Spencer Chretien, left, and Kristen Eichamer stand in the Project 2025 tent during the playing of the national anthem at the Iowa State Fair in Aug. 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press file photo

On July 31, the Sierra Club posted a video to social media. It observes all the conventions of a political attack ad: haunting piano music, stern warnings about the influence of extremists, and even the prospect of a “death sentence” for treasured protections.

But the video doesn’t go after a particular candidate. Its target is the 920-page white paper known as Project 2025, meant by conservative organizations to serve as a blueprint for former President Donald Trump’s second term if he wins the election this November.

The timing of the Sierra Club’s post was notable. It came a day after the head of Project 2025 resigned under intense criticism from Trump and his campaign team. The manifesto, published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, had become ammunition for Democrats and a growing liability for the GOP ticket.

Trump has disavowed the plan, but several of the chapters were written by former high-level staffers in his administration. Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance, also wrote a foreword for a forthcoming book by Heritage President Kevin Roberts.

“We do not speak for President Trump or his campaign,” said a spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation.

As the video suggests, climate and environmental groups will continue to attack along this front regardless. “I don’t buy” that Trump is really pulling away from Project 2025, said Melinda Pierce, the Sierra Club’s legislative director, expressing a sentiment shared by many advocates. “And it is such a rich target,” she said. “It’s a gift.”

The plan proposes deep changes to the federal government that include severely cutting back the Environmental Protection Agency, replacing some career civil servants with political appointees, selling off public lands and breaking up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Some advocates have seized on recent climate-related disasters to draw attention to the document. As the Park Fire in Northern California forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate, the communications firm Climate Power warned that the “Trump-backed Project 2025 would take away free emergency alerts,” citing the plan’s proposal to privatize National Weather Service forecasts, which form the basis of most alerts sent in the US.

“People vote on what impacts their everyday lives,” said Alex Glass, Climate Power’s managing director. In an era with increasingly extreme weather, she added, “people depend on the weather service for life-saving information.”

Although the Project 2025 roadmap was first published in 2023, it went viral earlier this summer thanks in part to TikTok stars posting about it, comedian John Oliver digging into it on Last Week Tonight and actor Taraji P. Henson exhorting viewers of the BET Awards to “look it up.” President Biden’s reelection campaign launched a website on the plan and, since he dropped out of the race, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has continued to point to it.

Democratic groups have been relentless in attacking the project, and recent polls show awareness of Project 2025 has grown as a result. Navigator, a polling firm that tests and develops progressive messaging, found that 54% of Americans it surveyed last month “report being familiar with Project 2025, up 25 points since our last survey in late June.” Both Democrats and independents overwhelmingly expressed a negative view of the document.

Danielle Alvarez, senior advisor to the Trump campaign, said the candidate’s “20 promises to the forgotten men and women and RNC Platform are the only policies endorsed by President Trump for a second term.” She added, “Dangerously liberal Kamala Harris and the DNC are LYING and fear-mongering because they have NOTHING else to offer the American people.”

One of the reasons that liberal activists are mining the plan is that it concretely ties Trump to an extreme agenda, said Craig Segall, vice president of climate change advocacy group Evergreen Action. “He likes to be strategically ambiguous, but it is really hard to run away from a document” tied to so many of his associates, Segall said.

Segall said that Evergreen is not only reaching out to voters with messaging on the plan but is also using it as a way to convince corporate leaders that a second Trump presidency wouldn’t be in their interest. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act and other Biden administration policies, companies have invested huge amounts of money based “on stable government investments related to climate,” he said. “If you’ve spent billions that locks you into a battery factory, you don’t want a wrench in the economy.”