Democrats spent 2024 warning voters that Project 2025 would end their freedoms.
Now 2028 hopeful Cory Booker just endorsed Democrats’ own version that is aimed straight at Silicon Valley.
What Democrats built to fight Big Tech could blow up in their own donor base.
Democrats Line Up Behind Tech Plan That Picks a Fight With Silicon Valley
Project 2029 is the Democratic Party's answer to the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.
The man running it is Chad Maisel, a former Biden White House domestic policy aide who also advised Booker directly.
His first release is not about the economy.
It is not about healthcare or the border.
It is called "Kids Over Clicks," and it targets the tech industry that bankrolls half the Democratic Party.
Cory Booker endorsed it this week.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed on too.
So did American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten.
Maisel has said he wants the plan to set the standard for the entire crowded field of 2028 Democratic hopefuls, not just Booker.
That means every Democrat weighing a 2028 run inherits this fight whether they signed on yet or not.
Maisel says the plan will expand into AI, housing, and healthcare, but tech came first.
The group picked kids' safety first because it polls well and sounds harmless.
Reset Tech's Rishi Bharwani wrote the actual policy language behind Kids Over Clicks.
Bharwani previously ran tech policy for both Booker and Sherrill, so this was never an outside idea Democrats simply adopted.
It came from inside their own political machine.
Social scientist Jonathan Haidt lent his name to the rollout, giving the plan a veneer of nonpartisan science.
Behind that veneer sits a plan built by career Democratic operatives, not outside experts.
Section 230 Protections Are the First Target
Section 230 has kept platforms out of court over what their users post since 1996.
Kids Over Clicks takes a scalpel to that shield, exposing companies to lawsuits over AI chatbot output, paid ads, stalking, and exploitation.
The plan bars anyone younger than sixteen from holding a social media account at all.
It would ban cellphones in schools and push a "smartphone-free childhood" until age fourteen.
It would ban what the plan calls surveillance advertising and choke off data collection on children entirely.
Democrats are modeling this on Europe, where regulators already force platforms to verify users' ages under the EU's Digital Services Act.
Brussels bureaucrats built an entire government identity system just to police what teenagers see online.
Booker's new blueprint borrows that same instinct: let Washington decide what the algorithm is allowed to show your grandkids.
Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt stood next to Senate Democrat Dick Durbin in February, accusing tech companies of hiding behind Section 230 to dodge accountability for child exploitation.
That is the energy now baked into a national Democratic policy platform.
Australia already locked kids under sixteen out of social media entirely, starting last December.
The United Kingdom announced its own version this year, with enforcement set for 2027.
This blueprint borrows directly from foreign governments that treat the internet as something the state licenses, not something citizens simply use.
Every one of those countries built the enforcement machinery first and asked about free speech consequences later.
Kids Over Clicks does not explain who verifies a user's age or what happens to the identification data collected to prove it.
Somewhere a federal contractor will end up holding your grandkid's driver's license scan right next to his TikTok login.
Every government database from the IRS to the VA has been hacked at some point, and Democrats want to build a new one just to let a teenager watch videos.
That is not child safety, that is a national database of every kid in America waiting for the next breach.
The Party That Loves Silicon Valley Cash Just Declared War on It
Meta, Google, and Amazon executives have filled the party's donor rolls for two decades, long before Trump ever ran.
Now the party's own 2028 platform opens with a Section 230 carve-out that trial lawyers could use to sue those same companies into oblivion.
Democrats spent years insisting any regulation of Big Tech from the right was authoritarian overreach.
Suddenly a government mandate on what algorithms can serve your kids is "commonsense," as long as Cory Booker's name is attached.
Project 2025 got mocked as a blueprint for control.
Project 2029 opens with an EU-style speech and data regime, backed by a governor, a senator, and a teachers union president who has never met a federal mandate she didn't like.
Kids Over Clicks is the thank-you note to the industry that funded their campaigns.
Watch what happens when Meta and Google's lobbyists actually read the fine print on Section 230.
The same donors who wrote checks for Booker's Senate campaigns will be the ones fighting his policy in court.
Booker just handed Republicans a 2028 campaign ad before the race even started.
Or Republicans just let Democrats end run them on an issue Americans are increasingly concerned about.
Sources:
- Amanda Macias, "Joseph Gordon-Levitt slams Big Tech for sextortion, threats to children while calling for key internet reform," Fox News, February 4, 2026.
- New York Post, "Dem-backed 'Project 2029' wants a tech clampdown that looks like Europe's and risks war with Silicon Valley," New York Post, July 20, 2026.
- Washington Examiner, "Rising stars in Democratic Party back new proposal for 'Project 2029'," Washington Examiner, June 2026.
