Has Kari Lake supported Project 2025 on Social Security policy? Not quite; here’s why

As Democratic candidates continue to make Project 2025 a top issue in this year’s election, U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego sought to link his U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Kari Lake, to the conservative policy blueprint. 

"MAGA Republicans like Kari Lake support Project 2025, which would raise the retirement age for 73% of Arizonans," Gallego said Aug. 17 on X. 

Weeks later, Gallego revisited the talking point, writing on X on Sept. 10 that Lake appeared in a Project 2025 promotional video, a policy he said would "cut Social Security benefits for the average Arizonan up to $100,000 over 10 years."

But the policy blueprint, offered by an outside group with close ties to former President Donald Trump, doesn’t recommend raising the retirement age or cutting Social Security. 

Trump endorsed Lake, a former local news anchor who lost her bid for  Arizona’s governorship in 2022. Gallego, a former U.S. Marine, has represented a House district that includes Phoenix since 2015. 

Trump has said multiple times he does not endorse Project 2025, although some policies overlap with his agenda. At least 140 of his former employees helped create Project 2025, CNN reported. 

Lake appeared in a March 2023 promotional video for Project 2025 that was filmed at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual political gathering in Washington, D.C.

In the video, Project 2025 Associate Director Spencer Chretien said the group was speaking with people who are "interested in serving the next conservative president." 

During the video, Lake says, "You have to have thick skin. We have to get beyond being bothered by what words they're going to call us."

PolitiFact searched for more statements from Lake about Project 2025 but found none. 

Here’s why the link to raising the retirement age for Arizonans is a misleading stretch.

PolitiFact reviewed the more than 900 pages of Project 2025’s "Mandate for Leadership," and found it doesn’t detail a plan for Social Security.

Gallego’s campaign didn’t comment specifically on his X post but pointed PolitiFact to an article from the Arizona Mirror, which cites a study from the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. 

The study connects politicians who are in the Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative House Republicans, to people involved with Project 2025. 

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The Republican Study Committee proposed a fiscal year 2025 budget proposal that would limit access to Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age from 67 to 69 years old, said Andrew Eschtruth, deputy director of the Center for American Progress’ Center for Retirement Research 

The Center for American Progress’ calculations show that the committee’s proposed retirement age increase would affect an estimated 73% of Arizonans  — the same statistic Gallego cited in his X post. 

Separately, the Heritage Foundation published an article on its website advocating to raise the retirement age from 65 to 69 or 70 years old, which some critics have used to draw a connection between Project 2025 and raising the retirement age. The article’s author, Rachel Greszler, was one of several "special mentions" in Project 2025’s chapter on the Labor Department and is an overall contributor. 

Gallego said, "MAGA Republicans like Kari Lake support Project 2025, which would raise the retirement age for 73% of Arizonans."

On the campaign trail, Lake hasn’t explicitly endorsed Project 2025, but she has appeared in a Project 2025 promotional video. 

Even so, the Project 2025 blueprint doesn’t recommend raising the retirement age. The closest connection we could find is that Project 2025’s main sponsor, the Heritage Foundation, has publicly supported raising the retirement age from 65 to 69 or 70. 

We rate the claim Mostly False.

Former PolitiFact Contributing Writer Sabine Martin contributed to this report.