webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

2025 3 KEVIN ROBERTS 2

ESTB 7 24 this IS THREE

trifecta prolly some neglect

SEE TWO ON SCIENCE SUPPRESS CLIMATE OCEAN SENSOR NOAA

SEE KOCH

XIAN NAT ISLAMOPHOBE 5 26

SEE MASS DEPORT

SEE TRUMP TRANS 2 ADMIN DOGE COUP = 2025 4 ~ DEI BS

SEE NOAA CUT TARGET

see social safety net target

a target?!

SEE PRESS SUPPRESSION // FASCIST

merri ok

denier sci supp noaa tho tout death down conf earth2

featured at DNC big book thump

hijack freedom and patriotism

see voughtOMB 2 impoundment

see voter suppr illegal mike howell pjt oversight hidden cam BS

see press suppr carr FCC

SEE KARO SPOX

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tool of ppl: Project 2025

This site is produced by Court Accountability Action (CAA) to expose and counter Project 2025, the playbook of the Heritage Foundation and its right-wing counterparts. This site includes research and analysis from CAA, State Democracy Defenders Action, and American Oversight Inc.

Tim Dunn, Department of Energy, Trump Super PAC Megadonor, Project 2025 Advisory Board Member Affiliation, Project 2025

Tim Dunn

Dan Brouliette, Department of Energy, Trump Admin Appointee, Project 2025

Dan Brouliette

William Perry Pendley, Department of the Interior, Project 2025 Author / Contributor, Trump Admin Acting Official, Project 2025

William Perry Pendley

Mandy Gunasekara, Environmental Protection Agency, Trump Admin Appointee, Project 2025 Author / Contributor, Election Denier, Project 2025 Advisory Board Member Affiliation, Project 2025

Mandy Gunasekara

David Bernhardt, Department of the Interior, Trump Admin Appointee, Project 2025

David Bernhardt

Bernard McNamee, Department of Energy, Trump Admin Appointee, Project 2025 Author / Contributor, Project 2025

Bernard McNamee

David Bernhardt, Department of the Interior, Trump Admin Appointee, Project 2025

Bernard McNamee, Department of Energy, Trump Admin Appointee, Project 2025 Author / Contributor, Project 2025

Bernard McNamee

Barry Myers, Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Trump Admin Failed Nominee, Project 2025

Barry Myers

Andrew Wheeler, Environmental Protection Agency, Trump Admin Appointee, Project 2025

Andrew Wheeler

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TOOL WIKI LIST TOC

List of contributors to Project 2025 - Wikipedia

Directed by the Heritage Foundation, the 2025 Presidential Transition Project (or Project 2025) rests on "four pillars": a policy guide, a "conservative LinkedIn", a "Presidential Administration Academy",[1] and a "playbook".[2] The policy guide has been published in April 2024[3] as a volume of the Mandate for Leadership series, under the name The Conservative Promise. Edited by Paul Dans and Steven Groves, the more than 900-page volume features 30 chapters written by 40 primary authors.[4]

More than 100 organizations, spanning from conservative to far-right,[5] have helped produce the Conservative Promise, and Project 2025 more generally.[6] The policy reforms promoted in it and its digest have gained traction during the 2024 US presidential election.[7] Many collaborators of Donald Trump have been tied to the project.[8][9][10]

Background

Trump attended an event for Heritage in Amelia Island, Florida, on April 21, 2022, and praised its forthcoming Project 2025, saying:[11]

[T]hey're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America and that's coming. That's coming. Because nobody can stand what's happening right now. Only a fool, only a fool or somebody that hates our country can like what's happening right now. Never been in this position before and already we know a very big part of our agenda.

During his 2024 political campaign Trump faced political pressure for his association with Project 2025; he started to disavow it by July.[12][13] Soon after, Dans resigned from Project 2025, a symbolic gesture since it published its deliverables, including a database of 10,000 conservative job candidates.[14] Dans later criticized senior advisors Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita for 'historic campaign malpractice'.[15] LaCivita floated the idea that Project 2025 members would be barred from serving in the second Trump administration.[16]

On August 15, 2024, CNN published a video in which British journalists made Russell Vought reveal his policy preparation for a Trump presidency, his views on unitary executive theory, and his Christian nationalism.[17] While still distancing himself from Project 2025,[18] Trump headlined a Moms for Liberty event sponsored by Heritage at the end of August.[19]

Heritage stated that Trump has previously embraced many of the policy recommendations put forward by that organization. Several contributors to the project have held positions in one of Trump's political campaigns or his administrations.[20]

Conservative Promise has an "Advisory board" section in its front matter.[21] Those featured in the Conservative promise with no collaborator are:

Heritage maintained a website from April 2023 to March 2025.[23] The organizations listed during that time changed. The number listed in press releases varied from 21 in June 2022 to more than 100 in February 2024; after Trump's disavowal of Project 2025, many advisory board members were scrubbed from the website, including America First Legal, an organization founded by Stephen Miller.[24]

EG} TABLE

PJT 2025 REPORT GPAHE

Project 2025 and the Unraveling of America

SPECIAL REPORT

Project 2025 and the Unraveling of America

“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Donald Trump said throughout his campaign. “I have no idea who is behind it.”

The lie collapsed on January 20, 2025, the coldest inauguration day in four decades. Trump took his second oath of office in the shelter of the Capitol rotunda, then decamped to the Capital One Arena, where thousands of supporters watched him sign executive orders one after another, holding each up before hurling his presidential Sharpie into a sea of outstretched hands. By midnight, he had signed 26. Despite his campaign disavowals, two-thirds of his day-one policies came straight from the pages of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership.

Fourteen months later, the distance between blueprint and policy has all but vanished.

Since Inauguration Day, the administration has eliminated 317,000 federal jobs and shuttered the Consumer Protection Bureau. The White House rescinded emergency abortion protections. It expelled transgender troops and erased LGBTQ+ Americans from federal data. The Justice Department abandoned consent decrees meant to curb police discrimination against Black communities. In Minneapolis, ICE agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, detained Native Americans during what officials called the largest immigration raid in American history. Agents elsewhere have detained more than 170 U.S. citizens, including children—even as the administration insists that “ICE does NOT arrest or deport U.S. citizens.” The birthright citizenship of American-born babies hangs in the balance before the Supreme Court.

The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) began sounding the alarm about Project 2025 in 2023, when the Heritage Foundation first published its authoritarian playbook. Before and since Inauguration Day, GPAHE has tracked its implementation week by week.

This report draws on that coverage to document what has already happened and what the playbook still demands.

The path to authoritarianism is not new, and the warning signs are well documented. Independent institutions get bent to serve the ruling party. Disinformation floods the public square. Executive power swells while the courts and legislatures meant to check it are sidelined. Dissent is punished. Vulnerable communities are scapegoated. Elections are corrupted. Violence becomes a tool of governance.

Project 2025 follows this script point by point. Here we lay out what has happened already—and what will happen next.

CONTENTS

Executive Summary

2. Dismantling Government

3. Deleting Consumer Protection

4. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the Crosshairs

5. Erasing LGBTQ+ Americans

6. Police Reforms Under Fire

7. The Assault on Reproductive Freedom

8. Cutting Pay for Caregivers

9. Silencing Workers’ Voices

10. Rolling Back Child Labor Protections

11. Poisoning the Air and Water

12. Selling Off Public Lands

13. Dismantling NOAA and the War on Climate Science

13. Cutting Food from families

14. Destroying LGBTQ+ Families

15. Eliminating Head Start

16. Privatizing Medicare by Stealth

17. Dismantling Public Education

18. The War on Universities

19. Breaking Promises to Public Servants

20. Mass Deportation

21. Attacking the “Woke” Military

22. Press Freedom Under Siege

23. Looking Ahead

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mma 9 26

CHERYL CASONE (HOST): Kevin, it's great to see you. I want to get your thoughts on Charlie Cook's prediction, we're just over a month away from the midterms, and he's saying done deal. Do you agree with that?

KEVIN ROBERTS (HERITAGE FOUNDATION PRESIDENT): No, I'm old enough to remember so many times that Charlie Cook and the chattering class in Washington have been wrong. And in particular, if you look at the Senate map, I just think he's outrageously wrong in this case. The Republicans have legitimate pickup opportunities in places you wouldn't expect, Cheryl: New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota. Is it a tough environment? Sure. That's what American history would suggest for the party that's in power. But I think that this prognosticating is a psyop by so many of these polling firms in order to do what, to depress conservative turnout.

CASONE: Mmhmm.

ROBERTS: And so, I think it's really important that we understand the Senate is not going to flip. James Talarico, who believes in six genders, is not going to win a majority of the votes in Texas. I would agree, however, that the House is a jump ball. The only person more optimistic than me in Washington on that front is Speaker Mike Johnson. I'm glad you'll be hearing from him. He's done such a great job. But I'm optimistic because I look at this race by race, and I see the contrast between the left and the right. And I think that we have a few weeks before early voting starts in a majority of states have early voting, that's time for both the message and also the money on the conservative side to bring home what I think is going to be an anomaly. I think there's going to be a conservative victory in the Senate and in the House.

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The Republican Party & The Far Right: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

JOHN OLIVER TUCKER FUENTES NEO NAZI

12:20

12 minutes, 20 seconds

to which Tucker said we'll circle back to that and then just as Stalin did when he meant to save millions of peasants from starving to death probably just

12:28

12 minutes, 28 seconds

forgot to. Now, in the aftermath of that sitdown, battle lines were drawn across the political right, with many arguing

12:35

12 minutes, 35 seconds

Tucker shouldn't have given such a softball interview to Fuentes, especially since it gave him access to one of the largest audiences he's ever

12:43

12 minutes, 43 seconds

had. But the Heritage Foundation, one of the largest, most influential think tanks in America, initially stood by Tucker, with whom it had recently had an

12:51

12 minutes, 51 seconds

advertising deal. In fact, its president Kevin Roberts even put out a video in which he said, "We will always defend our friends against the slander of bad

12:58

12 minutes, 58 seconds

actors who serve someone else's agenda." That includes Tucker Carlson. And he also said Tucker was under attack from a venomous coalition and mentioned

13:07

13 minutes, 7 seconds

pressure from the globalist class. Both, if you are not aware, pretty notable dog whistles. Now, in the wake of that video, dozens of Heritage staff members

13:15

13 minutes, 15 seconds

departed, as did several board members, and an anti-semitism task force severed ties with the foundation. Eventually, Robert admitted he'd used a terrible

13:24

13 minutes, 24 seconds

choice of words and addressed his remaining staff in an all hands meeting in which he tried unconvincingly to plead ignorance about the issues with Carlson and Fuentes.

13:33

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I don't actually don't have time to consume a lot of news.

13:39

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I don't mean this as a as a fake attempt at light-heartedness. I I I consume a lot of sports.

13:46

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I don't consume a lot of podcasts, not even hours. I don't consume a lot of news and that ignorance should have told

13:54

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me ask around. Wow. It is one thing to say you don't watch a lot of news if you're

...14:24

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And to be clear here, Nick Fuentes is famously a bigot. And while I admit he's also very much a troll, and you may have

14:32

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seen clips online of him where he comes across as an edge lord just trying to shock, it is worth seeing what he's like when the mask fully comes off because it's truly heinous.

14:42

14 minutes, 42 seconds

You know who built everything? Planes, railroads, cars, the radio, the telephone, the telegraph. Whites, television, everything. Whites.

14:53

14 minutes, 53 seconds

Jews are money changers.

14:56

14 minutes, 56 seconds

artists, psychopaths, charlatans, grifters, manipulators. Why do you think they're so obnoxious? Why do you think they're so

15:04

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obnoxious? They have no manners cuz they come from the third world. They come from the literal ghetto.

15:09

15 minutes, 9 seconds

Yeah, that's pretty unambiguous, isn't it? And it makes it all the more laughable that Tucker made such a show of offering Fuentes, a man who's

15:16

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literally spent thousands of hours on the internet saying whatever he wants, the chance to finally say what he thinks. You really didn't need to invite

15:24

15 minutes, 24 seconds

Fuentes to your antler dome to find out what makes him tick. Just Google him, you boatshed And and the worrying

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CIVIL WAR?

AN 7 26

The Heritage Foundation has long been one of the key institutions in conservative politics, helping to shape the policies of Republican presidents dating back to Ronald Reagan. But now, insiders say it is breaking apart due to an internal struggle that has also gripped the wider Republican Party in general: “how to harness the energy unleashed by Trumpism without being completely overrun by its conspiracy- and nativist-minded elements, particularly among the rising generation that has known little else.”

According to a new report from the New York Times, while the Heritage Foundation has been “long accustomed to placing its experts in key positions in Republican administrations, as it did in Trump’s first term,” once he returned to office, Heritage was “pushed to the side” regardless of the major role its notorious Project 2025 played in the 2024 election debate.

“As it tried to work its way back into the center of power, the foundation was consumed by a vicious in-house conflict,” explains the Times. “An old guard of establishment experts saw themselves swamped by an influx of more radical, often younger conservatives eager to remake the institution for the post-Trump right in their image: terminally online, ruthless in fighting the culture wars and vehement in rejecting the dogmas of postwar conservatism.”

According to the Times, a key breaking point came after Heritage president Kevin Roberts refused to back down from his support for Tucker Carlson, who had recently drawn accusations of antisemitism for hosting far-right white nationalist Nick Fuentes on his podcast. Roberts went on to argue the need to bring them into a conservative coalition, but many longtime Heritage employees disagreed, saying that “the people they usually collaborated with in congressional offices, circuit courts, foreign embassies and other institutions no longer wanted to be publicly associated with Heritage and what they perceived as its fidelity to Carlson.”

This incident prompted dozens of staff members to quit, defecting to Mike Pence’s new think tank, Advancing American Freedom, which is geared toward more traditional Republicans. “It’s good that they’re gone,” declared Roberts.

Around this time, there was a wave of firings and other resignations across the organizations, prompting some employees to call it the “Heritage Hunger Games" as their colleagues disappeared. Paranoia rose as staff began to suspect their devices were being monitored. One former senior analyst told the Times that the exodus was driven by “this movement that’s been brewing on the right,” that had “crept into a variety of mainstream conservative institutions and taken over.” The analyst declared that “it was planned, and it was a coup.”

By late 2025, most of the Heritage old guard had been replaced by Roberts’ hirees, who brought explicitly MAGA bona fides and often dubious pasts.

For example, “Mario Enzler, who served in the Vatican’s Swiss Guard, joined Heritage as a senior adviser. According to The Houston Chronicle, Enzler resigned from his previous position at the University of St. Thomas, a private Catholic school in Houston, amid allegations that the Italian university where Enzler claimed to have earned his Ph.D. did not offer Ph.D.s, and that the institution where he supposedly earned his bachelor’s degree was actually a high school.” Another recent top recruit was a former DOJ official who had been indicted for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Others openly promote racism, misogyny, and Holocaust denialism.

According to the Times, “Many of the staff members who left Heritage quit because they were exasperated by what they saw as the institution’s failure to firmly distance itself from extremists and trolls. As the former senior analyst put it…these groups ‘always existed out there, but they never seized main institutions before. That’s what’s new.’”

While MAGA conservatives like Roberts say they’re glad the more traditional conservatives have left Heritage, it turns out that the feeling is mutual.

“Kevin Roberts says (referring to me & my colleagues who left Heritage to join Advancing American Freedom) that he’s glad we’re gone,” posted former Heritage Vice President John Malcolm. “I couldn’t agree more. Although there are some great people who are still there, we are glad we’re gone too.”

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rww 8 26

Kevin Roberts is quite proud about the role the Heritage Foundation has played in helping Congress and the Trump administration wage war on the Smithsonian.

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SET UP ZELDIN DECAPITATION STRIKE?

EAND E THE GOOD ONE

Inside the Project 2025 plan to gut climate regs

By Jean Chemnick | 07/18/2024

The conservative outline for a second Trump presidency offers detailed steps for weakening EPA.

A paint-by-numbers plan to weaken EPA has been prepared for former President Donald Trump by his past advisers. Francis Chung/POLITICO

There’s a playbook for how a second Trump administration could pull back climate regulations.

The EPA chapter of the much-vaunted Project 2025 blueprint is stocked with ideas for how political appointees could use a second Trump term to remake agency org charts, defang enforcement and disperse Washington-based staff to regional offices. But the document — spearheaded by the conservative Heritage Foundation — also catalogs tactics for relaxing regulation in ways that might reverberate beyond the next four years.

Former President Donald Trump has distanced himself from the initiative — a sprawling guide on how executive branch authorities and agencies could serve a conservative agenda. But many of its authors served in the first Trump administration and are likely candidates for a second one.

Dave Banks, a former Trump climate adviser, said the document would serve more as a wishlist for past and future officials than a reflection of the president’s own priorities.

“I think the big question is, are the people who wrote it going to be back in?” he said. “And I think there’s a strong likelihood that a lot of the folks who worked on Project 2025 will end up in a Trump 2.0, if that happens.”

Mandy Gunasekara, the Trump EPA chief of staff who penned the project’s chapter on EPA, left open the possibility that she might return to the William Jefferson Clinton Building that serves as the agency’s headquarters.

“That’s a question for the president to ask, and an answer for me to give with my husband and family,” she said. “And we’re not there yet.”

Most of the regulatory policies included in her 28-page chapter seem cut from the same cloth as those EPA attempted in the first Trump administration. They were rescinded under President Joe Biden or overturned in court.

But some are new, like a proposal to shrink the pool of industries required to report their greenhouse gas emissions each year to EPA.

Just the fact that the policies are being explored in a widely circulated document marks a departure from 2016. The Trump EPA transition team that formed after his surprise victory eight years ago was famously long on infighting and short on planning. Political appointees were slow to arrive and key components of Trump’s deregulatory agenda were thrown out in court.

Project 2025 would revive some of those rules. For example, the EPA chapter advises the agency to “make public and take comment on all scientific studies and analyses that support regulatory decision-making.” That dovetails with a Trump-era “secret science” rule that was vacated in 2021.

Gunasekara said an incoming EPA team could avoid similar outcomes by “applying lessons learned” from the first Trump term.

“It’s very different regulating from the inside versus applying oversight from the outside,” said Gunasekara, one of several Trump EPA officials who came to EPA from congressional committees. Gunasekara was a staffer on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee under the late Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), as was Trump’s second EPA Administrator, Andrew Wheeler.

Mandy Gunasekara, former EPA chief of staff, left open the possibility of working for Trump if he wins the election. | Rogelio V. Solis/AP.

Gunasekara blamed first term policy failures in part on resistance from career staff — something Project 2025 would take pains to root out through extensive structural and workforce changes. She also acknowledged that the Trump administration sometimes cut corners — something she said wouldn’t be repeated.

“The biggest difference is we have a plan from Day One, we’re going to start implementing it, and we won’t be as susceptible to process problems that really sunk a couple of those final regulatory proposals and actions we took at the tail end of the administration,” said Gunasekara, who spoke by phone with POLITICO’s E&E News as she attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Gunasekara said four Trump-era political appointees helped write the chapter: David Harlow, Scott Mason IV, Justin Schwab and Clint Woods. AFP Schwab declined to comment, and the others did not respond to requests for interviews.

The bulk of the chapter is devoted to reshaping EPA — “an agency that has long been amenable to being coopted by the Left for political ends” — into an entity suited to carry out a “conservative vision.”

The sections devoted to regulation ricochet between improbable suggestions and superspecific head-scratchers.

“It does have this kind of spaghetti-against-the-wall approach,” said James Goodwin, policy director at the Center for Progressive Reform. “Literally everything and the kitchen sink is in there.”

For example, the chapter proposes that EPA “update” the 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the environment. That’s the bedrock finding behind all Clean Air Act climate regulations, and has been targeted by some of the conservative groups behind Project 2025 — such as the Heartland Institute — since the finding’s inception.

But reversing it would be a legally tricky — and potentially more complicated after last month’s Supreme Court decision curtailing agency authority.

The Trump administration’s own EPA lawyers rejected a petition by a conservative think tank to reconsider the endangerment finding. They noted in emails obtained by E&E News that it remained consistent with scientific assessments by federal research bodies.

“If they were to revisit the endangerment finding based on the latest science, it is only more dire,” said Rachel Cleetus, climate policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“If anything, the 2009 endangerment finding is softballing the kind of impacts that are now already clear around us,” she said, referring to the effects of climate change.

But the chapter also provides a menu of wonky-sounding proposals that could narrow the scope of regulations, including for climate pollutants.

“This goes beyond many of the things that they did in the first Trump administration,” said Stan Meiburg, a former EPA acting deputy administrator. “It certainly is a very ambitious document, and incorporates ideas that go all the way back to the Reagan administration.”

Maximizing cost, minimizing benefits

Many of the regulatory proposals target EPA practices around cost-benefit analysis. There’s a reason for that: It’s generally harder for an agency to justify standards if their costs exceed their benefits.

Meiburg said the Reagan-era move to embrace cost-benefit analysis gave cost considerations the upper hand.

“Costs are specific and tend to be more quantifiable, and benefits tend to be more diffuse and less quantifiable, even though, in aggregate, they are larger,” said Meiburg.

Project 2025 proposes that EPA issue a rule to ensure “consistent and transparent consideration of costs.” Gunasekara said this would likely be a “very similar rule” to one introduced by the first Trump EPA, which was later voided by the Biden administration.

The rule promulgated under Wheeler was the first of its kind, and some experts say it could face longer odds now, when courts defer less to agencies on policy.

The EPA chapter also instructs the agency to “use appropriate discount rates, focus on the benefits of reducing the pollutant targeted by Congress, identify ‘co-benefits’ separately, and acknowledge the uncertainties involved in quantifying benefits.”

Discount rates are applied to future benefits that come at a present cost — such as avoided climate risk stemming from near-term emissions reductions.

“Basically, the higher the discount rate, the less argument there is for making investments now, because why would you spend money on this when you could make that money get a higher return doing something else?” said Meiburg.

During the Trump administration, discount rates were high, so the value of avoiding future climate change was low — somewhere between $1 and $7 per ton of carbon dioxide.

Project 2025 urges the agency to “revise guidance documents” for the so-called social cost of carbon, while another chapter proposes ending its use altogether.

Co-benefits — a rule’s health and environmental advantages that aren’t tied directly to reducing a targeted pollutant — have been persona non grata with conservatives for years. But the Trump EPA did count them in its climate rules — which showed minuscule benefits due in part to low social cost values for greenhouse gases.

Jason Schwartz, policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, said sidelining benefits could make rules less legally durable.

“I think that the court says have been clear in a number of cases that it would actually be arbitrary for an agency to ignore — or to really treat differently — co-benefits or indirect costs,” he said.

Gunasekara said co-benefits would still be analyzed.

“But it should be very clear, if EPA is going after one pollutant, what are the relative costs and benefit of [reducing] that one pollutant?” she said.

The goal, she said, should be “to ensure that there is increased transparency and understanding to the American public about cost-benefit justifications for the reduction of various pollutants.”

Transparency

Transparency is one of the chapter’s prevailing themes. That’s how the document frames its bid to require the data from all scientific studies underpinning regulation to be made public — effectively barring research that utilizes anonymous datasets.

But critics warn that many of its suggestions would create information gaps that would make it harder for EPA to maintain inventories of the greenhouse gas emissions — and ultimately to regulate them.

“It’s basically like two blades of a scissors,” said Goodwin of the Center for Progressive Reform. “These cost-benefit analysis rules are demanding more information. But the other blade is making it harder for EPA to get that information in the first place. And you can see how they come together.”

EPA currently requires 41 high-emitting sectors to report their greenhouse gas emission each year. About 8,000 facilities within those sectors — chosen because they exceed certain emissions thresholds — is the basis of EPA’s annual greenhouse gas inventory. The data has numerous purposes, including as an input for EPA regulatory decisions.

But Project 2025 would limit reporting to the few sectors currently being regulated for greenhouse gas emissions — such as power plants and oil and gas production. It would exempt major emitters in other sectors, such as municipal landfills, iron, steel and cement manufacturing, and carbon capture and storage.

The chapter said this would eliminate costly requirements borne by small businesses.

“This is either a pointless burden or a sword-of-Damocles threat of future regulation, neither of which is appropriate,” the document states.

But suspending annual greenhouse gas reporting for the four years of a second Trump term could delay regulation of new sectors during a subsequent administration by depriving it of needed data. It would reduce the scope of information available to scientific agencies that track emissions.

It could also make it impossible for the U.S. to fulfill its obligations as a party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which requires an annual accounting of emissions and carbon sinks. The Senate formally ratified the treaty in 1992 and the U.S. remained a party to it under Trump, even as the administration moved to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

Gunasekara said she’d urge “the next conservative administration” to withdraw from the UNFCCC as well as Paris, which she said required the U.S. to make painful cuts while giving other countries “a free pass.”

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White House Plan Calls for NOAA Research Programs ...}:

The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com › noaa-research-budget-cuts](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/climate/noaa-research-budget-cuts.html)

Apr 13, 2025 — ... the preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.” Advertisement. SKIP ADVERTISEMENT. “It would take the U.S. back to the ...Read more

NO LNX

White House Plan Calls for NOAA Research Programs to Be Dismantled

A Trump administration budget proposal would essentially eliminate one of the world’s foremost Earth sciences research operations.

By Austyn Gaffney

Published April 11, 2025

Updated April 13, 2025

See more of our coverage in your search results.

Trump administration officials are recommending the elimination of the scientific research division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times and several people with knowledge of the situation.

The proposal from the Office of Management and Budget would abolish the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research office at NOAA, one of the world’s premiere Earth sciences research centers.

A budget allocation of just over $170 million, down from about $485 million in 2024, would hobble science as varied as early warning systems for natural disasters, science education for students in kindergarten through high school, and the study of the Arctic, where temperatures have increased nearly four times as fast as the rest of the planet over the past four decades.

“At this funding level, O.A.R. is eliminated as a line office,” the proposal states.

Programs that retained funding, including research into tornado warnings and ocean acidification, would be relocated to the National Weather Service and National Ocean Service offices.

The outline for the 2026 budget passback, which would need to be approved by Congress, suggests “significant reductions to education, grants, research, and climate-related programs within NOAA” and comes after the dismantling of other agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the United States Agency for International Development, and the removal of mentions of climate change from federal websites.

Under the proposal, the total budget for the Commerce Department would be nearly $7.7 billion, a reduction of more than $2.5 billion from 2025 levels. According to the document, the budget would refocus on activities more in line with the Trump administration’s agenda, including enforcing trade laws and collecting scientific observations like ocean and weather data to support forecasting.

“This Administration’s hostility toward research and rejection of climate science will have the consequence of eviscerating the weather forecasting capabilities that this plan claims to preserve,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, the senior Democrat on the House Sciences Committee, said in an emailed statement.

NOAA, which takes up more than half of the Commerce Department budget, would receive just over $4.4 billion, a reduction of $1.6 billion from 2025.

“It’s not surprising, but it’s very disturbing,” said Rick Spinrad, who led NOAA under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

That includes reducing the budget for the National Marine Fisheries Service by one-third. The office would be split from NOAA and moved to the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Grants that fund species recovery and habitat conservation would be eliminated.

Funding for National Ocean Service, a branch of NOAA, would be cut in half. Programs like the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, an office within the ocean service that studies corals, pollution, and the effect of climate change and sea-level rise on coastal communities, would not be funded.

The National Centers for Environmental Information, which archives climate data, would lose a quarter of its funding.

The proposal would also alter NOAA’s satellite and space programs.

It would gut the Office of Space Commerce and relocate the Space Weather Prediction Center to the Department of Homeland Security. A program called the Traffic Coordination System for Space that was set to take over the monitoring of satellite traffic from the Department of Defense, a kind of traffic police for outer space, would also lose funding. The passback suggests having such work done by the private sector.

The satellite program that provides data for weather forecasting and modeling would also be downsized. The longstanding relationship that helps NOAA acquire satellites through NASA would also be terminated.

Dr. Spinrad said the likelihood that this budget, as proposed by the White House, would pass Congress was low. “I don’t think it will withstand congressional scrutiny.”

The passback is part of balancing the federal budget, according to the document, which includes “eliminating the federal government’s support of woke ideology.”

Project 2025, a document that has been used as a blueprint for an overhaul of the federal government under the Trump administration, included a goal to break up NOAA and downsize its research arm.

“It begs the question, is the Trump Administration intentionally breaking our weather forecasting capabilities as an excuse to carry out the dangerous Project 2025 proposal to privatize the Weather Service?” Ms. Lofgren said in a statement.

Project 2025, which was published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy research organization, called NOAA Research “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism” and said “the preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.”

“It would take the U.S. back to the 1950s in technical and scientific skill,” said Craig McLean, chief scientist at NOAA under both the first Trump presidency and President Biden, of the proposed budget.

Alexandra McCandless, an OMB spokesperson, said “No final funding decisions have been made.”

The agency has until noon on April 15 to appeal the proposal. And it has until April 24 to submit plans for many of the overhauls the passback suggests, even before the proposal has been addressed by Congress.

On Thursday, probationary government employees who had been fired in February, and then reinstated by a judge, received an email from the Department of Commerce firing them again after the decision was reversed by a higher court. A so-called reduction in force plan could slash an additional 20 percent of its work force in the coming weeks.

Austyn Gaffney is a reporter covering climate and a member of the 2024-25 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.

A version of this article appears in print on April 13, 2025, Section A, Page 25 of the New York edition with the headline: Plan Calls for End to NOAA’s Research. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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[### White House outlines plan to gut NOAA, smother climate ...

E&E News by POLITICO

https://www.eenews.net › Articles](https://www.eenews.net/articles/white-house-outlines-plan-to-gut-noaa-smother-climate-research/)

Apr 11, 2025 — ... the “preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.” The OMB document outlines a plan to break up NOAA's space weather ...Read more

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37 ways Project 2025 has shown up in Trump’s executive orders

37 ways Project 2025 has shown up in Trump’s executive orders

By Liset Cruz, Ali Bianco, Megan Messerly, Abhinanda Bhattacharyya and Anna Wiederkehr

02/05/2025

President Donald Trump on the campaign trail last summer disavowed Project 2025, saying he knew nothing about the effort.

But many of the conservative blueprint’s ideas have made their way into his early executive orders, signaling the sweeping impact the Heritage Foundation document has already had on the Trump administration’s policy making. A side-by-side review by POLITICO found dozens of cases where the president’s early executive actions have aligned with portions of the 922-page policy document, including some instances with nearly verbatim language lifted from the report to the White House.

Several of the ideas, such as energy policies expanding U.S. oil and critical minerals production, are longtime conservative policy priorities that did not originate with Project 2025. But some of the more unconventional strategies outlined in the document, such as reclassifying federal employees to make them easier to fire and installing loyalists in senior government positions, have also shown up in Trump’s executive orders.

There have also been other Trump administration moves outside of his executive orders that appear to come directly from Project 2025, such as directing the Federal Communications Commission to investigate NPR and PBS for alleged violations of sponsorship advertising rules.

We’ve broken down the executive order similarities in social issues, immigration, government staffing and other categories below.

...

MMA

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts argues “there ought to be certain restrictions against not just religions, but particular political implementations of religions”

Roberts: “I'm talking about Islamism and some of the head coverings that are political statements more than they are honoring religious traditions”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 05/26/26

Video

Citation

From the May 22, 2026, edition of The Blaze's Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey as broadcast on YouTube

KEVIN ROBERTS (GUEST): I would also encourage the president when it comes to immigration, to come back to that, to really double down on the importance of assimilation, the importance of wanting to be an American beyond getting the certificate that you're an American citizen, and to embrace what many of us have argued for decades, which is that the best way to be a pro-immigration country is to have laws that require immigrants to assimilate.

English should be the official language. We should have these mass deportations. You should break the back of these sanctuary cities, counties, and states. If that's something that needs to wait until January because of midterm considerations, that's fine. It just needs to happen. Not just because it's good, but also because we will in this movement strain credulity with our base if we don't deliver on that.

Americans want their country back, and I can think of no president, certainly in modern history, who better embodies the desire to do that than Donald Trump.

ALLIE BETH STUCKEY (HOST): Yeah, and that's a top issue for me, of course, I'm a big culture war girl. The things that I see is creation order issues, abortion, gender, marriage, those are going to be top. But other than that, crime, immigration. And like I'm just the suburban mom, but those are the things I really see affecting my community and it's not just, it's not only illegal immigration and this is where I think the conversation has shifted on the right in a good way.

I just don't know the solution for it is that people are saying, yes, illegal immigration, number one, but also, it doesn't seem like our legal immigration is really prioritizing American interests. And when people see their communities, the neighborhoods that they grew up in, completely shift and when people see churches turning into mosques, I think most Americans are uncomfortable saying it, but there's something unsettling about it.

And I don't know that many voters know how to articulate what our goal is or what we want, but something just doesn't seem just, and I haven't heard a whole lot of politicians be able to say there's a solution for that. So what do you think about it?

ROBERTS: Well, I will say, and not just for me, but from all of us at Heritage, I'm not uncomfortable saying it. It's a travesty. We ought not have this plethora of mosques being built anywhere. We ought not tolerate at any level of government what is at least the partial implementation of Sharia law. And I'm not holding President Trump responsible for that. I actually think he's going to get onto that issue, but I want to encourage him there.

I think that what we've learned now that we have closed the southern border, you know, almost a small political miracle if you will, is that we can move on to the next order of questions, and that is, what does it mean to be an American? What does it mean to be a citizen, and not just in a legal sense, but in a social and cultural sense to, to be part of your neighborhood, your community, right?

Well, at the very least, it means you ought to speak English and English ought to be our official language.

It also means that while of course we will honor religious liberty that there ought to be certain restrictions against not just religions but particular political implementations of religions. I'm talking about Islamism and some of the head coverings that are political statements more than they are honoring religious traditions.

We have to understand that this country was based on principles that came from Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and Philadelphia. We are both Judeo and Christian in our founding.

That doesn't mean that there isn't room for other people, but it does mean that it's possible in a country that is so generous toward immigrants that we might have too many people from the wrong places.

You know my Christian faith, I believe as it is demanded of me because of my faith that every human person is equal in the eyes of God. A nation state can believe that and also because it believes it, say, that legal immigration should be so restricted as to be able to perpetuate the best parts of that society, right?

