schedule F

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8 22 disambig</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see admin state</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">// deep state</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">anti-gubmint</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">_expertise</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx9 23</font></div><div>The shocking Republican plan to dismantle the American government</div><div>
</div><div>Thom Hartmann</div><div>September 01, 2023</div><div>
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</div><div>As we learned from last week’s Republican debates, the leading candidates for the GOP nomination all appear to agree on a broad plan to gut American government and replace it with a strongman president and corporate rule.</div><div>
</div><div>The modern administrative state, sometimes called the “welfare state” by Republicans, was largely created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to the Republican Great Depression of the early 1930s. And every day since FDR was sworn into office on March 4, 1933, the GOP has worked feverishly to dismantle his legacy.</div><div>
</div><div>Outside of Russia, China, and Hungary, this isn’t true at all for the rest of the developed world.</div><div>
</div><div>Nations across the rest of Europe, South America, and Asia imitated FDR’s and LBJ’s America, most going beyond our simple development of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the legalization of unions to further expand opportunity and social mobility for their citizens.</div><div>
</div><div>For example, Taiwan has the most efficient and comprehensive single-payer healthcare system in the world; Germany requires half of the members of every large corporation’s board of directors to come from the ranks of organized labor; Luxembourg has the highest national minimum wage in the world at roughly $19.50 an hour (they calculate it monthly).</div><div>
</div><div>All of Europe is pledged to reduce greenhouse gasses to get climate change under control, and they require chemical companies to prove their new compounds are safe before introducing them into food or the environment (the “precautionary principle”).</div><div>
</div><div>Prisons across the rest of the developed world are committed to rehabilitation and only in America are run for profit; every other developed country carefully regulates the possession of guns; pharmaceuticals are inexpensive — at least half, and sometimes a tenth of their cost here in the US — in every other developed country in the world.</div><div>
</div><div>Republicans and the billionaires who fund them reject all of that.</div><div>
</div><div>They want to abandon modern ideas like prohibitions on child labor and the age of consent; worker and workplace protections and unions; free, quality public schools and colleges; civil rights and the power of women to make their own healthcare decisions.</div><div>
</div><div><b>They’re dedicated to taking America back to the era before the New Deal and, as Steve Bannon said, “deconstructing the administrative state.”</b></div><div>
</div><div>Over the years, the GOP has used a series of plans to reach their goal of a billionaire- and-corporate-owned-and-run America with working people turned into serfs and children in factories instead of school.</div><div>
</div><div>In 1971, it was the Powell Memo, written by Virginia tobacco lawyer Lewis Powell and delivered to the US Chamber of Commerce. It called for a rightwing takeover of America’s schools and colleges; building out a corporate-friendly media infrastructure; packing the courts with pro-corporate, anti-labor conservatives; and the wholesale purchase of Republican politicians at both the state and federal level.</div><div>
</div><div>The following year Richard Nixon put Powell on the Supreme Court and over the next quarter-century he used that position to put many of his own suggestions into law. In addition to decisions gutting the powers of unions and deregulating industry, Powell’s major achievement was authoring the 1978 Boston v Bellotti decision that struck down hundreds of state and federal anti-corruption laws, explicitly allowing corporations and their senior officers to bribe politicians for the first time in American history.</div><div>
</div><div>No other developed country in the world tolerates this; outside of the United States, you only find it in developing countries that have been taken over by corrupt autocrats.</div><div>
</div><div>Two years later, when Ronald Reagan cut a traitorous deal with the Ayatollah to hold the American hostages in Iran long enough to destroy Jimmy Carter’s chances in the 1980 election, the Heritage Foundation stepped up with a plan to further gut the rights and powers of working-class people and elevate corporate and billionaire power.</div><div>
</div><div>They called it the Mandate for Leadership and, at the time, The Washington Post said it was “an action plan for turning the government toward the right as fast as possible.”</div><div>
</div><div>Reagan adopted over half of Heritage’s suggestions and in some cases went even farther, cutting enforcement of our anti-trust laws; ending the Fairness Doctrine; slashing the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from 74 percent down to 27 percent; declaring all-out war on unions; gutting the EPA, Education, and Labor Departments; and selling off federal lands for pennies on the dollar to mining and drilling operations.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Now the partly-billionaire-funded Heritage Foundation has laid out a second-stage plan for the next Republican administration, whether it’s Trump or somebody else, whether it’s next year or in future presidential election cycles.</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>They call it Project 202</b>5. With it, they intend to finally and fully seize control of and transform America. With it, they will rule.</div><div>
</div><div>Ideologues on the right correctly see the Trump administration as having been a bumbling mess. Nobody expected him to win the election, not even Trump himself (he and Roger Stone had already registered the URLs and put together a “Stop the Steal” campaign claiming “election fraud” to distract and kneecap incoming President Hillary Clinton).</div><div>
