With more Electoral College votes than any other swing state, Pennsylvania is largely seen as the make or break battleground.
Getting those last couple yards in the.
Red zone in Pennsylvania is really, really tough.
The presidential candidates have their eyes on it, and so do we all this week on the Consider this podcast from NPR.
Come along.
This is FRESH AIR.
I'm Dave Davies.
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's Blueprint for a has gotten a lot of attention and criticism in the last few months, but our guest, Ken Benzinger, writes that a different organization, the America First Policy Institute, is poised to be far more influential in staffing and guiding a potential second Trump administration.
In a story published last week, Benzinger and the Times David Farenthal described training sessions the institute held to help potential Trump staff deal with the mainstream media and overcome the resistance of federal bureaucrats.
The story also traces the origins of the group to wealthy Texas conservatives bent on planning a second Trump term as early as 2020.
Benzinger has also written about the Trump campaign's failure to commit to agreements and ethics rules required under federal law to start the process for planning a new administration.
Ken Benzinger is a Pulitzer Prize finalist who joined the New York Times in 2022.
He previously reported for the Wall Street Journal, Smart Money magazine, the Los Angeles Times and BuzzFeed News.
Well, Ken Benzinger, welcome to FRESH AIR.
Let's talk about the America First Policy Institute and how it's distinct from the Heritage foundation, which produced Project 2025, which has gotten so much attention.
How do these two groups differ?
So these are two groups that are in some ways very similar, but they're kind of so similar they end up being rivals rather than joining hands.
Like the Heritage foundation, which was founded in the 1970s, America first policy Institute is a Washington well, at least present in Washington think tank that is dedicated to conservative policies and currently is very aligned with the former Trump administration and its policies and the policy ideas of President Trump.
It's a much newer group, however, though it was only founded in late 2020.
And it differs from Heritage in that it's much smaller and far lower profile.