5 ways Rick Scott is linked to Project 2025

Florida’s junior US senator has consistently shown his support for the far-right proposal that aims to reshape the United States government. Critics warn that it could unleash an authoritarian regime.

It is widely known as Project 2025 – a 1,000-page right-wing policy proposal crafted by dozens of right-wing organizations and political figures that pushes an extreme agenda.

The proposal calls for abolishing the Department of Education, relaxing child labor regulations, restricting access to reproductive healthcare, repealing laws that lowered prescription drug costs, eliminating hundreds of thousands of childcare slots, eliminating environmental protections that help promote clean air and water, and much much more.

What may be less known is that Rick Scott, Florida’s junior US senator, who is currently in a race for reelection against former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Florida), has consistently shown his support for elements of Project 2025. Scott is close with Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, the far-right organization behind Project 2025, and has repeatedly endorsed many of the group’s proposals.

RELATED: 10 things to know about Senator Rick Scott

Here are the top five ways Scott has been linked to Project 2025 and its leaders: 

1. Scott has praised and collaborated with the Heritage Foundation and shares many of its priorities, including terminating the National Flood Insurance Program that insures 1.7 million Florida homes, a state plagued by skyrocketing property insurance costs.
2. A longtime foe of Roe v. Wade who voted against IVF, Scott supports Florida’s current extreme 6-week abortion ban. And while Project 2025 doesn’t explicitly call for an abortion ban, it would take several steps to restrict the procedure, including barring federal funds being used to provide healthcare coverage for abortion, and requiring states to report all abortions that take place there to the federal government. Project 2025 also calls for the US Department of Justice to start enforcing the Comstock Act of 1873. The old law bans the mailing of “anything designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion,” which could include abortion pills and medical instruments.
3. Like Project 2025, Scott’s tax plan proposes that lower-earners pay more taxes. Page 35 of Scott’s proposal states: “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax.” He fails to mention, though, that those who owe no income tax to the federal government usually earn too little or qualify for a variety of deductions and refundable tax credits that negate any income tax they would have owed. The Tax Policy Center estimates that achieving Scott’s goal could increase federal income taxes, with more than 80% of the tax increase paid by households making about $54,000 or less, and 97% by those making less than about $100,000. Project 2025, meanwhile, proposes a 15% rate for anyone under the Social Security wage base ($168,000 in 2024) and 30% for taxpayers earning more than that. This means the lowest-income taxpayers would pay more and some higher earners would pay less.
4. Scott’s 12-Point Plan to Rescue America also asserts that “men are men and women are women, and no government forms will include questions about gender identity or sexual preference,” a view which mirrors Project 2025’s aim to reinstate the ban on transgender Americans serving in the military, prohibit public school educators from referring to students by anything other than their birth name and pronouns without parental permission, and ensure that no federal funds are used to provide gender-affirming care.
5. Last but not least, Project 2025 would make significant cuts to Medicaid and impose work requirements to receive coverage, as well as reform Medicare—including by making Medicare Advantage, a paid supplement to Medicare, the default option for patients. Scott’s 12-point agenda (which includes over 100 policy proposals) also initially targeted these programs, proposing a plan to sunset all federal legislation after five years, including Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. After criticism, Scott ultimately said he would support an exception for Medicare and Social Security in the proposal, but some are not buying Scott’s reversal.

“Scott has engaged in a never-ending ceaseless attack on Medicare, and you only have to look at Project 2025, which is the blueprint for another Trump term, to know exactly where the Republicans are headed on this,” said South Florida US Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

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RELATED: Rick Scott has supported abortion bans, voted against protecting birth control and IVF