</div><div>Nobody realized how effective Putin’s interventions — his 29 million Facebook ads and message posts targeting a million or so people in six swing states who’d been identified as persuadable by the GOP and passed along to Russian Intelligence via Paul Manafort — would be.</div><div>
</div><div>When Trump was declared the winner he didn’t even have a victory speech ready, was totally unprepared to govern, and it took the better part of three years for Trump and his corrupt clown car to get their act together. Most of the time he and his son-in-law were too busy making money out of their connection to the White House. They’ve corruptly taken home billions in the years since 2016.</div><div>
</div><div>So this time the rightwing billionaires and their GOP lackeys aren’t taking any chances.</div><div>
</div><div><b>First up, they want to deconstruct the Civil Service, taking much of the federal workforce back to 1882. There’s an amazing backstory here.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Way back in 1881, a man named Charles Guiteau thought he’d properly bribed President James Garfield by giving the president, during an in-person visit in the White House, a speech he’d written for Garfield to use. Garfield was polite but didn’t offer Guiteau a federal job, which provoked a murderous rage: shortly thereafter, Guiteau met Garfield’s train and shot him twice, killing him.</div><div>
</div><div>The explicit and institutionalized practice of exchanging gifts and personal loyalty for federal jobs dates back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), arguably the second-most depraved president in American history behind Trump (which is probably why Trump hung his picture in the Oval Office). His favorite nickname for himself — given him by the Cherokee he slaughtered with the Trail of Tears — was “The Indian Killer.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Jackson had elevated the practice of bribing the president to get federal jobs into an art-form: it was called the “spoils” or patronage system and was insanely corrupt. It was also, by 1883, routine.</b></div><div>
</div><div>After Guiteau failed to gain his “spoil” or “patronage” from Garfield and killed him, President Chester Arthur oversaw the writing and passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883. It separated all those government jobs from the administration in power, turning federal workers from patrons of the president into permanent bureaucrats whose first loyalty was to the nation instead of the guy who happened to be in the White House at any particular time.</div><div>
</div><div>It also outlawed bribing the president for a job. The goal, which it accomplished and has held for 140 years, was to end corruption in the bureaucratic branches of the federal government.</div><div>
</div><div>Donald Trump wanted to functionally end the Civil Service and replace the top levels of the nation’s 2.7 million federal workers with people loyal exclusively to himself. He did this through an October 21, 2020 executive order, Schedule F, (which Biden reversed on his first day in office) that reclassified those workers out of their Civil Service jobs and into political appointee positions doing the exact same work.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The next Republican administration will almost certainly put Schedule F back into force, reestablishing the 1829 spoils system for the federal government</span>. As Paul Dans, director of Project 2025’s “Presidential Transition Project” and a former Trump administration official, told the Associated Press:</div><div>
</div><div><b>“We need to flood the zone with conservatives.”</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Next up, Project 2025 proposes to kill off federal efforts that may inhibit the profits of the fossil fuel industry and the billionaires it’s created who are helping fund both the GOP and Heritage.</span></div><div>
</div><div>As Scott Waldman wrote for Politico:</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“Called Project 2025, it would block the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy; slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice office; shutter the Energy Department’s renewable energy offices; prevent states from adopting California’s car pollution standards; and delegate more regulation of polluting industries to Republican state officials.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“If enacted, it could decimate the federal government’s climate work, stymie the transition to clean energy, and shift agencies toward nurturing the fossil fuel industry rather than regulating it. It’s designed to be implemented on the first day of a Republican presidency.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>After ensuring fossil fuel industry profits and the further wilding of our weather, Project 2025 would effectively dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, presumably on behalf of the petrochemical and other polluting industries that are also big GOP donors.</div><div>
</div><div><b>It would either end or downsize the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, and the Office of Public Engagement and Environmental Education</b>. Like the process Trump began, it would shatter the EPA into pieces, moving regional offices and cutting its workforce by “terminating the newest hires in low-value programs.”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It would also block states from advancing any agenda that may prevent the further expansion of carbon pollutants that are driving global warming by “ensur[ing] that other states can adopt California’s standards only for traditional/criteria pollutants, not greenhouse gasses.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>One of the most disturbing aspects of Project 2025 and other plans for future Republican presidencies is their consolidation of power in the hands of the president, reflecting the way government is run in Hungary, China, and Russia rather than the checks-and-balances envisioned by our nation’s Founders.</div><div>
</div><div><b>They would outright end the operational independence of the of the Department of Justice and the FBI, turning both into tools (or weapons) the president alone could wield.</b></div><div>
