be the full-blown policy in his [Trump's] administration, and what will that policy be? I described it on the first night of our national convention, and I've been describing it that way ever since: It will be Jim Crow 2.0."
Despite Trump's efforts to downplay the project, prominent MAGA figure Steve Bannon, an ex-Trump adviser, strongly endorsed conservative political commentator Matt Walsh's claim that "How that the election is over I think we can finally say that yea actually Project 2025 is the agenda."
Bannon said that Walsh is "a very smart and funny guy," then repeated Walsh's comment before adding, "Fabulous...put that everywhere."
Walsh's post has over 8.3 million views, 7,400 retweets and 91,000 likes as of Friday evening at around 5 p.m. ET. Walsh does not have any formal role on Trump's team but is a significant figure in the MAGA-supporting media landscape with his daily podcast The Matt Walsh Show.
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