---

MMA

Dozens of Project 2025 proposals appear to be included in the Trump administration's newest budget

Budget director Russ Vought was a key author of the extreme right-wing media initiative

Written by Sophie Lawton

Published 04/14/26

The proposed 2027 budget released by the Office of Management and Budget is filled with ideas that appear to be copied and pasted from Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. Russ Vought, the head of the OMB, was an architect of the extreme right-wing media initiative and its signature publication before being hired by President Donald Trump.

The 2027 budget proposes defunding a variety of “woke" policies (with the word “woke” appearing more than 30 times in the document), including, for example, Department of Commerce programs “focused on woke and meaningless initiatives" like prioritizing support and funding for LGBTQ businesses.

Similarly, in Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ forward to the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership, he calls for the next conservative administration to “make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors" by “deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’), diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists."

Other proposals from the 2027 budget go even further than what was suggested by Project 2025. For instance, Project 2025 concedes that Congress is unlikely to defund the Minority Business Development Agency and therefore “a conservative Administration is best served by approaching MBDA as a tool to be leveraged in the fight to deliver economic opportunity to all Americans." The 2027 budget suggests defunding the agency entirely.

Project 2025 calls for a conservative administration to restructure the Teen Pregnancy Prevention initiative so it does not serve as an “advocacy tool” to “promote sex, promote prostitution, or provide a funnel effect for abortion facilities." Trump's 2027 budget proposes completely eliminating the program.

The 2027 budget document also contains some language more forceful than what was seen in Mandate for Leadership, repeatedly referring to the Green New Deal as the “Green New Scam,” for example, while Mandateuses the somewhat softer “green subsidies” to describe environmental and related policies it calls to dismantle.

After spending months disavowing Project 2025 on the campaign trail in 2024, Trump hired dozens of people connected to the effort at the start of his second term and has continued to enact policies lifted directly from the Mandate for Leadership. Some of the more notable Project 2025 suggestions that have been implemented include dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and defunding programs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. According to the open source Project 2025 Tracker, the Trump administration has implemented around 50% of Project 2025's policy proposals so far.

Below are 45 of the 2027 OMB budget proposals that appear to be pulled straight from Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership.

Department of Agriculture}:

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

International Trade Association (ITA)

Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) and Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (MMPA) permitting

Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA)

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

State control

School choice

Critical minerals

Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR)

Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)

Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)

Office of Science (SC)

Environmental Management (EM)

Refugee Resettlement

Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

FEMA Non-Disaster Grant Programs

TSA privatization

CISA reform

Federal Land energy resources

“Woke” programming

Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB)

International organizations

General efficiency

Research and development

Environmental justice

//

  1. ### The definitive guide to Project 2025

08/08/24 10:36 AM EDT

  1. ### Trump set to appoint Project 2025 architect Russ Vought to Office of Management and Budget

11/20/24 3:42 PM EST

  1. ### Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts: Project 2025 framework will carry on for the next 10 years

06/24/24

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an 3 26

Indystar reports Indiana’s Gov. Mike Braun has signed a new bill forcing state colleges and universities to include a “classics-based” examination embraced by religious colleges in Republican states.

For decades, the ACT and the SAT have been the gatekeepers and the standard-bearer of college admissions to measure a student's aptitude in core subjects like math, science and reading. But proponents said the test “would better assess students who received a classical education, typically offered to homeschooled students or at private or charter classical schools,” according to the IndyStar.

The newly required Classical Learning Test aims to promote the "Western intellectual tradition" that right-wing supporters claim has been abandoned by existing standardized tests.

The change stems from a legislative bill that also “requires schools to teach a 2000s-era anti-poverty theory involving waiting until marriage to have kids as part of schools' good citizenship instruction,” reports IndyStar. “It passed mostly along party lines amid criticism that the CLT could disadvantage students who are less accustomed to Western ideas.”

"It has baked-in prejudices that would make students who come from less diverse backgrounds appear to have done better than students from more diverse backgrounds," said Joel Hand, a lobbyist for the American Federation of Teachers for Indiana, during Senate committee testimony in January.

Classic Learning Test creator Jeremy Tate applauded the bill's passage in Indiana in an X post Feb. 24.

“While Tate has said the test is not partisan, his company's expansive Board of Academic Advisors include administrators from religious colleges and right-wing figures like Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation and PragerU CEO Marissa Streit,” reports IndyStar. “It's also been promoted by Sen. Jim Banks, who called it the "standard for academic excellence."

PragerU is not a university, but a conservative nonprofit known for producing wildly inaccurate educational videos. One PragerU videofrom its history series depicts abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass arguing that the founders’ decision not to abolish U.S. slavery was worth it because it helped convince the Southern colonies to join the Union.

“Our system is wonderful, and the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. We just need to convince enough Americans to be true to it,” the video depicts Douglass saying.

Teachers' unions and academics also doubt the value of the Classic Learning Test considering its concepts and biased arguments.

===

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alimac 2024 pjt bradley

Notion

DL 2 26

Project-2025-Financial-Networks-and-Power-Architecture 28 pp

...

Conclusion: A Coordinated Apparatus

Project 2025 represents not merely a policy document but an integrated political apparatus combining:

•$1.6 billion+ in available capital through Leo's Marble Freedom Trust

•Hundreds of millions more flowing through DonorsTrust, Bradley, and other foundations

•At least 100+ organisations coordinated through Heritage Foundation

•Personnel database and training programme for administration staffing

•State-level infrastructure through SPN, RAGA, and State Freedom Caucus Network

•Litigation operations through America First Legal and allied groups

•Grassroots mobilisation through AFP and CPI

•Media and cultural operations through Teneo and funded outlets

•Direct placement of key architects in Trump administration positions

The financial architecture ensures donors maintain anonymity whilst receiving tax benefits, corporate interests secure policy representation without public accountability, and personnel circulate between think tanks and government positions carrying policy continuity.

The integration of billionaire family fortunes (Bradley, Scaife, Uihlein), industrialists (Seid, Koch), corporate interests (fossil fuel, tobacco, retail, finance), and Trump administration veterans creates a network positioned to implement comprehensive governmental transformation. With Russell Vought controlling OMB, Stephen Miller as Deputy Chief of Staff, and at least 16 additional Project 2025 contributors in Cabinet or senior positions, the initiative transitions from blueprint to implementation.

The opacity of funding flows—from Seid's $1.6 billion through multiple intermediaries, anonymous multi-million dollar contributions to CPI, and corporate money laundered through RAGA—prevents citizens from identifying who finances the reshaping of their government. This represents the central mechanism: converting private wealth into public policy whilst evading democratic accountability.

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Trump Brings Putin's Booted Propaganda Goon Back to U.S.}:

The Daily Beast

https://www.thedailybeast.com › trump-brings-putins-bo...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-brings-putins-booted-propaganda-goon-lauren-chen-back-to-us/)

6 hours ago — ... State Department senior adviser Joe Rittenhouse. She credited Rittenhouse with “moving mountains to ensure we were able to return in time ...Read more

...Last week, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio barred five European campaigners and watchdog leaders from entering the country under a new “free speech” visa policy.

It also raises questions about Trump’s friendly behavior toward Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. Even in the past month, Trump—who in 2022 called Putin a “genius”—has described Putin as being “very generous” about Ukraine’s future in a call they had about the war there, prompting visible disbelief from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump Gets Beauty Salon Owner to Decide Who to Ban From U.S.EYEBROW RAISING

Tom Latchem

Trump’s State Department has increasingly been populated with loyalists in roles that control who gets a visa and who gets turned away. Rittenhouse, for instance, is a former actor who became a Trump presidential campaign worker. Over Christmas, it also emerged that Trump had elevated Project 2025 contributor Mora Namdar to run the consular bureau overseeing visa approvals and revocations.

---

AN 12 25

Comedian and podcaster Deborah Frances-White isn’t joking in her recent column for The iPaper, where she describes a growing movement of men who believe women’s right to vote should be taken away.

"The Guilty Feminist" host noted that she first assumed that it was rumblings coming from the "manosphere," an umbrella term for a loose network of online communities that promote ideologies of male supremacy and anti-feminism.

"However, even the most fiercely anti-feminist forces haven’t openly questioned women having the vote in my lifetime, because no one can remember a time when it wasn’t normal," wrote Frances-White.

She recalled being cornered in the lobby of one of her comedy shows, by a woman who claimed that women are "too emotional" to have the right to vote.

"That was my first alarm bell," she confessed.

White women in the U.S. earned the right to vote in 1920. Frances-White noted that Native American women weren't even classified as citizens until 1924 and some Black women were blocked from voting until the 1960s — particularly in the South.

But in the last decade, Supreme Court rulings eliminated the Roe v. Wade standard, allowing the government to regulate reproductive health.

Frances-White pointed to the "Project 2025" handbook, a plan authored by those working with the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation amid President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.

The goals include not just replacing FBI staff with Trump loyalists, but the complete dismantling of the Department of Education, the mass deportation of immigrants and cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

One section, however, focuses on enacting laws pushed by Christian nationalists, including laws that criminalize reproductive health.

"Much of this is being actioned now," she warned.

"Part of this new political climate includes the visibility of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), which counts more than 160 congregations across North America, Europe, Asia and South America," she continued. "Their most recent outpost was strategically planted in Washington DC under the leadership of Pastor Doug Wilson. While they are not directly connected to Project 2025, many of their aims align neatly with it."

CREC spokespeople are outright arguing to overturn a woman's right to vote and put women "back to the household." Women's suffrage is "eroded family values" in their eyes. Women should only be voting, they believe, if she is the head of the household. That does not mean that men who are not the head of the household are not allowed to vote, however.

This reflects a broader argument within the Trump coalition. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has contended that if women are to be included in combat roles, they must meet the same physical standards as male soldiers.

In her closing remarks, Frances-White contends that what marks the beginning of the journey "on the road to Gilead" is not the overturning of a ruling like Roe, but rather when ideas questioning women's voting rights spread through conversations, social media, and videos without significant public opposition.

"It’s a quiet conversation in a church basement," she said. "It’s a campaign shared on social media. It’s ideas dropped in YouTube videos with millions of hits. It’s a moment when someone says, “maybe women shouldn’t vote,” and it doesn’t get laughed off. If you believe democracy means that each of us has a voice – the right to vote, choose, speak, dissent – now is the time to guard it."

Read the full column here.

---

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gmail 11? 25

during this Trump administration, Charles Koch’s influence is everywhere. The fossil fuel billionaire funds a nationwide network of rightwing organizations, the most famous of which are probably American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the prolific incubator of rightwing legislation, and Americans for Prosperity, the libertarian-conservative advocacy group, whichlobbied hard for Trump’s recent mega-bill that gave tax cuts to billionaires. The Koch network spent millions helping launch Project 2025, and its donors and partners are all over the Trump administration. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, for example, is a Koch network donor.

Connor Gibson is an independent opposition research consultant specialized in climate change deniers, fossil fuel lobbying, deceptive public relations, dishonest front groups, dark money, and all-things Koch. He founded Grassrootbeer Investigations after spending a decade at Greenpeace USA. I’ve been lucky enough to work with him, and I wanted to ask him how the Koch network’s influence is playing out now, during this time of unprecedented handouts to the billionaire class.

*Meaghan: Why have you devoted time to researching the Koch network?

Connor:Throughout my career, I’ve been paying attention to political spending that prevents policy solutions related to environmental protection and climate change. Koch Industries – the oil petrochemical industrial multinational conglomerate that’s headquartered in Wichita, Kansas – has been and remains a massive opponent to climate and environmental policies and regulations.

Corporations know exactly what to expect from their return on investment in politicians. For that reason, financial disclosures related to political spending are extremely important for identifying basic problems with our democracy.

The same exact logic can be applied to any interest group, whether it’s the pharmaceutical or insurance industry. These companies that sell these products are often not concerned with the impact that their product has on the consumer. They’re concerned with making money. In fact, as we know well enough now, corporations are legally mandated to maximize profits to shareholders, often at the expense of a healthy population. So, I take great interest in using the financial paper trail as key data points, examining the lobbying and donor disclosures, the behavior of politicians that are affiliated with these donors, to help make a case that perhaps there’s a quid pro quo arrangement.

Pledge your support

*Meaghan: In this Trump era, all the corruption is such a brazen caricature of itself. Can you tell me how Koch spending fits into the oligarchy we’re seeing now?

Connor:Citizens United is 15 years old, and exceptionally rich people spending money is the new normal now. Charles Koch, I think, is still a unique case for a few reasons.

Charles Koch, as a political actor, is focused on many other issues, but his infrastructure – his nonprofit fleet, as I call it – is still unique in that it is totally centered around his privately controlled corporation, and his top executives are the people that are running the nonprofits in this network. We’re talking about a multi-billionaire-dollar network at this point.

What Charles Koch has built is also completely unique in terms of its structure, its sophistication, its scope and scale. Somebody who’s getting a lot of scrutiny, like Leonard Leo, who has been massively influential in terms of the Supreme Court, in terms of the Trump administration’s priorities, does not control nearly as much money as Charles Koch.

The Koch fleet is something like 27 nonprofit organizations that are regulated by the IRS. There are a handful of other organizations, PACs and super PACs, that are regulated by the Federal Election Commission. These are Koch-controlled groups, not just groups that they’re funding. That fleet was worth $8.4 billion in assets as of 2023, that’s the latest data that’s available, and that network spent a gross sum of $1.5 billion as of 2023. Money is also circulated between these Koch groups and there’s a dizzying mess of transactions where one group is granting to the other and maybe even granting right back. But, ultimately, it’s money going out the door for politics and policy fights that Charles Koch wants to see.

Koch is also unique in terms of his influence. The Koch apparatus is built around a for-profit company specifically, and that for-profit company has been very politically active for decades. There aren’t many corporations out there whose executives have been that neck deep in politics for so long.

*Meaghan: What’s an example of something that Koch and his allies have gotten with that spending?

Connor:The Koch network was over the moon about getting the tax bill with tax cuts passed by the Republican Congress during Trump’s first term. That was worth many untold billions of dollars for somebody like Charles Koch and every owner or major shareholder of a major corporation.

Super rich people got a great return on their investment for their efforts to support the Republican Congress, as well as getting their people on Donald Trump’s cabinet. The Kochs having such permanent infrastructure really allows them to adapt to those changing political winds and continually be opportunistic.

In general, the recipients of the Koch’s dark money funds, including front groups, can serve as independent validators, which is really important for their donors. The tobacco industry innovated by getting doctors to smoke and wage a public relations campaign against the facts of the harms of cigarettes. The oil companies, coal companies, car companies, did the exact thing when they hired a cohort of bozos, through consulting firms and subcontractors, to go on TV and say, “I am a scientist, and climate change is not a problem.” That’s still happening. So, being able to anonymize the money trail that pays for that is worth it for these companies.

...

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AN 11 25

ANOTHER CIVIL WAR? // 5?

NO LNX

‘The whole thing is imploding’: Inside the rebellion at America’s top right-wing think tank

David Badash andThe New Civil Rights MovementNovember 09, 2025

Founded in 1973, the Heritage Foundation has become what its president, Kevin Roberts, now hails as the “intellectual backbone” of the conservative movement. It crafted the policy blueprint that powered President Ronald Reagan’s right-wing revolution — and today, under Roberts’s leadership, it’s once again shaping the machinery of power. Through its highly controversial Project 2025 — a plan widely credited to Roberts as its chief architect — Heritage laid out a road map for President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda. But Roberts’s recent missteps have rattled the institution, raising strong questions about his leadership — and the future direction of the conservative movement itself.

Roberts gained widespread attention in July 2024 when he issued a warning to Democrats: “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

At the time, Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer said, “they are threatening violence.”

As did others.

“Kevin Roberts is threatening violence to anyone not following his dear leader,” former Republican and former U.S. Congressman Denver Riggleman wrote. “Every network should cover this."

Roberts’s remarks had come just after the U.S. Supreme Court recognized a new constitutional principle of “presidential immunity” for official acts — a decision critics say President Donald Trump has wielded to expand his power.

Late last month, Roberts came under tremendous criticism after throwing his support behind former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who had a two-hour interview with far-right extremist leader Nick Fuentes, whom many see as promoting Christian nationalism, white supremacy, racism, antisemitism, misogyny, and Islamophobia.

"There has been speculation that @Heritage is distancing itself from @TuckerCarlson over the past 24 hours," Roberts wrote on October 30 when posting the video that sparked this current firestorm. "I want to put that to rest right now."

The editors of the right-wing National Review in a scathing editorial explained the issue: “Tucker Carlson, knee-deep already, has taken another step into the muck with a friendly interview with Nick Fuentes.”

HERITAGE "WILL ALWAYS DEFEND OUR FRIENDS ... THAT INCLUDES TUCKER CARLSON"

Roberts had wasted no time in coming to Carlson's defense.

“The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians. And we won’t start doing that now,” he said in his video supporting Carlson.

Roberts insisted that Heritage "will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda. That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains, and as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”

Criticism of Roberts was immediate.

Journalist Yashar Ali called it a "watershed moment."

"In his statement," Ali wrote, "Kevin condemns what he calls a 'venomous coalition' that is 'sowing division' by attacking Tucker. That 'venomous coalition,' includes MAGA Republicans as well as Jewish conservative commentators, activists, and donors."

"Kevin also frames Nick Fuentes’s rhetoric as worthy of debate, rather than something to be condemned outright. A shift like this would’ve been unthinkable for Heritage just three years ago."

Condemnations came, and continue to do so — from both outside and inside Heritage.

CNN's Andrew Kaczynski on Thursday reported on what one senior staffer called the "absolute s--" swirling inside Heritage.

"The staff that we talked to told us the Heritage Foundation is in open revolt over the president's defense of Carlson," Kaczynski explained.

That senior staffer also told CNN that Roberts had "lost control over the organization."

Kaczynski noted that they also "said there's an open rebellion, and this really all came to a head [Wednesday], where they had this all hands meeting ... this was kind of going around social media, where Roberts publicly apologized, according to her recording we obtained, Roberts told employees, 'I made a mistake. I let you down. I let this institution down. I'm sorry.'"

"But," Kaczynski added, Roberts "also made clear he has no plans to resign."

On Friday, Reason senior editor Stephanie Slade wrote that at a Thursday night event, "I was asked if the crisis at Heritage Foundation seemed to be blowing over. This morning I received a message from someone inside the building about Kevin Roberts: 'He needs to be made to resign by the [Heritage] Foundation Board of Trustees.'"

"In speaking to current and former Heritage staffers over the last week," Slade continued, "the emotion I've most commonly encountered is disgust and the words I've most commonly heard are 'Kevin Roberts has to go.'"

By Wednesday, as Ali noted, Roberts had "made his fourth public statement on the Tucker Carlson/Nick Fuentes situation ... over the course of six days." After the initial video that ignited the firestorm, Roberts made three other attempts to "clean up" his remarks.

According to The Wall Street Journal's Elliot Kaufman, Heritage senior fellow Amy Swearer, in remarks before Heritage staff, told Roberts, "over the last week, you have shown a stunning lack of both courage and judgment."

She called Roberts' initial defense of Carlson "at best ... equal parts incoherent, unhelpful and naive."

"At worst, it was more akin to a master class in cowardice that ran cover for the most unhinged dregs of the far right."

"LOST MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN DONATIONS"

Heritage also appears to be losing important donors.

"One major donor, whose organization contributes more than a half million dollars annually to Heritage Foundation, told us that they had totally lost faith in Roberts," Kaczynski reported.

"They said, 'I see how things play out, but if Kevin remains as president, we will not be giving to Heritage.'"

"Likewise, the Zionist Organization of America, that's actually the oldest pro-Israel group in the United States, announced that it has withdrawn from Heritage's initiative on antisemitism, unless Roberts publicly apologized, and retract his praise for Carlson."

Newsmax reported that "Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein told Newsmax Friday that Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts should resign immediately."

"My organization has many of the same donors as Heritage," Klein also said. "They've told me that they're stopping all funding for Heritage until they get rid of Kevin Roberts, so yes, they have lost millions of dollars in donations since this controversy arose."

Klein also "pointed to longtime Heritage fellow Stephen Moore's recent departure."

"He doesn't want to be involved with Heritage, which is now tainted as an antisemitic, bigoted organization," Klein told Newsmax. "It's harmed everything else they do."

Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told The Wall Street Journal on Friday that “Any tent that is big enough for them ...is too big for me,” referring to Fuentes and his allies.

The Journal reported that "Goldfeder resigned from Heritage’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism in the aftermath of Roberts’s video."

"CIVIL WAR AT THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION"

Other critics outside Heritage have also been observing Roberts' crumbling support, and what it means for the future of the organization, its president, and the conservative movement.

"The civil war at the Heritage Foundation is far more consequential than most people realize," noted Mike Madrid, the prominent Latino Republican political consultant. "The divide seems irreconcilable and it could splinter the American right irreversibly."

Conservative New York Times opinion columnist David French wrote on Sunday, "I don’t know if Roberts will survive at Heritage."

"I do know that Carlson and Fuentes and their constellation of friends and allies are far too popular to cancel or even to contain," he noted, and observed: "The fight for the future of the Republican Party is underway."

And pointing to a Washington Post article on the crisis at Heritage, Madrid declared: "The whole thing is imploding."

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National Review Senior writer Noah Rothman blasted Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ embrace of MAGA influencer Tucker Carlson, and the alternative media host’s “friendly interview with avowed racist Nick Fuentes.”

After Carlson posted his interview with Fuentes Monday, conservatives urged the foundation to distance itself from Carlson due to Fuentes’s being the founder of a group of internet trolls that praise Hitler and white Christian nationalism.

But that’s not what Roberts did, said Rothman.

“My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America always,” Roberts said instead. “When it serves the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence, and technology. But when it doesn’t, conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.”

Rothman called this a “strawman — and a familiar one, at that.”

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“It gets a beating whenever rank Jew hatred encounters even the mildest dissent, allowing purveyors of the world’s oldest hate to retreat into a more defensible posture,” Rothman argued. “‘We were only critiquing the geopolitical entity of Israel, and your obsession with one of many nation-states marks YOU as the monomaniac here!’ The notion that those who object to anti-Jewish slurs insist upon ‘reflexive’ — read, thoughtless and tribalistic — support for the Israeli government’s every act is false.”

Additionally, said Rothman, Israel’s military policies did not inspire Roberts’s statement. It was “Carlson’s generous efforts to elevate the profile of an unapologetic racist and antisemite” that is the issue to which Roberts is responding.

Equally cowardly is Roberts’ attempt to “evade direct engagement with the subject he pretended to address” by swearing off “cancelling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians,” said Rothman.

“I disagree with, and even abhor, things that Nick Fuentes says. But cancelling him is not the answer either,” Roberts argued. “When we disagree with a person’s thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas in debate.”

Only there was no disagreement with Fuentes by Carson.

“This, too, is preposterous,” Rothman said. “… Carlson conspicuously declined to challenge Fuentes’s ideas on any substantive level,” as Carson has happily done for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“As we wrote, amid the rise of right-wing antisemitism, it is ‘a time for choosing.’ This video suggests Roberts is making his choice,” said Rothman.

Read the National Review article at this link.

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Prominent conservatives are rebuking Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation — the organization behind Project 2025 and self-described “intellectual backbone” of the conservative movement — after he threw his support behind right-wing political commentator and podcaster Tucker Carlson, now under fire for platforming far-right extremist leader Nick Fuentes this week.

The editors of the right-wing National Review in a scathing editorial explained: “Tucker Carlson, knee-deep already, has taken another step into the muck with a friendly interview with Nick Fuentes.”

“The issue isn’t merely that Carlson ‘platformed’ a white-nationalist influencer,” they wrote. “The deeper problem is that Carlson didn’t actually challenge any of Fuentes’s noxious views that he has spelled out quite clearly over the years. Fuentes has engaged in Holocaust denial, called Adolf Hitler ‘really f– cool,’ and said that if his movement gained power, it would execute ‘perfidious Jews.'”

The editors continued: “In his appearance, Fuentes stated that the ‘big challenge’ to unifying the country against tribal interests was ‘organized Jewry in America,’ and he expressed admiration for Soviet butcher Joseph Stalin. He did not receive any pushback from Carlson.”

READ MORE: ‘Disturbing’: Johnson Scorched for Saying He’s Starving SNAP to ‘Pressure’ Democrats

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In a video rushing to Carlson’s defense, Roberts declared, “The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians. And we won’t start doing that now.”

Instead, he framed the controversy surrounding Carlson and Fuentes as “the robust debate we invite, with our colleagues, our movement friends, our members, and the American public,” while vowing to “always defend truth.”

And Roberts insisted that “we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda. That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains, and as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”

He vowed that the “attempt to cancel him will fail,” and said that “canceling” Fuentes is also “not the answer” — before denouncing “the vile ideas of the left.”

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) in remarks made at a Republican Jewish Coalition gathering, said:

“If you sit there and nod adoringly while someone tells you that Winston Churchill was the villain of World War II, if you sit there and nod while someone says, ‘Well, there’s a very good argument that America should have intervened on behalf of Nazi Germany in World War II.’ If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil.”

READ MORE: Americans Turn Against Trump’s Crime Crackdowns: Report

As Jewish Insider reported, Cruz “did not mention the Heritage Foundation, Roberts, Carlson or Fuentes by name, though he accused anyone who uncritically promotes Adolf Hitler of being ‘complicit’ in spreading virulent antisemitism.”

Jewish Insider also reported that the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matt Brooks, told the news outlet, “I am appalled, offended and disgusted that [Roberts] and Heritage would stand with Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes as somehow being acceptable spokespeople within the conservative movement.”

Brooks added, “obviously there’s going to be a reassessment of our relationship with Heritage in light of this.”

U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the former longtime Republican Leader, responded to Roberts’ video with biting condemnation: “The ‘intellectual backbone of the conservative movement’ is only as strong as the values it defends.”

“Last I checked, ‘conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats. But maybe I just don’t know what time it is…”

Right-wing commentator Erick Erickson, in a lengthy rebuke, blasted Roberts (and numerous other targets): “Kevin Roberts could have chosen to criticize Carlson as a friend. Kevin could have chosen silence. Instead, he picked the worst possible option of dismissing very legitimate criticism and did so in the most straw-man possible way.”

“I also know what Kevin Roberts, J.D. Vance, and others are doing as they dance around some of these guys, Erickson wrote. “They want to attract young zoomers to their side, many of them male, and they think the way to do that is to punch back hard at critics, refuse to fold to criticism, and show a high tolerance for inflammatory positions that rile up the left.”

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When President Donald Trump returned to the White House, it was obvious that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had a radically different approach from the two women who held that position under former President Joe Biden: first Jen Psaki (now an MSNBC host), then Karine Jean-Pierre. While Psaki and Jean-Pierre were happy to debate conservative reporters or disagree with them, they welcomed their presence — Leavitt, in contrast, regularly attacks and berates journalists.

Leavitt had a reputation for being a MAGA attack dog well before she joined Trump's second administration. And according to the Daily Beast, she "once played a starring role in a training video created by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank responsible for the president’s Project 2025 playbook."

"Long before Donald Trump was swooning about her being a White House star with 'lips that move like a machine gun," Daily Beast reporters David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice explain in an August 21 report, "Karoline Leavitt was teaching aspiring politicos how to conduct themselves if they ever landed a job in the (Trump) Administration…. The 30-minute guide, titled 'The Art of Professionalism,' was produced before Trump returned to the Oval Office and features Leavitt providing tips on everything from competence ('you have to be resourceful,' she says); to 'knowledge' ('reading the news of the day'); and 'confidence' ('just be prepared')."

READ MORE:Aides sat 'helpless' as 'incoherent' Trump displayed 'stunning ignorance': biographer

The Beast reporters continue, "Leavitt had not yet graced the podium when she filmed the video with Chris Hayes, who was then the careers coordinator at the right-wing Leadership Institute, and not to be confused with the left-wing MSNBC host of the same name.

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Project 2025 contributors celebrate the Trump administration moving to dismantle the Department of Education

Written by Sophie Lawton

Published 07/16/25

The Heritage Foundation and other Project 2025 partners are praising the Supreme Court decision opening the doors for President Donald Trump to dismantle the Department of Education — a key Project 2025 initiative marking another U-turn from Trump's early disavowal of the unpopular transition plan.

The court's July 14 ruling allows the administration to continue with the reduction in force of over 1,300 Education Department employees, more than one-quarter of the department's workforce. Trump praised the decision in a post on Truth Social, writing, “The Trump Administration may proceed on returning the functions of the Department of Education BACK TO THE STATES.”

The ruling also reverses a block on Trump's March executive order to close the department, though officially shuttering it requires congressional approval. The lower court judge who had halted the administration's efforts claimed the layoffs alone would effectively “cripple” the department.

The Department of Education has already struggled with enforcing civil rights laws and supporting students with disabilities since the Trump administration ordered a freeze on new cases and pressured the office to focus on investigations into transgender students on sports teams and antisemitism. The approved layoffs will shutter seven regional civil rights offices in major cities like New York and Chicago. The department’s Federal Student Aid office, which has already battled technical difficulties due to layoffs, is also facing large cuts. According to a Time magazine review, reducing the FSA offices may “massively disrupt” student loan operations. Trump has announced plans to move many of these offices’ functions to other government departments such as Health and Human Services and the Small Business Administration, both of which are also facing layoffs.

Alongside the personnel cuts and grand plans for closure of the department, the Trump administration is withholding billions of dollars in federal education grants to ensure they “align with President Donald Trump’s priorities,” effectively shuttering many after-school programs and other federally funded education initiatives.

Project 2025 — the extreme right-wing plan for a second Trump administration organized by the Heritage Foundation and over 100 conservative partners — pledged to “gut federal education funding, sanction discrimination against LGBTQ+ students, divert taxpayer funds to private schools,” and “dismantle the federal role in public education.” Now, Project 2025 partner organizations are celebrating the Supreme Court ruling.

Extremist “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty posted, “Parents should raise children, not government bureaucrats,” and has already begun a campaign to eliminate the National Education Association.

Extreme anti-LGBTQ group the Family Research Council released an episode of its Washington Watch podcast in which host Tony Perkins claimed “the left is going to be fearmongering” about the cuts to the Department of Education but argued there will be little change to classrooms. Speaking with Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT), Perkins praised the Supreme Court ruling, arguing it will “free up education at the state level to do what works.”

The Heritage Foundation's Jonathan Butcher appeared on The Steve Gruber Show and argued the layoffs and other changes to the department won't majorly affect students, repeating the claims that essential programs will simply be moved to other federal agencies. Butcher also attested that “Congress is going to look to disentangle the U.S. Department of Education and other federal responsibilities from federal law” to move education policies to the states.

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From the July 16, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's The Steve Gruber Show

All of the Trump administration's steps to dismantle the Department of Education reflect the goals of the Project 2025 policy book, Mandate for Leadership. The Heritage Foundation has argued for shuttering the Department of Education since the first Mandate for Leadership book published in 1981. The 2024 edition of Mandateincluded specific plans for demolishing the Department of Education in a chapter written by Heritage's Lindsey Burke.

Burke's chapter for Project 2025 called for the Trump administration to “devolve” the Department of Education “as a stand-alone Cabinet-level department" and recommended that its programs, offices, and personnel be moved to other federal agencies or completely eliminated. Project 2025 specifically argued that the department’s Office of Civil Rights “should move to the Department of Justice,” a plan that Education Secretary Linda McMahon echoed during her confirmation hearing. Burke also suggested that only “employees whose positions are determined to be essential to the mission” would possibly move to other agencies now handling their office's work.

Closing down the Department of Education is just one area of many policies where the Trump administration is following the lead of Project 2025.

For instance, in January, the Trump administration released an executive order requiring any federally funded schools to remove so-called “critical race theory,” “gender ideology,” and other “radical indoctrination” from their curriculums. This measure was taken directly from Mandate for Leadership, which called for lawmakers to prevent the teaching of CRT and to “take particular note of how radical gender ideology is having a devastating effect on school-aged children.”

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Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts touted a decrease in weather-related deaths. The decrease is partially due to NOAA, an agency Project 2025 wants to dismantle.

09/26/24

As “life-threatening” Hurricane Helene approached Florida, the Miami Herald called out Project 2025's proposal to dismantle NOAA

09/27/24

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project 2025 plans to dismantle the federal agency that tracks hurricanes

Right-wing media have attacked NOAA and climate science for decades

Special PROGRAMSCLIMATE & ENERGY

WRITTEN BY ALLISON FISHER

PUBLISHED 05/31/24

:{:{The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that predicts changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coastlines and provides data that informs lifesaving forecasts such as tracking hurricanes, is in the crosshairs of Project 2025, the conservative battle plan for a potential second Trump presidency which describes NOAA as a “colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.”}:

But researchers have pushed back on these charges and defended NOAA’s climate data and meteorological work — while forecasters are predicting an “extremely active” Atlantic hurricane season and experts say this summer could rival last year’s record heat.}:

Project 2025’s call to dismantle NOAA by eliminating or privatizing key functions of the agency is the endgame of years of attempts by conservatives and right-wing media to attack the credibility of the agency and the veracity of the data it produces. It also illustrates that the conservative plan is not just to dismantle U.S. climate policy, but also to scrub the climate data that underpins it.

Speaking to The Guardian, former NOAA official Andrew Rosenberg said the agency “basically reports the science as the scientific evidence accumulates and has been quite cautious about reporting climate effects,” adding, “It’s not pushing some agenda.” And meteorologist Chris Gloninger said Project 2025’s recommendations are “a sign that the far right has ‘no interest in climate truth.’” E&E News, [4/10/24; The Guardian, 4/26/24]}:

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U.S. President Donald **Trump on Thursday signed an executive order calling for an end to taxpayer funding for NPR and PBS, an escalation of his assault on the media that could shutter hundreds of local stations across the country.

The president's order, which he signed behind closed doors, echoes a section of Project 2025, a far-right agenda that called for stripping public funding from NPR, PBS, and other broadcasters on the grounds that they "do not even bother to run programming that would attract conservatives."

Trump's order instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)—a private nonprofit corporation created and funded by Congress—to "cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my administration's policy to ensure that federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage."

The executive order, which is expected to face legal challenges, also directs all federal agencies to "identify and terminate, to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, any direct or indirect funding of NPR and PBS."

Trump's move was expected, and it came in the wake of reports that the administration intends to ask Congress to rescind previously approved funding for CPB, which is already engaged in a court fight with the president over his attempt to fire several of the organization's board members. The Associated Pressreported Thursday that the rescission request "has not yet been sent to Capitol Hill."