</div><div>The Federal Reserve, with its ability to turn on the monetary spigot to ensure “the good times roll” or turn off the spigot to induce a recession would also become the president’s political plaything.</div><div>
</div><div>Ditto for the Federal Communications Commission, which has the power to not only regulate but even shut down over-the-air radio and TV broadcasts that displease it, as well as wielding a largely today-unused power of censorship over cable TV and the internet.</div><div>
</div><div>And the Federal Trade Commission, which has the power to grant billion-dollar favors or inflict severe punishments on companies, would lose their independence because they could be used to reward or destroy companies that have earned the favor or ire of the president.</div><div>
</div><div>As Russell Vought, president of one of the 65 far-right organizations on the Project 2025 advisory board, told The New York Times:</div><div>
</div><div>“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them.”</div><div>
</div><div>This is all a reflection of what, for several decades, has been called the Unitary Executive Theory. It argues — erroneously — that a strongman president like Putin, Xi, or Orbán is what the Founders and Framers had in mind.</div><div>
</div><div>As professors Karl Manheim and Allan Ides of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles famously wrote in 2006:</div><div>
</div><div>“In fact, the theory of the <b>unitary executive </b>is anything but an innocuous or unremarkable description of the presidency. In its stronger versions, it embraces and promotes a notion of consolidated presidential power that essentially isolates the Executive Branch from any type of congressional or judicial oversight.</div><div>
</div><div>“And it is much more than an academic theory. Rather it is an operative way of thinking about and applying Executive Branch power that has had and will continue to have real-world consequences for our republic and for the international community. In attempting to understand and appreciate the significance of unitary executive theory, it is worthwhile to keep in mind that it is a product of the late 20th century and not a legacy bequeathed from the founding generation.</div><div>
</div><div>“The theory, which in fact is more about power that it is about law, grew out of a somewhat perverse reaction to abuses of presidential power that had come to light during the late sixties and early seventies. Such events as President Johnson’s fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident and President Nixon’s secret war in Cambodia, among many other similar abuses of presidential power, led to efforts to curb what was perceived as an increasingly imperious Executive Branch. …</div><div>
</div><div>“The almost immediate response to this reform movement was a redoubling of efforts to consolidate and amplify presidential power. The theory of the unitary executive grew out of this reactionary response.”</div><div>
</div><div>Project 2025 and other efforts by the GOP to consolidate power in the Executive branch, as well as their recent successes at packing the courts and buying off Republican members of Congress, should be a clanging five-alarm fire bell for our republic.</div><div>
</div><div>This neofascist ideology of “rule by the rich” has been explicitly embraced by both Trump and DeSantis (who, this June, sent a senior advisor, David Dewhirst, to work on Project 2025), and the themes and contents of the plan are also regularly invoked on the campaign trail by Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley.</div><div>
</div><div>The merger of billionaire wealth with partisan Republican governance — and their combined efforts to reshape our government in their own corrupt image, the public be damned — threaten the integrity and future of the American experiment.</div><div>
</div><div>But it can only come about if we fail to awaken people, mobilize them, and vote.</div><div>
</div><div>Step one, then, is to wake people up to what the GOP and its billionaire patrons are planning. Pass it along.</div><div>
</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 4 23</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/donald-trump-civil-service-test/">https://www.alternet.org/donald-trump-civil-service-test/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><font color="#3a434e" face="bagatela, serif"><span style="font-size: 19.7354px;"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/rep-matt-gaetz-r-fl-and-former-trump-official-russ-vought-discuss-using-new-house">https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/rep-matt-gaetz-r-fl-and-former-trump-official-russ-vought-discuss-using-new-house</a></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><font color="#3a434e" face="bagatela, serif">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 19.7354px;">REP. MATT GAETZ (GUEST HOST): Let's start with the Holman Rule. Talk about what it means for any member of Congress to be able to get up and defund a particular bureaucrat.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 19.7354px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">RUSS VOUGHT (PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR RENEWING AMERICA; FORMER OMB DIRECTOR)</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">: It's huge. And so you know I come from the executive agency before this role, and we would have all of these career bureaucrats that we would be having to work with and the American people would largely not know their names, until Covid happened and now everyone knows who Tony Fauci is. But think about the ability to go to the House floor and have a debate about a particular bureaucrat. That is enormous. It changes the entire game right now.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 19.7354px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">I would have situations where our staff would do anything they possibly could not to necessarily give me what I needed, because they were worried about their own ability to stay anonymous.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> The Holman Rule</span><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);"> makes sure that those career bureaucrats are no longer anonymous, and that they are put in the crosshairs to the same extent – in the arena – that you are. That I am. </span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 19.7354px;">So that is a game changer in having the appropriations debate. Also, not just what the message it sends, but the extent to which it itself focuses the appropriations process on the deep state, on the<b> administrative state that exists, that is now woke, and it's weaponized. </b>And that has to be the biggest fiscal priority that we have, to go after the woke and weaponized bureaucracy.