As Democrats continue to regroup after their brutal loss in last year’s presidential election, they have yearned to replicate the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and deliver policy recommendations to their next presidential candidate. The highest-profile think tank on the center-left, the Center for American Progress (CAP), has assigned several high-profile policy types to lead an effort that documents show was internally described as “Project 2029.”
According to two people with knowledge of the arrangement and a member of CAP, one of the leads on the economic policy plank for this project is Harvard professor and former Treasury secretary Larry Summers, who has now been exposed as regularly exchanging emails about his personal life with notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Officially, Summers has the title of “distinguished senior fellow” at CAP. All three sources confirmed that CAP is compiling a policy blueprint in the event of a Democratic presidential victory in the next election. Summers had taken a leadership role in advising the project’s economic policy arm, two of the sources said. They also said that Summers was the final sign-off on a CAP housing policy paper set to be released next week.
Despite shocking new emails detailing the close friendship between Epstein and Summers released by the House Oversight Committee this week, the CAP employee said they had heard of no plans to remove Summers from the organization, or the policy planning around Project 2029.
In a statement, a CAP spokesperson said: “Larry Summers is a non-resident, uncompensated fellow at CAP. We are reviewing this week’s disclosures to determine appropriate next steps.” In addition, the spokesperson denied that CAP was running an official Project 2029 effort, and denied that Summers was the final sign-off on the housing paper, describing him instead as “one of a number of people, we reached out to consult on our housing plan.”
Summers did not respond to a request for comment, though this week he did give a statement to The Harvard Crimson: “I have great regrets in my life … As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”
Here’s a simple thought exercise. Read the following 2019 interaction that took place just months before Epstein died mysteriously in his cell awaiting trial, and then decide whether Summers should be overseeing the Democrats’ national economic policy:
Summers: We talked on the phone. Then “I can’t talk later”. Dint think I can talk tomorrow”. I said what are you up to. She said “I’m busy”. I said awfully coy u are. And then I said. Did u really rearrange the weekend we were going to be together because guy number 3 was coming” She said no his schedule changed after we changed our plans. I said ok I got to go call me when u feel like it. Tone was not of good feeling. I dint want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.
Epstein: shes smart. making you pay for past errors. ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh.
Another one of the emails released in the most recent tranche finds Summers describing women as low-IQ, the Saudis in need of “slathering,” and Donald Trump as lucky. In the same email, Summers goes on to say that he is struggling “to figure why American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard, but hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”
Not feeling disgusted enough? Try this missive from Summers’s wife, Harvard poetry professor Elisa New, emailing Epstein in 2018:
Dear Jeffrey … I’m going upstairs to hunt for my copy of Lolita, or will get on my kindle and reread on our way to Australia. I may have lent it to one of my kids. I would recommend reading My Antonia by Cather next time you’re on a long plane trip. The prose is gorgeous, and the book has—come to think of it—similar themes to Lolita in that it’s about a man whose whole life is stamped forever by his impression of a young girl.
Jeff Hauser, executive director of the government watchdog organization the Revolving Door Project, told the Prospect that “Larry Summers has an argument for being on the Mt. Rushmore of people responsible for destroying America. Only insane people would seek out the counsel of a man who relies on Jeffrey Epstein for dating advice and Milton Friedman for economic inspiration.”
Nonetheless, this is exactly what CAP, and a laundry list of other elite organizations, has done. In addition to CAP, Summers also maintains his affiliation with Harvard University (as Charles W. Eliot University Professor), OpenAI (as a member of the board of directors), Bloomberg (as a columnist), The New York Times (as a contributing opinion writer), Skillsoft (as a member of the board of directors), the Center for Global Development (as chair of the board of directors), the Peterson Institute for International Economics (as vice chair of the board of directors), Atlas Merchant Capital (as a senior adviser), Jiko (as a advisory committee member), Aven (as an advisory board member), Palmetto (as an advisory board member), and the Yale Budget Lab (as an advisory board member).
These affiliations have remained intact thus far, despite the fact that Summers’s (and his wife’s) relationship with Epstein has been detailed in multiple news articles and investigations stretching back to the 1990s. In 2023, The Wall Street Journal published an investigation that found that even after Harvard University began refusing donations from Epstein, Summers continued to meet with Epstein and solicit him for financing.
“I need small scale philanthropy advice. My life will be better if i raise $1m for Lisa,” Summers wrote to Epstein in April 2014, referring to his wife. “Mostly it will go to make it a pbs series and for teacher training. Ideas?” The two arranged to meet at the Fireplace restaurant in Brookline, Massachusetts, to discuss the matter further. Two years later, a nonprofit linked to Epstein donated $110,000 to Summers’s wife’s nonprofit.
Summers’s efforts at CAP are part of a multipronged effort by high-powered centrists in the Democratic Party to bend the agenda of the 2028 presidential candidate toward the middle. There is an official Project 2029 effort that was initially run out of the policy magazine Democracy Journal. According to a source with Project 2029, they have no relationship with or contact with Summers.
However, the source did say that Project 2029 is collecting ideas from across the party, including from CAP. Internal emails show that CAP has described its own effort as Project 2029, and ideas generated there could feed into the broader effort. Neera Tanden, president and CEO of CAP, was on the advisory committee of the other Project 2029, but a CAP spokesperson said she has ended her participation.
As The New York Times reported over the summer, the Project 2029 advisory committee includes Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the economist Justin Wolfers, New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Third Way’s Jim Kessler. Roosevelt Institute principal Felicia Wong, who is departing the institute at the end of the year, also had involvement but resigned from the advisory committee in October, according to a Roosevelt spokesperson.
Writing in response to the rollout of Project 2029 last summer, the co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Dean Baker, wrote that the centrist coalition plotting the Democratic Party’s future is in dire need of populist messaging.
“Stealing the title from a right-wing think tank’s policy book as a path back to political power makes about as much sense as buying the same socks as LeBron James as a path to basketball stardom. But no one ever accused the Democrats of being great thinkers,” Baker wrote, adding, “I don’t know if a Democrat running on a populist platform in 2028 can overcome the real obstacles that big money creates. But it is important to have a clear view of the issues and the obstacles. Somehow, I don’t think that Project 2029 will give us that.”
UPDATE: This story has been updated with information received after publication from spokespeople at CAP and the Roosevelt Institute. It also seeks to clarify the differences between the effort at CAP internally described as Project 2029 and the more official Project 2029 effort underway.