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According to the organizations' estimates, federal funding accounts for roughly 1% of NPR's annual budget and 15% of PBS's yearly revenue.

In a letter to congressional leaders earlier this week, a coalition of civil society groups led by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned that, if enacted, Trump's proposed funding cuts for public broadcasting "will result in the shutdown of dozens, if not hundreds, of local, independent radio and television stations serving Americans in every corner of the country."

"As it stands, public media journalists are often the only reporters attending a school board meeting, or a local zoning hearing, or at the scene of a crime," the groups wrote. "They are the journalists most likely to hold local public officials accountable and expose

corruption. Faraway digital media outlets will not replicate this coverage, and the American public will lose out."

Trump's attack on public broadcasters is part of his administration's broader effort to undermine journalism in the United States and around the world.

RSF said in a report published Friday that Trump's "early moves in his second mandate to politicize the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), ban The Associated Press from the White House, or dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, for example, have jeopardized the country's news outlets and indicate that he intends to follow through on his threats, setting up a potential crisis for American journalism."

"After a century of gradual expansion of press rights in the United States," the group said, "the country is experiencing its first significant and prolonged decline in press freedom in modern history, and Donald Trump's return to the presidency is greatly exacerbating the situation."

NOW READ:Trump's top spy chief blasted as her 'crazy' cash grab is exposed

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04/14/2025

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“Let Him Cook': Glenn Beck And Kevin Roberts Flack For Trump's Tariff Policy

04/07/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Over the weekend, Glenn Beck posted a podcast with Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, focused on the global tariffs that have been unilaterally imposed by President Donald Trump.

With those tariffs rattling the international economy and tanking the stock market, Beck and Roberts agreed that they support Trump simply because they want to "let him cook" even as they admitted that they are fielding panicked calls from friends and acquaintances who are actively seeing their businesses destroyed by Trump's policy.

Beck, who spent the entire 2016 presidential campaign warning that Trump is a psychopath, a narcissist, and a "the biggest flaming ass that you could possibly imagine" only to become a MAGA cultist the moment Trump took office, said that while he has always opposed tariffs, he is now willing to support them because Trump "loves America as much as me."

"On election day, we all walked out of the office going, 'OK. You're the boss,'" Beck said. "He's the best negotiator I've ever seen. He's a businessman, and he's one of the first presidents—in fact, I think the first president since Reagan—that I actually trust loves America as much as me, [who's] not in it for himself [but] in it for the country."

"I'm not going to give him a pass forever," Beck continued. "I mean, a year from now, if we are really struggling because of this, I'm not going to be saying the same thing. But I think we have to let the chef cook the meal. We came into the restaurant; we came because we knew he was the chef. Let him cook the meal."

Roberts, who turned the Heritage Foundation into a MAGA think tank that was the source of the infamous Project 2025 which Trump disingenuously disavowed on the campaign trail only to immediately implement upon taking office, agreed with Beck.

"You just summarized exactly where we are," Roberts said. "The larger thing is what you explained, which is Donald Trump's great love for this country [and] a cabinet that I think is the best assembled in modern history."

"I think maybe since [Abraham] Lincoln," Beck replied. "The first time I saw the cabinet altogether, I said, 'Look at the brains. I haven't seen this since the founding era.'"

"I think you're right," Roberts responded. "I think only [George] Washington's and Lincoln's rival them."

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By Zachary Albert

February 5, 2025 tpm

*This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

In his first few days back in office, President Donald Trump engaged in a whirlwind of executive actions, from exiting the World Health Organization, to deploying military personnel and National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Many of these actions are unprecedented. Some appear to be illegal and unconstitutional, according to legal experts and judges. But none of them should come as a surprise — nearly all of them were outlined in 2022 in a plan called Project 2025.

A Heritage Foundation representative attends a Moms for Liberty National Summit in Washington on Aug. 30, 2024. Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

Project 2025 is top of Trump’s to-do list

Project 2025 is a multifaceted strategy to advance conservative policies in the federal government. Part of this effort revolves around the “Mandate for Leadership,” a 922-page document published in April 2023 that outlines a slew of proposed governmental policy changes.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank and advocacy group, organized the collaborative effort. A long list of other right-leaning research organizations and interest groups, like Moms for Liberty and Turning Point USA, also participated in Project 2025.

In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Project 2025 participants wrote on the plan’s website that “to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left,” they would “need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration.”

In my research on think tanks, I’ve investigated how these research organizations can influence public policymaking. The most potent strategy is to ally with a political party and support its objectives through research and advocacy. This is exactly what the Heritage Foundation has done via Project 2025.

Even though Trump said during his 2024 campaign that he was not affiliated with the project, evidence of Project 2025’s agenda can be seen throughout the beginning of his second term — as well as in his first administration.

For example, on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump echoed the plan’s statement that “men and women are biological realities” when he signed an executive order that, in part, recognizes “two sexes, male and female” that are “not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” This order led to the removal of transgender references from government websites.

Other orders are similarly aligned with Project 2025. Take Trump’s executive order that, in part, eliminated the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, or OFCCP, a government office previously charged with ensuring companies working with the government did not discriminate against any employees. Project 2025 recommended, quite simply, to “eliminate OFCCP.”

Some news reports have found that there are already many other examples of Trump policy decisions and executive orders that appear to mirror Project 2025 recommendations.

One CNN analysis from Jan. 31 found that more than two-thirds of the 53 executive orders Trump issued during his first week in office “evoked proposals outlined in [the] ‘Mandate for Leadership.‘”

Heritage Foundation’s decades of activism

Project 2025’s influence on Trump reflects the Heritage Foundation’s growing importance to the Republican Party.

In my forthcoming book about the polarization and politicization of policy research organizations, I show the many ways that think tanks like the Heritage Foundation have become embedded within partisan networks and intimately connected to politicians. Increasingly, Heritage and other partisan-aligned think tanks, including progressive groups like the Center for American Progress, use their research to consistently support partisan agendas that align with their policy goals.

The relationship between the Heritage Foundation and the GOP represents the most extreme version of this dynamic. The think tank has supported Republican presidents as far back as Ronald Reagan, using another policy document — also called the “Mandate for Leadership” — to secure significant policy gains through his administration. But the symbiosis between the Heritage Foundation and the GOP has been particularly notable since Trump gained more influence in the party.

At the start of Trump’s first term, as one Heritage Foundation researcher told me in 2017, the think tank recognized that the “administration didn’t have much policy depth, so when they won the election they were sort of like, ‘Now what do we do?’ And that’s where Heritage comes in. … We work on these issues year-round, so we’ll stand by your side.”

The Heritage Foundation also vetted potential staffers for federal government positions. This led to more than 66 Heritage employees or former employees working for the Trump administration by the middle of 2018.

But Heritage has not entirely dictated Trump’s agenda. While the group did say that Trump “embraced 64 percent of our 321 recommendations” by the end of 2017, the think tank has also revamped its agenda to align with Trump on the issues he cared most about, like trade and culture wars.

As the think tank’s president, Kevin Roberts, said in 2024, Heritage views its job as “institutionalizing Trumpism.”...

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Project 2025 laid a foundation for Trump’s attacks on workplace safety

The Trump administration reportedly destroyed 18 publications from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as part of a larger DEI purge. Most of the guidelines had nothing to do with diversity initiatives.

Written by John Knefel

Published 02/20/25

The Trump administration has reportedly destroyed 18 workplace safety publications as part of a broader attack on diversity initiatives, a development that is largely in line with recommendations made by the sprawling and unpopular presidential transition plan known as Project 2025.

According to Popular Information, 17 of the destroyed workplace guidelines — issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — appeared to have nothing to do with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs and instead seem to have been selected because “they include a DEIA-related keyword used in a completely different context.” OSHA is part of the Labor Department and is tasked with making sure U.S. workers “have safe and healthful working conditions free from unlawful retaliation,” according to its official website.

The Trump administration has been targeting diversity programs across the federal government, in some instances using the existence of DEI efforts as a justification for essentially shuttering entire agencies, as in the case of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The administration’s anti-DEI approach mirrors recommendations made in Project 2025’s nearly 900-page policy book, Mandate for Leadership, which called for the elimination of federal DEI programs and for the Department of Justice to investigate private sector programs that promote diversity.

In addition to its direct attacks on DEI, Project 2025 — organized by The Heritage Foundation in collaboration with more than 100 partner groups — proposed drastic rollbacks of labor laws, including dismantling overtime regulations and creating exemptions to the National Labor Relations Act, which protects workers’ rights to collectively bargain and to form a union.

Although the Trump administration’s memo calling for the 18 safety guidelines to be “disposed of or recycled” appears to be a hamfisted and failed attempt to root out DEI programs, it nevertheless fits in with Mandate’s broader approach to dismantling worker protections.

For example, Mandate recommends carve outs to OSHA’s workplace safety regulations, calling on Congress and the Department of Labor to “exempt small business, first-time, non-willful violators from fines issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.”

Mandate further argues that “national employment laws,” like the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, “set out one-size-fits-all ‘floors’ regulating the employment relationship,” and that the protections the law provides could instead be “treated as negotiable defaults rather than non-negotiable floors.” If enacted, this recommendation could allow employers to use safety measures as leverage in contract negotiations, thus increasing the already stark asymmetry in power between workers and bosses. And U.S. workplaces are already deadly; according to the AFL-CIO, in 2022: “344 workers died each day from hazardous working conditions,” and “5,486 workers were killed on the job in the United States.”

The final chapter in Mandate calls on the president to order Cabinet secretaries to “rein in agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which the Biden Administration weaponized to attempt to force COVID-19 vaccine mandates on 84 million Americans through their workplaces.”

That demand built on previous work from The Heritage Foundation, which sued the Biden administration over its Covid-19 workplace vaccine mandate. After the Supreme Court blocked the mandate, Heritage President Kevin Roberts celebrated the decision on former Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow’s radio show. Sekulow is also chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, whose advocacy arm is a partner in Project 2025.

“When it comes to putting government back in the box, it is a series of battles,” Roberts said. “We have won one battle, but we have not won the political and policy war.”

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Citation

From the January 14, 2022, edition of Sekulow, streamed on YouTube

Whether the administration adopts the anti-working class OSHA policies in Mandate remains to be seen, but Trump’s pick to head the agency — former Amazon and UPS executive David Keeling — strongly suggests it’s possible. As The New Republic reported, Keeling’s recent job history does not bode well for worker safety:

Both of those companies have been cited for various workplace safety violations by the very agency Keeling is set to control, if confirmed by the Senate. In 2019, OSHA cited UPS for forcing its drivers to work in “excessive heat” with no air conditioning. That same year, UPS was also cited for fire hazards at packaging facilities. Amazon has been cited numerous times for the dangerous, high-pressure environments in its warehouses, as well as the long hours its employees are forced to spend in them. Just last year, Amazon paid a $145,000 settlement over OSHA violations.

Keeling worked as director of safety compliance for UPS from 2011 to 2018 before serving as the vice president of global health and safety from 2018 to 2021, overlapping with OSHA’s 2019 safety citations. The same can be said for Amazon, where he worked from 2021 to 2023—a time when Amazon had one of the highest warehouse injury rates in the country.

Keeling’s nomination hearing has not yet been scheduled, but elsewhere the Trump administration is already waging war on the working class. His pick as general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board just rolled back several major Biden administration policies, including protections for student athletes who want to unionize and guidance that determined most non-compete agreements violate federal labor law.

Many of the Trump administration’s opening salvos against the working class have followed the Project 2025 roadmap and targeted DEI programs. These measures are already making workers’ positions more precarious and less safe, just as Project 2025 recommended.

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Project 2025 laid the foundation for Trump using DEI to target USAID staff and level a broader attack on workers

The sprawling presidential transition plan uses anti-DEI language as a tool to attack workers across the public and private sectors

Written by John Knefel

Published 02/07/25 11:47 AM EST

Project 2025 — a conservative transition plan to support the Trump administration, led by The Heritage Foundation and more than 100 partner organizations — repeatedly criticized diversity initiatives to justify mass firings across government offices and to lay the groundwork for a broader assault on workers’ rights.

Now, President Donald Trump is using that template to decimate the federal workforce.

In the first days of his second term, Trump took several executive actions reflecting years of right-wing attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, issuing an executive order that removed DEI programs from the federal government and another to “combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.” A third order prohibited hiring federal employees with the aim of increasing diversity in the workforce, and Trump further ordered that all federal employees who worked in DEI offices be placed on administrative leave.

Days after that initial barrage of activity, the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo purporting to freeze all federal funding — amounting to tens of billions of dollars — partially based on one of Trump’s anti-DEI orders. The memo, which aligned with the recommendations in Project 2025’s policy book, Mandate for Leadership, was later rescinded following a broad backlash and court challenges.

It’s already clear that in Trump’s first weeks in office he has moved to enact many of the proposals in Mandate, in some cases pushing even more extreme policies than those put forward by Project 2025. His attacks on DEI are no exception.

* ### Project 2025 takes aim at USAID workers by attacking DEI programs

The Mandate for Leadership chapter on the U.S. Agency for International Development criticizes DEI programs and initiatives 14 times, including calls for all DEI-related activity to be shuttered and employees working in those areas to be fired.

“The next conservative Administration should dismantle USAID’s DEI apparatus by eliminating the Chief Diversity Officer position along with the DEI advisers and committees; cancel the DEI scorecard and dashboard; remove DEI requirements from contract and grant tenders and awards; issue a directive to cease promotion of the DEI agenda, including the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda,” the chapter reads. “It should eliminate funding for partners that promote discriminatory DEI practices and consider debarment in egregious cases.”

Trump has gone even further, not only dismantling USAID’s DEI apparatus but promising to “wind down” the entire agency and potentially bringing it under the purview of the State Department. The New York Times reported that the Trump administration planned to “reduce the number of workers” at the agency “from more than 10,000 to about 290 positions.” CNN previously reported that USAID had placed “dozens of senior officials” on leave and “thousands of contractors [had been] laid off."

In offering an explanation for why USAID should be effectively shuttered, the Trump administration leaned heavily on anti-DEI justification. In a February 3 statement, the White House criticized supposed agency programs that “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities;” allocate money to fund a “‘DEI musical’ in Ireland;” support a “‘transgender opera’ in Colombia” and a “‘transgender comic book’ in Peru;” and fund “sex changes and ‘LGBT activism’ in Guatemala.” (USAID did not fund the musical in Ireland, the opera in Colombia, or the comic book in Peru.)

This anti-diversity rhetoric seeded by Project 2025 and embraced by Trump helped to provide a partial pretext for mass layoffs at USAID that ultimately extend far beyond any DEI-specific programs.

Like the chapter on USAID, Mandate’s chapter on the Labor Department and related agencies leans heavily on anti-DEI, anti-“woke” rhetoric. The first entry in the “Needed Reforms” section reads: “Reverse the DEI Revolution in Labor Policy.” It calls on the next Republican administration to “eliminate every one of these wrongful and burdensome ideological projects,” without specifying exactly what that would entail.

The entire chapter is an attack on the working class, largely under the guise of combatting DEI. “​​The DEI revolution in labor affected not only the administrative state, but it has also targeted much of the private sector,” the chapter reads, adding that “much of American labor and employment policy has become institutionally oriented toward ‘woke’ goals. Retracting regulations that support this revolution is a good first step, but more is needed.”

From this foundational opposition to DEI, Project 2025 pushes extreme, anti-worker policies. It calls for a drastic roll back of overtime protections. It seeks to misclassify employees as independent contractors by reverting to a rule from Trump’s first term, thus denying them benefits and protections otherwise required by law. Project 2025 also looks to weaken child labor laws and create “employee involvement organizations” as employer-friendly alternatives to unions.

Mandate for Leadership takes specific aim at the National Labor Relations Board, which helped unions secure significant gains during the Biden administration, by demanding that the next Republican president immediately fire then-NLRB general counsel Jen Abruzzo, one of the most aggressive advocates for the working class in the federal government. Trump followed through and not only removed Abruzzo but also fired Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman member of the NLRB, who called her dismissal a “blatant violation” of the law. In a report headlined “Trump Ousts Top Labor Board Leaders Who Backed Broader Worker Rights,” Bloomberg noted that “a White House official described those fired as far-left appointees with radical records who don’t belong in a Trump administration.”

Project 2025 also calls for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigates violations of civil rights law in the workplace, to “prohibit racial classifications and quotas, including human-resources classifications and DEI trainings that promote critical race theory.”

Trump took the issue to heart. His choice to lead the EEOC, Andrea Lucas, describes her priorities as “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination,” according to The Washington Post. The Post wrote that Lucas, “a vocal critic of corporate DEI initiatives, will lead an agency that holds sway over policy for a vast swath of U.S. employers.”

Conservatives have attempted to dismantle public education for decades, and Project 2025 continues those efforts in its recommendations for the second Trump administration. The Department of Education chapter in Mandate for Leadership opens with the following sentence: “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated."

One inescapable throughline in Project 2025’s attacks on the Education Department is criticism of DEI and the related right-wing boogeymen of “critical race theory” and what conservatives call “gender ideology." Mandate recommends, for example, that the president issue an executive order requiring an “accounting of how federal programs/grants spread DEI/CRT/gender ideology.” Elsewhere, Project 2025 recommends the next administration prohibit the federal agencies from requiring higher education institutions “to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies."

The chapter is simultaneously a broadside against DEI and the two largest teachers unions — the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers — which are also two of the largest unions in the country. Project 2025 claims that the teachers union “promotes radical racial and gender ideologies in schools” and calls on Congress to “rescind the National Education Association’s congressional charter,” referring to it as a “radical special interest group."

On February 4, NBC News reported that Trump is considering issuing an executive order to “eliminate the Education Department,” thus fulfilling one of Project 2025’s central goals. Already, the Trump administration is using its opposition to DEI as a pretext to target workers. “Dozens of employees who attended a diversity training course that former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos encouraged during President Donald Trump’s first administration have been placed on paid leave as part of Trump’s targeting of DEI programs," according to another NBC News report.

The move echoes a recommendation Project 2025 makes in the chapter on the Treasury Department to “treat the participation in any critical race theory or DEI initiative, without objecting on constitutional or moral grounds, as per se grounds for termination of employment."

The Trump administration is attempting to lay waste to nearly every aspect of the federal civil service, and with it the government’s capacity to function. According to The Wall Street Journal, at least 40,000 federal workers took a buyout offered by the administration. Legal experts say the offer is likely illegal, and unions have sued to stop what they refer to as an “ultimatum to a sweeping number of federal employees: resign now or face the possibility of job loss without compensation in the near future."

Some federal workers are reportedly facing intimidation from outside groups as well. NBC News reported that a website called “DEI watchlist” posted the personal information of “mostly Black employees who work in agencies primarily within the Department of Health and Human Services” and referred to them as “targets.” The website is reportedly a “project of the American Accountability Foundation,” a conservative organization on the advisory board of Project 2025 known for its McCarthyite tactics. (Last June, The Associated Press reported that AAF was creating and planning to publicize a list of “100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of a second-term Trump agenda — and ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings.”)

Trump’s attack on workers is already extending beyond federal civil servants. The National Science Foundation stopped issuing grant money to be in compliance with Trump’s federal funding freeze on DEI programs, sending some recipients into financial turmoil. Even after the funding was unfrozen, the NSF continued to review grants related to “discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI” initiatives.

Newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly issued a memo to Department of Justice staff instructing them to “target private-sector diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives for potential ‘criminal investigation,'" according to Slate.

The memo appears to echo a nearly identical suggestion from Mandate for Leadership. DOJ’s “Civil Rights Division should spend its first year under the next Administration using the full force of federal prosecutorial resources to investigate and prosecute all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers who are engaged in discrimination in violation of constitutional and legal requirements,” the policy book recommends.

Now, the Trump administration is going beyond Project 2025’s policy proposals and using its attacks on DEI programs to bolster a broader assault on the entire working class.

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AN 2 25

President Donald Trump made numerous executive orders after returning to the White House on January 20, some of which are which are being aggressively challenged in court — from firing more than a dozen inspectors general to an order calling for an end to birthright citizenship (which, Trump's critics say, is flat-out illegal because birthright citizenship is protected by the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment).

But Trump and some of his MAGA defenders are pushing a far-right idea known as the "unitary executive theory," which claims that a president has sole authority over the federal government's executive branch.

In an article published by Salon on February 8, three political science scholars — John A. Dearborn of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Desmond King of Oxford University in England, and Stephen Skowronek of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut — lay out some flaws with the "unitary executive theory."

READ MORE:Americans' 'legally protected' info now 'exposed' as Trump budget chief gets new powers: union

Trump, according to the scholars, is determined to "test the boundaries of existing law"

"For example, the Office of Personnel Management sent a 'Fork in the Road' e-mail to federal employees designed to incentivize mass resignations," Dearborn, King and Skowronek explain. "Employees at the Department of Justice who had worked on special counsel Jack Smith's investigations were fired, despite their career status and protections from at-will removal. The president also fired several inspectors general, declining to provide the congressionally mandated 30-day notice and detailed reasons for their dismissal."

The scholars continue, "Such rapid-fire actions are already setting up court cases that will determine how much control the president can exercise over the civil service and whether any kind of restrictions on the president's removal power are constitutional."

Dearborn, King and Skowronek note that the "unitary executive theory" is promoted in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's 922-page blueprint for a second Trump presidency.

READ MORE:'Not going to be replaced': Reformed white supremacist met with protest from extremists

"Cultivated by the conservative legal movement and now widely shared within it," the scholars write, "this 'theory of the unitary executive' deploys the 'Vesting Clause' of Article II of the Constitution to declare that 'all of the executive power' belongs to the president alone…. No doubt the conservative legal movement believes that in advancing the unitary executive theory, it is espousing the true meaning of the Constitution. In fact, it boasts that it has rediscovered the original meaning. But we should be under no illusions that adopting such decisions would restore Americans' faith in the Constitution."

Dearborn, King and Skowronek continue, "Instead, judicial approval for the president’s actions would fatally undercut the Constitution's power-sharing design. It would turn the Constitution into a warrant for one group of participants to impose its will unilaterally on the rest."

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an ah 2 25

During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly insisted that he knew nothing about Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation's far-right 922-page blueprint for a second Trump Administration. Trump's campaign viewed Project 2025 as a political liability, and he made a concerted effort to distance himself from it.

Democrats hoped that Project 2025 would seriously damage Trump's campaign. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, before her debate with Trump, warned, "What you're going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again."

But Trump narrowly defeated Harris, winning the popular vote by roughly 1.5 percent (according to the Cook Political Report) and prevailing in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan. And on January 20, 2025, he returned to the White House — where, according to Politico, he has issued many executive orders reflecting Project 2025's agenda.

READ MORE:There's an emerging blue-state nightmare

In a report published on February 5, five Politico journalists (Liset Cruz, Ali Bianco, Megan Messerly, Abhinanda Bhattacharyya and Anna Wiederkehr) lay out 37 ways in which Trump's executive orders mirror the Heritage Foundation's recommendations in Project 2025.

"A side-by-side review by Politico found dozens of cases where the president's early executive actions have aligned with portions of the 922-page policy document, including some instances with nearly verbatim language lifted from the report to the White House," the journalists explain. "Several of the ideas, such as energy policies expanding U.S. oil and critical minerals production, are longtime conservative policy priorities that did not originate with Project 2025. But some of the more unconventional strategies outlined in the document, such as reclassifying federal employees to make them easier to fire and installing loyalists in senior government positions, have also shown up in Trump's executive orders."

Politico cites a variety of examples of Trump's executive orders mirroring Project 2025, from "ban transgender troops" to "enforce the death penalty" to "restrict federal funds from supporting abortion access abroad under the 'Mexico City' policy."

Project 2025 proposed ending DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs, and Trump, Politico notes, called for their "termination" in an executive order.

READ MORE:[What should Democrats in Congress be doing about Trump's coup?

Project 2025 called for U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), and a Trump executive order reads, "The United States intends to withdraw from the WHO."

Project 2025 recommended a "hiring freeze for career officials," and a Trump executive order, according to Politico, declared, "I hereby order a freeze on the hiring of Federal civilian employees, to be applied throughout the executive branch.

READ MORE:'Bar lowered quite a bit': How a Trump appointee went from pariah to prominence

*Read the full Politico article at this link.

rww

01/31/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

At news conference, Trump read a list of disabilities he calls disqualifying, but his administration started such hiring in 2019.

Kash Patel helped keep the QAnon movement alive on Truth Social, interacting with Q accounts, appearing on QAnon podcasts, and signing his children’s books with a QAnon catchphrase.

With Trump’s return to the presidency, Project 2025, a 920-page blueprint for authoritarianism in the U.S., spearheaded by the powerful and extreme far-right Heritage Foundation, is becoming a reality, affecting all Americans and people around the globe.

Trump has revived his 1776 Commission (a response to the 1619 Project) and wants to make the Semiquincentennial celebration (250th anniversary of independence in 2026) a rip-roaring patriotic educational bonanza. Can you imagine all the Trump merch with Trump250 on it?

Upon taking office, President Trump issued executive orders which banned federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and rescinded an executive order which prohibited discrimination in federal contracting. In response, Jeremy Carl boasted that Trump “implemented” every recommendation from a book he wrote decrying “anti-white racism.”

They may have heard a very powerful dog whistle.

===

mma

Russ Vought’s fingerprints are all over Trump’s new federal funding freeze

The Project 2025 architect has long argued in support of the president’s power to impound — that is, refuse to spend — funds allocated by Congress

Written by John Knefel

Published 01/28/25

A new memo issued by the Trump administration directing the federal government to temporarily cease disbursing billions of dollars in funds appears to draw on arguments made by Russ Vought, the president’s selectee to run the Office of Management and Budget.

Vought was a primary architect of Project 2025, a sprawling effort organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and staffing recommendations for President Donald Trump’s second term. In addition to that role, Vought is also the founder of the Center for Renewing America, a MAGA-aligned think tank that has spent over a year arguing that the president can unilaterally refuse to spend funds allocated by Congress, an authority known as the impoundment power that was severely curtailed by Congress in 1974.

The new Trump administration memo was issued by Matthew Vaeth, acting director of OMB pending Vought’s confirmation vote. The document calls for federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”

“The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” the memo states.

Although the two-page memo doesn’t use the term impoundment, law professor Steve Vladeck argued that the Trump administration is claiming “the unilateral power to at least temporarily ‘impound’ tens of billions of dollars of appropriated funds—in direct conflict with Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, and in even more flagrant violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.” The existence of the document was first reported by journalist Marisa Kabas and later confirmed by The Washington Post and The New York Times. (OMB issued a follow-up memo claiming the freeze does “not apply across-the-board” and withheld funds are “not an impoundment under the Impoundment Control Act.”)

The direct effects of the memo are unknown given its scope and vagueness, but they could be detrimental even if the pause is short-lived.

“Experts said the memo as written was poised to bring a rapid halt to scores of federal functions, from assistance to homeless shelters to financial aid for college students,” the Post reported. “Health grants distributed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state aid for disaster reconstruction, might face delays.”

The memo appears to exempt Social Security and Medicare recipients, and it says the halt “does not include assistance provided directly to individuals.” It isn’t clear whether Medicaid recipients will be affected, although some early reports indicated that payments had been disrupted.

The New York Times additionally reported that transportation funding and loans to small businesses could also be affected. In a statement to the Times, Diane Yentel, the chief executive of the National Council of Nonprofits, warned: “From pausing research on cures for childhood cancer to halting food assistance, safety from domestic violence and closing suicide hotlines, the impact of even a short pause in funding could be devastating and cost lives.”

HuffPost reported already that some payments for Head Start — which funds preschool for low-income families — are at risk of being delayed. HuffPost also reported that officials at Meals on Wheels, the food program for elderly Americans, are worried they could face funding disruptions.

Vought and his think tank pushed for a radical interpretation of the impoundment power for years prior to Trump’s election.

In June 2023, Vought posted on X (formerly Twitter), “Making Impoundment Great Again!” Days later, the Center for Renewing America’s X account wrote that “the impoundment power is our secret weapon to totally dismantle the WOKE & WEAPONIZED federal bureaucracy.” The CRA post linked to a Real Clear Politics article quoting Vought as saying, “When you think that a law is unconstitutional” — referring to the Impoundment Control Act — the response should be to “push the envelope.”

In July 2023, CRA senior fellow Jeffrey Clark — who as a DOJ attorney attempted to overturn the 2020 election by pushing a fake elector scheme at the end of Trump’s first term — appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room to argue against the Impoundment Control Act.

“So what I’m working on, essentially, are the constitutional arguments for why that was wrong and various ways in which the Impoundment Control Act is just flatly unconstitutional,” Clark said.

Video

From the July 3, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Vought continued to beat the drum months later.

“The loss of impoundment authority — which 200 years of presidents enjoyed — was the original sin in eliminating the ability for a branch-on-branch to control spending,” Vought said the following February on Fox Business.

Video

From the February 12, 2024, edition of Fox Business' Kudlow

In June 2024, the Center for Renewing America released a white paper arguing that the Impoundment Control Act — passed following President Richard Nixon’s refusal to spend funds for environmental, transportation, and educational priorities — is unconstitutional and a break with legal precedent. The authors of that paper later wrote articles for The Hill and right-wing blog The Federalist making similar claims.

Vought highlighted the centrality of the impoundment power to his think tank’s project. “Why did we found the Center for Renewing America?” he wrote on X. “To write papers like this.”

During Trump’s first term, he attempted to unilaterally withhold roughly $400 billion in foreign aid funding for Ukraine, leading to his first impeachment for violating the impoundment law.

During Vought’s recent confirmation hearing to serve as director of OMB during Trump’s second administration — a job he also held during Trump’s first term — Vought refused to promise to follow the Impoundment Control Act on the grounds that both he and Trump believe it is illegal.

Last August, Vought was filmed in an undercover video claiming that he and his Project 2025 collaborators had written “about 350 different documents that are regulations and things of that nature” in preparation for a possible Trump victory. He said in the video that one of his goals is to “end multiculturalism” in America.

The OMB memo has triggered a massive reaction across the political spectrum. Bannon celebrated the move on War Room, while Senate Democrats are calling for a delay to Vought’s confirmation vote following the news. A former OMB official said the memo read like a “hostage note written directly by Russ Vought.”

===

==

AN NO LNX

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-medicaid/

Trump supporters finally finding out why you shouldn't vote for a criminal corporate raider

Thom Hartmann

January 29, 2025

Yesterday, the Medicaid payment portal was shut down in all 50 states; they came back up when a federal judge put Trump’s illegal impoundment of federal funds on hold until February 3rd.

And it wasn’t just Medicaid. The Trump administration shut down Pell grants, federally supported student loans, veterans homeless shelters, veterans suicide prevention programs, school meals, home heating assistance, housing assistance, food stamps, food for women and infants, childcare, Headstart, child abuse investigations, rape crisis centers, and hundreds of other programs.

Why?

Because Trump is trying to gut the federal government the same way Mitt Romney gutted Clear Channel when I did my show from one of their studios a decade ago.

Romney’s company did it to shut down Air America and then extract the millions in wealth Clear Channel had, before throwing the husk of the company into bankruptcy; Trump is tearing our systems of governance apart because he and his billionaire buddies are offended by the idea of paying taxes to help the American middle class and the poor.

In the process, Trump is also breaking multiple laws and daring Congress and the courts to do anything about it. This is the beginning of the path to both economic chaos and dictatorship.

But first, let’s take a look at what Trump and his billionaire funders are up to and why.

Back in 1980, David Koch ran for vice president on a platform of shutting down virtually every federal function except the military and the court system. Some billionaires, you see, hate paying taxes and many of them think that all those “gummint” programs are both unnecessary and wasteful.

— “We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.

— “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.

— “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.

— “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.

— “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.

— “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service.

— “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.

— “We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.

— “As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.

— “We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.

— “We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.

— “We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.

— “We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.

— “We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

— “We support abolition of the Department of Energy.

— “We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.

— “We demand the return of America’s railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.

— “We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called ‘self-protection’ equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.

— “We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.

— “We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.

— “We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.

— “We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.

— “We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.

— “We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

— “We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

— “We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”

In other words, gut the federal government the same way Mitt Romney’s company gutted Clear Channel. But in politics and governance, it’s called libertarianism, which is the hot new philosophy for Silicon Valley tech bro billionaires.

The “Project 2025” plan put together by the Heritage Foundation (funded in part for years by the Koch brothers’ network) was a 21st century cleaned-up version of Koch’s 1980 Libertarian Party platform. And now we’re seeing it put into place, one step at a time.

Like Romney stripping the liberal talk radio network out of Clear Channel, they are now stripping the 20th century out of our laws and policies.

It’s why Republicans are working so hard to disempower women in the workplace, starting with eliminating their control over their own reproductive capacity.

It’s also why they’re doing everything they can to shut down corporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs nationwide; the majority of the hiring and increased pay benefits coming from corporate, government, and academic DEI programs go to women, a situation Republican men find intolerable.

Republicans want to either “return” to a pre-Civil War understanding of the Constitution (as advocated by Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito) or embrace Russell Vought’s “post-constitutional” order, in which the last century’s “innovations” (including the income tax, women’s suffrage, “welfare” programs, entitlements, and even free public school and college) are dialed back.

We also see this in the ways the Republicans on the Supreme Court have gutted both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, how they’ve stripped most of the teeth out of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, and how they’re working to castrate most regulatory agencies including the EPA, FTC, and even the IRS.

Republicans are trying to do to our government, in other words, what corporate raiders do to companies.

Some of it is simple greed: as the middle class shrinks and poverty grows, the cash stash at the very top of the American economic pyramid grows exponentially.

Other American oligarchs follow the teachings of Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, and Ronald Reagan who all argued that a larger-than-50% middle class is a threat to the stability of the nation.

The simple reality is that nations without a large and active federal government providing protections and services to its people never develop large middle classes.

Unregulated capitalism always produces the kind of nation Charles Dickens wrote about in Christmas Carol and his many other novels: A tiny 1% who own most wealth; a small 3-5% middle class of doctors, lawyers, and small business owners (Ebeneezer Scrooge); and a massive 90%+ class of the working poor (Bob Cratchit).