</p><p style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 19.7354px;">GAETZ: Russ, if we'd have had this tool, we would have obviously directed it at Anthony Fauci, right? So, if you're comparing and contrasting, we would have had the ability – if we had the rules that we now have in place – <b>if we'd have had those in place in the last Congress, you could actually force a vote on funding Fauci or not funding Fauci</b>. As we look at a weaponized system across the apparatus of government, give us some examples or advice for who are some of the bureaucrats that enjoy their anonymity now? What are some of the agencies we should look at to target and take this tool out of the toolkit and actually put it to use?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 19.7354px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">VOUGHT: Well, there's all sorts of the types of people that you'd want to get in with Labor, HHS, and the COVID fascism that we've saw as a result of kind of lockdown-era policies. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">But <b>we're going to want to use this in the Department of Justice</b>. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">We're going to want to find those people that participated in the Russia hoax, that participated in going to FISA and lying to get warrants that are cooked up against the American people. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">So as you bring that aspect of what you negotiate, along with the <b>Church-style committee</b> that will sit within Judiciary, those are the kinds of things that you can say in real time that makes this enforcing.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; color: rgb(58, 67, 78); font-family: bagatela, serif; font-size: 19.7354px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">The battle is certainly not over. We've got to show up at every stage, but it is self-enforcing.<b> You enforce it, the 20 enforce it. </b>And that was what makes this different than anything else that we've seen in recent memory, because not only is your voting no confidence in real speak – your motion to vacate present, but you also have the Rules Committee that is enforcing this on a bill-by-bill basis. So it's enormously successful and you've got a lot of potential to use it against that<b> bureaucrat that you'd identify that's standing in your way at NASA or the EPA – who's the EPA bureaucrat that put Joe Robertson, a 77-year-old Navy veteran in jail for building four ponds on his ranch to be able to fight wildfires</b>. That's the person we want to use the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Holman rule </span><span style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247);">on.</span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(239, 243, 247); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><font color="#3a434e" face="bagatela, serif"><span style="font-size: 19.7354px;">
</span></font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wtf?!  lied to IG</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://montanafreepress.org/2022/11/10/zinke-wins-race-for-montanas-western-u-s-house-district/">
</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://montanafreepress.org/2022/11/10/zinke-wins-race-for-montanas-western-u-s-house-district/">https://montanafreepress.org/2022/11/10/zinke-wins-race-for-montanas-western-u-s-house-district/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx gfx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>2022 ELECTIONS</div><div><b>Zinke wins race for Montana’s western U.S. House district</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Republican beat Democrat Monica Tranel by four points to conclude the state’s highest-profile race of the 2022 election cycle.</span></div><div>by Arren Kimbel-Sannit</div><div>11.10.2022</div><div>
</div><div>Ryan Zinke, Republican candidate for Montana's western U.S. House district, attends a police ride-along in Browning on Oct. 14 Credit: Arren Kimbel-Sannit / Montana Free Press</div><div>
</div><div>Republican Ryan Zinke has won the race to represent Montana’s <b>newly created western U.S. House district. </b></div><div>
</div><div>With all precincts reported, Zinke received 120,285 votes. Energy attorney Monica Tranel, a Missoula Democrat, received 112,271 votes, four points behind Zinke. John Lamb, a Norris farmer running on the Libertarian ticket, came in third with<b> 9,304 votes.</b> Zinke declared victory Wednesday night, and the Associated Press called the race for him Thursday morning. </div><div>
</div><div>“I’m incredibly grateful to the people of Western Montana for once again placing their trust in me to fight for them in Washington, D.C.,” Zinke said in a statement Wednesday night. “The voters saw through the vicious lies and deceit of my opponents and radical political groups. Truth matters, and now it’s time to fight for freedom and protect our way of life in Montana.”</div><div>
</div><div>Montana's Western Congressional District (MT-01)</div><div>Based on the 2022 general election results available at 8:41 a.m. 11/10/22.</div><div>RYAN K ZINKE leading by 8,014 votes of 241,861 counted (+3%).</div><div>Votes in county-level victory margin</div><div>[map]</div><div>Ryan Zinke (R)</div><div>Monica Tranel (D)</div><div>Libertarian John Lamb was also on the ballot.</div><div>
</div><div>In a tearful Thursday morning speech in front of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library in Missoula, Tranel, bundled in a heavy coat as snow fell, conceded, thanking her supporters and pledging to continue fighting for the state. </div><div>
</div><div>“I shall do so not in the 118th U.S. Congress, but I will serve the people of Montana as I have done my entire career, as your advocate, as your neighbor, as a forever champion of the Montana that I know, I love and I believe in still,” Tranel said. </div><div>
