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.

[3] 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.

[15] Sarah Lenti, a political consultant who had worked with Galen on the George W. Bush presidential campaign, was recruited as executive director.

The Lincoln Project said the billboard would remain, releasing a statement saying: "While we truly enjoy living rent-free in their heads, their empty threats will not be taken any more seriously than we take Ivanka and Jared.

[33] According to The New York Times, Weaver offered young men professional support in exchange for sex; that report also accused him of cultivating a non-sexual online relationship with a fourteen-year-old boy and then engaging in "sexual banter" with him after his eighteenth birthday.

[43] Steve Schmidt, a founder, also resigned from the board due to his involvement in leaking Horn's private direct messages;[44] however, he remained with the Lincoln Project until November 2021.

The Lincoln Project prepared to sue Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani for defamation after he claimed in a broadcast interview with Steve Bannon that the organization had planned the January 6 storming of the Capitol.

[46][47][48] They called the stunt "a demonstration" designed to highlight "Youngkin's continued failure to denounce Donald Trump's 'very fine people on both sides'" comment.

[50] The Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin called the project's ads "devastating for several reasons: They are produced with lightning speed, and thereby catch the public debate at just the right moment; they hammer Trump where he is personally most vulnerable (e.g., concerns about his vigor, concerns about foreign corruption); and they rely to a large extent on Trump himself—his words and actions.

[50] Additionally, they released videos attacking Republican Senators Cory Gardner, Martha McSally, Thom Tillis, Susan Collins, Joni Ernst and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, all of whom were up for reelection in 2020, as enablers of Trump.

[64] The project released the ad just after Trump's former National Security Adviser John Bolton published an excerpt from his memoir, The Room Where It Happened, in which Bolton wrote that Trump had asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to assist him in getting elected and had told Xi that he should continue building internment camps detaining Uyghurs.

In Betrayed, former Navy SEAL and emergency room doctor Dan Barkhuff said that "any commander-in-chief with a spine would be stomping the living shit out of some Russians right now—diplomatically, economically, or, if necessary, with the sort of asymmetric warfare they're using to send our kids home in body bags.

[69][70] On July 2, 2020, the Lincoln Project released Fellow Traveler, an ad saying in Russian with English subtitles that "Comrade Trump" had been "chosen" by Vladimir Putin and had "accepted the help of Mother Russia".

The ad featured communist imagery such as the hammer and sickle, as well as photographs of Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin and Soviet leaders from Joseph Stalin to Mikhail Gorbachev[71][72] and referenced the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

[78] Other major donors include Silicon Valley investors Ron Conway, Michael Moritz and Chris Sacca, financier Andrew Redleaf, Walmart heiress and philanthropist Christy Walton, Martha Karsh (who is married to billionaire financier Bruce Karsh), and Continental Cablevision CEO Amos Hostetter Jr.[79][77] As of May 2020, the group's expenditures were mostly in producing, buying, and placing ads.

[50] Politico said that the Lincoln Project "successfully established itself as a squatter in Trump's mental space, thanks to several factors: members each boasting hundreds of thousands of social media followers, rapidly cut ads that respond to current events and a single-minded focus on buying airtime wherever Trump is most likely to be bingeing cable news that day, whether it's the D.C. market or his golf courses across the country.

[83] Joanna Weiss of Northeastern University's Experience magazine wrote in Politico that most of the Lincoln Project's ads "pack an emotional punch, using imagery designed to provoke anxiety, anger and fear—aimed at the very voters who were driven to (Trump) by those same feelings in 2016", citing scientific research indicating that fear-mongering ads might be effective with Republican voters.

"[2] The project has labeled a faction within the Republican Party which they claim disenfranchises African American voters as the Jim Crow caucus.

[88] Writing in The Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin said the Lincoln Project stood "head and shoulders above all the rest in the hard work of beating back President Trump and Trumpism" and wrote of the group's founders: "They made their careers helping to elect Republicans, but in the era of Trump, they have put partisanship aside in the cause of patriotism and defense of American democracy.

"[51] Author and columnist Max Boot praised the Lincoln Project for "turning out brilliant videos at a relentless pace that puts most political organizations to shame" and for seeking to demolish "the Trumpified GOP" and replace it with "a sane and sober center-right party in America".

"[89] The Lincoln Project was criticized by former Romney campaign staffer Oren Cass, who described it as "a group of political operatives who are not conservatives".

[90] Writing in The Atlantic, Andrew Ferguson described the ads as "personally abusive, overwrought, pointlessly salacious, and trip-wired with non sequiturs".

[80] Rich Lowry, writing for the conservative publication National Review, described the Lincoln Project's stated goals as "self-serving tripe, as a glance at the insult-filled Twitter feeds, op-eds, and cable appearances of the principals instantly demonstrates", and described the group's advertisements as being "clearly meant to garner retweets rather than to speak to on-the-fence voters".

[91] Jeet Heer wrote in The Nation that "To the extent that the ads articulate any political vision, it is a desire to return to the hard-line military aggression of the George W. Bush era.

[93] The New York Times wrote in October 2020 that "The Lincoln Project ads have been dismissed by some as "anti-Trump porn," more concerned with going viral than moving voters.

[96] Paige Williams published a long analysis in The New Yorker, highlighting the project's influence on Republican politics and claiming that its conservative-style attacks on Donald Trump were playing a very decisive role in the 2020 election.

[22] After the 2020 election, critics including U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jacobin editor-at-large David Sirota questioned the Lincoln Project's effectiveness after Trump increased his share of the Republican vote compared to 2016.