The Lincoln Project
American political action committee

The Lincoln Project is an American political action committee (PAC) founded in December 2019 by moderate conservatives and former Republican Party members who oppose U.S. president Donald Trump and Trumpism. During the 2020 presidential election, the organization sought to prevent Trump's re-election and to defeat Republican candidates who supported him. In April 2020, they endorsed Democratic nominee Joe Biden. From 2022 to 2024, their efforts shifted to thwarting Trump's re-election bid in the 2024 presidential election, endorsing Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Following Trump's victory, the Lincoln Project has focused on criticizing the actions of Trump's second presidency.
History
Before the 2020 election
The committee was announced on December 17, 2019, in a New York Times op-ed by George Conway, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, and Rick Wilson. Other co-founders include Jennifer Horn, Ron Steslow, Reed Galen, and Mike Madrid. Conway is an attorney and at that time was married to Kellyanne Conway, then an advisor to Trump; Schmidt managed John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign; Weaver oversaw McCain's presidential campaign in 2000; and Wilson is a media consultant. All four are outspoken critics of Trump; Schmidt left the Republican Party in 2018. Jennifer Rubin, in a Washington Post op-ed, described the four founders as "Some of the most prominent NeverTrump Republicans".
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This entry incorporates text from “The Lincoln Project” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.