</div><div>Zinke will soon be the first person to represent the western U.S. House district. The state had two districts until the 1990 U.S. census, when it was relegated to a single at-large district. Montana regained its second congressional district following the 2020 census count.</div><div>
</div><div>What else you need to know:</div><div>Secretary of State appeals rulings that struck down new election laws</div><div>11.23.2022</div><div>Forest Service turns back Holland Lake proposal, for now</div><div>11.23.2022</div><div>The resignation that wasn’t</div><div>11.23.2022</div><div>The western district, as drawn by the state Districting and Apportionment Commission, includes 16 counties and two Native American reservations. Republican former President Donald Trump would have carried the district by 7 points in 2020. Tranel outperformed Democratic President Joe Biden in the district, but ultimately could not drive enough votes her way to upset Zinke, who has been considered the favorite since declaring his candidacy in the primary. </div><div>
</div><div>RELATED</div><div>The Zinke, Tranel (and Lamb) show</div><div>Ryan Zinke and Monica Tranel are the two main contenders for Montana’s new western U.S. House district. The presence of Libertarian John Lamb and Zinke’s long, variable record in government could make things complicated.</div><div>by Arren Kimbel-Sannit</div><div>10.26.2022]</div><div>
</div><div>It was arguably the state’s highest profile race this year, as Montana Democrats looked to improve on a dismal showing in 2020 and send one of their own to Congress for the first time since longtime representative Pat Williams retired in 1997. </div><div>
</div><div><b>Zinke raised more than $6 million, more than double the $2.8 million Tranel brought in. </b>Lamb did not file campaign finance paperwork, saying he did not raise or spend enough to cross federal reporting thresholds. </div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The voters saw through the <b>vicious lies and deceit of my opponents and radical </b>political groups. Truth matters, and now it’s time to<b> fight for freedom and protect our way of life in Montana.”</b></span></div><div>U.S. REP. RYAN ZINKE</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Zinke, a former Navy SEAL from Whitefish, began his political career as a state legislator in 2009. He was elected to Montana’s at-large House district in 2014, and then again in 2016. Shortly after being elected to his second term, Zinke joined the cabinet of President Donald Trump as Interior Secretary, a tumultuous period that generated 18 federal investigations into Zinke’s ethics and decision making before his resignation in 2018. Trump endorsed Zinke’s run this cycle.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The former congressman’s time in the Trump administration has colored much of his campaign, both in terms of policy and his <b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">contempt for the “deep state” that he says stood in his way during his tenure as Interior Secretary. </b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">He has trumpeted his record as a booster of domestic energy protection — which he achieved in part by expanding oil and gas leasing on public lands — and has said the first piece of legislation he will introduce is the s<b>o-called FEAR Act, a proposal to make it easier to fire federal employees. </b>If Republicans take the U.S. House — which, despite a few outstanding races, seems likely — Zinke has said the party needs to use its appropriations power to hamstring the Biden administration and cut federal spending. </span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“We’re just gonna take the money away so they can’t buy a piece of paper, let alone hiring the Department of Environmental Justice in the EPA,</span>” he said at an October campaign event in Ravalli County. </div><div>
</div><div><b>Tranel, a former Olympic rower, entered electoral politics with a Republican run for the Public Service Commission in 2004, but has since switched parties, running as a Democrat for the commission in 2020 and then for Congress this year</b>. Citing her legal work serving the office of Montana Consumer Counsel, challenging NorthWestern Energy before the PSC and representing renewable energy projects, Tranel has presented herself as an anti-corporatist litigator and a foil to Zinke, who took consulting work in the oil and gas sector after leaving federal office. </div><div>
</div><div>Monica Tranel</div><div>Democrat Monica Tranel conceded the race for Montana’s western U.S. House district to Ryan Zinke on Thursday, Nov. 10, in Missoula. Credit: Screenshot for Tranel Instagram feed]</div><div>
</div><div><b>Much of her campaign focused on attacking Zinke’s record at Interior, which included a recent finding by a Trump-appointed inspector general that he misled investigators about a Whitefish land deal connected to a Halliburton executive, and his general coziness with the fossil fuel industry against the backdrop of climate change. </b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Even in admitting defeat, Tranel still had her sights set on her opponent.</b></div><div>
</div><div>“The fact of the election does not erase the corruption of Ryan Zinke,” she said Thursday. </div><div>
</div><div><b>Lamb, the Libertarian, unsuccessfully ran for state Senate in 2020. He first found a public platform as a supporter of the Bundy family</b> during the series of federal trials arising from the 2016 Malheur standoff. A father of 12 raised in an Amish-Mennonite community in Indiana, Lamb made reducing the role of the federal government in just about every aspect of American life a core tenet of his campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>Even with his connections to the far-right Bundys and his avowedly hard-line anti-abortion views, he found a welcoming campaign companion in Tranel, generating concern among Republicans that he could play a spoiler to Zinke by peeling off Republican votes. The two attended numerous candidate forums together, and the Montana Democratic Party lauded Lamb’s campaign, writing in an October release that Lamb was “connecting with voters across the district, sharing his story as a father of 12 and a small business owner.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Outside PACs presumably interested in boosting Tranel’s chances</b> also presented Lamb as a more principled conservative alternative to Zinke, who began his career in the Legislature as a relative moderate. </div><div>