Ever since the 1950s when Russell Kirk wrote his manifesto The Conservative Mind, a small cabal of Republicans and billionaires have argued that FDR’s “big government” programs — that moved America from being 10% middle class in the 1930s to over 60% when Reagan came into office in 1981 (it’s under 50% now) — were dangerous.

As I detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, their argument was largely based on the turmoil of the 1960s, when women, Blacks, and young people were demanding rights; they worried that these protests could lead to the destruction of our republic and a “communist takeover.”

Nowadays most rightwing billionaires have largely abandoned that argument, simply asserting their disgust at having to pay taxes to support programs that primarily benefit “the little people.”

And then, of course, there are those in the GOP who simply hate America because of its pluralism and diversity.

Most recently, Trump proved his commitment to fulfill their and Putin’s desire to see America’s government destroyed by sending an email to 2 million federal employees offering them 8 months pay if they’ll resign.

Just like when I was at Clear Channel and Romney’s company fired or laid off more than half of the employees here in Portland.

In the process of disemboweling our federal government, however, Trump is taking it a step farther and breaking multiple laws:

— The Impoundment Control Act, which was passed in the 1970s after Nixon withheld funding for programs he didn’t like, including the Clean Water Act, Public Housing projects, the elementary and Secondary Education Act that funded public schools in poor districts, school desegregation efforts, mass transit programs for cities, and health research and healthcare programs for low-income people.

The law says that presidents cannot refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress without the explicit permission of both the House and Senate, and requires him to give them 45 days to consider the impoundment or rescission of funds.

Our lawless, convicted-criminal president is nakedly breaking this law and daring Congress and the courts to do something about it.

— The Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883 and the Civil Service Reform Act guarantee that federal government employees can’t be fired for “retaliation” or political reasons; there must be actual evidence that they are not doing their jobs, doing them poorly, or behaving in ways that justify the firing.

When Trump fired all the career prosecutors and lawyers in the Justice Department who’d participated in his prosecution, it was a clear case of political retaliation and a clear violation of the law.

Our lawless, convicted-criminal president is nakedly breaking this law and daring Congress and the courts to do something about it.

— The Inspector General Act of 1978 (also responding to Nixon’s corruption) mandates that the president must notify Congress at least 30 days before removing an IG and provide detailed, case-specific reasons for the dismissal. Inspectors General are the watchdogs for federal agencies, keeping an eye out for people within those agencies committing fraud, stealing funds, or engaging in illegal favoritism or bribery, among other crimes.

Firing them is like a police department firing its Internal Affairs department that looks into corrupt cops. It sets up every federal agency affected by the firings to be corrupted by the Trump cronies put in charge of them. Even Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is furious about this.

Our lawless, convicted-criminal president is nakedly breaking this law, too, as he raids our government, and is daring Congress and the courts to do something about it.

As Alexandrian Ocasio-Cortez noted on social media yesterday:

“Trump is holding all the nation’s hospitals and vital services hostage to seize power from Congress and hand it over to billionaires. We must state the truth: this is a constitutional crisis. It’s a massive, illegal power grab that the House and Senate have a sworn duty to stop.”

Trump’s defiance of these three major laws (along with a few others) in the first two weeks of his presidency — and the GOP’s acquiescence to his criminality — are terrible signs for the future of American democracy.

They are frankly even more dangerous than his corporate raider-like efforts to bring the American government to its knees.

While most Americans who voted for Trump probably knew he was a convicted criminal, it’s unlikely they also thought he’d commit crimes in office that would gut the protections and programs that so many of them need. They f----- around and now they’re finding out.

Sadly, they’re taking the rest of us with them…

===

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an 1 25

clarence clerk liar

Trump's own supporters on Saturday lashed out as the President-elect announced the nomination of a contributor to Project 2025.

Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign distanced himself from Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation's blueprint for a Republican presidential administration. The project was found by polls to be devastating for Republicans, and Trump did what he could to disassociate from those who headed it.

But over the weekend, the former and incoming president announced he would be bringing on someone who had a role in the document.

ALSO READ: Trump intel advisor Devin Nunes still dismisses Russian election meddling as a 'hoax'

"I am pleased to announce that Steven Gill Bradbury will be the next United States Deputy Secretary of Transportation," Trump wrote. "For the entirety of my First Term, Steven served as the General Counsel of the Department of Transportation, where he helped rebuild our crumbling Infrastructure, and cut regulations that were killing jobs and our incredible Small Businesses. He previously clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas."

Trump added, "Steven will work with our fantastic Secretary of Transportation Nominee, Sean Duffy, to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN."

Not all Trump's supporters were happy with the move.

David W. Reinauer, a conservative Christian who has posted pro-Trump material, said, "Oh great! Another satanic (f)reemason from the Heritage freemason society!"

"The 'conservative deep state' of the USA," he added. "Let's hope it is a SPOTLIGHT like most of the rest."

Another self-identified "MAGA" supporter, @blacklisterd, said, "We already have roads. Close it down."

A user who celebrated Trump's election win, @Cheshiret, said the President-elect was making appointments to an "unconstitutional agency.

===

truthout 12 24

after the hottest summer in recorded human history — along with Hurricanes Helene and Milton, flooding and wildfires — why isn’t there a greater push for action on climate change?

One reason is that big oil, gas and coal companies — and their allies in Congress — block the urgent action that’s required. They do this in part by denying basic climate science, and in many cases, they receive enormous,publicly subsidizedtax benefits to do it. And in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, millions in charitable donations poured into policy development at the Heritage Foundation, producing the Project 2025 Blueprint for the incoming Trump administration.

It’s true. Wealthy donors and fossil fuel corporations regularly make “charitable” donations to nonprofit organizations that deny science, sow doubt about the urgency of climate change and run out the clock for timely action. When they deduct those contributions from their tax bill, they’re effectively being subsidized by you — the taxpayer.

Many of these donors have built their fortunes in the oil, coal and gas industries or in the industries that support them, like banking and insurance. They have a vested interest in ensuring the world’s ongoing dependence on fossil fuels. These include the Koch family of private energy giant Koch Industries, and the Scaife family, heirs to the Mellon oil and banking fortune.

Here’s how it works, according to a new report I’ve co-authored for the Institute for Policy Studies and Climate Accountability Research Project: Through U.S. charitable giving tax laws, donors like the Kochs and Scaifes reduce their taxes when they give to qualified, tax-exempt nonprofit charities. The wealthier the donor, the greater the reduction in their tax bill. Byone estimate, for every dollar a billionaire gives to charity, taxpayers chip in up to 74 cents in lost tax revenue.

Related Story

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A US nonprofit funnels money from billionaires like Home Depot’s co-founder to effectively subsidize Israeli troops.

By Derek Seidman , TruthoutDecember 2, 2024

> From 2020 to 2022, U.S. nonprofits that deny basic climate science received $5.8 billion in tax-deductible donations.

Our report identified 137 nonprofit tax-exempt organizations that actively spread climate disinformation, working effectively to confound public opinion and delay urgent action on climate.

For example, theCompetitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) received $21 million in charitable contributions from 2020 to 2022. CEI boasts that it’s been “instrumental” in stalling climate action, both in blocking ratification of the 1997Kyoto Protocol and in pressuring former (and now incoming) President Donald Trump to withdraw from the 2016Paris Climate Agreement.

In 2013, Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University in Pennsylvania,predicted that $500 million was given to organizations devoted to undermining the science of climate change. We estimate that figure has risen into the billions: Over three years, from 2020 to 2022, U.S. nonprofits that deny basic climate science received $5.8 billion in tax-deductible donations. Some $219 million went to groups that primarily work on climate disinformation.

The rest went to multi-issue organizations that include climate denial as part of their work — groups like The Heritage Foundation, which developed the extremist Project 2025 blueprint that would, among other things, roll back environmental regulations and cancel billions of dollars’ worth of investments in green jobs. Other recommendations from Project 2025 include the elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (OCAA).

Conservatively, we estimate that somewhere between $219 million and $1 billion flowed directly to climate disinformation, all subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, during our study period between 2020 and 2022.

Even though these are effectively our tax dollars at work, we don’t know the precise figure. That’s because many donors give through vehicles called donor-advised funds (DAFs), which mask the identity of donors and their recipient organizations. Roughly 16 percent of all donations to climate disinformation groups come through DAFs. Many billions more may have come through private individual donations as well.

If we want to save the planet, we need transparency reforms to reveal this web of secret donations.

The fossil fuel industry has harnessed our charitable system for their self-serving, harmful disinformation campaigns — and they do it largely in secret. We know the oil, gas and coal industry has been funding disinformation for almost half a century, even as their own internal research documented the harms from carbon and methane emissions. So what can we do about it? One simple step is to improve transparency, so the public has more accurate information about where these taxpayer-subsidized donations are going.

Currently, DAF sponsoring organizations — like Schwab Charitable or Fidelity Charitable — are only required to disclose total grants to nonprofits from their sponsoring fund, not from each DAF account, so we don’t know the individual donor who gave the funds. Our report urges lawmakers to pass legislation to require grants from DAFs to be reported on an individual account basis.

We’re also calling to close another DAF loophole. Private charitable foundations, which are required by law to distribute 5 percent of their assets each year, are increasingly giving funds to DAFs and counting that toward their payout requirements. That loophole, which can conceal the actual grant recipients, should be closed.

U.S. taxpayers are likely subsidizing billions of dollars of donations to climate misinformation organizations. If we want to save the planet, we need transparency reforms to reveal this web of secret donations.

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We unraveled the $122 million web of climate denial, political extremism, and Trump ties to Project 2025

Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025 - DeSmog

As scrutiny of Project 2025 continues to grow, defenders of the Heritage Foundation-led initiative, which would reshape federal governance and give the next Republican president unprecedented new powers, say it’s the criticism — not the 922-page plan itself — that’s too extreme.

In a piece published last month, Fox News cited prominent conservatives who feel there’s “nothing radical” about the endeavor. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has accused detractors of “panic-mongering” and tried to reframe Project 2025’s sprawling “Mandate for Leadership” blueprint as more boring than scary — a milquetoast white paper that simply “melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups.” This echoes Heritage’s insistence that Project 2025, while conservative, is anything but fringe.

But the findings from DeSmog’s recent investigation into Project 2025’s funding sources tell a very different story. Our wide-ranging analysis of public financial disclosure forms found that the groups on Project 2025’s advisory board — whose experts largely helped to draft the plan — are heavily funded by just six family fortunes. Since 2020, foundations linked to these billionaire families have contributed over $122 million to Project 2025 groups, including at least 290 individual donations to 49 nonprofits that contributed to the Mandate for Leadership documents or are on the initiative’s advisory board. We’ve mapped the funding ties between the billionaire families and the Project 2025 individuals and organizations in an interactive graphic, below.

Groups that received funds from the six family fortunes are far from the political mainstream, according to DeSmog’s analysis, including entities that actively deny the science of anthropogenic climate change — as well as organizations that have been classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. DeSmog’s review also uncovered additional ties between the six families and the Trump/Vance ticket, though both candidates have tried to distance themselves from the initiative in recent months. Indeed, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein — the billionaire founders of the Uline packaging company, whose charitable donations tie them closely to Project 2025 — are among the former president’s biggest donors.

Project 2025 styles itself as populist, moderate, and far from the politics of Washington. Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts hails it as a plan for the perennially downtrodden, hard-laboring folks “who shower afterwork instead of before.” Its funding sources — elite, extreme, and closely tied to the Trump campaign — suggest exactly the opposite.

The Donors

Though the Mandate pledges to “prioritize the economic prosperity of ordinary Americans” and pry influence away from “America’s corporate and political elites,” the funding that produced it comes from the upper echelons of the billionaire class.

And not just any billionaires. The six family dynasties providing significant support to Project 2025 — Bradley, Coors, Koch, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein — all have long histories of fighting for financial and environmental deregulation. Three of the six families have promoted climate denial consistently enough to appear in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database, which tracks the people and organizations doing the most to undermine decarbonization efforts.

They include oil and gas magnate Charles G. Koch and his Koch Family Foundations; the Scaife Family Foundations, which tap vast wealth from the Mellon aluminum, oil, and banking fortune; and chemicals-and-electronics industrialist Barre Seid, whose recent, record-setting $1.6 billion gift to a nonprofit controlled by Federalist Society co-chair Leonard A. Leo has been a major source of Project 2025 money.

While the Heritage Foundation suggests a diverse conservative coalition gave rise to the Mandate for Leadership, the six family fortunes’ giving patterns were remarkably similar. Of the 49 Project 2025 groups, 37 percent received funding from at least three of the six families. 70 percent of the 49 groups received funding from at least two of the families. (In a few cases, the donations were to sister 501(c)4 lobbying arms that share offices and staff.) The average donation was over $420,000.

*Related:See DeSmog’s coverage of Trump Megadonor Tim Dunn’s Plan That’s More Extreme Than Project 2025

Links to Climate Denial

For decades, oil and gas magnate Charles G. Koch and his late brother David fought vigorously for environmental deregulation, including by supporting groups that sow doubt about the science of manmade climate change. Foundations linked to Koch gave at least $9.6 billion to 15 Project 2025 groups since 2020. But four of the lesser-known families — Bradley, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein — gave even more, and all six family fortunes helped to fund Project 2025 groups that have denied the science of manmade climate change.

Of the 10 groups that the six families funded most heavily, seven are in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database. That includes more than $11 million to the Heritage Foundation; $8.3 million to Turning Point USA, which has provided a platform for well-known climate deniers like Alex Epstein; and $4.6 million to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which in 2015 published an op-ed claiming warming is “obviously not initiated by the burning of fossil fuels”. In total, foundations linked to the six families gave to 15 Project 2025 groups with entries in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database.

That wasn’t the only form of extremism DeSmog uncovered. Four Project 2025 organizations that received donations from the six billionaire fortunes since 2020 are classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a leading civil rights watchdog group. These include the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ group that received over $1.6 million in donations from Bradley and Koch; The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigrant group that received $650,000 from Scaife; Eagle Forum, an anti-government and anti-immigrant group that received over $100,000 from Koch and Uihlein; and Family Research Council, an anti-abortion group that received $25,000 from Seid.

Of the six billionaire families, only Coors-linked foundations — run by heirs to the Coors brewing fortune — did not donate to at least one SPLC-designated hate group.

Links to the Trump Campaign

For months, Donald J. Trump has publicly disavowed Project 2025, claiming to know nothing about the initiative. That stance conflicts with subsequent media reports, including resurfaced video of the former president and current Republican presidential nominee saying, as a keynote speaker at a 2022 Heritage Foundation event, that Heritage would “lay the groundwork & detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” The Washington Post reported that Trump flew in a private plane to the event with Heritage President Kevin Roberts.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, has also been the subject of intense scrutiny for numerous ties to Project 2025 — including writing the foreword to Roberts’ forthcoming book. DeSmog’s investigation also uncovered numerous ties between Vance and Project 2025 advisory groups, including a previously unreported 2017 keynote speech at a Heritage event.

But while the candidates continue to downplay any Project 2025 connections, one link is unavoidable: a billionaire family that heavily supports Project 2025 groups is among their campaign’s biggest donors, according to Federal Election Commission data.

In May, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the founders of the Uline packaging company, each donated $5 million to Make America Great Again, Inc., a super PAC supporting Trump’s reelection. That’s not including the more than $48 million Richard contributed to Restoration PAC, a pro-Trump political action committee, last quarter alone. Restoration PAC has spent over $12.9 million this year on political advertising, including ads supporting Trump and attacking his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Since 2020, the Ed Uihlein Foundation, which is run by the Uihleins and named in honor of Richard’s father, has donated at least $13.4 million to 13 different Project 2025 groups.

The map below is interactive. Click on a donor to see the groups it funded with dollar amounts, or a nonprofit to see which of the six family fortunes made donations.

[GFX]

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We unraveled the $122 million web of climate denial, political extremism, and Trump ties to Project 2025

Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025 - DeSmog

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Trump's nomination of Project 2025 architect means Social Security, Medicare 'are at risk'

Jake Johnson Common Dreams 12 24

Trump's choice of Russell Vought, a Project 2025 architect, to lead the White House budget office was seen as further evidence of the threat the incoming administration poses to Social Security, Medicare, and other critical government programs.

Vought, who currently heads the far-right think tank Center for Renewing America think tank, served as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during Trump's first term, and he's set to return to the post after playing a central role in crafting the Project 2025 agenda that the Republican president-elect attempted to disavow on the campaign trail.

In remarks to an undercover journalist earlier this year, Vought dismissed the notion that Trump opposed the aims of Project 2025, saying the Republican leader was "very supportive of what we do."

Vought is expected to aggressively pursue federal spending cuts in concert with other actors within and around the incoming Trump administration, including the "government efficiency" commission led by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

"With the architect of Project 2025 nominated to lead Trump's Office of Management and Budget, there can be no distinction between the two."

During his tenure at OMB and as an outside adviser to Republican lawmakers, Vought advocated massive cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance, programs that the GOP is targeting as it looks to offset the costs of its proposed tax cuts.

Vought also spearheaded budget proposals from the Trump White House that recommended cuts to Social Security and Medicare, both of which the president-elect vowed to protect during his 2024 campaign.

"Vought oversaw every budget in the first Trump administration that cut Social Security and Medicare," said Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog group Accountable.US. "This much is clear: Social Security and Medicare are at risk in the second Trump presidency."

According to Accountable, Vought is one of at least six individuals associated with Project 2025 whom Trump has picked for a spot in the incoming administration.

"With the architect of Project 2025 nominated to lead Trump's Office of Management and Budget," said Carrk, "there can be no distinction between the two."

While Project 2025's sweeping policy document includes little discussion of Social Security, the far-right program's authors have endorsed changes such as raising the retirement age—which would result in across-the-board benefit cuts.

As for Medicare, Project 2025 proposes making privatized Medicare Advantage plans the default enrollment option for U.S. seniors, a change that would be massively profitable for insurance giants and potentially disastrous for patients.

Vought's nomination to lead OMB is expected to bolster Trump administration efforts to slash spending across the federal government. As Punchbowlreported Monday, Vought "is among those Trump allies looking to challenge Congress' authority over spending via impoundment," a strategy that Democratic lawmakers have condemned as unlawful.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told Punchbowl in a statement that Vought "is deeply confused about this and many other points about the Constitution and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974."

"While Trump distanced himself from Project 2025, Vought's nomination makes it crystal clear that Trump lied to the American people," said DeLauro. "Trump's agenda is the Project 2025 manifesto."

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GOP’s 'plan' to increase social security age started '20 years' ago according to Mark Levin

Maya Boddie an 12 24

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HCR say we think soc sec safe bc 40 yr norms [but 2025 target?]; just bc it has not changed does not mean it can’t.

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mma

Heritage's Kevin Roberts calls for the federal government to seize university endowments unless they “end the implementation of the woke mind virus”}:

12/02/24

November 27, 2024, edition of UnHerd, streamed on YouTube

FREDDIE SAYER (HOST): Ivy League colleges. You don't have many nice words to say about the Ivy League schools.

KEVIN ROBERTS (HERITAGE FOUNDATION): Very few.

SAYER: You're very uncompromising about that. It's not that they need radical reform and being turned upside down. You say in terms that you think they should be destroyed.

ROBERTS: I say that unless they end the implementation of the woke mind virus, and if they continue to live off the teats of government -- through research grants, through participating in Title IV federal student loans and grants -- then it's perfectly appropriate, as the Vice President-elect said in his senatorial campaign, for the federal government to seize their endowments. Because they are using that money to fund nonsense. Actually, to empower the Chinese Communist Party's infiltration of our institutions, which is yet another problem that motivates my aggressiveness. And thirdly, educational attainment at those colleges -- those colleges in particular has gone down.

SAYER: So what the federal government, in this scenario, would seize the entire endowment of a college like Harvard University, for example?

ROBERTS: Unless Harvard wants to stop living off the public dole, it would be perfectly appropriate.

Heritage President Kevin Roberts: “There's no doubt” that Trump will implement Project 2025}:

12/02/24

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mma

  1. ### Fox News' Laura Ingraham: “Project 2025, to be very clear here, a lot of their ideas were just classic MAGA ideas”

11/22/24

  1. ### On MSNBC’s The ReidOut, Angelo Carusone explains the connection between Project 2025 and Donald Trump's nominations

11/22/24

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{an 11 24}:

As a candidate, Donald Trump insisted he knew nothing about the far-right Heritage Foundation's authoritarian Project 2025 playbook. But as president-elect, Trump is appointing some of its authors to powerful positions in his Cabinet.

On Friday, Trump confirmed previous reports that he would be appointing Russell Vought – president of the Center for Renewing America (CRA) — to be his next director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought served in that role in Trump's first administration, and is likely to bring back Trump's controversial "Schedule F" executive order that would make it easier for a president to fire tens of thousands of federal civil service workers and replace them with political loyalists.

After leaving the Trump White House, Vought founded the CRA, which was one of the key partner organizations backing Project 2025. In August, two undercover journalists got Vought to admit in a hidden camera interview that Trump's rhetoric distancing himself from Project 2025 was just for show, and that he has secretly "blessed it" and was "very supportive" of the plan.

READ MORE:Trump's plan to 'aggressively' reshape government would create 'army of suck-ups': report

As Agence France-Presse journalist Bill McCarthy noted in a Friday tweet, Vought is just the latest Project 2025 contributor to join the Trump Cabinet. Brendan Carr, who Trump nominated to chair the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authored the section of Project 2025 that specifically dealt with the FCC.

Other Project 2025 contributors taking key roles in the Trump administration include Michigan Republican Party chair Pete Hoekstra — who was tapped to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Canada — and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who the president-elect has since nominated to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Tom Homan, who will be Trump's new border czar, is also listed as a contributor to Project 2025.

Homan's contributions were likely concentrated among Project 2025's recommendations for reforming the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). That section, which was chiefly written by former Trump DHS official Ken Cuccinelli, called for rapidly expanding the DHS' staff and consolidating various border enforcement agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to be under one umbrella. At a far-right conference in Washington, D.C. earlier this summer, Homan — who was Trump's ICE chief in his first administration — promised that if he were given a position within the Trump administration, he would assemble "the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen."

“They ain’t seen s— yet. Wait until 2025," Homan said at the National Conservatism conference.

READ MORE:'He is on our side': Org behind Project 2025 boasts repeatedly about close ties to Trump

During the 2024 election cycle, Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly sought to associate Project 2025 with Trump, causing the Republican nominee to repeatedly distance himself from it on the campaign stump due to the document's overwhelming unpopularity. Notably, Trump transition co-chairman Howard Lutnick — who Trump selected to head the U.S. Department of Commerce — promised to blacklist anyone linked to Project 2025 from serving in his second administration, calling the Heritage Foundation and its sweeping policy document "radioactive."

Trump keeping Project 2025 at arms' length didn't pass muster, however, with CNN finding that more than 140 of Trump's former advisors and staffers helped assemble the document. Heritage itself has also heavily promoted its close relationship with Trump on its website and in its fundraising materials, pointing out that in his first year as president he implemented roughly two-thirds of their policy recommendations.

"President Trump addressed a group of Heritage members. He confirmed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is on our side," a 2017 email from Heritage read.

In June, People magazine published a comprehensive report delving into Project 2025, calling it a "far-right, Christian nationalist vision for America that would corrode the separation of church and state, replace nonpartisan government employees with Trump loyalists and bolster the president's authority over independent agencies."

READ MORE:'Nearly all' voters know about Project 2025 and majority have negative view of it: report

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after gaetz beat

an 11 24

Trump's transition team is actively rejecting a possible Department of Health and Human Services senior role contender, according to Politico.

CNN senior reporter Andy Kaczynski wrote via X, "wow: Donald Trump’s transition team has rejected a push to install a prominent Project 2025 author Roger Severino in a senior role at the Department of Health and Human Services over concerns that his strident anti-abortion views would prove too controversial."

Per Politico's report, "According to six people familiar with the situation, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations," some of Trump's team member "worried Severino’s nomination would further inflame fears among voters and moderate Republican lawmakers that Trump might widely restrict abortion access, distracting from the rest of the president-elect’s agenda, though they added that Trump officials remain open to appointing other anti-abortion officials at HHS."

READ MORE:Ron DeSantis slams the door on Matt Gaetz‘s hopes of being a senator

The team's rejection of Severino comes as "anti-abortion groups had been lobbying" for the Trump ally, the report notes.

"Heritage was lobbying hard," a source told Politico.

However, "the internal feeling was that [Trump campaign manager Chris] LaCivita and that crew had spent a lot of political capital trying to kill Project 2025 and they didn’t want to do this because that would be going backwards."

READ MORE:Top Trump advisor threatens Republicans to support nominees or face a primary: report

*Politico's full report is available here

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MMA

Bounties, self-deportation, and extremist sheriffs: How Project 2025 partners are planning for Trump’s mass deportations

Written by John Knefel

Published 11/21/24

Organizations on the advisory board of Project 2025, a sprawling plan to provide the incoming Republican presidential administration with policy and staffing recommendations, have responded to President-elect Donald Trump’s victory by promoting extreme approaches to carrying out his promise to deport upward of 10 million undocumented immigrants.

Right-wing think tanks the Center for Immigration Studies, The Claremont Institute, and the Center for Renewing America have all advanced anti-immigrant policies since Trump’s win. Some of their proposals include offering bounties for information on suspected undocumented people, conscripting far-right so-called “constitutional sheriffs” to serve as immigration enforcers, and attempting to make life so miserable for out-of-status immigrants that they flee the country — referred to euphemistically as “self-deportation.”

Trump has already named the two top officials who will be tasked with carrying out his mass deportation plan, and they both have direct connections to Project 2025. Tom Homan, Trump’s pick for “border czar,” is a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025’s lead organizer. He is also credited as a contributor in Project 2025’s policy book, Mandate for Leadership, which proposes drastic cuts to legal immigration in addition to harsh crackdowns on undocumented people. Homan has promised to “to run the biggest deportation operation this country has ever seen.”

Alongside Homan will be Stephen Miller — a top architect of Trump’s Muslim ban and family separation policies — who will serve as deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser in the new Trump administration. Miller and his conservative advocacy organization, America First Legal, attempted to distance themselves from Project 2025 amid growing backlash to the effort, but their fingerprints are all over it. Miller appeared in a Project 2025 promotional video, a top AFL executive authored a chapter in Mandate, and AFL was on the advisory board until it removed itself following public outcry.

But the likely influence that Project 2025 partners will have on Trump’s looming immigration policy extends far beyond Homan and Miller. Below are some of the coalition’s more extreme proposals.

Center for Immigration Studies pushes bounties, self-deportation

The Center for Immigration Studies is one of the three main branches of the Tanton network, named after John Tanton, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as “the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement.” The SPLC has designated CIS as an anti-immigrant hate group.

On November 13, CIS published a blog under the headline “The Trump Deportation Plan: Easier Done than Said.” The article argues for a stricter version of E-Verify — which uses Social Security data to determine employment eligibility — called G-Verify, which would require employers to electronically submit the eligibility form to the Department of Homeland Security.

The blog acknowledges that these programs “would not capture unauthorized migrants who work ‘off the books’” — a common critique of E-Verify, which critics argue actually pushes immigrant workers into unregulated markets.

That’s where the bounties come in. CIS continues, “However, lawful employees, business competitors, customers, or even family members who are aware of this unlawful practice might be willing to report the employer’s criminal practice to DHS in return for a small (say $2,000) reward and a promise of confidentiality.”

In another blog — this time for the National Review — CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian revived the idea of “self-deportation,” which is to say coercing undocumented people into leaving the country by making life miserable for them.

“Persuading illegal aliens to go home on their own saves the government time and money,” Krikorian wrote.

“And it’s also preferable for the illegal aliens themselves, allowing them to return on their own terms,” he continued, “They can settle their affairs, pack up their belongings, and go home for Christmas — and not come back.” After arguing that immigrants leave the country all the time, he suggested that one reason might be that “little Mario came home one day from P.S. 666 insisting on being called Maria.”

Krikorian has been joined in resurrecting this once-radical proposition by Heritage Foundation President — and Project 2025 evangelist — Kevin Roberts, who recently pushed it on The Vince Coglianese Show. While praising his colleague Tom Homan as a fantastic hire, Roberts argued that “such a big part of this is trying to inspire self-deportation.”

As a sign of how far contemporary politics have shifted toward the nativist right, it’s worth remembering that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) was roundly excoriated for proposing “self-deportation” as a central plank of his immigration plan during the 2012 presidential race. He was denounced at the time by liberal magazines, mainstream outlets like the Washington Post editorial board, and conservatives including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and a little magazine called the National Review.

In another blog published following Trump’s win, CIS argued that “the time may have come for President Biden or President-elect Trump to deploy the [Alien Enemies Act] against Iranian nationals residing in the U.S.” Per the author’s own description, invoking the act would allow “the president to summarily detain and remove nationals of enemy nations” — i.e., Iran. As the Brennan Center for Justice notes, the Alien Enemies Act “is best known for its role in Japanese internment, a shameful part of U.S. history for which Congress, presidents, and the courts have apologized.”

The Claremont Institute is a MAGA-aligned think tank that publishes the right-wing blog The American Mind. While the conservative authors featured on The American Mind may not necessarily speak for the institution, they offer a clear window into the Trump movement.

On November 8, The American Mind posted a blog headlined “Mr. President, Deputize Your Local Sheriffs.” The piece was written by Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy, an SPLC-designated hate group.

“President Trump should look to sheriffs to fill U.S. Marshal roles,” Shideler argued, for the purpose of facilitating “the cross-deputization of local sheriffs’ deputies and police officers along the Southern border, which is needed to address prohibitions against state and local officials enforcing federal immigration law.”

“That manpower will be required if Trump is to meet his campaign promise of securing the border and expelling millions of illegal aliens,” he continued.

Shideler further suggested that “conservative organizations” could “identify local law enforcement leaders who support the Trump agenda” — adding that “those who have participated in the Claremont Institute’s Sheriffs Fellowship would be an excellent place to start.”

Jessica Pishko — author of a recent book about sheriffs and right-wing movements — reported on Claremont’s inaugural sheriff fellows program in 2022. She revealed that it “presented for the sheriffs two sets of people in America: those communities sheriffs should police as freely and brutally as they see fit, and those ‘real’ Americans who should be considered virtually above the law.”

As Pishko and others have noted, many of Claremont’s honorees adhere to the far-right ideology of the constitutional sheriffs movement, which holds that sheriffs “should be the ultimate law enforcement authority in the U.S.”

The Center for Renewing America is a MAGA-aligned think tank founded by Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist and top architect of Project 2025.

On November 8, CRA published a white paper titled “Primer: U.S. Deportations — A Longstanding & Normal Process” which attempts to normalize and sanitize an earlier mass deportation undertaking officially known as “Operation Wetback” (though CRA’s authors don’t use that racist slur).

The authors argue that “mass deportations are a normal part of the president’s toolbox.”

“For example, in 1954, the U.S. government conducted a campaign that resulted in the mass deportation of Mexican nationals—1,100,000 persons,” they continue.

Left unmentioned is the humanitarian catastrophe unleashed by the mass deportations. As Dara Lind wrote for Vox when Trump praised the Eisenhower-era mass deportations in 2015, immigrants were “deported en masse: by train, by truck, by plane, and by cargo ship.” She adds that a “congressional investigation described conditions on one cargo ship as a ‘penal hell ship’ and compared it to a slave ship on the Middle Passage.”

In one mass raid, 88 people died of “sun stroke as a result of a round-up that had taken place in 112-degree heat,” according to a definitive account by Mae Ngai.

And as Professors Louis Hyman and Natasha Iskander argue, Operation Wetback was largely a propaganda campaign that “enforced the idea that American citizens are white.”

Nevertheless, the 1954 operation has become a touchstone for the Trumpist right. As but one example, Stephen Miller recently cited the “Eisenhower model” as justification for the potential deployment of the U.S. military “​​in a large-scale deportation operation.” CRA’s anodyne description of the 1950s deportations shows how embedded this history has become in the MAGA movement.

Trump’s new administration and its partners in the conservative policy ecosystem are laying the groundwork for the most nativist, xenophobic government in decades. From Homan and Miller to the think tanks providing them scaffolding, every sign suggests that the Trump administration will terrorize, surveil, and deport immigrants and their communities in record numbers. And Project 2025 and its partners will almost certainly continue to provide a roadmap for the draconian crackdown.

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rww

11/19/2024

by

Kyle Mantyla

Rep. Nancy Mace (R) introduced the resolution, saying it was "common sense" while using demeaning language about her future colleague.

Knowles: “It's especially offensive to tell women that they no longer have any of their legitimate rights because you've decided to throw on stilettos one day.”

Donald Trump wants a Project 2025 architect to play a starring role in his Cabinet.

Trump shunned Project 2025. He’s picking its authors for Cabinet positions anyway.

Vice President-elect JD Vance called Grace Chong, the CFO and COO of Bannon’s WarRoom, the media company owned by Steve Bannon, a “mouth breathing imbecile” for making an argument similar to one also made by President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday.

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mma

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts promotes the convention of states: “We realize the objective isn't just short term. It's long term.”

11/20/24

  1. ### Michael Knowles praises effort to control which bathroom Rep.-elect Sarah McBride can use: “We kind of brought this to the forefront”

11/20/24 12:04 PM EST

  1. ### Russ Vought: “The whole notion of an independent agency should be thrown out”

11/20/24 11:31 AM EST

  1. ### Michael Knowles: “Atheist

tnr

no lnx pix

Trump’s War With the Press Takes a Terrifying Turn

Donald Trump has nominated a Project 2025 author to lead the Federal Communications Commission.

Donald Trump has announced that the next Federal Communications Commission chair would be Brendan Carr, the senior-most Republican on the FCC and a contributor to Project 2025.

“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for free speech, and has fought against the regulatory lawfare that has stifled Americans’ freedoms, and held back our economy,” Trump said in a statement Sunday. The president-elect did not mention Carr’s involvement in Project 2025.

In his Project 2025 chapter, Carr outlined his agenda for the FCC. Carr wrote that one of the goals for Trump’s administration should be reining in Big Tech’s “attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square,” according to Business Insider. Carr suggested that companies be unable to censor content unless it is illegal, allowing consumers to choose their own content filters and fact-checking services.

Carr’s intentions for social media are perhaps best demonstrated by X, which has been transformed into a MAGA misinformation echo chamber by its owner, Elon Musk, who seems to have permanently attached himself to Trump’s side.