</div><div><b>Zinke will return to Congress alongside fellow Republican Matt Rosendale,</b> who handily won his race in the state’s eastern district. Zinke will now travel to Washington for new member orientation and to receive committee assignments, his team said.</div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://twitter.com/johnknefel/status/1550458009905758208" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">Christian nationalist</a> Russ Vought recently appeared on Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk’s radio show to discuss plans to purge at least 10% of federal career staffers under a new Trump administration. Vought described that portion of the federal workforce as “the roots of the problem” that prevented former President Donald Trump from fully implementing his agenda. During the interview, Kirk suggested that the next Republican administration subject civil servants to “ideological purity tests.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Vought ran the powerful Office of Management and Budget under Trump and now heads up a right-wing think tank called the <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/center-renewing-america-preparing-next-republican-administration-govern" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">Center for Renewing America</a>, whose <a href="https://americarenewing.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">mission</a> is to “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.” While at OMB, Vought helped develop a policy called “<a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/07/23/donald-trump-news-schedule-f-executive-order" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">Schedule F</a>” as a tool that would allow a new conservative administration to circumvent job protections typically enjoyed by federal workers who aren’t politically appointed. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Speaking on the September 23 edition of <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Charlie Kirk Show</span>, Vought claimed to have reclassified 90% of the workers in his own office under that job category</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">CitationFrom the September 23, 2022 edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, <b>streamed on Rumble</b></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Schedule F is an authority that we discovered and developed at the end of the Trump administration to give the president the ability to reclassify career civil servants, who normally have permanency within the bureaucracy, to turn them into essentially at-will employees,” Vought told Kirk.</font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">When asked by Kirk how many career employees he’d like to potentially sack using this authority, Vought set the floor at 10% of current workers, but suggested that he considers as much as 80% of the federal workforce to be ideological opponents.</font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“I would say that within my agency, we had, you know, 80% of it was left-leaning,” Vought said. “Their paradigms were all rooted in this permanent class, ruling class that defines the milieu of Washington, D.C.”</b></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“And you can reason and work with that crowd, but there is about a 10% of activists that are animated by the wokeism, the anti-racist movement, to be able to come into these agencies and they're just activists,” Vought added.</font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Vought then told Kirk that someone in the human resources department at OMB described themselves and their colleagues as “committed anti-racists.” </b></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Kirk responded by calling that person the leader of “a sleeper cell of a woke communist ideology who's just right there within our federal government.”</b></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You're going to have to figure out how to solve that, I don’t know,” Kirk continued. “But ideological purity tests are an interesting approach, but let's break up the federal government first and then we'll go from there.”</font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In July, Axios <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/07/23/donald-trump-news-schedule-f-executive-order" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">reported</a> on discussions Trump allies were having about staffing their next administration, with the Schedule F being central to the framework. Vought reportedly has been a leader in these efforts: As Media Matters <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/center-renewing-america-preparing-next-republican-administration-govern" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">reported</a> a week prior to Axios’ story, V<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">ought stated publicly that he wants to build an “army” of hard-right activists with “Biblical worldview” to run the federal agencies that he can’t outright destroy. He’s been very clear that the goal is to get “ideologically committed individuals up and down the agencies,” and he’s been similarly clear that Schedule F is the way to do it.</span></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Right-wing propagandist Christopher Rufo – known for launching bad-faith attacks on <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/new-york-times-continues-whitewash-right-wing-extremism-its-chris-rufo-profile" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">critical race theory</a> and <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-responded-threats-against-childrens-hospitals-amplifying-voices-fueling-them" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">targeting</a> children’s hospitals that provide care to trans youth – has pushed for a similar course of action. </b></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The idea is to centralize ideological control over the federal agencies in the White House and <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">create a team at the Office of Management and Budget to enforce it,”</span> Rufo <a href="https://im1776.com/2022/07/01/christopher-rufo-interview/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">said</a> in an interview with conservative website IM-1776 in July.