Carr also pushed to ban TikTok if its parent company, ByteDance, does not sell its U.S. operations, warning that Americans were receiving their news and information from China.

In addition to addressing Big Tech, Carr also wrote that the FCC should focus on “promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.”

House Democrats previously called for an investigation into Carr over his partisan activity, but it did not result in formal action, according to NPR. Carr said he received approval from FCC ethics officials to contribute to the right-wing playbook.

Trump spent months on the campaign trail disavowing Project 2025, an authoritarian policy road map cooked up by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, only to now welcome its architects into the fold.

Last month, Carr railed against Kamala Harris’s surprise appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, calling it “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule” and “biased and partisan conduct.” Trump was offered equal time on NBC, and the FCC said they had “not made any determination regarding political programming rules, nor have we received a complaint from any interested parties.”

Still, Carr took up the bullhorn on behalf of the president who’d appointed him to the FCC in 2017.

FCC rules dictate that only three commissioners can be affiliated with the same political party at any given time, and none can have a financial interest in any commission-related business. The FCC is responsible for regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. Under Trump’s first administration, the FCC repealed net neutrality rules, which were then reinstated this year.

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JOE MATHEIU HOST): We had heard from the transition team that no one from Project 2025 was invited, now we’ve got Homan, that apparently was not the case. Have you talked to Donald Trump since he won?

KEVIN ROBERTS: We’ve not spoken yet but I anticipate that we will.

MATHEIU: I mean he’s got to be pretty keyed up on what Heritage is offering here. He was on the record when the team was trying to distance itself from you – I have no idea who is behind it, he put on X, I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Do you have a sense of what he likes or doesn’t like here?

ROBERTS: I think the key thing is that President Trump saw the branding as a liability in the political season but I also would anticipate moving forward that the president-elect and vice president-elect with whom we maintain great relationships will also understand that it’s the policymaking season that Heritage and all of the other groups that are a part of our project are built for.

And if they’re looking, for example as President Trump said this morning, for a plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, we know exactly where he can go for that plan. Totally up to him about whether he uses the plan.

…

All of the political calculations of the last few months which were very understandable and about which we have no hard feelings are in the past. We’re now in the policymaking season, we think this is the beginning of a golden era of conservative reform. I will say that because the work of Project 2025 represents the conservative movement, it would be very difficult for anybody to implement policies on education, on the border, on taxation, without at least consulting those ideas and people.

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Parts of Project 2025’s radical policy wish list are already on display in numerous states

Over 30 states have implemented policies that Project 2025 wants to federalize, affecting reproductive rights, public education, labor rights, and more

Written by Shelby Jamerson

Published 11/05/24 3:10 PM EST

Multiple states have enacted legislation or executive orders with restrictions or provisions that overlap with Project 2025’s goals, offering case studies of the harm that the playbook could unleash on a federal level.

The Project 2025 initiative — which has deep ties to former President Donald Trump and his campaign — presents a road map to pack the next GOP administration with extreme Trump loyalists and implement extremist federal policy. It calls for severely limiting reproductive and LGBTQ rights, altering public education with book banning and right-wing curricula, rolling back equity and inclusion initiatives, and restricting labor rights.

These Project 2025 proposals — and state-level policies — often reflect narratives pushed by right-wing media, which have spread misinformation about abortion, advocated for book bans, attacked diversity programs, amplified anti-LGBTQ campaigns, and promoted anti-union sentiments.

Below we detail state-level actions that are comparable to Project 2025 proposals as well as their impact and examples of right-wing media supporting them.

Jump to section...

The playbook proposes that the next conservative administration collect data “about who had abortions and where” and urging the Department of Health and Human Services to punish noncompliant states. It suggests HHS cut federal funding from those states “to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”

Right-wing media have bolstered anti-abortion narratives by frequently pushing misinformation about the safety of abortion and abortion medication. They’ve also tried to ignore abortion’s widespread public approval and tried to obscure Republican opposition to the safe medical procedure.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturnRoe v. Wade in 2021, at least 21 states are banning or restricting access to abortion, reportedly with “more than 25 million women and more trans and non-binary people living in states that now have abortion bans or restrictions.” Some states have also passed legislation restricting access to medication abortion, a method reportedly used in 63% of abortions in the United States in 2023.

Over the last two years, reporting indicates that people living in states that enacted restrictions have died from untreated pregnancy complications or been charged with murder after miscarriage, and infant deaths are estimated to have increased in at least one state.

At least 21 Republican governors or GOP-controlled state legislatures have restricted abortion access in Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Utah. Some of those measures include:

Right-wing media figures have also amplified anti-LGBTQ narratives by spreading misinformation about gender-affirming care, fearmongering about inclusive bathroom policies, and fixating on trans-inclusive initiatives in sports.

According to data from the American Civil Liberties Union, over 40 states have introduced legislation restricting LGBTQ rights, and according to data from the Movement Advancement Project, Republican-controlled legislatures and/or governors in at least 25 states have signed bills or executive orders — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Many of these policies target trans rights, codifying which bathrooms people can use, restricting who can participate in female sports teams, or blocking access to gender-affirming care for minors. Those measures include:

The book’s foreword by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts states that American “children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.” It further equates materials with “transgender ideology” to “pornography” and argues that they have “no claim to First Amendment protection,” adding that “educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.” Project 2025 also attacks efforts to teach about racial equality, alleging that critical race theory — a university-level academic framework used for studying the impacts of systemic racism — disrupts “the values that hold communities together such as equality under the law and colorblindness.”

Right-wing media outrage campaigns vilifying teachers, public school curricula, critical race theory, and public school library collections have helped spur unprecedented levels of actions taken to censor books.

As New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait wrote in 2023, “Over the past three years, legislators in 28 states have passed at least 71 bills controlling what teachers and students can say and do at school.” The American Library Association reported “efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles in schools and libraries” in 2023 — a 65% increase from the year before — which disproportionately targeted books “representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals.” Simultaneously, Republican-led states have increased efforts to blur the line between church and state by injecting Christian rhetoric and guidance into public schools.

Since 2021, policies or legislation enforcing a conservative agenda in public schools have been authorized by the Republican-controlled legislatures, boards of education, state superintendents of public instruction, or GOP governors in the following states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming. These measures include:

Right-wing media have repeatedly attacked DEI in American institutions, deploying the term as a smear against prominent people of color and blaming diversity initiatives for major disasters and even for the Secret Service’s apparent failures during an assassination attempt against Trump.

Since 2023, 28 states introduced at least 86 bills to limit or ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, with at least 14 becoming law. These bills run parallel to right-wing media’s sustained attacks against racial justice efforts, slamming DEI programs as “un-American.”

Republican-controlled legislatures and governors have restricted or banned DEI programs in at least 9 states (Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming), with at least one additional governor, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, signing an executive order also restricting such initiatives. Those measures include:

Right-wing media have railed against labor laws and unions for years, spreading misinformation about so-called “right-to-work” laws, asking business leaders how to prevent workers from unionizing, lying about union fair-share fees, and railing against strikes.

Over the last three years, at least 13 states have enacted legislation weakening child labor laws and worker safety regulations, such as extending the hours that teens can work, removing requirements that businesses verify the ages of their workers, and reversing local ordinances that require water breaks for construction workers. Additionally, at least six Republican governors have publicly made statements condemning labor organizing, with three states signing laws blocking economic development subsidies to any business that voluntarily recognizes a union without insisting on a formal vote.

Republican-controlled legislatures and governors have signed such bills into law in Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. These measures include:

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Project 2025 partner blog: If Trump wins, “‘revenge’ can also be a good vehicle for public policy”

The Claremont Institute’s Jeremy Carl called for Trump to “concentrate first and foremost on destroying the people who tried (and failed) to destroy him”

Written by John Knefel

Published 11/04/24 mma

Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at MAGA-aligned think tank The Claremont Institute, argued in a blog published on Friday that if former President Donald Trump wins the presidential election he should fulfill his promises to carry out retribution against his enemies.

The article appeared at The American Mind, a media outlet from The Claremont Institute — one of the more than 100 advisory board members of Project 2025, a sprawling effort to provide policy and staffing options to the next Republican administration.

Trump should “concentrate first and foremost on destroying the people who tried (and failed) to destroy him,” Carl wrote, adding that “Trump must not be afraid to do at least some of the terrible things that demented liberals have been shrieking that he would do if elected. Fortunately, if this program is carried out strategically, not with anger but with purpose, ‘revenge’ can also be a good vehicle for public policy.”

Since at least March of last year, Trump has threatened that he will use the executive branch to target his declared enemies if he’s reelected. Carl — a former Trump official in the Department of the Interior who called Black Lives Matter “racist” and once cited white nationalist Jared Taylor in an op-ed — wrote that it was incumbent upon Trump to carry out his promises.

A few months ago on X, I mused (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that I was worried that if Trump won, he would concentrate on making good policy rather than ruthlessly crushing his enemies. I say that it was somewhat tongue-in-cheek because of course I would like the administration to develop good policies, policies that several of my colleagues have outlined in their contributions to this symposium. But I was not joking in the sense that if Trump does not concentrate first and foremost on destroying the people who tried (and failed) to destroy him, his presidency is unlikely to be a long-term success.

In other words, Trump must not be afraid to do at least some of the terrible things that demented liberals have been shrieking that he would do if elected. Fortunately, if this program is carried out strategically, not with anger but with purpose, “revenge” can also be a good vehicle for public policy.

…

Meanwhile, at the border, Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas have not just looked the other way, but have actively enabled illegal aliens to invade America. There must be consequences, including prosecutions of people at the highest levels of the Biden-Harris Administration. NGOs must have their funding frozen, and to the extent they have been found to have engaged in corrupt practices, RICO prosecutions of the heads of “resettlement” NGOs should be on the table.

There are many other opportunities to match political retribution with optimal policy. So, yes, as Trump supporter and Silicon Valley Investor David Sacks argues, “The major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) operate on free licenses of public spectrum in exchange for requirements to serve the public interest. They no longer do, and this is an obsolete model anyway. The spectrum should be auctioned off, with the proceeds used to pay down the national debt.” Sacks discusses how this could unleash innovation at scale, and it doubtless would. But it would also send a powerful message to other entities feeding at the public trough under both parties while being fully allied with the most rabidly partisan Democrats.

While promoting his latest book, titled The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart, Carl appeared in May on a far-right YouTube show and endorsed the racist “great replacement” theory. Carl also said he’d originally wanted the book’s title to be It’s Okay to Be White, a phrase popular among white supremacists.

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MSNBC's Joy Reid has often compared Christian nationalist ideology to "Gilead," the Christianist theocracy depicted in author Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel "The Handmaid's Tale." Christian nationalism is a major part of former President Donald Trump's game plan for a second term if he wins the 2024 election, and in a report published by Politico on February 20, journalists Alexander Ward and Heidi Przybyla describe the role that MAGA Republican Russell Vought would play in Trump 2.0's Christian nationalist agenda.

Ward and Przybyla explain, "An influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power, according to documents obtained by Politico…. Vought, who is frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, is president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term."

Christian nationalists, Ward and Przybyla note, "believe that" the United States "was founded as a Christian nation and that Christian values should be prioritized throughout government and public life."

READ MORE:'Each person' will 'serve' Jesus: Embattled Republican’s Christian nationalism revealed

"As the country has become less religious and more diverse," the Politico reporters explain, "Vought has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response. One document drafted by CRA staff and fellows includes a list of top priorities for CRA in a second Trump term."

Ward and Przybyla continue, "'Christian nationalism' is one of the bullet points. Others include invoking the Insurrection Act on Day One to quash protests and refusing to spend authorized congressional funds on unwanted projects, a practice banned by lawmakers in the Nixon era."

Although he has had a close alliance with far-right white evangelicals, Trump himself is not an evangelical but rather, was raised Presbyterian and comes from a Mainline Protestant background.

Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias, tweeting Politico's report, posted, "Trump is not personally religious but the Trump/Heritage Project 2025 plan is to staff the government top to bottom with right wing psychos who'll do everything possible to ban abortion, restrict birth control, etc."

READ MORE:['Wrong answer': Ex-RNC chair schools Lara Trump on 'number one responsibility' of GOP organization

Project 2025 is Trump and his allies' plan for giving the United States' federal government a top-to-bottom MAGA makeover if he wins a second term.

Ward and Przybyla report, "The documents obtained by Politico do not outline specific Christian nationalist policies. But Vought has promoted a restrictionist immigration agenda, saying a person's background doesn't define who can enter the U.S., but rather, citing Biblical teachings, whether that person 'accept(ed]) Israel's God, laws and understanding of history.' Vought has a close affiliation with Christian nationalist William Wolfe, a former Trump Administration official who has advocated for overturning same-sex marriage, ending abortion and reducing access to contraceptives."

READ MORE:[Mike Johnson’s 'Christian nationalism' is 'a greater threat to America than al-Qaida': strategist

*Read Politico's full report at this link.

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Project 2025 seeks to fulfill the right-wing media dream of cutting vital food assistance

The extreme right-wing initiative proposes cuts to programs benefiting millions of Americans

Written by Casey Wexler & Reed McMaster

Published 10/29/24 mma

Right-wing media have spent over a decade attacking and calling for cuts to vital food assistance programs, with particular focus on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (commonly known as “food stamps”) as well as free school lunch programs.

Now, Project 2025 — an extreme right-wing initiative organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and personnel to the next Republican presidential administration — proposes fulfilling their wish of cutting off hundreds of thousands of Americans from vital food assistance.

Project 2025 calls for sweeping cuts to the food stamp program, which would eliminate food assistance for some Americans and slash the purchasing power of families

Project 2025 also aims to cut free school lunch programs, cutting children off from vital nutrition

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These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

A key ally to former President Donald Trump detailed plans to deploy the military in response to domestic unrest, defund the Environmental Protection Agency and put career civil servants “in trauma” in a series of previously unreported speeches that provide a sweeping vision for a second Trump term.

In private speeches delivered in 2023 and 2024, Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, described his work crafting legal justifications so that military leaders or government lawyers would not stop Trump’s executive actions.

He said the plans are a response to a “Marxist takeover” of the country; likened the moment to 1776 and 1860, when the country was at war or on the brink of it; and said the timing of Trump’s candidacy was a “gift of God.”

ProPublica and Documented obtained videos of the two speeches Vought delivered during events for the Center for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank led by Vought. The think tank’s employees or fellows include Jeffrey Clark, the former senior Justice Department lawyer who aided Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election result; Ken Cuccinelli, a former acting deputy secretary in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; and Mark Paoletta, a former senior budget official in the Trump administration. Other Trump allies such as former White House adviser Steve Bannon and U.S. Reps. Chip Roy and Scott Perry either spoke at the conferences or appeared on promotional materials for the events.

Vought does not hide his agenda or shy away from using extreme rhetoric in public. But the apocalyptic tone and hard-line policy prescriptions in the two private speeches go further than his earlier pronouncements. As OMB director, Vought sought to use Trump’s 2020 “Schedule F” executive order to strip away job protections for nonpartisan government workers. But he has never spoken in such pointed terms about demoralizing federal workers to the point that they don’t want to do their jobs. He has spoken in broad terms about undercutting independent agencies but never spelled out sweeping plans to defund the EPA and other federal agencies.

Vought’s plans track closely with Trump’s campaign rhetoric about using the military against domestic protesters or what Trump has called the “enemy within.” Trump’s desire to use the military on U.S. soil recently prompted his longest-serving chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, to speak out, saying Trump “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”

Other policies mentioned by Vought dovetail with Trump’s plans, such as embracing a wartime footing on the southern border and rolling back transgender rights. Agenda 47, the campaign’s policy blueprint, calls for revoking President Joe Biden’s order expanding gender-affirming care for transgender people; Vought uses even more extreme language, decrying the “transgender sewage that’s being pumped into our schools and institutions” and referring to gender-affirming care as “chemical castration.”

Since leaving government, Vought has reportedly remained a close ally of the former president. Speaking in July to undercover journalists posing as relatives of a potential donor, Vought said Trump had “blessed” the Center for Renewing America and was “very supportive of what we do,” CNN reported.

Vought did not respond to requests for comment.

"Since the Fall of 2023, President Trump’s campaign made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former staff, represent policies for the second term,” Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement. She did not directly address Vought’s statements.

Karoline Leavitt, his campaign’s national press secretary, added there have been no discussions on who would serve in a second Trump administration.

In addition to running his think tank, Vought was the policy director of the Republican National Committee’s official platform committee ahead of the nominating convention. He’s also an architect of Project 2025, the controversial coalition effort mapping out how a second Trump administration can quickly eliminate obstacles to rolling out a hard-right policy agenda.

As ProPublica and Documented reported, Project 2025 has launched a massive program to recruit, vet and train thousands of people to “be ready on day one” to serve in a future conservative administration. (Trump has repeatedly criticized Project 2025, and his top aides have said the effort has no connection to the official campaign despite the dozens of former Trump aides and advisers who contributed to Project 2025.)

Vought is widely expected to take a high-level government role if Trump wins a second term. His name has even been mentioned as a potential White House chief of staff. The videos obtained by ProPublica and Documented offer an unfiltered look at Vought’s worldview, his plans for a Trump administration and his fusing of MAGA ideology and Christian nationalism.

A Shadow Government in Waiting

In his 2024 speech, Vought said he was spending the majority of his time helping lead Project 2025 and drafting an agenda for a future Trump presidency. “We have detailed agency plans,” he said. “We are writing the actual executive orders. We are writing the actual regulations now, and we are sorting out the legal authorities for all of what President Trump is running on.”

Vought laid out how his think tank is crafting the legal rationale for invoking the Insurrection Act, a law that gives the president broad power to use the military for domestic law enforcement. The Washington Post previously reported the issue was at the top of the Center for Renewing America’s priorities.

“We want to be able to shut down the riots and not have the legal community or the defense community come in and say, ‘That’s an inappropriate use of what you’re trying to do,’” he said. Vought held up the summer 2020 unrest following George Floyd’s murder as an example of when Trump ought to have had the ability to deploy the armed forces but was stymied.

Vought’s preparations for a future Trump administration involve building a “shadow” Office of Legal Counsel, he told the gathered supporters in May 2023. That office, part of the Justice Department, advises the president on the scope of their powers. Vought made clear he wants the office to help Trump steamroll the kind of internal opposition he faced in his first term.

Historically, the OLC has operated with a degree of independence. “If, all of a sudden, the office is full of a bunch of loyalists whose only job is to rubber-stamp the White House’s latest policy directive, whose only goal is to justify the ends by whatever means, that would be quite dangerous,” said an attorney who worked in the office under a previous Republican administration and requested anonymity to speak freely.

Another priority, according to Vought, was to “defund” certain independent federal agencies and demonize career civil servants, which include scientists and subject matter experts. Project 2025’s plan to revive Schedule F, an attempt to make it easier to fire a large swath of government workers who currently have civil service protections, aligns with Vought’s vision.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

“We want to put them in trauma.”

Vought also revealed the extent of the Center for Renewing America’s role in whipping up right-wing panic ahead of the 2022 midterms over an increase in asylum-seekers crossing at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In February 2022, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich released a legal opinion claiming the state was under “invasion” by violent cartels and could invoke war powers to deploy National Guard troops to its southern border. The legally dubious “invasion” theory became a potent Republican talking point.

Vought said in the 2023 speech that he and Cuccinelli, the former top Homeland Security official for Trump, personally lobbied Brnovich on the effort. “We said, ‘Look, you can write your own opinion, but here’s a draft opinion of what this should look like,’” Vought said.

The nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight later obtained an email in which Vought pitched the “invasion” framework to Brnovich.

Brnovich wrote in an email to ProPublica that he recalled multiple discussions with Cuccinelli about border security. But he added that “the invasion opinion was the result of a formal request from a member of the Arizona legislature. And I can assure you it was drafted and written by hard working attorneys (including myself) in our office.”

In the event Trump loses, Vought called for Republican leaders of states such as Florida and Texas to “create red-state sanctuaries” by “kicking out all the feds as much as they possibly can.”

“Nothing Short of a Quiet Revolution”

The two speeches delivered by Vought, taken together, offer an unvarnished look at the animating ideology and political worldview of a key figure in the MAGA movement.

Over the last century, Vought said, the U.S. has “experienced nothing short of a quiet revolution” and abandoned what he saw as the true meaning and force of the Constitution. The country today, he argued, was a “post-constitutional regime,” one that no longer adhered to the separation of powers among the three branches of government as laid out by the framers.

He lamented that the conservative right and the nation writ large had become “too secular” and “too globalist.” He urged his allies to join his mission to “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.”

And in one of his most dramatic flourishes, he likened the 2024 election to moments in America’s history when the country was facing all-out war.

“We are here in the year of 2024, a year that very well [could] — and I believe it will — rival 1776 and 1860 for the complexity and the uncertainty of the forces arrayed against us,” Vought told his audience, referring to years when the colonies declared independence from Britain and the first state seceded over President Abraham Lincoln’s election. “God put us here for such a time as this.”

Vought said that independent agencies and unelected bureaucrats and experts wield far too much power while the traditional legislative process is a sham. He extended that critique to agencies like the Department of Justice and the Federal Reserve, whose independence from the White House had long been protected by both political parties.

“The left in the U.S. doesn’t want an energetic president with the power to motivate the executive branch to the will of the American people consistent with the laws of the country,” he said in the 2024 speech. “They don’t want a vibrant Congress where great questions are debated and decided in front of the American people. They don’t want empowered members. They want discouraged and bored backbenchers.”

He added, “The all-empowered career expert like Tony Fauci is their model, wielding power behind the curtains.” Fauci was one of the top public health experts under Trump at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and a key figure in coordinating the national response.

What sets Vought apart from most of his fellow conservative activists is that he accuses powerful organizations on the right of being complicit in the current system of government, singling out the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, the conservative and libertarian legal network co-chaired by activist Leonard Leo. The society is widely seen as an instrumental force in cultivating young conservative lawyers and building a bench of future judges whose embrace of legal theories like originalism and textualism have led to decisions overturning abortion rights, environmental protections and social welfare policies.

Yet in his 2024 speech, Vought accused the Federalist Society and “originalist judges” of being a part of the problem, perpetuating the “post-constitutional structure” that Vought lamented by not ruling more aggressively to weaken or dismantle independent regulatory agencies that Vought and his allies view as illegitimate or unconstitutional. CHEVRON DEFERENCE?!

It was “like being in a contract quietly revoked two decades ago, in which one party didn’t tell the other,” he said. “At some point, reality needs to set in. Instead, we have the vaunted so-called Federalist Society and originalist judges acting as a Praetorian Guard for this post-constitutional structure.”

Echoing Trump’s rhetoric, Vought implicitly endorsed the false claim of a stolen 2020 election and likened the media’s debunkings of that claim to Chinese Communist propaganda.

“In the aftermath of the election, we had all these people going around saying, ‘Well, I don’t see any evidence of voter fraud. The media’s not giving enough [of] a compelling case,’” he said. “Well, that compelling case has emerged. But does a Christian in China ask and come away saying, ‘You know, there’s no persecution, because I haven’t read about it in the state regime press?’ No, they don’t.”

Vought referred to the people detained for alleged crimes committed on Jan. 6, 2021, as “political prisoners” and defended the lawyers Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman, who have both faced criminal charges for their role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Federal law enforcement agencies, he added, “are keeping political opponents in jail, and I think we need to be honest about that.”

The left, Vought continued, has the ultimate goal of ending representative democracy altogether. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said, “in which our adversaries already hold the weapons of the government apparatus, and they have aimed it at us. And they are going to continue to aim it until they no longer have to win elections.”

When Democrats called Trump an “existential threat to democracy,” they were not merely calling for his defeat at the ballot box, he said, but were using “coded language the national security state uses overseas when they are overthrowing other governments” to discourage the military from putting down anti-Trump protests should he win.

“They’re making Trump out to be a would-be dictator or an authoritarian,” he said. “So they’re actively working now to ensure, on a number of levels, that the military will perceive this as dictatorial and therefore not respond to any orders to quell any violence.”

Trump, Vought insisted, has the credibility and the track record to defeat the “Marxist” left and bring about the changes that Vought and his MAGA allies seek. In his view, the Democratic Party’s agenda and its “quiet revolution” could be stopped only by a “radical constitutionalist,” someone in the mold of Thomas Jefferson or James Madison. For Vought, no one was in a better position to fill that role than Trump.

“We have in Donald Trump a man who is so uniquely positioned to serve this role, a man whose own interests perfectly align with the interests of the country,” Vought said. “He has seen what it has done to him, and he has seen what they are trying to do to the country.

“That,” he added, “is nothing more than a gift of God.”

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Project 2025 partner blog advocates for overturning New York Times Co. v. Sullivan

The Claremont Institute's American Mind: “President Trump should make the case for revisiting the Sullivan ruling a more prominent and recurring part of his public rhetoric”

Written by Madeline Peltz

:{:{Published 10/25/24}:

The American Mind, a project of Project 2025 partner The Claremont Institute, published a piece on October 23 advocating for a second Trump administration to seek the Supreme Court to overturn New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, a key decision protecting the First Amendment.

Legal scholars have described the Sullivan decision, which established the “actual malice” standard in libel law, as “one of the Supreme Court’s most significant First Amendment rulings.” As Oyez outlines: “When a statement concerns a public figure, the Court held, it is not enough to show that it is false for the press to be liable for libel. Instead, the target of the statement must show that it was made with knowledge of or reckless disregard for its falsity.”

The Claremont Institute’s Carson Holloway recently argued that “President Trump should seek the reversal of New York Times v. Sullivan,” casting his argument as a continuation of the Dobbs decision that reversed the constitutional right to abortion. Holloway celebrates Trump as singularly responsible for Dobbs, describing it as his “signature accomplishment” in his “already impressive legacy” of the “restoration of self-government.” Continued:

If Trump is elected to a second term, he should build on this legacy by seeking the reversal of another egregious instance of judicial activism that continues to distort the Constitution and our nation’s politics: New York Times v. Sullivan. In this 1964 ruling, the Warren Court imposed a new doctrine of libel and the First Amendment on the nation.

Holloway then lays out a three point plan for how to accomplish this.

First, he suggests, “President Trump should make the case for revisiting the Sullivan ruling a more prominent and recurring part of his public rhetoric.” He has good reason to believe this is viable. In 2016, Trump promised that if he won he would “open up our libel laws” to make it easier to sue the press, singling out The New York Times and The Washington Post. On the Supreme Court, Justices Thomas and Gorsuch have both signaled their openness to reconsidering Sullivan.

More recently, Trump has been ramping up his attacks on journalists, advocating for revoking broadcasting licenses and launching other legal attacks. Brendan Carr, a Trump-appointed member of the Federal Communications Commission that oversees broadcasting licenses, could be a key ally in this threat. Carr wrote the chapter on the FCC in Project 2025’s policy book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.

Holloway’s next suggestion on stripping the press of legal protections is a given: “President Trump should continue his first-term policy of appointing serious constitutionalists to the Supreme Court and, indeed, to all federal judicial vacancies.”

Finally, Holloway states: “President Trump should direct his Department of Justice to seek the reversal of the actual malice doctrine and restore judicial respect for the original meaning of the First Amendment. This policy should include the regular filing, in appropriate cases, of amicus curiae briefs by the Justice Department urging the courts to revisit this question.”

This argument harmonizes with the vision of a weaponized Department of Justice outlined in Mandate. As Gene Hamilton, vice president and general counsel of former Project 2025 partner America First Legal, wrote in his chapter on the Justice Department, DOJ policy “must always be consistent with the President’s policy agenda and the rule of law.” Project 2025 would gut the federal government’s system of checks and balances through a radical consolidation of executive power.

Project 2025’s emphasis on personnel would also bolster a second Trump administration’s attacks on free speech. Through the initiative, The Heritage Foundation has assembled a prevetted database of Trump loyalists, which it calls a “conservative LinkedIn,” of potential administration hires that have taken loyalty tests to prove they’d be willing to stretch or even violate the law in order to enact his agenda. Project 2025 also advocates for the implementation of a policy known as “Schedule F,” which would remove civil service protections for politically neutral career bureaucrats so they could be fired en masse and replaced with pro-MAGA sycophants. Remaking the federal workforce in this way would allow Trump to more easily exercise control over the Department of Justice and enact a retributional, anti-free speech agenda.

===

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mma

Project 2025 organizer Heritage Foundation gave $1 million for Trump’s convention

Written by Eric Hananoki

Published 10/18/24

The Heritage Foundation, the architect of Project 2025, gave $1 million to the 2024 Republican National Convention, according to a recently filed document. Because of a firestorm of criticism, Trump and Republicans have attempted to distance themselves from the embattled group.

Project 2025 is an extreme right-wing initiative that intends to provide policy and personnel to the next conservative administration. Its proposals include attacks on reproductive rights, education, and LGBTQ rights.

On September 16, the host committee that helped organize the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin — whose official name is 170 Freedom Milwaukee 2024 Host Committee Inc. — filed its post convention report listing donors with the Federal Elections Commission.

One of them is the Heritage Foundation, which donated $1 million for the convention in February.

[no doc]

The nonprofit Energy and Policy Institute noted Heritage’s donation in an article last month.

Project 2025 contributor Tom Homan, a Heritage visiting fellow, and Peter Navarro, who authored a chapter of Project 2025’s guiding document, spoke at the convention. Heritage itself sponsored the convention and hosted a “policy fest” near the convention venue. Russ Vought, another chapter author, was the policy director of the RNC’s 2024 Committee on the Platform. And Heritage branding was also displayed at the Milwaukee airport.

Aside from the convention, Trump and his campaign have numerous connections to Project 2025.

===

===

mma 10 24

During a segment analyzing Vice President Kamala Harris’ and former President Donald Trump’s Univision town halls, host Elián Zidán failed to contextualize Trump’s connections to Project 2025, citing the network’s fact-checking division elDetector to misleadingly say it is false that Project 2025 is “Donald Trump’s plan if he is elected president.”

Project 2025 — a comprehensive transition plan organized by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation to guide the next GOP presidential administration — is the conservative movement’s most robust policy and staffing proposal for a potential second Trump White House. Its extreme agenda represents a threat to democracy, civil rights, the climate, and more. The project has deep ties to Trump; as CNN reported, “at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025.”

During a segment called “Después de las Respuestas,” Zidán, who is the host of Noticiero Univision Edición Nocturna, highlighted a quote from Harris during her own town hall in which she said, “I urge everyone to look into Project 2025, which is Donald Trump's plan if he is elected president.” Without context, Zidán said that according to elDetector, the statement is “false. And that is [because] this 900-page text was developed by the Heritage Foundation … not Donald Trump.”

Video

CitationFrom the October 17, 2024, edition of Univision's Noticiero Univision

ILIA CALDERÓN: Very good, let's now invite Elián Zidán. He has elDetector of truths, lies, and also misleading statements from the candidates during both town halls. Elián.

ELIÁN ZIDÁN: Ilia, Felix, Enrique. That's right. During the town hall, Kamala Harris said, and I quote, “I urge everyone to look into Project 2025, which is Donald Trump's plan if he is elected president." According to elDetector, this statement is, let’s see, it’s false. And that is [because] this 900-page document was developed by the Heritage Foundation, an organization that also leads conservative reforms. Not Donald Trump.

The Trump campaign has lately attempted to distance itself from efforts to promote or speculate about “future presidential staffing or policy announcements.” However, Project 2025 is significantly more developed than the Trump campaign’s transition initiative, called Agenda47. And given that the Heritage plan has the backing of virtually the entire conservative movement and links to numerous former Trump officials and advisers, it appears all but inevitable that Trump and his allies will rely on the policies and personnel assembled by Project 2025 if he is reelected in November.

Connections between Trump and his allies to the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 include:

//

  1. ### Univision knows how to fact-check Trump. Will the network do it during his town hall?

10/09/24

  1. ### Maduro, Castro, Ortega: Spanish-language right-wing media compare Democrats to Latin American dictators

08/27/24

  1. ### The right’s incendiary immigration rhetoric is spreading in Spanish media

04/22/24

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mma

“Fake News Networks”: Trump and Project 2025’s goal to attack, defund, and delegitimize the press

Written by Charis Hoard

Published 10/16/24

Former president and current GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump recently called for CBS’ and ABC’s broadcast licenses to be revoked, a continuation of the kind of adversarial rhetoric he has used against the press since his presidency. Project 2025, the right-wing policy blueprint for the next Republican administration, has also argued for the defunding of public radio and broadcast networks.

===

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/07/us/politics/heritage-foundation-2024-campaign-immigration.html

nyt

no lnx

Heritage Foundation Spreads Deceptive Videos About Noncitizen Voters

The right-wing think tank has been pushing misinformation about voting into social media feeds. The Georgia secretary of state’s office called one video “a stunt.”

Once a staid think tank, the Heritage Foundation has recently made its mark seeding falsehoods about the integrity of the 2024 election across social media and conservative news outlets.Credit...Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Ken BensingerRichard Fausset

By Ken Bensinger and Richard Fausset

Sept. 7, 2024

In July, two men went door to door at a sprawling apartment complex in Norcross, Ga., an Atlanta suburb that is a hub for the region’s fast-growing Latino population, asking residents if they were U.S. citizens and whether they were registered to vote.

Speaking in Spanish, often peeking from behind half-closed doors, seven people told the men that they were not citizens but that they were registered to vote.

Although the two men claimed to represent a company helping Latinos navigate the election system, they were actually working with the Heritage Foundation and carrying a hidden camera. Days later, the conservative think tank posted a video on the social media platform X containing some of the footage the men had captured, calling it “staggering” evidence that 14 percent of noncitizens in Georgia — which Heritage said extrapolated to more than 47,000 people — were registered to vote.

“Based on our findings,” the video concluded, “the integrity of the 2024 election is in great jeopardy.”

The video was reposted by Elon Musk, X’s owner, who called it “extremely disturbing.” It quickly went viral.

But under scrutiny, those claims do not hold up. Three of the seven people Heritage filmed later said they had misspoken. State investigators found no evidence that any of the seven people on the tape had ever registered to vote. A spokesman for Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, called the video “a stunt.”

It was one of several misleading videos that the Heritage Foundation has pumped into social media feeds this year. While the once-staid think tank has received attention recently for Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a future Trump administration that the group funded, it has also made its mark with an aggressive effort to shape public opinion, seeding falsehoods about the integrity of the 2024 election across social media and conservative news outlets.

At the center of that effort is the Oversight Project, an arm of Heritage that conducts what it describes as investigations into immigration policy, among other topics. Borrowing from covert tactics used by the group Project Veritas, the Oversight Project has published videos about the supposed threat of migrant voting in shelters on the Texas border, in New York City and in North Carolina.

The project says it is preparing to release investigations of other states, including what its executive director, Mike Howell, recently described in a livestream on X as “a pretty big thing” targeting voter registration at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.

“We view our role in this cause as breaking the bombshell news,” said Mr. Howell. The recording of the livestream appears to have been deleted after The New York Times contacted Heritage for this article, and the Oversight Project has so far not posted any videos about alleged noncitizen voting in Virginia.

Image

An open doorway into a room with a table and chairs. A large “Vote” sign in on the table.

An Atlanta polling location in March. There is no evidence to support Heritage’s findings in Georgia, a critical swing state with a large immigrant population.Credit...Christian Monterrosa for The New York Times

Few groups have done more to propel the false, but snowballing, theory that noncitizens are preparing to vote in droves in November, threatening the integrity of the election.

Heritage’s most recent effort, the Georgia video, tallied more than 56 million views, according to X’s statistics, and has become fodder for discussion on dozens of right-wing talk shows and podcasts, as well as on Fox News. The day after it was posted, both Mr. Raffensperger and Georgia’s attorney general, Christopher Carr, released statements, apparently in response to the video, pledging to investigate “specific” claims of voter fraud.

But there is no evidence to support Heritage’s findings in Georgia, a critical swing state with a large immigrant population, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the country.

Voting by noncitizens is illegal in almost all jurisdictions except for a few scattered municipalities that allow residents who are not citizens to vote in local elections. Any noncitizen convicted of trying to vote in a federal election faces stiff fines, prison time and potential deportation.

A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a policy group that focuses on voting and criminal justice issues, found that one ten-thousandth of 1 percent of votes in the 2016 election were cast by noncitizens. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has said that “noncitizens don’t illegally vote in detectable numbers.” The Heritage Foundation’s own analysis found just 23 documented cases of noncitizen voting across the country between 2003 and 2023.

Regardless of the evidence, critics say efforts like the Heritage investigation in Georgia could be used by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to try to discredit the election results if he loses.

“The immigrant becomes the boogeyman,” said Richard L. Hasen, an expert on elections law at U.C.L.A. law school. “It provides a means of delegitimizing Democratic victories and creates a path for challenging them.”

Several election experts derided the Oversight Project’s methodology as deeply flawed. The group’s figures suggest it spoke to a total of 50 people — statistically, a tiny sampling — before coming to a determination that one in seven noncitizen residents of Georgia may be illegally registered to vote.

In an email to The Times last week, Mr. Howell stood by the group’s work in Georgia. “I am not surprised that when an individual admits to a crime on camera that they would later retract it when that video is made public,” he said.

Asked about research — including Heritage’s own data — showing how rare noncitizen voting is, he said: “The monumental number of noncitizens that have poured over our borders since 2021 have made any previous ‘study’ of noncitizens’ voting irrelevant.”

In a July interview on Real America’s Voice, a right-wing podcast network, Mr. Howell said that out of 40 people his investigators spoke to at an apartment complex in Charlotte, N.C., four said they were both registered to vote and not citizens. That led the Oversight Project to conclude that 10 percent of noncitizens in that state were most likely registered to vote.

Mr. Howell claimed the Biden administration was planning to “refuse a peaceful transition of power by relying on illegal aliens to vote for them, and that’s clear as day.”

In Georgia, Mr. Raffensperger's investigation into Heritage’s claims is continuing, according to Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office. Mr. Hassinger said investigators had found no records suggesting that the people who appeared in the video had registered or voted, and “no pending or rejected voter applications from 2024” from the apartment complex.

The state investigators went to the apartment complex and spoke to two of those interviewed by the Oversight Project. One said she purposely gave the men at her door a fake name, and told them what she thought they wanted to hear “to get them away.”

Mr. Hassinger described the Heritage effort as “a stunt,” adding, “There’s no better word for it.”

The Times also spoke with a woman interviewed in the video. The woman, an immigrant from Honduras who asked that she be identified only by her first name, Marta, because she feared being deported, confirmed to the Times that she was not registered to vote and had never tried to register in the nine years that she had lived in the United States.

She had been surprised to see two strangers appear at her door and feared that if she told them the truth — that she was not registered to vote — they might try to register her and ask her to sign documents, potentially putting her at risk with immigration authorities.

Marta said that she had no idea she was being filmed until she was shown the video online and that the two men did not ask for her full name or address. “I just wanted them to go away,” she said.

The woman was first identified by Lead Stories, a private fact-checking group hired by social media platforms to verify content. The group also tracked down two other women who were shown in the video. Both denied having registered to vote.

On social media, the Oversight Project said it had tried to locate the seven people on state voter rolls but was “unable to find them,” adding that “non-citizens have shoddy address history records and often use fake documents and names.”

Founded in 1973, Heritage was long known as a policy shop, focused on promoting conservative, pro-business policies in Washington. In recent years, it has taken a sharp turn under the leadership of Kevin Roberts, an academic who said his goal for Heritage was “institutionalizing Trumpism.”

Mr. Roberts started the Oversight Project just a few months after arriving at Heritage, asking it to provide “aggressive oversight” of the Biden administration and “institutional support” to the conservative movement.

The Oversight Project partnered with an outside group, Muckraker, to produce both the Georgia and North Carolina videos. In April, they also teamed up to produce a video about a flier encouraging migrants to vote for President Biden. The groups said the paper was found in a shelter in Matamoros, Mexico, but the founder of the shelter denied being behind it. She said she had received death threats after the video was posted.

In March, the two groups used a hidden camera to film employees of a migrant aid group, La Jornada, that was providing documentation they said could enable noncitizens to register to vote. The executive director of that organization, which is based in Queens, N.Y., later said the document they had provided was not identification that could be used to register to vote.

Anthony Rubin, the founder of Muckraker, in a recent interview on InfoWars, the conspiracy spreading podcast hosted by Alex Jones, said that “anybody who claims this isn’t happening, they’re just burying their head in the sand.”

In March 2022, Mr. Raffensperger announced the results of a statewide audit that determined that 1,634 noncitizens had tried to register to vote among all of Georgia’s registered voters at the time, and had been blocked from doing so by existing state verification procedures. He also noted that none of them had cast ballots.

“So, my fellow Georgians asked me, ‘Are noncitizens voting in Georgia?’” Mr. Raffensperger said in May on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I can say, ‘No, they aren’t,’ because we’ve checked it.”

Ken Bensinger covers right wing media and national political campaigns for The Times. More about Ken Bensinger

Richard Fausset, based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice. More about Richard Fausset

===

---

Tucker Carlson promoted Heritage's Project 2025 — but never mentioned Project 2025 by name 10/08/24 mma

===

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mma

Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts touted a decrease in weather-related deaths. The decrease is partially due to NOAA, an agency Project 2025 wants to dismantle.

09/26/24

As “life-threatening” Hurricane Helene approached Florida, the Miami Herald called out Project 2025's proposal to dismantle NOAA

09/27/24

===

mojo

as he took a seat on stage at a climate conference in New York City on Wednesday, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts admitted that even hewas surprised he had been invited to speak.

Heritage, after all, is the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, a controversial policy wish list to reshape the federal government, including gutting many environmental regulations. The event, “Climate Forward,” hosted by the New York Times, was dedicated to “understanding our rapidly warming world,” with speakers including EPA Administrator Michael Regan, conservationist Jane Goodall, and the President of Guyana, Mohamed Irfaan Ali.

“That sounds like weather to me, not climate,” Roberts said.

Roberts, who penned the forward to Project 2025, seemed an unlikely guest, but as he put it, “I’ll go anywhere to talk about how the climate agenda is ending the American Dream.” He seized the speaking opportunity to dismiss climate science and argue that it was the climate agenda—not climate change itself—that should most concern people.

At the start of the panel, moderator and Times reporter David Gelles promised the audience an “open, respectful dialogue.” Aside from the occasional hiss from the crowd (and one audience member who left early, holding a middle finger in the air in protest), it was.

Project 2025, Gelles began by reminding the audience, proposes drastically cutting funding for climate research, weakening bedrock laws like the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act, undoing key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, and more—all at a time when climate-fueled extreme heat, wildfires, and storms increasingly threaten people’s lives. “I’d like to start this conversation,” Gelles said, turning to Roberts, “by asking you not what you would undo, but what is your proactive proposal to deal with climate change?”

To Roberts, however, climate wasn’t the real issue. Progressive climate policies were. The Inflation Reduction Act, he said, was imposing the will of “elites” on the American people by forcing a transition to clean energy and electric vehicles. (“I’m very happy, by the way, in my diesel F-150,” Roberts later joked, “because I enjoy my high carbon lifestyle.”)

The energy transition, he argued, “has been so artificial, it has been so accelerated,” he said, “that [it] is actually harming people far more than any of the harms that you would cite from so-called climate change.” By “harms,” Robert seemed to mean that electrification has brought with it higher energy bills (the switch to renewables is one of many factors that can affect prices) and more frequent electricity shut-offs.

//LOMBORG?

As for the harms of climate change? Roberts pointed to studies, including those by Heritage, that show a reduction in climate-related deaths in the last century. As *Reuters* notes, while disaster-related deaths have indeed decreased in the last 100 years, that’s in part because prediction tools and preparedness have gotten better. But in the meantime, the number of disasters—and the associated cost of them—has only continued to increase. By 2050, as the *Times* writes, climate change may be to blame for an estimated 14.5 million deaths.

When asked about Donald Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025, despite the majority of its authors being former Trump appointees, Roberts said that the Trump campaign and Heritage were currently operating in separate “lanes.” “They exist in a political lane in a political season,” he said. “We exist in a policy lane and are waiting for the policy-making season.”

Later, Gelles again pushed Roberts to acknowledge the risk posed by climate change, noting that last year was the hottest in recorded history. “Is there any degree of warming that you think the United States or the world should stay below?” he asked. “Is there any level at which it becomes too dangerous?”

Roberts declined to give a direct answer, instead downplaying the science—again. “That sounds like weather to me, not climate,” he said. “A hot year.”

ggl 9 24

https://www.nytimes.com › 2024 › 09 › 25 › climate › climate-forward-project-2025-kevin-roberts.html

Project 2025 Architect Dismisses Climate Change at Times Climate ...

2 days agoAt Climate Forward Event, an Architect of Project 2025 Dismisses Global Warming. At a New York Times Climate Forward event, Kevin D. Roberts said climate change amounted to a "hot year."

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https://www.motherjones.com › environment › 2024 › 09 › project-2025-kevin-roberts-climate-ira

The Guy Behind Project 2025 Says the Climate Agenda Is Worse Than ...

2 days agoAs he took a seat on stage at a climate conference in New York City on Wednesday, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts admitted that even he was surprised he had been invited to speak ...

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https://insideclimatenews.org › news › 26092024 › activists-disrupt-occidental-petroleum-interview-at-new-york-times-climate-event

Activists Disrupt Occidental Petroleum CEO's Interview at New York ...

1 day agoTension in the audience was palpable during Gelles' interview with Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, about Project 2025. ... That's because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 ...

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Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts touted a decrease in weather ...

1 day agoDuring The New York Times' "Climate Week NYC" discussion with Heritage Foundation president and Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts, reporter David Gelles outlined the right-wing initiative ...

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https://newrepublic.com › article › 185683 › new-york-times-kevin-roberts-project-2025

Why Is NYT Inviting Project 2025's Architect to a Climate Ideas Event ...

Sep 6, 2024Kevin Roberts believes environmentalism is something between a "pseudo-religion" and a conspiracy. Yet he's one of the speakers at the paper's Climate Forward event later this month.

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===

mma

Project 2025 author and JD Vance debate prep partner Monica Crowley's extreme history on abortion

Crowley has lamented that "unfortunately" abortion was still legal after Roe v. Wade was overturned, and described Roe as “a constitutional, legal, and moral abomination.”

Written by Jane Lee & Helena Hind

Published 09/26/24 12:02 PM EDT

Ahead of the October 1 vice presidential debate, Trump running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) has enlisted Project 2025 contributor and former Trump Treasury official Monica Crowley to help with debate prep.

Crowley, a former Fox contributor, made a name for herself via serial plagiarism and pushing conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama’s heritage.

In addition to their mutual connection to Project 2025, Vance and Crowley also share extremist anti-abortion views.

A brief history of Monica Crowley’s anti-abortion extremism

Crowley criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for visiting a Planned Parenthood clinic: “That’s not the kind of history you want to make.” Crowley also claimed that Democrats support “abortions up to the moment that that baby is delivered” and instructed Republican candidates to “talk about it [abortion] in the context of being pro-baby, pro-woman, and pro-family.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*,[3/16/24]

Crowley said after Roe v. Wade was overturned, the “lunatic left” looked “like they are demonically possessed.” She added, “Hell is seething right now. The enemy is really seething right now, because there’s going to be some killing of the babies in America, in places like New York and California, but as a nationwide law, as the law of the land, Roe v. Wade is gone. So the killing of the babies is going to be more difficult, not impossible, but difficult. And, so, Hell is burning even brighter, more on fire, the heat is coming even more. But these people, their faces are contorted, they’ve got the demonic eyes, and in some cases the demonic voices come out.” Bahakel Entertainment, *The Monica Crowley Podcast*, [6/27/22]

The day Roe was overturned, Crowley posted, “The Left is a death cult.” Twitter/X, [6/24/22]

On Fox News, Crowley called the left a “death cult” and chastised pro-choice protesters. She continued, “When there is an obstacle placed in their path like a Roe v. Wade reversal, they go absolutely bananas, and they do it publicly, right, because the whole purpose is to tear down the Constitution and all of our institutions.” Crowley also said that the Supreme Court decision solidified Trump’s “legacy of life.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [6/24/22]

Crowley complained that the decision overturning Roe v. Wade “does not mean that abortion is illegal in the United States of America, unfortunately.” Crowley mocked Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) for discussing making California an abortion sanctuary: “Like, you come to California for your abortion and, you know, you get a mud mask and a mani-pedi at the same time.” Bahakel Entertainment, *The Monica Crowley Podcast*, [6/24/22]

Crowley posted: “When the conversation is about guns, they pretend to care about ‘the children’. When the conversation is about abortion, they can’t kill ‘the children’ fast enough. Evil 24/7.”Twitter/X, [5/30/22]

Crowley complained about “woke corporations” pledging to pay for employees’ abortions: “This is all about pro-abortion. This is not pro-choice.”Crowley then speculated that the companies were doing this “to avoid paying for maternity leave.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [5/6/22]

While interviewing far-right Christian radio personality Eric Metaxas, Crowley celebrated that Roe might be overturned and hoped that “this could finally be the end, if not of abortion in America, then at least as the law of the land.” Crowley falsely added, “We now have some states where abortion is allowed up until the moment of birth. … This whole thing is pure evil. … Everywhere we look, and certainly this issue, evil looks like it's ascendant and that evil is astride the world.” Bahakel Entertainment, *The Monica Crowley Podcast*, [5/6/22; PolitiFact, 7/21/23]

When the decision to overturn Roe was leaked, Crowley described Roe as “a constitutional, legal, and moral abomination.” She then downplayed the impact overturning Roe would have, arguing, “Everybody now knows this doesn't make abortion illegal in the country. … And, you know, for all of these people, like, ‘Oh, such an inconvenience for a woman to have to get in a car or on a bus or on a train and go to a neighboring state that does allow abortion,’ these are the same people who are OK with the Biden administration moving illegal immigrants from the border areas to all over the country, by car, by plane, by train, you name it. …. And that’s not an inconvenience to the illegal alien.” Bahakel Entertainment, *The Monica Crowley Podcast*, [5/4/22]

Crowley called Trump’s 2018 proposal to cut off Title X funding for Planned Parenthood a “straight up no-brainer” and claimed outrage over the proposal was a “scare tactic.” She mused, “What is the point of having a Republican president and Republican control of the Congress if they cannot or will not defund Planned Parenthood?” Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, [5/2/18]

Crowley downplayed the consequences of the 2013 Texas anti-abortion bill that, if not struck down by the Supreme Court, would have shuttered most abortion-providing facilities in the state. She said reproductive health advocates “always try to go right to hyperbole -- that women are going to have to flee to Tijuana because they're not going to have access in Texas to abortion. It's all ridiculous.” Media Matters, [6/26/13]

===

mma

Project 2025 partners celebrate Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity

Written by Jack Wheatley, Jacina Hollins-Borges & Sophie Lawton

Published 07/02/24

Project 2025 partners are taking a victory lap after the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision in Trump v. United States, which ruled that “former President Donald Trump is entitled to immunity from federal prosecution for official actions he took while in office, a landmark decision at the height of an election season that further delays the start of his criminal trial in Washington, D.C.”

Project 2025 is a comprehensive transition plan to guide a potential second Trump administration with policy proposals and staffing recommendations led by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, which joined other members of the project’s advisory board in celebrating the ruling on presidential immunity as a win for Trump and a defeat for Democrats.

Last week, Project 2025 partners also praised the Supreme Court decision overturning Chevron deference in a ruling that will restrict federal agencies' regulatory abilities and make it easier for corporations to challenge environmental protections, climate action, and rules that protect workers or regulate drugs and financial practices, among other issues..

On former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts marked the decision as “vital,” and claimed, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [7/2/24]|}:

The American Center for Law and Justice posted, “BREAKING: In a major ruling, the Supreme Court has agreed with our amicus brief that Presidents are entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts in office.” Twitter/X, [7/1/24]|}:

Related

  1. ### Project 2025 partners join right-wing media and climate deniers to celebrate SCOTUS decision overturning Chevron deference

06/28/24

  1. ### Fox's chief political anchor interviewed the architect of Project 2025. Here are some of the details he failed to mention.

09/19/24

  1. ### Fox praises “pro-worker” Trump despite his anti-overtime record

09/13/24

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Project 2025 architect allegedly used shovel to kill neighbor’s dog: 'Crazy thing to do' - Alternet.org

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an raw 9 24

The MAGA movement has grown to such an extent that it’s now more powerful than Donald Trump is — and it’s become one of the former president's biggest threats, an analyst wrote in the New York Times.

The groundswell coalition that he started has evolved and developed its own issues and policies, wrote Ezra Klein. And they're not fully in line with him.

Now Trump as an individual is losing his grasp on it — and it's becoming aFrankenstein monsterits creator has little control over.

“Trumpism is whatever Trump says it is,” Klein wrote. “But MAGA is whatever his movement becomes.

“This is why J.D. Vance has been a political liability to Trump’s campaign: Vance represents MAGA as it has evolved — esoterically ideological, deeply resentful, terminally online — unleavened by Trump’s instincts for showmanship and the winds of public sentiment.”

Klein wrote that MAGA had led Trump into associations with Project 2025, a policy started as a way to clear out the old school of government and replace it with loyalists.

But it morphed into a movement of extreme conservatism which Trump is now trying to disassociate himself from, but which has become emblematic of his movement.

“The MAGA coalition — particularly its elected officials and Washington staffer class — has grown beyond Trump. It has more views on more issues than he does,” Klein wrote.

“It has absorbed more specific and unusual ideologies than he has. It is more hostile to abortion than he is, or than he wants to appear to be. It is more committed to deregulating health insurance than he is, or than he wants to appear to be.

“There is a great gap between the MAGA leader who slept with a porn star and the factions in the MAGA movement that want to outlaw pornography, as Roberts proposed on Project 2025’s first page.”

And Trump is now so associated with it that it could be what brings him down.

“By all accounts, Trump and his campaign are furious that Project 2025 has been hung like a millstone around his neck,” Klein wrote.

He went on, “Trump’s problem in the 2024 election is that he can no longer run as if he is a man alone. Everyone knew Mike Pence did not represent Trumpism. But Trump chose Vance to be the heir of the MAGA movement.

“A Trump administration would be full of people like Vance pursuing the agendas they believe in.”

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Project 2025's Kevin Roberts to speak at NY Times’ Climate Week NYC event

Roberts has referred to environmentalism as a “pseudo-religion” and called for unleashing our “vast reserves of oil and natural gas”

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Allison Fisher

:{:{Published 09/06/24 mma}:

The New York Times announced the speakers for its September 25 “Climate Week NYC” discussion, an annual event coinciding with the United Nations General Assembly session in New York City that promises to “bring together some of the world’s most engaged climate voices as part of a community focused on change.” The event’s lineup notably includes Kevin Roberts, the president of right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation who has led the Project 2025 initiative — the controversial conservative transition plan of policy and staffing proposals for a potential second Trump presidency.

IFrame Content

As detailed in its nearly 900-page policy book, titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, Project 2025 rejects climate science and dismisses efforts to reduce planet-warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy in favor of serving the interests of the fossil fuel industry. Overseen by Roberts, who wrote the book’s foreword, the Heritage plan for a future GOP administration seeks to gut or hamstring federal agencies working on renewable energy deployment, climate science, and environmental safeguards while opening up state and federal public lands for oil and gas extraction.

In Project 2025’s policy book, Roberts attacked environmentalists, the U.N., and the Environmental Protection Agency, calling for the unfettered use of oil and gas

In the foreword of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership policy book, Roberts sets the tone for the plan's hostility toward climate action and wholesale endorsement of fully extracting our oil and gas reserves, a path scientists have warned would be catastrophic.

:{*:{Update (9/9/24):The Times replied to this piece with the following statement: “Climate Forward is a live journalism event that has a history of bringing together newsmakers who seek to influence climate and political policy for a day of rigorous, challenging interviews. We anticipate the same for this year's event.”}:

mma related

  1. ### Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts: Project 2025 framework will carry on for the next 10 years

06/24/24 10:15 AM EDT

  1. ### Project 2025 plans to dismantle the federal agency that tracks hurricanes

05/31/24 3:07 PM EDT

  1. ### Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts says his group will release a “Project 2028” if Kamala Harris wins

09/06/24

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Fox's chief political anchor interviewed the architect of Project 2025. Here are some of the details he failed to mention.

Written by Jane Lee

Published 09/19/24 11:26 mma

On September 18, Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier hosted Heritage Foundation president and architect of Project 2025 Kevin Roberts for a seven-minute softball interview.

Baier teed up questions for Roberts to communicate his preferred talking points, chiefly that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has no direct connection to the agenda and that Democrats are lying about its contents.

Here are some details of Project 2025 that Bret Baier failed to address in his interview with Kevin Roberts.

Video

CitationFrom the September 18, 2024, edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier

* Baier teed Roberts up to repeatedly deny that there were any links between Project 2025 and Trump, not covering the full extent of the widely reported connections Trump has to the agenda. Baier did ask about Trump previously embracing much of Heritage’s manifesto in his first term and how that would project onto a second term but didn’t go much further. Fox News, *Special Report with Bret Baier*, [9/18/24]

In Project 2025, a fundamental premise is that abortion is not health care — and the CDC would be banned from promoting it as such. The document’s authors want the renamed Department of Life to collect data on people who have abortions, using “every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.” They urge the agency to rescind Biden administration guidance that EMTALA, a decades-old emergency medicine law, requires that hospitals provide abortion care in emergency situations. They also call to eliminate the agency’s Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force and replace it with an anti-abortion task force. The 19th, [7/16/24]

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mma

Fox praises “pro-worker” Trump despite his anti-overtime record

09/13/24

During his first term as president, Donald Trump worked to repeal expanded overtime protections implemented by his predecessor, and his Department of Justice chose not to contest a federal judge’s decision to strike down an Obama-era rule that would have extended overtime pay to over 4 million more Americans.

The Trump-aligned Project 2025, which was created to serve as the blueprint for his next presidential administration, also includes numerous proposals to further restrict overtime pay and protections for American workers.

Yet now Fox News is promoting his supposedly “pro-worker” announcement that he will move to eliminate taxes on overtime pay if reelected.

News organizations shouldn’t fall for Trump’s gimmick.

Related

  1. ### Project 2025 would roll back protections for overtime pay — a longtime right-wing media priority

07/09/24 2:40 PM EDT

  1. ### Project 2025 would benefit the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us

07/11/24 12:41 PM EDT

  1. ### Project 2025 leader The Heritage Foundation pushes anti-worker apprenticeship and contracting policies

08/27

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More Americans searching for Project 2025 than for Taylor Swift or the NFL: Google results

Carl Gibson an 9 24

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Former Project 2025 director resurfaces in mainstream media, and suddenly he is telling a different story about the extremist work he oversaw

In interviews with CNN and The New York Times, Paul Dans swiped at the Trump campaign and Heritage President Kevin Roberts

Written by Madeline Peltz & Sophie Lawton

Published 09/10/24 mma

:{:{The former head of Project 2025, Paul Dans, bragged about the initiative’s extreme policies and criticized both the Trump campaign and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in interviews with[}:

](https://youtu.be/SrPzf2TH6UI) and The New York Times, his first since resigning from his post. Dans used the opportunity to mislead about the content of Project 2025, in particular the plans to replace scores of federal workers with MAGA acolytes.}:

Dans took swipes at Trump campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles for the campaign’s disavowals of Project 2025 and blamed them for the hair splittingly close race. He told The New York Times, “Trump should be running like Secretariat at the Belmont, but instead it’s a race to the wire,” and reportedly advocated for the pair to be replaced.

On CNN, Dans appeared to expand his criticism to include Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts (though he didn’t use his name).

“Certainly there were some remarks by people at Heritage that I would — I fully renounce,” he said, “Any kind of, you know, talking about the second American revolution or bloodlessness. we have to lower the temperature in this country.” Dans appears to be referring to Roberts’ viral remarks from July, in which he said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Video

CitationFrom the September 9, 2024, edition of CNN's The Source

Dans has effusively praised former President Donald Trump in the past and bragged about the former president’s cozy relationship with Project 2025.

Project 2025’s connection to Trump is not limited to Dans.

Dans told CNN host Kaitlan Collins, “The ideas within Project 2025, I think they’re pretty solid.” In fact, Project 2025’s policy proposals are both extreme and deeply unpopular. Here is a sampling of the ideas Dans is referring to:

Dans also misled CNN viewers on Project 2025’s plans to gut the federal bureaucracy. “I mean, what Project 2025 really is: It's not a threat to democracy, it’s a threat to bureaucracy,” he told Collins. “It's putting the American — we the people — back into our government."

In reality, Project 2025 aims to replace politically neutral bureaucrats with far-right Trump loyalists through the reimplementation of a Trump-era executive order known as “Schedule F.” Schedule F would remove employment protections for up to 50,000 federal employees, allowing them to be fired.

Project 2025 has prepared for a future Republican administration to execute these firings quickly with the creation of a personnel database that has been referred to as the “conservative LinkedIn.” The initiative has been soliciting resumes for potential staffers and reportedly screening applicants through questions that drill down “more on political philosophy than on experience, education or other credentials,” according to Axios.

Additionally, ProPublica obtained and reported on training videos for potential hires produced by Project 2025, finding that “some of the content is routine advice that any incoming political appointee might be told. Other segments of the training offer guidance on radically changing how the federal government works and what it does."

Dans has also said he’s recruited audience members of Steve Bannon’s War Room to serve as bureaucrats in the next Trump administration.

Given Project 2025’s focus on remaking key parts of the executive branch into Trump’s main political weapon to enact a retribution agenda, Dans’ comment about Project 2025 being a “threat to bureaucracy” is anything but reassuring.

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rep. Chip Roy says election deniers and Project 2025 contributors helped draft SAVE Act

Civil rights groups have condemned the bill that would prohibit noncitizen voting, which is already illegal

Written by Madeline Peltz

Research contributions from Sophie Lawton

Published 09/04/24 mma

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), author of the SAVE Act — a bill that would bar noncitizens from voting in federal elections, something which is already illegal — appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room and claimed he drafted the bill in collaboration with election deniers and Project 2025 allies. The House of Representatives is reportedly considering attaching the SAVE Act to a continuing resolution to fund the government, an effort that is unlikely to succeed.

Noncitizen voting is already illegal and exceedingly rare. Civil rights groups have condemned the SAVE Act as “both unnecessary and dangerous”, saying the bill “seeks to intimidate members of immigrant communities and communities from exercising their lawful right to vote.”

“I drafted that bill in the spring alongside our good friends Stephen Miller, our good friends Hans Von Spakovsky, Cleta Mitchell, other good friends of President Trump and patriots across the country who have been fighting for election integrity for years,” he told guest host and former Trump staffer Kash Patel.

Video

CitationFrom the September 3, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Miller, Von Spakovsky, and Mitchell are all directly tied to Project 2025, the extreme right-wing initiative led by the Heritage Foundation that would provide policy and personnel to the next Republican administration.

Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller is one of Trump’s longest serving advisers and speechwriters. He was behind some of the administration’s most notorious policies, including the so-called Muslim ban and family separation policy. After Trump’s defeat, Miller launched America First Legal, a legal nonprofit attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion policies as part of the conservative culture wars.

Miller was directly involved in Project 2025 before recently attempting to distance himself. America First Legal was a member of the advisory board, and Miller appeared in a Project 2025 promotional video for its Presidential Administration Academy, an effort to recruit MAGA activists into government service, which was posted in September 2023.

Miller, an anti-immigrant extremist, has been a longtime proponent of the myth of noncitizen voting. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Miller pushed Trump’s fake electors scheme. In a December 2020 appearance on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, he said, “We have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner of the election.”

Hans Von Spakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 author, who The Guardian has described as having “decades-long career,” going back to the 2000 presidential contest, promoting “unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud.” According to ProPublica, von Spakovsky “is a leading purveyor of the notion that voter fraud is rampant, claims that have been largely discredited.”

During the 2000 election, he advised a group that was advocating for purging voter rolls and honored a company “responsible for erroneously scrubbing thousands of disproportionately minority voters from Florida’s rolls.” In 2008, von Spakovsky withdrew from consideration from an appointment to the Federal Elections Commission under President George W. Bush after Democrats refused to bring up his nomination for a vote due to his controversial and politicized views on election administration. According to The Guardian, several former colleagues at the Justice Department objected to his nomination, claiming he “played a major role in the implementation of practices which injected partisan political factors into decision-making on enforcement matters and into the hiring process”.

Von Spakovsky wrote the chapter on the Federal Election Commission in the Project 2025 policy book Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise and has frequently appeared in the media to promote the project. He also has promoted the SAVE Act on War Room, claiming the Democrats’ answer that non-citizens voting is already a felony is a weak position by sarcastically saying, “I guess that means all our federal prisons must be empty because fear of the law is keeping all these criminals and other people from violating the law.”

Cleta Mitchell

Cleta Mitchell is a prominent election denier and contributor to Mandate for Leadership. She was previously a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, and has been described as one of two “legal architects” of Trump’s “failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” She is also the founder of the Election Integrity Network and a senior legal fellow at Conservative Partnership Institute. The Conservative Partnership Institute is a Project 2025 partner organization, and Election Integrity Network was originally founded as a project of CPI.

The SAVE Act passed the House in July 2024. President Joe Biden has promised to veto the bill.

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Rep. Chip Roy says election deniers and Project 2025 contributors helped draft SAVE Act

09/04/24 mma

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Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts: “The United States in the 1700s was a place that was not divided by class”

09/03/24

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see dans on rfk

Could RFK Jr. be Trump’s Project 2025 liaison? Asked to 'help pick' government officials

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mma 8 24

April 19, 2023, edition of Fox News' *Tucker Carlson Tonight

Kennedy’s friendly sit-down with Carlson was characteristic of the glowing treatment he received from right-wing outlets and influencers for the Democratic run he had officially announced earlier that day. His bid drew fervent praise from the likes of Trumpist political operative Charlie Kirk and arch-conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and he became a constant presence on right-wing cable outlets and podcasts. In the early months of his campaign, Kennedy received more Fox weekday appearances than high-profile Republican presidential candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and more mentions on that network than all but three members of that field.

It’s no secret why avowed right-wingers were so interested in Kennedy’s Democratic presidential bid — they thought he could be a spoiler who would help Trump win. Indeed, Steve Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser who had spent years using his streaming show to promote Kennedy’s anti-vax conspiracy theories, reportedly encouraged him to launch the run because he viewed Kennedy as “a useful chaos agent.” Other current and former Trump advisers also talked up Kennedy’s campaign and were not shy about why they were doing so: As Roger Stone put it, Kennedy would “soften Joe Biden up for his defeat by Donald Trump.”

Kennedy was a bad fit for a Democratic campaign. He has one of the party’s most celebrated names, and played a leading role in environmental organizations earlier in his career. But in recent years, he became better known for promoting conspiracy theories about childhood vaccinations, and his extremist views on the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine put him in step with the right-wing propaganda machine. As a candidate, Kennedy thrilled white supremacists by claiming that the virus had been “ethnically targeted” to not affect Jewish people.

Kennedy’s positioning made him a better fit for MAGA voters than Democrats. So when he failed to gain traction in the Democratic race and switched to an independent run in the fall, he immediately became a thorn in Trump’s side.

The right turned on RFK Jr. when his independent campaign started hurting Trump}:

Sean Hannity, the Trump political operative who also has a prime-time Fox show, used a September 2023 interview with Kennedy to pitch the candidate on switching from his Democratic primary bid to a third-party run.

“When Sean Hannity's nicer to you than they are, you got a problem,” the Fox host told him. “You would agree with that. If they're not treating you fairly, why stay with them? If they're not going to treat you fairly, why?”

Video

CitationFrom the September 12, 2023, edition of Fox News' Hannity

But a month later, when Kennedy returned to Hannity’s show shortly after announcing his run as an independent, the host shivved him. Over more than seven minutes, Hannity characterized Kennedy as “very liberal,” and criticized him over his positions on environmental policy and for endorsing Democrats for president in past elections.

Again, there’s nothing subtle about what was going on. Trump’s campaign saw polling which suggested that Kennedy would attract more support from Republicans than Democrats as an independent candidate, so they pivoted to attacking him — and Trumpist shills like Hannity followed along.

Over the following months, the right-wing press struggled with how to cover Kennedy, seemingly hoping to use him to damage Democrats while also trying to remind their viewers that he was too liberal to actually support.