</font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In furtherance of those shared goals, Vought has attempted to turn the Center for Renewing America into a shadow government-in-waiting for Trump or another conservative president. In June, Vought <a href="https://twitter.com/russvought/status/1532820707062829056" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">brought</a> on Jeffrey Clark, a former Department of Justice environmental lawyer and Trump’s top <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/us/politics/jeffrey-clark-trump-election.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">coup</a> architect, as senior fellow at CRA. Kash Patel, another key figure in Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election, is a CRA senior fellow as well. </font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the recent interview with Kirk, Vought expressed a <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/mike-pompeo-says-trump-administration-182615858.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">common</a> <a href="https://time.com/5766186/jared-kushner-interview/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">regret</a> among former Trump officials that the administration wasted precious time in its first years adjusting to the steep learning curve of running the government. </font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.38;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“My hope is that we don’t have to do that again because we're laying the groundwork now,” Vought <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3994232" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">said</a>, later adding, “We want to make sure that can never happen again and make sure that from day one, we can ensure that the agenda is being done.” </font></font></font></p></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.supersummary.com/the-fifth-risk/summary/">https://www.supersummary.com/the-fifth-risk/summary/</a></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="">Fifth Risk</b> is a 2018 non-fiction book by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lewis" title="Michael Lewis" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Michael Lewis</a> that examines the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_transition_of_Donald_Trump" title="Presidential transition of Donald Trump" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">transition</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_appointments_by_Donald_Trump" title="Political appointments by Donald Trump" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">political appointments</a> of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_presidency" class="mw-redirect" title="Donald Trump presidency" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Donald Trump presidency</a>, especially with respect to three government agencies: the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Energy" title="United States Department of Energy" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Department of Energy</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Agriculture" title="United States Department of Agriculture" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Department of Agriculture</a>, and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Commerce" title="United States Department of Commerce" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Department of Commerce</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-nytimes_review_1-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk#cite_note-nytimes_review-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[1]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-nytimes_review2_2-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk#cite_note-nytimes_review2-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[2]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-kirkus_review_3-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk#cite_note-kirkus_review-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[3]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-pw_review_4-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk#cite_note-pw_review-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[4]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[5]</a></sup> The book spent fourteen weeks on <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times" title="The New York Times" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The New York Times</a></i> non-fiction <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_best_seller_list" class="mw-redirect" title="The New York Times best seller list" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">best-seller list</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a></sup> A lengthy excerpt from the book was published twice by <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian" title="The Guardian" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The Guardian</a></i>,<sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[7]</a></sup> using a quote from a top adviser to Trump in the title.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama" title="Barack Obama" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Barack</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Obama" title="Michelle Obama" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Michelle Obama</a> acquired the rights to the book for a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix" title="Netflix" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Netflix</a> series about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_government_of_the_United_States" title="Federal government of the United States" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">U.S. government</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-8" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[8]</a></sup> The 2022 American comedy series <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_G_Word_with_Adam_Conover" class="mw-redirect" title="The G Word with Adam Conover" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The G Word with Adam Conover</a></i> is "loosely inspired" by the book.