Meanwhile, reporters produced features detailing embarrassing events from Kennedy’s past, including his claims that a parasite had eaten parts of his brain and triggered memory loss, and his admission that he had once discovered the carcass of a bear cub by the site of the road in upstate New York, driven it into New York City, and dumped it in Central Park with an old bicycle to suggest that it had been killed by a cyclist (“Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm,” he told The New Yorker).

Kennedy had too little support in national polls to make the presidential debate stage and no path to electoral victory. All he could do was take votes from Trump — and so after reported lobbying by people like Carlson, he’s apparently planning to drop out and endorse the Republican nominee instead.

The question is what Kennedy secured in return.

An anti-vaxxer running HHS?}:

Kennedy’s campaign had reportedly been trying to secure him a future administration position in exchange for his endorsement. His efforts to meet with Harris to discuss such a deal went nowhere.

But Kennedy found Trump more amenable to such a deal. Kennedy reached out to Trump following the July assassination attempt on the former president, using a phone number reportedly provided by Carlson. The pair reportedly talked about Kennedy “about endorsing his campaign and taking a job in a second Trump administration, overseeing a portfolio of health and medical issues.” Kennedy subsequently told The Washington Post he is “willing to talk to anybody from either political party who wants to talk about children’s health and how to end the chronic disease epidemic.”

Trump has since publicly floated giving Kennedy a major job in his administration, telling CNN he “probably would” consider such an appointment.

It’s unclear what such a job might look like, and Trump is such a huge liar you’d have to have brainworms to trust him to hold up his end of such a bargain. But Donald Trump Jr. has said of Kennedy, “I love the idea of giving him some sort of role in a three-letter agency and letting him blow it up.” And Trump’s media supporters have proposed offering Kennedy a position as prominent as secretary of health and human services, with Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, suggesting Kennedy should head that department, the Food and Drug Administration, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in order “to really clear house at the agency.”

Video

CitationFrom the August 21, 2024, edition of Timcast IRL

Granting Kennedy control of HHS and its $1.5 trillion budget, or one of the “three-letter agencies” it oversees, like the FDA or CDC or the National Institutes of Health, could have disastrous consequences. As a report on the prospect from NBC News detailed, Kennedy has kooky health views and “has described wanting to dismantle those offices and rebuild them with like-minded fringe figures.”

But such a move would serve as the natural culmination of the right-wing media’s campaign against the COVID-19 vaccines developed under Trump and rolled out under Biden. Carlson and his ilk spent years waging war on those lifesaving medications, falsely claiming they were ineffective and inflating claims about their potential side effects. (By driving down support for the vaccines among Republicans, their effort surely led to the deaths of many members of their audiences.)

Thanks to that campaign, Trump was unable to take credit for the COVID-19 vaccines on the campaign trail. The former president shied away from discussing his administration’s greatest accomplishment to avoid alienating his own supporters during the GOP primary. He’s tried to court Kennedy’s endorsement by talking down childhood vaccinations, bizarrely telling him in a leaked phone call, “I want to do small doses” rather than giving infants a shot that “looks like it’s meant for a horse, not uh, you know, a 10-pound or 20-pound baby.” And on the campaign trail, he’s vowed that his administration “will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.”

All of this is troubling enough. Trump’s anti-vaccine rhetoric — and threats to enact it as policy — has come as Republicans have become generally less supportive of vaccination. But putting an anti-vax crackpot in charge of a government health agency could supercharge that process, with dire consequences for America’s children.

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an 8 24

If former President Donald Trump succeeds in his third bid for the presidency this fall, it could mean checkmate for the far-right's decades-long plan to completely take over the federal government.

That's according to columnist David Sirota, who recently wrote in the Guardian about how the authoritarian Project 2025 initiative could become reality should Trump win the November election. He specifically noted that Project 2025 effectively marks "the final stage of [conservatives'] grand half-century scheme to destroy the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society."

Sirota — a former speechwriter for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) — is publisher of LeverNews.com, which has delved into the 1971 Powell Memo in its "Master Plan" series. He noted that the memo, which was authored by Nixon-appointed Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, "created the foundation for Citizens United and the modern era of corporate politics."

READ MORE:Trump hopes you won't notice 'close partnership' with Project 2025: former Labor Secretary

As Sirota wrote, the Heritage Foundation, which is the chief organization pushing Project 2025, "carved out a special role for itself" in the aftermath of the Powell Memo as the public policy arm of the far-right's plan to merge corporate power with conservative politics.

"[W]ithin a few years of its launch, [Heritage] was focused on influencing presidential administrations with the original version of Project 2025 – Mandate for Leadership, described in the press at the time as 'a blueprint for grabbing the government by its frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out 48 years of liberal policy,'" Sirota wrote. "[Former President Ronald] Reagan delivered a speech at Heritage lauding 'the importance of the Heritage Foundation ... in bringing to Washington the political revolution.'"

Now, in Trump's second run for a second term in the White House, he's attempted to distance himself from Heritage and Project 2025, insisting "I don't know what the hell it is" on the campaign stump. This is hard to take at face-value, given that roughly 140 of his former staffers and advisors had a hand in writing Project 2025 and that his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) wrote the foreword to a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts.

Sirota additionally warned readers to not trust Trump when it comes to his downplaying of Project 2025, noting that Heritage "boasted" about how Trump implemented roughly two-thirds of its policy proposals during Trump's first year in the White House. He also quoted Vance's foreword for Roberts' book to illustrate how the Republican ticket privately views the group behind Project 2025.

READ MORE:Trump: 'I know nothing' about Project 2025 despite numerous ex-officials' involvement

“The Heritage Foundation isn’t some random outpost on Capitol Hill,” Vance wrote. “It is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.”

Democrats have seized on Project 2025 as a means of highlighting what their Republican opponents would do if given the levers of power again. As People magazine wrote in July, the document lays out a detailed plan to institute "a far-right, Christian nationalist vision for America that would corrode the separation of church and state, replace nonpartisan government employees with Trump loyalists and bolster the president's authority over independent agencies."

Click here to read Sirota's column in its entirety.

READ MORE:['Toxic': Experts mock Trump's sudden and strident Project 2025 denial

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Project 2025, right-wing media, and Trump zero in on dismantling the Inflation Reduction Act

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Published 08/29/24 mma

While the Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from the widely unpopular project, both the former president and his running mate JD Vance have extensive ties to it. And although Project 2025 architect Paul Dans resigned from his position at The Heritage Foundation in July, the Trump campaign’s rhetoric on the Inflation Reduction Act appears to align with that of Project 2025, as laid out in an over 900-page policy book called Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.

* Project 2025 chapter author Bernard McNamee and Trump have both suggested that renewable energy doesn’t work. During an exclusive interview with Fox host Jesse Watters, Trump said, “The whole world is going woke, their world is going woke. The Green New Scam, we’re spending all our money on things that don’t work.” In *Mandate*, McNamee calls renewable energy unreliable, backing his statement with an endnote that includes no citation and falsely claims that “the challenges to the grid are coming mainly from subsidized renewable resources.” Meanwhile, most power outages are triggered by severe weather.

Renewable energy is particularly resilient because it is modular, and can adapt more easily even if one component of a system is damaged. McNamee also argues that “electric reliability is decreasing in many parts of the country,” citing “the blackouts and shortages in California (August 2020, summer 2022) and Texas (February 2021, summer 2022)” in an endnote. In reality, widespread blackouts and shortages did not occur in California or Texas in 2022, and a multitude of factors caused the blackouts in 2020 and 2021. Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [7/22/24; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Climate Central, 4/24/24; Media Matters, 2/19/21; Utility Dive, 11/22/22; ABC News, 9/9/22; Natural Resources Defense Council, 9/12/22, 3/3/21]

* Like the architects of Project 2025, Trump has publicly opposed equity-related initiatives throughout the federal government, which would seemingly include billions in IRA funding dedicated to helping underserved communities. McNamee writes: “The next Administration should stop using energy policy to advance politicized social agendas. Programs that sound innocuous, such as ‘energy justice,’ Justice40, and DEI, can be transformed to promote politicized agendas.” Trump has also attacked equity-focused programs, writing on Truth Social in 2023 after Biden signed an executive order focused on advancing racial equity, “It is time to eradicate Joe Biden's sinister ‘equity’ Executive Order that has led to the woke takeover of the U.S. Government!” These statements lay bare the threats to initiatives and programs like the $3 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Grant program, a product of the IRA that aims to reduce the impacts of climate change and pollution in low-income communities. Project 2025, *Mandate for Leadership*, [2023; Newsweek 3/2/23; United States Environmental Protection Agency, accessed 8/16/24]

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As key Trump allies advocate for revenge, Project 2025 provides a policy framework to attack the media

Former Trump national security adviser Kash Patel: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media”

Written by Jack Winstanley

Published 08/27/24

Project 2025, a comprehensive transition plan organized by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation to staff the next GOP administration with extremists and implement a far-reaching right-wing agenda, proposes that a second Trump presidency should gut funding for public broadcasting and “reexamine” the relationship between the White House and reporters. These policy proposals laying the framework for the next Republican administration to attack the media are especially notable as former President Donald Trump and his allies have a long history of hostility toward the press, including during the 2024 presidential campaign, and some of Trump’s key allies have openly threatened retaliation against specific journalists and outlets if he is reelected.

Project 2025 attacks public broadcasting and suggests a future administration “reexamine” the relationship with the White House press corps, following years of Trump and his allies attacking the media

* Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign has denied press credentials to outlets and journalists that have reported critically on the former president. While in office, Trump revoked press passes for dozens of journalists, and his 2020 reelection campaign continued the pattern of denying credentials. Reporters from HuffPost, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, and Spectrum News have stated that their press access to Trump’s 2024 campaign events has been revoked, assumedly over prior unflattering coverage. Vanity Fair, [4/19/24; Media Matters, 4/22/24; Twitter/X, 8/15/24, 8/14/24, 8/15/24; Columbia Journalism Review, 5/9/19; The Washington Post, 12/2/19]

* Taking issue with a recent report from The New York Times questioning Trump’s claim that he survived a helicopter crash landing with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, the former president attacked the paper and journalist Maggie Haberman for their “Fake & Fraudulent writing on the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX.” Trump reportedly called the newspaper and demanded an apology after it debunked his story (which Brown has also denied) and “used ‘a sing-song voice’ to mock the Times’ request for the helicopter flight records.” HuffPost, [8/10/24]

* Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and the principal architect of Project 2025, attacked the “deceitful ‘journalism’” covering the Trump 2024 campaign. In a separate post, Roberts accused Harris of “dodging tough questions, and the so-called ‘Professional Journalists’ are just fine with it?! It’s a disgrace to real journalism.” Twitter/X, [8/16/24, 8/9/24]

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August 20, 2024, edition of The Blaze's Pat Gray Unleashed

PAT GRAY (HOST): Democrats have also done a really good job with repositioning Project 25 as some sort of kookery and really they - I don't know if the RNC is okay with them repositioning that but most of the proposals, in fact, all the proposals I've seen are pretty reasonable, you know, protect the border, we're pro-life. I mean, these are things that just make sense for the conservative party. Is that something that Donald feels it's necessary to distance himself from?

LARA TRUMP: Well, I think you're right there are some ideas in there that are very productive and will be great for this country. There are some ideas in there that might be a little more extreme and the problem is Donald Trump hasn't had anything to do with Project 2025. This is a think tank.

Project 2025, organized by the Heritage Foundation, extensively outlines potential approaches to governance for the next would-be Republican president, including replacing federal employees with extremists and Trump loyalists and attacking LGBTQ rights, abortion, contraception, and labor unions. Project 2025 describes extreme policies like dismantling the federal agency that tracks hurricanes, upending Medicare as we know it, enacting inflationary tariff policies, and dramatically raising taxes on everyday Americans.

Trump has deep ties to Project 2025, despite attempts by Trump and his allies to distance himself. Just days ago, an undercover video revealed Project 2025 architect Russ Vought highlighting Trump's ties to Project 2025 and downplaying the former president distancing himself, candidly explaining that Trump is just “running against the brand” of Project 2025 but that, “he’s very supportive of what we do.” Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts has made similar remarks.

related

Did Charlie Kirk lie to a 13-year-old child at the DNC? Sure seems like it.

08/20/24 5:19 PM EDT

  1. ### Numerous Project 2025 groups have claimed abortion is comparable to or worse than the Holocaust

08/21/24 10:17 AM EDT

  1. ### CNN breaks down the undercover interview that features Project 2025 architect Russell Vought discussing the secret plan for a future Trump administration

08/16/24

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Numerous Project 2025 partners have falsely claimed that abortions are never medically necessary

08/13/24 mma

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DN 8 24

on msnbc trump spox is in a video

Leaked Project 2025 Training Videos Show Former Trump Officials Detailing Plans to Dismember Gov’t | Democracy Now!

as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tries to downplay his connection to the far-right policy agenda known as Project 2025, ProPublica and Documented have just published dozens of training videos by the group that show how the conservative movement is gearing up for the next Republican administration.

It’s an effort led by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank and other groups to remake the federal government, including by replacing civil servants with thousands of partisan political appointees who would help carry out the extreme policies envisioned by Project 2025. Many of the people who crafted the policy blueprint are former top Trump officials. The training videos include discussions about undoing climate policy, combatting diversity efforts, denying freedom of information requests and more.

“The first time that Trump … got elected, his operation was very unprepared. They did not have a bench of people ready. There was chaos, there was confusion, and that set back that administration for perhaps months, maybe even a year or two,” says ProPublica reporter Andy Kroll. “If he is elected again, that will not be the case.”

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. It’s “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman.

We look now at the far-right policy plan to overhaul the federal government, known as Project 2025. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is trying to downplay his connection to the plan. And last week, Kevin Roberts, head of the influential right-wing Heritage Foundation, postponed the release of his Project 2025 book until after the November election. The book’s foreword is written by Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance.

Trump’s campaign insists it has no connection to the right-wing blueprint for immigration, almost a thousand pages long — a blueprint for immigration, reproductive rights, climate policy and more. But many of the key figures working for Project 2025 are former top Trump administration officials, some of them featured in newly released videos that were created for Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy.

In a major new development, the independent news outlets ProPublica and Documented have now published dozens of these videos, some of which we’ll feature today. In this clip, Trump’s former deputy chief of staff at USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, Bethany Kozma, discusses climate change.

BETHANY KOZMAN: Climate change, allegedly, is everywhere. And if the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere. And according to our intelligence community, the number one threat facing our country today is — drum roll — climate change — not Russia, not China, not AI, climate change. This shows how the federal government is all in on this issue. And climate change activists wield a lot of power. This is an issue to pay attention to, as it has infiltrated every part of the federal government.

Now, when I think of climate change, I immediately think of population control, don’t you? I think about the people who don’t want you to have children because of the “impact” on the environment. Perhaps not everyone will make that connection, but after spending time in the international space trying to protect life, I can tell you that this is part of their ultimate goal: to control people.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s conservative activist and former Trump official Bethany Kozma in a newly released Project 2025 training video.

For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Andy Kroll, investigative reporter for ProPublica, whose new exposé is headlined “Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos.” ProPublica has posted the full 23 videos, totaling more than 14 hours of content, on its website.

Andy, welcome back to Democracy Now! Explain how you got the videos and their significance as we go through some of them.

ANDY KROLL: Yeah, the videos come from the Presidential Administration Academy, which is one of the main pillars of Project 2025. We’ve heard a lot about, you’ve talked about on this show, the extreme policy proposals that Project 2025 put out in its 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” document. What’s gotten less attention but is no less important to Project 2025’s long-term goal here is to train thousands of future political appointees, so that if a conservative president, which, of course, now means if Donald Trump — a conservative candidate wins in November and we have a Republican president, that there will be a bench of thousands of vetted and trained appointees who can go into the government and fill openings in that government, so that, as Project 2025 itself says on its website, that conservative administration can be ready from, quote-unquote, “day one.”

Now, these videos were provided to us by a source who had access to them. I won’t get into the sourcing on it, but with any kind of situation like this, the key things for us at ProPublica are: Are these videos real? Are they authentic? And are they newsworthy? Obviously the substance is newsworthy. In our reporting process, we talked to people who are in the videos. We verified them, authenticated them and fact-checked them ourself. And now we’ve published on them and, as you helpfully pointed out, also published all of these 23 videos, totaling more than 14 hours, on our website. Anyone watching today can go and watch them now.

AMY GOODMAN: Andy, if you can just give us some background again on Project 2025? Because, of course, President Trump has disavowed this, but, meanwhile, the director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, a former top adviser in Trump’s administration, has been forced to step down, and, of course, that book which is headed by the head of Heritage Foundation, which is behind this blueprint, is now — they are putting off the publication of this, with the foreword by none other than Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance.

ANDY KROLL: The Trump campaign has clearly come to the realization that Project 2025 and the policies that it lays out are extremely unpopular. And it’s not really surprising to understand why. Just a few of those policies are, for instance, closing the entire Department of Education; further restricting abortion rights in this country, especially mifepristone, also known as the abortion pill; slashing Medicaid; and then, of course, reclassifying tens of thousands of career government employees so that they can be more easily fired and then replaced by more loyal, vetted political appointees chosen by the next conservative president, which, again, in this case would potentially be Donald Trump. So there’s a reason the Trump campaign is distancing itself from those unpopular policies: It is hurting their campaign.

However, as you pointed out and as we report in our story, the number of connections between Trump’s political operation in his administration from '17 to ’21 and Project 2025 are many. As we write in the story, of the 36 different speakers in these videos, 29 of them have a connection to Mr. Trump. They worked in his administration across the government — the White House, National Security Council, a number of departments, including Justice, Interior, Health and Human Services, Office of Management and Budget, Presidential Personnel Office, across the board. There are people who ran his 2016-'17 transition team, that led him into the first presidency, and, lastly, I would point out, the Trump reelection campaign spokeswoman, who sent us a comment reiterating, in their view, that there’s no connection between 2025 and the Trump campaign. She herself, Karoline Leavitt, actually appears in the videos that we posted on our site. So, it’s really impossible to say that there is some bright line here between Trump’s political campaign, his team, and this Project 2025 effort.

AMY GOODMAN: Andy Kroll, I want to play a series of clips that you have just released. This is another Project 2025 training video featuring Katie Sullivan, who was acting assistant attorney general at Department of Justice under Trump. In this clip, Sullivan says the next conservative administration will need to eradicate all equity plans.

KATIE SULLIVAN: I think you can expect that equity and all of the equity executive orders under Biden will be repealed early in the next administration. This is going to require a very detailed plan to execute the eradication of the dictates in the equity orders. For instance, there’s a gender adviser position created by one of these executive orders. That position has to be eradicated, as well as all the task forces, the removal of all the equity plans from all the websites, and a complete rework of the language in internal and external policy documents and grant applications.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is another Project 2025 training video, featuring Dan Huff, former legal adviser in the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump, laying out how political appointees should be ready to enforce dramatic changes and face blowback when they do.

DAN HUFF: If the next Republican president does not execute a dramatic course correction, there may never be another chance. So, if you’re not on board with helping implement a dramatic course correction because you’re afraid it will damage your future employment prospects, it’ll harm you socially, look, I get it. That’s a real danger. It’s a real thing. But, please, do us all a favor and sit this one out.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is another Project 2025 training video, titled “The Political Appointee’s Survival Guide.” It features Max Primorac, a former deputy administrator at USAID during the Trump administration.

MAX PRIMORAC: Now, in terms of a tip, survival tip, do not let career bureaucrats hinder you from advancing the president’s agenda. Keep in mind, you’re coming into a place, Washington, D.C., that does not share your conservative values. They’re even hostile to it, because you’re here to do something that’s not in their interest. They’re not going to be your friend, or they’re not going to help you succeed.

What are you doing? You’re here to cut government. You’re here to cut spending. You’re here to cut regulations. You’re here to stop the waste, fraud and abuse that’s going on. But a lot of careers have been made from that. A lot of money has been made from that. Fiefdoms have been built around it. So you’re going to get a lot of opposition here. It’s an entire industry of opposition, from lobbyists, professional associations, contractor groups and, disappointingly, faith-based organizations.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, I want to turn to a Project 2025 training video featuring Alexei Woltornist, a former assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. In this video, he encourages future appointees to avoid mainstream news outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, instead take their message to conservative media.

ALEXEI WOLTORNIST: The American people who vote for a conservative presidential administration, they’re not reading The New York Times. They’re not reading The Washington Post. Actually, to the contrary, if those outlets publish something, they’re going to assume it’s false. So the only way to reach them with any voice of credibility is through working with conservative media outlets.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Andy Kroll, investigative reporter for ProPublica, if you can respond? This is just an excerpt of the videos that you have released, “Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos.”

ANDY KROLL: Yeah, I would pull out a couple of key points for your audience, Amy. I would say first that there is a level of extreme rhetoric in these videos, even down to the choice of words in these different clips. We hear the word “eradicate” a lot, and then we hear “eradicate” in the context of removing the word “climate change” from any federal government document that a future appointee sees. Obviously, that would not move the country in the right direction in terms of combating this existential threat that we face with climate change. You hear “eradicate” in terms of getting rid of policies that are responding to gender inequality, racial inequality. I mean, those executive actions that Katie Sullivan in the second clip discussed, those are things responding to the abuses surfaced by the #MeToo movement or the abuses surfaced, the injustices surfaced in 2020 during the racial uprisings then, as well, getting rid of all of those.

And then you have, with this last clip, the former DHS press secretary, you have someone basically saying, “When you get into government, just talk to conservative media. Shut out everybody else. I mean mainstream media, but just about everyone else, as well. Only talk to the people who you agree with, who like you.” That the audiences served by those conservative outlets are the only ones that matter, that’s not what a presidential administration, Democratic or Republican, is supposed to do. You’re supposed to serve the whole country. But clearly, that is not the advice that they’re getting in these clips.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s very interesting that they advise the right-wing administration not to leave a paper trail, yet they have left quite a video trail. As we wrap up, Andy, the most important takeaways at this point?

ANDY KROLL: Yeah, the most important takeaways, I think, for people watching are, the first time that Trump ran and then, surprisingly to many, got elected, his operation was very unprepared. They did not have a bench of people ready. There was chaos. There was confusion. And that set back that administration for perhaps months, maybe even a year or two into the Trump first administration. If he is elected again, that will not be the case. These videos have a lot of extreme content in them, a lot of eyebrow-raising advice, for instance, like don’t leave a paper trail, which you just referenced, but really what they are trying to do is prepare these thousands or tens of thousands of people to get in government and enact a pretty conservative, a right-wing agenda and be prepared and trained to do it from the moment that administration starts. That is different from before. And the voting public needs to understand that when they think about these two candidates, when they think about what that Trump agenda would be if he gets elected in November and takes office in January.

AMY GOODMAN: Andy Kroll, we want to thank you so much for being with us, investigative reporter for ProPublica, his new exposé titled “Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos.” ProPublica has posted the full 23 videos, totaling more than 14 hours of content, on its website. We will link to it.

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an july 24

Election law expert and Democracy Docket publisher Marc Elias has been warning that if President Joe Biden or another Democratic candidate wins the 2024 election, presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump and his allies will do everything they can to overturn the election results — only they will be better equipped this year than in 2020.

Now, the Heritage Foundation is claiming, without evidence, that Democrats are planning to steal the election.

The Washington Post's Isaac Arnsdorf reports that Heritage made that claim during a "war game" presentation at their headquarters on Thursday, July 11.

READ MORE: Christian nationalist behind MAGA’s Project 2025 blasted for 'threatening violence'

"Barbra Streisand kidnapped by Hamas, Antifa-BLM protesters taking over a migrant detention facility, the FBI arresting Donald Trump two days after winning the election — these were among the far-fetched scenarios imagined by a simulation of threats to the 2024 election showcased on Thursday by the right-wing Heritage Foundation," Arnsdorf explains. "The presentation, delivered at the Foundation's Washington headquarters, stated as a given that the Biden Administration was already engaged in a sweeping conspiracy to use multiple forms of federal power to influence the presidential election. It did not supply any evidence."

Mike Howell, executive director of Heritage's Oversight Project, claimed, "As things stand right now, there's a zero percent chance of a free and fair election. I'm formally accusing the Biden Administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election."

Arnsdorf notes that the July 11 simulation, billed as the "2024 Transition Integrity Project," is "technically independent of the Heritage Foundation but included multiple Heritage employees."

Heritage has recently been drawing a great deal of scrutiny over Project 2025, its 900-page blueprint for a second Trump presidency. The proposals range from severe abortion restrictions to giving the U.S. federal government's executive branch considerably more power, and Project 2025 is so controversial that even Trump himself is trying to distance himself from it.

READ MORE:['Toxic': Experts mock Trump’s sudden and strident Project 2025 denial

Kevin Roberts, the far-right Chrisitan nationalist who heads the Heritage Foundation, is also being criticized for some recent remarks that his detractors say were promoting violence.

During an appearance on Real America's Voice, Roberts said, "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."

In response, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch argued, on X (formerly Twitter), "The author of Project 2025 is calling for revolution and suggesting bloodshed if liberals dare oppose them."

Conservative/libertarian former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Virginia) warned, "Kevin Roberts is threatening violence to anyone not following his dear leader. Every network should cover this. All of this happening while Dems whinge and play new candidate lotto."

READ MORE:Beware: Trump is Project 2025 — and he cannot escape it

*Read the Washington Post's full report at this link (subscription required).

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some neglect see mma

Delayed book by The Heritage Foundation president echoes Project 2025's attacks on unions. JD Vance wrote the foreword.

08/08/24

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mma 7 24

MAGA figures are suddenly afraid that Trump will lose and are looking for someone to blame.

On July 30, Project 2025 Director Paul Dans suddenly stepped down, even after promoting his work on War Room earlier in the day. The Trump campaign, in a memo signed by senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, celebrated, even claiming they would welcome Project 2025’s demise.

But outside of the right-wing bubble, the PR move seems to have failed in its attempt to distance Trump from Project 2025.

As New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan noted, the Trump campaign reportedly has no transition plan — even compared to 2016 — and will need to rely on Project 2025 for staffing should he prevail in the election this fall. (This is also a reason why Project 2025 partner positions matter as much as what is in the official Project 2025 book: These are the people who would be in a position of power for staffing the federal government, especially if Trump follows through on threats to lay off thousands of federal civil servants.)

Other journalists and analysts reported similarly.

Project 2025 is the policy platform and staffing database organized by the Heritage Foundation for the next Republican presidential administration. The extreme policies have proved to be very unpopular with the American people, and this unpopularity seemingly led the Trump campaign to force Dans to resign.

The situation was already a tinderbox since Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democrats' likely presidential nominee, replacing President Joe Biden, since Trump’s campaign was reportedly designed to face Biden instead of Harris; switching MAGA’s messaging on a dime was going to be no easy task.

Before Harris took the reins, Trump had complained about Project 2025, even as Project 2025 contributors were invited to speak at the Republican National Convention, a key Project 2025 figure was appointed to the RNC’s platform committee, and Trump himself named the elected official perhaps most closely tied to Project 2025 as his new vice presidential nominee.

Inside the MAGA bubble, recriminations and blame are growing as Trump’s electoral position apparently grows weaker.

Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist, Holocaust denier, and groyper leader who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, has been railing at LaCivita for a while. Just days ago, Fuentes bragged that his audience is more loyal to him than it is to Trump and said that he would not vote in 2024 because the people closest to Trump, like LaCivita and Wiles, are not loyal to America First ideals.

Wiles and LaCivita’s decision to turn on Project 2025 so publicly has only made this wound larger.

Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich jumped in, writing that Project 2025 people were “loyal to the end” and that LaCivita is “preparing a coup against Trump.”

MAGA figures the Hodgetwins wrote that they don’t trust LaCivita and Wiles and that Trump needs “OG loyalists” to win the election.

Fuentes posted about the LaCivita/Wiles statement, and in replies and quotes, groypers directed rage against the pair. Groyper-aligned figure Tyler Russell reacted on a stream to Dans’ resignation, saying Fuentes was correct and LaCivita “needs to be the first person in jail.” He also added, “Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita — fuck both of you.”

White nationalist Vincent James Foxx also wrote that “Trump disavowing Project 2025 should be concerning because he's literally disavowing what he ran on in 2016.”

Daily Wire host Matt Walsh implored the Trump campaign to stop trying to disavow Project 2025.

Fox contributor Mollie Hemingway claimed that the Trump campaign was bowing to “left wing media lies.”

Noted extremist Pedro Gonzalez also criticized the decision.

This is not to say that all of MAGA is on the side of Project 2025 here. MAGA thought leader Catturd railed against the project, writing, “The Heritage Foundation doesn’t get to write this dumb 2025 project and get to pretend it’s Trump’s idea or something we real citizens (grassroots Trump supporters) support. Seriously, who in TF do these narcissists think they are speaking for us and Trump?”

Trump meme team leader Brenden Dilley simply wrote, “Fuck Heritage. Right in the ass.” (Bannon acolyte Grace Chong in turn harshly criticized Dilley.)

This is all quite reminiscent of 2016, when frequent turmoil roiled the Trump campaign, and he on a few occasions switched who was in charge, eventually settling on Steve Bannon less than 90 days before the election. Whatever solution Trump lands on this time will have to be different: Bannon is currently in federal prison.

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mma

  1. ### Far-right figures laud Project 2025, calling it “the best personnel database”

08/01/24 12:51 PM EDT

  1. ### Project 2025 contributor Stephen Moore: “We want people to keep working” into their 70s

08/01/24 12:44 PM EDT

  1. ### Project 2025 partners call for the end of birthright citizenship

08/01/24

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MMA

THE head of Project 2025 has resigned, but the policy suggestions aren’t going anywhere

The MAGA effort is still poised to provide staffing to a second Trump administration

Written by Sophie Lawton & John Knefel

Published 07/30/24

Architect and leader of The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 Paul Dans has announced his resignation from his position at Heritage, but there is no evidence to suggest Project 2025’s policy and staffing efforts will be impeded.

As Media Matters has previously documented, both Donald Trump and JD Vance have extensive ties to Project 2025. And as reporters have noted, the Trump campaign would have to rely on Project 2025 should Trump win the election given how little transition work has been done.

Dans' resignation comes following the Trump campaign's attempts to distance itself from the project. Dans wrote in a statement that Project 2025 has “completed what we set out to do” and “our work is presently winding down.”

A statement from Trump campaign officials Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles claimed, “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.”

It is exceptionally unlikely the project will actually wind down. Heritage President Kevin Roberts even wrote in a statement released on Twitter that the “policy drafting” work by Project 2025 was meant to conclude after the two party conventions but that the group “will continue our efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels.”

The Washington Post reported that Project 2025 always planned to “hand off recommendations to the official presidential transition,” but the Trump campaign has yet to stand up an official transition team.

Project 2025 is a Heritage-backed coalition of right-wing individuals and organizations working to recruit conservatives to work for the next GOP presidential administration and proposing radical right-wing policy changes in essentially every department controlled by the White House. Many of the policy suggestions made in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership were written by former Trump White House officials or advisers.

Despite Trump’s efforts to disavow Project 2025, the Trump campaign and Project 2025 have many overlapping policy ideas, including both calling for the Department of Education to be dissolved. The most widely embraced policy suggestion between the two camps is calling for the reinstatement of Schedule F policies in order to dismantle the civil service and staff the next administration with loyal conservatives. Project 2025’s recruiting programs still seem to be an essential part of this Trump 2024 campaign promise.

Media Matters president Angelo Carusone added more context to Dans’ ouster.

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Dans’ departure now leaves Heritage President Kevin Roberts as the de facto head of Project 2025. As Media Matters has repeatedly noted, Roberts has frequently bragged about the close connections between Trump and Project 2025.

The connections between the Trump campaign and Heritage don’t stop there.

Roberts hasn’t been shy about his grand ambitions for Project 2025 either.

The lovefest between Trump and Heritage was firmly established less than halfway through Trump’s first term.

Now, Dans is gone and the future of Project 2025 is at least partially unsettled, likely due in part to its increasing unpopularity. For now, the tensions between Trump and Heritage appear to revolve more around the former president’s ego and less around policy differences — which are mostly negligible between the two camps.

On July 2, Roberts went viral for comments he made on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, long a champion of Project 2025. “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts said. Less than a month later, it seems that his revolution is devouring its own.

Related

  1. ### Gretchen Carlson: Project 2025 “is effectively what Donald Trump would do”

07/30/24 10:54 PM EDT

  1. ### Kaitlan Collins and Isaac Arnsdorf explain why the Trump campaign can't fully distance itself from Project 2025

07/30/24 10:37 PM EDT

  1. ### JD Vance is linked to numerous Project 2025 partner organizations

07/30/24 4:08 PM EDT

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Fox News and Newsmax have falsely suggested Kamala Harris was “border czar” 129 times since Biden’s withdrawal

07/25/24 5:27 PM EDT

  1. ### Resurfaced audio: J.D. Vance appeared on Breitbart to claim “the Kamala Harrises” “want to take our kids and brainwash them” because “they don't have kids”

07/25/24 4:10 PM EDT

  1. ### President of Project 2025 partner brags about their hands-on role passing abortion bans at the state level

07/25/24 1:36 PM EDT

  1. ### Donald Trump told Fox he “agree[s]” with parts of the radical Project 2025 agenda. Which ones?

07/25/24 12:20 PM EDT

  1. ### Michael Knowles defends J.D. Vance: “He says the country is run by childless cat ladies. Show me the lie.”

07/25/24 10:40 AM EDT

  1. ### ​Fox Business claims quarterly economic report showing strong growth is “fairy-tale numbers”

07/25/24 10:21 AM EDT

  1. ### The group behind Project 2025 frequently bragged in fundraising materials about its influence on Trump

07/25/24 9:53 AM EDT

  1. ### Bill O'Reilly tells Sean Hannity that Kamala Harris is “the most radical abortion person the country has ever seen”

07/24/24 5:05 PM EDT

  1. ### MSNBC panelists describe how Project 2025 intends to raise middle-class taxes in a second Trump administration

07/24/24 3:18 PM EDT

  1. ### Daily Wire host Matt Walsh attacks VP Kamala Harris for having a career

07/24/24 3:09 PM EDT

  1. ### J.D. Vance wrote the foreword to the book of Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts — and proceeds will benefit his organization

07/24/24

ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, recently named as Donald Trump’s running mate, wrote the foreword to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ forthcoming book, Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, the proceeds for which will partly benefit Heritage.