<sup id="cite_ref-9" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[9]</a></sup></font></font></font></p><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; font-family: " linux="Linux" libertine="Libertine" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="See_also">See also</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: isolate; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></font></font></h2><ul style="list-style-image: url(" w="w" skins="skins" vector="Vector" resources="resources" common="common" images="images" bullet-icon.svg="bullet-icon.svg" d4515="d4515" margin="margin" em="em" px="px" padding="padding" color="color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schedule_F_appointment" title="Schedule F appointment" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Schedule F appointment</a> - aborted Trump plan for reclassifying civil servants as political appointees</font></span></font></font></li></ul></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A history lecturer is expressing concern about the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/02/republicans-trump-term-america-first-radical-agenda" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Republican Party's agenda</a> and how it could lay the foundation for a far more radicalized second term for former President Donald Trump.</font></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a new op-ed published by The Guardian, Andrew Gawthorpe, a history and international studies lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands, cited an Axios report as he detailed the political party's "core plan" as the 2022 midterm elections approach.</font></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"At the core of the new plan, as reported by Axios, is the<b> intention to strip away employment protections from thousands of senior civil servants, eliminating at a stroke a large chunk of the civil service’s expertise and institutional memory," Gawthorpe wrote. "This would allow them to be replaced with a ' <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/30/america-first-trumpism-beyond-trump" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">cadre</a>' loyal to Trump’s America First agenda, </b>most of them likely to be 20- and 30-somethings with no experience in government who would owe their newfound prominence to Trump alone. Ideologically zealous and loyal to a fault, they would set about trying to reshape the government in Trump’s image."</font></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/donald-trump-secret-plan-2000/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">How Donald Trump's 'secret' plan to steal the presidency has its roots in the messy 2000 election</a></font></strong></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He went on to note the distinct change in Trump's proposed agenda as he compared this situation to his first presidential term.</font></font></font></p><blockquote style="margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.542px; background: rgb(245, 245, 245);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"What seems to have changed in the interim is Trump’s desire for revenge. According to the Axios report, Trump’s top priority in a new administration will be to <b>“clean house” in the intelligence community,</b> DoJ and FBI. Loyalists will be installed in the place of current leadership. Why these places? The standard conservative critique of the civil service is that everyone in it is a liberal, but that certainly isn’t true of these agencies. Rather, they’re the places you need to corrupt if you’re bent on breaking the law and persecuting your opponents. Trump – notoriously thin-skinned, impulsive, and vengeful – wants to do just that."</font></font></font></blockquote><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Gawthorpe also highlighted the bigger issue with the radicalized agenda.</font></font></font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"But this isn’t just a problem limited to Trump. The conservative movement as a whole increasingly dreams of turning the state against its enemies. The people at the heart of the movement today are more likely to idolize the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán than they are Ronald Reagan," he said.</span>
</font></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/donald-trump-flash-presidential-seal/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Is Donald Trump illegally flashing the presidential seal at his golf outings?</a></font></strong></font></font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">"They aren’t animated by the belief that the job of government is simply to get out of the way – instead, they want to use it to impose a radical agenda on American society,"</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Gawthorpe wrote. "And the recent overturning of Roe v Wade provides a blueprint for how a compliant conservative judiciary can enable government officials to take away even the most fundamental of human rights."</span></font></font></font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He concluded with his perspective of what a future Republican presidency could look like given the current political climate of the party.</font></font></font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"Although Trump would bring his own particular set of grievances to the venture, any future Republican president is likely to follow a similar blueprint," he wrote. "Given the sheer scale of changes they want to impose on America, today’s conservatives act more like revolutionaries. And like all revolutionaries, they want to seize control of the state and launch an offensive on as many fronts as possible. If Trump’s first term isn’t to appear to future historians as a grim prelude to something far worse, they must never be allowed to do it."</font></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" style="" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="">READ MORE: </strong><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/trump-jan-6-2657654553/" target="_self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><strong style="">'Hot-blooded, contentious, deranged': J6 hearing to reveal details about 'craziest meeting in Trump presidency'</strong></a></font></font></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></font></font></p></div></div>