The Heritage Foundation is leading Project 2025, a far-right staffing and policy initiative backed by more than 100 conservative groups that seeks to remake the federal government into a vehicle for Trumpism and would severely inhibit protections around reproductive rights, LGBTQ and civil rights, and immigration, as well as climate change efforts.

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Vance’s foreward for Dawn’s Early Light, set to be released in September, will also financially benefit the Heritage Foundation directly, according to the Publishers Marketplace deal report that Roberts posted on X (formerly Twitter) in March 2023. The report states that the book sold “in a six-figure deal, with proceeds benefiting Heritage Foundation and aligned non-profits.”

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The Trump campaign has attempted to distance itself from Project 2025, despite numerous well-documented ties.

According to CNN, there are “nearly 240 people with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump.” Unearthed videos published by Media Matters show Trump gushing over Roberts as “so incredible” and bragging that his administration “implemented 64 percent” of Heritage’s recommendations, an effort that the think tank itself has also highlighted.

Vance has his own ties to Project 2025 and Heritage. Reuters reporter Gram Slattery noted that “Vance is very close to Heritage,” and Politico described Project 2025 author Russ Vought as a “close ally” of his. On Newsmax, Vance told host Rob Schmitt that “there are some good ideas” in Project 2025, and he has previously praised Heritage for its “incredible” policy work.

When Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate, Roberts said, “Privately, we were really rooting for him,” noting that he reacted to the news with a “broad smile.”

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  1. ### National TV news media largely ignored Trump's mass deportation plan despite the RNC's immigration focus

07/24/24

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7 24 gmail drilled

if you browse the Internet or watch TV you've probably heard of Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump presidency, mapped out by a coalition of 100 conservative think tanks, spearheaded (publicly at least) by the Heritage Foundation. Nothing written down in the Project 2025 manifesto is new, per se, nor is it new that they've written it down. Heritage put out a similar "Mandate for Leadership" in 2016, gearing up for the first Trump term. For that matter, they've been putting these things out regularlysince Reagan.

It is updated, though, and it's handy to have it all written out, side by side, a clear window into what lies behind the door on the right.

I know this newsletter has not been publishing as consistently as usual; partly that's because I've been reading this thing (partly it's because I've been working on a story about carbon capture that's making my head explode, which should be out in the next week or so). One thing I think is important to note is that once again we see that those pushing against climate action are not just aligned with those attacking trans rights, racial justice, labor rights and reproductive rights, but are in the same organizations, being funded by the same universe of backers.

*A not-yet-exhaustive diagram of the money flowing through the Project 2025 universe.

The complete Project 2025 manifesto is 900 pages (?!!), which might explain why it sometimes feels like we're hearing about this thing all the time yet don't know much about it. I haven't quite finished it yet, but I have managed to get to page 500, including Chapter 13, in which the plan for the Environmental Protection Agency is laid out.

The first thing I noticed is the chapter's author: Mandy Gunesakara. Today, Gunesakara is a visiting fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment and senior policy analyst for the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative women's organization funded by the Bradley Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Koch-backed donor-advised fund Donors Trust. A lawyer by training, Gunesekara has previously been a member of the CO2 Coalition (you might recognize her as the Republican witness during Rep Jamie Raskin's 2019 Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties' hearing on "The Oil Industry's Efforts to Suppress the Truth about Climate Change"), worked for Trump's EPA (first as principal deputy assistant administrator at the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation and then as chief of staff to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler), where she claims to have been "the chief architect of the Paris Accord withdrawal and the repeal of the Clean Power Plan", and was famously the Senator James Inhofe staffer who handed him a snowball during a 2015 hearing in which he claimed the existence of snow meant global warming wasn't a problem.

She was Majority Counsel for Inhofe, and led committee actions and policy development on Clean Air Act and climate change issues.

Mandy Gunasekara watches as her then-boss Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) holds a snowball in the Senate chamber in 2015.| *C-SPAN

It would not be remotely surprising to see Gunasekara tapped as EPA chief in a Trump administration. Following is a rundown of her key proposals. It's a long read, but not 32-pages long, so...you're welcome?

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Thanks for reading! Out now on the podcast, another story from our "The Real Free Speech Threat" season, this time about how El Salvador's "cool dictator" Nayib Bukele is going after anti-mining activists to clear a path for lifting the country's mining ban:

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First, the broad strokes. A Trump EPA would:

Now, the details...

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Climate and Air Pollution Go Hand in Hand

I've written before about Steve Milloy, the tobacco and coal lobbyist, and his longtime war on air pollution regulations. This proposal has his fingerprints all over it. Which makes sense for a few reasons: First, Gunasekara has no scientific background whatsoever, so she'd need someone like Milloy to outline a plan like this.

Milloy got a BA in natural sciences and then a masters in biostastics from Johns Hopkins University. Although he's never actually worked as a scientist, those qualifications still make him uniquely science-y in the climate denier-sphere. Milloy went to Georgetown law school after Johns Hopkins, had a brief stint at the Securities Exchange Commission and then got a job with infamous industry lobbyist Jim Tozzi after he “ran into” him one day. “He had an unusual lobbying practice where he lobbied regulatory agencies, so he hired me to work on risk issues because of my background in biostatistics and law,” Milloy told me.

Gunasekara and Milloy have both been visiting fellows at the Heritage Foundation, and Milloy was on the Trump EPA transition team when Gunasekara was an early appointee for the agency. "I was the only person on the team with a background in EPA science, so I was brought on to write the science part of the transition plan,” Milloy told me in 2020.

That "background in EPA science" came during the 90s, when Milloy was between stints as the science policy director for the National Environmental Policy Institute, a lobbying group funded by Occidental Petroleum and a handful of other oil companies that aimed to roll back EPA Superfund rules, and working as the director of the The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), an organization Tozzi worked with PR firm APCO to create for Philip Morris that aimed to poke holes in the science linking smoking, and particularly secondhand smoke, to cancer.

In between those gigs, “I got a big contract from DOE to study whether EPA science was based on science or politics,” Milloy said. That was the DOE's Regulatory Impact Project, Inc., which had hired Milloy to work on other studies, too. “I got the contract under Bush and finished under Clinton, and when the report was done and I sent it up the line to DOE, which was now all Clinton appointees. They said I couldn’t publish it, because I said regulations were based on politics and not science. So, I decided to cut my contract and publish it on my own. It got picked up in the Wall Street Journal and that’s what sort of launched me into whatever I am today.”

He’s never stopped trying to reshape the EPA the way he initially recommended in that report, back in the mid-1990s. And he's never stopped fighting air pollution regulations either, or warning conservatives and fossil fuel executives that regulating air pollution “is the most important backdoor science scheme for regulating fossil fuel emissions,” as he put it to me. Both of these crusades factor heavily into Gunasekara's Project 2025 EPA chapter.

In it, she proposes that the EPA embrace “true transparency” and “open-source science,” clear nods to Milloy’s “secret science” proposals for anyone who’s ever read them. To accomplish this, Gunasekara says the EPA must:

She goes after air pollution regulations from multiple angles too (all while proclaiming that a “conservative EPA” will provide cleaner air, water and soil, mind you), proposing reforms for the Office of Air and Radiation—where she once worked, during the Trump administration—as well as changes to National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee that helps to set them, and proposing limits to the application of the Clean Air Act.

A Trump EPA Won't Just Not Regulate Greenhouse Gas Emissions, It Will Work to Make it Impossible for Any EPA to Regulate Them

It's not at all surprising that this proposal aims to cut any EPA program focused on dealing with climate change. Nor is it shocking to read lines that sound like they were lifted from an early aughts climate denial blog swimming in Tea Party memes, like this gem: “Mischaracterizing the state of our environment generally and the actual harms reasonably attributable to climate change specifically is a favored tool that the Left uses to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations, diminished private property rights, and exorbitant costs."

Where Project 2025 takes things a step further than one might expect is in its proposals to hamstring any future efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, too.

Gunasekara wants to "notify Congress that EPA will not conduct any ongoing or planned science activity for which there is not clear and current congressional authorization," for a start, calling to mind the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v EPA, when justices invoked the "major questions doctrine," arguing that unless Congress explicitly moves to regulate greenhouse gases, and gives the power to do so to the EPA, the agency shouldn't even think about it.

She also wants to "eliminate the use of unauthorized regulatory inputs like the social cost of carbon, black box and proprietary models, and unrealistic climate scenarios, including those based on Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5."

RCP 8.5 is one of the projected future scenarios mapped out by climate scientists in reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While those in favor of increasing development of fossil fuels, like Gunasekara, dismiss it as "unrealistic" or a "worst-case scenario," actual scientists debate the details but generally take the projection seriously. Some argue that RCP 8.5 may actually underestimate future concentrations of atmospheric carbon on the business-as-usual path. Others describe RCP 8.5 concentrations as unlikely, yet plausible, on the business-as-usual path and note that RCP 8.5 is consistent with the current pace of global emissions. And still others think the anthropogenic emissions associated with RCP 8.5 are unlikely, but only because they say increased coal energy usage would run counter to current energy transition trends. The IPCC itselfreports that “*Scenarios without additional efforts to constrain emissions (‘baseline scenarios’) lead to pathways ranging between RCP6.0 and RCP8.5.”

An interesting conundrum here: Gunasekara wants to eliminate the idea of a "social cost of carbon," but one of the fossil fuel industry's most promising lifelines at the moment is carbon capture, the financial viability of which hinges on a high cost for carbon. The price per metric tonne that the government has agreed to pay, via the 45Q tax credit increase that Senator Joe Manchin negotiated in the Inflation Reduction Act, is $85, already far higher than the EPA's social cost of carbon, at $51 per metric tonne. Seems like it would be hard to justify the tax credit if there's no social cost of carbon, but cognitive dissonance has never gotten in the way of passing policy.

Elsewhere in the chapter, Gunasekara writes about wanting to "limit EPA’s reliance on Clean Air Act section 30121 general rulemaking authority to ensure that it is not abused to issue regulations for which EPA lacks substantive authority elsewhere in the statute," another clear attempt to block the agency's ability to do anything about greenhouse gas emissions. In other sections she's more explicit, writing that the agency should "remove the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) for any source category that is not currently being regulated," calling it a "significant burden" on small businesses. She also suggests the agency "update the 2009 endangerment finding," referring to the agency's finding under Clean Air Act section 202(a) that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endanger both the public health and the environment for current and future generations. The chapter also recommends repealing some of the regulations on hydrofluorocarbons, and changing course on how transportation emissions are dealt with, proposing a lifecycle analysis of electric vehicles; integrating cost, choice and other non-environmental concerns into the agency's greenhouse gas car standards; and walking back efforts to monitor or regulate air travel and truck emissions.

The EPA Is Too Political! Put Political Appointees In Charge of Everything

For all its squawking about how the EPA has been politicized, P2025 recommends putting political appointees in charge of:

Also throughout this chapter, Gunasekara suggests cutting the federal EPA budget and giving the states more power, while also mapping out a system in which state and regional EPAs are entirely under the control of political appointees. The section on the EPA's legal counsel, for example, recommends that the agency “establish a policy of legally speaking with one voice,” and notes: “Some EPA offices (for example, the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance and the Offices of Regional Counsel) assert legal positions and interpretations of the law that conflict with an Administration’s interpretation as articulated by the Office of General Counsel with input from program offices." These "inconsistent legal positions"are deemed unacceptable, and it's recommended that all attorneys with authority to represent the EPA be housed at the federal level (under a political appointee) in the Office of General Counsel.

Environmental Justice Is Reverse Racism

If ever there was a crystal-clear example of why it's important for anyone concerned about acting on climate to tune in to and join social justice fights, the intersection between efforts to push against diversity and inclusion and those to block climate policy is it. Over the past year or so, a slew of court cases have argued that initiatives meant to support diversity—in the workplace, at universities, in investments—discriminate against white people. A dozen or so of these cases have been brought by many of the same groups that are on Project 2025's advisory board, organizations like America First Legal Foundation, which is led by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller, and the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Funding for the litigation comes from various other Project 2025 organizations, many of which also fed the original attempt to create a legal basis for “reverse racism” claims in the 90s: the Bradley Foundation, the Koch network, and Pacific Legal Foundation (which is connected to the Atlas Network of libertarian think tanks), now joined by billionaire Barre Seid, who’s former Federalist Society president and longtime conservative legal activist Leonard Leo's new benefactor. Their collective pockets contain more than enough to, as Leo put it last year, “flood the zone with cases.”

Over the past year, the fight against diversity and the fight against climate policy have joined forces in the fight against the most boring of all opponents: investment risk disclosure. Specifically, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risk disclosure, which spent its first 20 or so years of existence being at worst ignored, and often embraced by companies that used social responsibility reports to boost their brands and unlock capital from do-gooder investors.

The various segments on environmental justice in Project 2025's EPA chapter echo the same arguments in the anti-ESG fight against "woke capital" and the anti-DEI cases crying "reverse racism." It recommends pausing or cutting all environmental justice-focused programs that were established or expanded under Biden and emphasizes the need to make sure they are being based on “neutral constitutional principles.”

It specifically cites cases various Project 2025 organizations have brought or participated in “The next Administration should pause and review all ongoing EJ and Title VI actions to ensure that they are consistent with any forthcoming SCOTUS decision.”

And lest there be any confusion, the summary at the start of the chapter explicitly recommends "eliminating the stand-alone Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights."

This Week's Climate Must-Reads

mma Unearthed video: Trump in 2018 celebrated following policy recommendations of the Heritage Foundation, the group behind Project 2025

07/23/24

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On MSNBC, Steve Rattner highlights Project 2025's potentially devastating economic consequences

07/23/24 mma

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US public rapidly sours on Project 2025 as awareness grows

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The amount of attention the far-right Heritage Foundation and its authoritarian Project 2025 playbook for the next Republican administration have been getting is also ensnaring several major GOP figures.

On Tuesday, Democratic election attorney Marc Elias' Democracy Docket website delved into the ties nine high-ranking Republicans have to Project 2025. Some of those links are direct while others are more tangential. However, these Republicans are likely to be asked about their connections to the controversial initiative on the campaign trail as Project 2025 and its proposals continue to garner media coverage. In fact, one recent poll found that just one in 10 Americans had a favorable view of Project 2025 after learning about it.

IFrame Content

1. Rep. Jim Banks (R-Indiana)

READ MORE:Anti-Trump group posts video of him praising Project 2025 authors after latest denial

Democracy Docket reported that as chairman of the Republican Study Committee, Banks published a budget blueprint that was praised by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. That document called for funds to build a border wall, diverting money from several federal agencies to boost the military budget and protecting Americans from what he referred to as "the Radical Woke Agenda."

"The Republican Study Committee, led by my friends Chairman Jim Banks and the RSC Budget and Spending Task Force Chair Kevin Hern, have put forward an important Blueprint to Save America," Roberts said in a statement. "The RSC is going on offense, setting the tone for what conservatives must do when the people take back control."

2. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)

Cruz, who is running for a third U.S. Senate term this November, previously spoke at a Heritage Foundation event in 2019 in the wake of former President Donald Trump's first impeachment. He complained about the House's impeachment over Trump's call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which the former president threatened to withhold aid unless Ukraine investigated then-candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Cruz accused House Democrats of impeaching Trump "without an article claiming a criminal violation."

READ MORE:Exhaustive review finds at :{least 140 ex-Trump advisors behind Project 2025: report}:

"There’s no federal statute that makes abuse-of-power — what they’ve called it — a criminal offense. They’ve just made this up," Cruz said.

3. Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska)

Like Cruz, Fischer is also running for reelection this fall. Democracy Docket reported that Fischer spoke at a virtual Heritage Foundation session on the "future of nuclear modernization" in 2021. One of Project 2025's proposals is to bring back nuclear weapons testing at Yucca Mountain in Nevada (less than 100 miles from Las Vegas). The document also calls for radioactive waste to be deposited there again after former President Barack Obama ended it in 2009. Nevada Republican Governor Joe Lombardo, who has endorsed Trump, is against the proposal.

4. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri)

READ MORE:More Americans searching for Project 2025 than for Taylor Swift or the NFL: Google results

Hawley, who is running for a second Senate term this fall, has common ground with one of Project 2025's core goals and has spoken at several Heritage events. In its report on the document, People Magazine called it "a blueprint for marrying church and state at the highest levels of government," which is a goal of Christian nationalists. Rather than run from that label, Hawley embraced it at a recent conservative conference.

“Some will say now that I am calling America a Christian Nation. So I am,” Hawley said. “And some will say that I am advocating Christian Nationalism. And so I do.”

5. Former Governor Larry Hogan (R-Maryland)

Maryland's former two-term Republican governor is now the Republican nominee for the Old Line State's open Senate seat. Despite his more moderate reputation, Hogan still elevated a senior fellow at Heritage to a post within his administration in 2017. To his credit, Hogan has since distanced himself from Project 2025, saying it would put the country on a "dangerous path" in a Washington Post op-ed.

READ MORE:Trump hopes you won't notice 'close partnership' with Project 2025: :{former Labor Secretary}:

6. Governor Jim Justice (R-West Virginia)

West Virginia's billionaire coal baron governor — who switched parties from Democrat to Republican in 2017 — is likely to win the U.S. Senate seat left open by the outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin (I-West Virginia). In 2021, Justice signed a bill into a law that directs education funds from public schools to home schools and private school tuition. Heritage lauded the bill and credited one of their experts for advocating for it in the West Virginia legislature. Project 2025 calls for the total elimination of the Department of Education in favor of "parental authority," meaning it would champion policies that weaken public education while strengthening home school programming.

7. Rep. David Schweikert (R-Arizona)

In Obama's last year in office, his Department of Health and Human Services put a regulation in place to protect LGBTQ+ youth in foster care. Project 2025 has called for repealing that regulation, which advocacy group DemocracyForward estimated would impact more than 368,000 kids. In 2020, Schweikert participated in a virtual Heritage Foundation session on proposed changes to the foster care system.

READ MORE:'One of the oldest dictator tricks': Here's why Trump is lying about Project 2025

8. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida)

Florida's junior U.S. senator is currently in a tight race for reelection against former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Florida), who is within striking distance of Scott in the latest polls. Scott — who is in the running to become the next Republican leader in the Senate after Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) retires from the role next year — participated in Heritage's five-part video series on inflation and the economy. Scott repeatedly blasted the Biden administration for higher prices, even though real wages (meaning inflation-adjusted) are up and the rate of inflation has leveled off significantly.

9. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi)

Mississippi's senior U.S. senator, who is the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is running for a fourth term this fall. In January, he participated in a Heritage Foundation talk on "Restor[ing] America's Military Power." Project 2025 has called for rescinding Pentagon policy that pays for female service members' travel costs in the event they have to travel out of their home state to get an abortion — the same policy Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) protested in his months-long blockade of military promotions. Project 2025 also proposes restoring Trump's ban on transgender Americans serving in the military.

READ MORE:Trump: 'I know nothing' about Project 2025 despite numerous ex-officials' involvement

Click here to read Democracy Docket's full report.

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former President Donald Trump's allies are working to reshape American law into a weapon to be used against their political enemies, wrote Jesse Wegman in a scathing editorial for The New York Times.

Trump's pick of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) underscores this, he wrote, because Vance embodies the far-right's commitment to a key goal of the controversial Project 2025 plan to transform the government into an authoritarian loyalty cult to the GOP.

Vance, wrote Wegman, "predicted ... that the former president, who had been recently disgraced by his insurrectionary attempt to overturn the 2020 election, would nevertheless run again in 2024. Should Mr. Trump win, Mr. Vance said, he had some advice: 'Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.' And if the courts ruled against him? No problem, Mr. Vance said: Just blow them off."

This is already happening, wrote Wegman — and another of Trump's appointees, District Judge Aileen Cannon, is showing how it will work in her move to dismiss the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, which special counsel Jack Smith is already moving to appeal.

In her decision, Cannon concluded Smith, "Was not validly appointed to his post because no federal law authorizes the appointment of someone from outside the Justice Department to perform that task," wrote Wegman, noting she based this entirely on a non-majority concurrence from Justice Clarence Thomas in the case granting Trump a presumption of immunity in a separate case.

ALSO READ:'Keep lying': Late night Trump rant about Harris quickly turns against him

"As a matter of law and fact, this is not merely wrong, it is flagrantly, embarrassingly wrong ... It is not a close or complicated legal question" — indeed, the Supreme Court ruled the law allows this in 1974, and Cannon pretends they didn't.

These sorts of machinations by Vance and Cannon are exactly what to expect the whole government to become should Trump get his way, Wegman concluded ominously.

"This is what a second Trump term would look like," he wrote. "Ambitious judges who may not have been Trump loyalists at first will watch what’s been happening in recent days and get the message about what it takes to advance their careers. In this way, Judge Cannon embodies the future that Mr. Vance described in 2021. She is part of a legal elite raised on Trumpism that will use their perches in the judiciary and legal world to enforce a one-sided version of law that is about power and outcomes over any liberal principle."

In other words, he said, this is a reality where "the rule of law is for suckers or, worse, only for specific people. Our people."

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J.D. Vance spoke at the Heritage Foundation's 50th anniversary celebration.

The Trump campaign’s recent dishonest efforts to distance itself from the deservedly reviled Project 2025 policy agenda created by his former aides and closest allies got even less convincing Monday with Trump’s choice of MAGA hardliner J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vance has praised Project 2025’s authoritarian, anti-equality, anti-freedom policy agenda.

Vance is a close ally of the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025’s primary sponsor. Vance he was “thrilled” to write the introduction to Heritage President Kevin Roberts’ new book, “Dawn’s Early Light: Burning Down Washington to Save America.”

Heritage sponsored a “policy fest” on the first day of the Republican National Convention. Held at a symphony hall a few blocks from the secure zone, the policy fest was a day-long series of speeches and panels promoting the kinds of policies laid out in Project 2025.

Roberts addressed the RNC audience just after the lunch break. He said Heritage welcomes the recent media coverage of what he called “the conservative movement’s plans for taking back this country,” claiming that “the vast majority of American people” support the project’s efforts to undermine the federal government’s regulatory powers and dismantle the administrative state.

Roberts tried to make the case that Policy 2025 is “a plan among a unified movement to speak on behalf of the everyday American, the Forgotten American.” In reality, Project 2025 would gut the federal government’s ability to protect American workers, families, and communities from corporate wrongdoing, predatory financial institutions, irresponsible polluters, and more. Roberts’ book title is reminiscent of a joke told among Federalist Society operatives describing their long game to repeal the New Deal and reverse a century of precedent and progress: “Rome Wasn’t Burned in a Day.”

At the same time, Project 2025 would grant a future President Trump virtually unchecked power to use federal agencies to target his political opponents, personal enemies, and mainstream media. That’s why historian Heather Cox Richardson has called it “a playbook to end American democracy.”

When Vance was running for the Senate in 2022, Right Wing Watch noted his support for Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election and Vance’s contempt for democratic checks and balances:

If you’re wondering what kind of United States Vance envisions, it’s one where Trump rules with an iron fist and only employs loyalists at all levels of government. “If I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,” Vance said.

Vance added that if the courts rule against such a move, Trump should defy them. That kind of stance explains why Vox calls Vance a “naked authoritarian” with a worldview that is “fundamentally incompatible with the basic principles of American democracy.”

Earlier this year, Jack Jenkins at Religion News Service reported on Vance’s connections to Catholic integralism, a right-wing Catholic version of authoritarian Christian nationalism.

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TUCKER REDEMPTION --> SAT NEXT TO TRUMP AT RNC

PENSION?

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Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson closed out the all-day Heritage Foundation policy fest on the first day of the Republican National Convention. He warned the crowd that they are in a “spiritual battle” against “anti-human” forces that want to “eliminate” Christians.

In a strange choice for talking to political activists, Carlson began by describing politics as a “repulsive” process and politicians in general as ruthless and power-hungry and miserable people. But he said he is “thrilled” by Trump picking Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, because “every bad person I’ve ever met in a lifetime in Washington was aligned against J.D. Vance.” Carlson said that was because “they thought he would be harder to manipulate and slightly less enthusiastic about killing people…that he would be an impediment to their exercising power.”

Carlson veered into spiritual warfare rhetoric, saying that since he spoke at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary celebration 15 months ago, he has experienced “a total change in the way that I see the world,” explaining, “this is not ultimately political. This is much deeper…There is a spiritual battle underway.”

From Carlson’s remarks:

And I think what happened on Saturday, the assassination attempt against President Trump, reminded a lot of people this, or awakened a lot of people to this. There is a spiritual battle underway. There is no logical way to understand what we’re seeing now in temporal terms. You just can’t.

These are not political divides. There are forces, and they’re very obvious now. They’ve decided, for whatever reason, to take off the mask, whose only goal is chaos, violence, destruction. And there are the rest of us who, once again, are not always certain we’re right, but we know that that’s bad and we’re against that, sort of standing, watching, thinking, ‘Is someone going to explain to me why this is politics?’

This is not politics at all. This is much deeper and older and more recognizable than that. This has been going on since the beginning of time. And I do think, by the way, that the more literal among us, and I would count myself in that category, fail to see this because we’re so desperate to ascribe some kind of recognizable human motive to what we’re seeing.

So we call it leftism or neoliberalism or communism or anarchism. We come up with some phrase to describe it, but those phrases are inadequate. They do not describe what’s actually happening. So what you’re seeing now is really not at all different in substance from what you saw in 1789 in France, from what you saw in 1936 in Spain, from what you saw in 1917 in Russia, from what you saw in 1975 in Phnom Penh. It’s all the same. These are forces of chaos and destruction which are fundamentally anti-human, which are against people.

Carlson railed against a number of movements he described as “anti-people,” including what he called “the climate cult.” He told the activists to pay close attention to what makes “them” angriest.

What group do they dislike most? What group are they absolutely terrified of and hoping to eliminate? Well, it’s Christians. That’s who it is. It’s Christians. … The group that makes them angriest, triggers them most, I guess we would say now, is Christians. Christian nationalism. People pray outside abortion clinics. People celebrate Easter, not trans visibility day. These are their real enemies.

Carlson talked about religious persecution during the Cultural Revolution in China and the French Revolution. He said at the start of the Spanish Civil War, the “anti-Christian” side opened fire on a statue of Jesus. “If you find yourself firing bullets at a statue, what you’re really doing is revealing your deepest priority, and that’s to kill Christians,” he said.

“I don’t know if any Christians here or people who are interested in continuing to live in the country you grew up in, but these are the terms and these are the stakes,” Carlson said. “They are not the ones that we’ve been told they are–left versus right, Republican versus Democrat.”

Carlson also talked about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, saying that Trump’s show of strength—fist raised in defiance—had won him the election, because people want and need strong leaders.

After delivering his remarks, Carlson engaged in some Q&A with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. In response to a question about what kind of conversations people could have to bring their friends and neighbors into the MAGA movement, Carlson said they should pray for people who are willing to accept the status quo. He then veered into a diatribe against “weak men,” saying that fathers should be willing to beat up school counselors who “indoctrinate kids and try and turn them into freaks, circus freaks.” Roberts agreed, saying that “what we’re all yearning for is just a return to normal. And it is normal for a strong man, for a man period, to respond the way you describe to the school counselor.”

Asked about what kind of message the Trump team should be delivering, Carlson said the campaign was trying out a “unity message,” to which he responded:

And a lot of people hear “unity” and they think, well, unity implies some sort of compromise conversation. You can’t have a conversation with people who are unwilling to compromise. The left, which is a religious movement, is unwilling to compromise on any level at all. They won’t even admit men can’t become women. So you how can you have unity with people like that? And of course, you can’t.

Carlson recommended that Trump’s team ignore his critics and simply show through his actions that he is calm and in command. He urged activists to take Trump’s bravery as a model for their own political engagement.

Tags: Kevin RobertsTucker CarlsonChristian PersecutionElection 2024Republican National ConventionSpiritual WarfareHeritage FoundationRepublican Party

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Although 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation's 900-page blueprint for a second Trump Administration — many of Trump's critics have been pointing out that a long list of his MAGA allies were heavily involved in crafting the controversial document.

According to NBC News reporter Allan Smith, the "brain trust behind Project 2025 isn't sweating" Trump's "disavowals."

"At recent events in Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee," Smith reports, "Project 2025 proponents and allies sought to defuse tensions and go on offense against the press and Democrats, after Trump took the wind out of their sails with critical social media posts as Democrats oriented their campaign around the plans."

READ MORE:'Stop it': Ex-GOP staffer questions whether 'CNN officially jumped the shark' over hosts’ Trump comments

The events that Smith is referring to are the recent National Conservatism Conference and the 2024 Republican National Convention, which got underway in Milwaukee on Monday, July 15 — only two days after Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Western Pennsylvania.

During Heritage's Policy Fest at the convention, Heritage CEO Kevin Roberts told NBC News, "The lesson of the last few days and the motivation for something like Project 2025 is to make Washington a heck of a lot less important in our lives."

Smith notes that during the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., "more than a dozen" Project 2025 organizers and contributors "made their case for drastically reconstituting the civil service, retaliating against Democrats for the ongoing prosecutions of Trump, launching mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and countering 'anti-white' discrimination."

According to a member of the Project 2025 advisory board, Heritage and its allies aren't worried about Trump's criticism of the plan.

READ MORE: Wife of dead rally-goer says she hasn’t heard from Trump — but won't take Biden’s call

That source, presumably interviewed on condition of anonymity, told NBC News, "The general sense is this is a PR gesture for him to provide himself maximum room to maneuver and avoid making any commitments at this point. He wants to avoid having to answer questions about anything he doesn't want to answer questions about. Most people I know who are involved with it don't seem overly worried that this actually constitutes a repudiation and is going to mean anything on January 20."

READ MORE: J.D. Vance VP pick won't 'help secure Trump a particular state': expert

*Read NBC News' full report at this link.

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Election law expert and Democracy Docket publisher Marc Elias has been warning that if President Joe Biden or another Democratic candidate wins the 2024 election, presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump and his allies will do everything they can to overturn the election results — only they will be better equipped this year than in 2020.

Now, the Heritage Foundation is claiming, without evidence, that Democrats are planning to steal the election.

The Washington Post's Isaac Arnsdorf reports that Heritage made that claim during a "war game" presentation at their headquarters on Thursday, July 11.

READ MORE: Christian nationalist behind MAGA’s Project 2025 blasted for 'threatening violence'

"Barbra Streisand kidnapped by Hamas, Antifa-BLM protesters taking over a migrant detention facility, the FBI arresting Donald Trump two days after winning the election — these were among the far-fetched scenarios imagined by a simulation of threats to the 2024 election showcased on Thursday by the right-wing Heritage Foundation," Arnsdorf explains. "The presentation, delivered at the Foundation's Washington headquarters, stated as a given that the Biden Administration was already engaged in a sweeping conspiracy to use multiple forms of federal power to influence the presidential election. It did not supply any evidence."

Mike Howell, executive director of Heritage's Oversight Project, claimed, "As things stand right now, there's a zero percent chance of a free and fair election. I'm formally accusing the Biden Administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election."

Arnsdorf notes that the July 11 simulation, billed as the "2024 Transition Integrity Project," is "technically independent of the Heritage Foundation but included multiple Heritage employees."

Heritage has recently been drawing a great deal of scrutiny over Project 2025, its 900-page blueprint for a second Trump presidency. The proposals range from severe abortion restrictions to giving the U.S. federal government's executive branch considerably more power, and Project 2025 is so controversial that even Trump himself is trying to distance himself from it.

READ MORE:'Toxic': Experts mock Trump’s sudden and strident Project 2025 denial

Kevin Roberts, the far-right Chrisitan nationalist who heads the Heritage Foundation, is also being criticized for some recent remarks that his detractors say were promoting violence.

During an appearance on Real America's Voice, Roberts said, "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."

In response, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch argued, on X (formerly Twitter), "The author of Project 2025 is calling for revolution and suggesting bloodshed if liberals dare oppose them."

Conservative/libertarian former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Virginia) warned, "Kevin Roberts is threatening violence to anyone not following his dear leader. Every network should cover this. All of this happening while Dems whinge and play new candidate lotto."

READ MORE:Beware: Trump is Project 2025 — and he cannot escape it

*Read the Washington Post's full report at this link (subscription required).

===

rww

Ryan Walters Taps Christian Nationalists and Right-Wing Propagandists To Overhaul Oklahoma’s Social Studies Curriculum

(https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post_author/kyle-mantyla/)By Kyle Mantyla (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post_author/kyle-mantyla/) |

Last month, Oklahoma’s Christian nationalist state superintendent of education Ryan Walters announced (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/oklahoma-superintendent-orders-public-schools-to-teach-bible-as-white-christian-nationalists-go-on-offense/) that the Bible must be taught in all public schools in the state. Now, Walters is taking things a step further, announcing (https://www.thedailybeast.com/oklahoma-official-wants-project-2025-creator-kevin-roberts-to-overhaul-state-curriculum) that the state’s social studies curriculum will be overhauled in order to further promote his Christian nationalist worldview.

“The revised standards will incorporate the introduction of the Bible as an instructional resource that Superintendent Walters announced last week as well as the ensuring that social studies reflect accuracy and not political slanted viewpoints,” stated the press release (https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24796756/walters-announces-revisions-to-social-studies-standards25.pdf) issued by Walters’ office on Tuesday. Walters’ claim is laughable, given that the state’s new curriculum will undoubtedly reflect the “political slanted viewpoints” of the various far-right activists he has appointed to the executive review committee.

Among the participants is Kevin Roberts, the hard-right activist who has pushed the Heritage Foundation into increasingly extreme MAGA territory (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/6-ways-the-heritage-foundation-makes-america-less-free-less-just-and-less-safe/) and is leading the Project 2025 effort (https://religiondispatches.org/project-2025-how-trump-loyalists-and-right-wing-leaders-are-paving-a-fast-road-to-fascism/) to seize control (https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/guide-project-2025-extreme-right-wing-agenda-next-republican-administration) of the federal government should former President Donald Trump win the 2024 election.

In 2023, Right Wing Watch reported (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-abcs-of-moms-for-liberty-summit-speakers/):

In a speech celebrating the 50th anniversary of Heritage’s founding, Roberts said the 2024 election “may be our last, best chance to rescue this nation from a woke, socialist left bent on its destruction,” mocked “non-vaccine vaccines” and “useless masks,” declared that there must be no bargaining with the “woke left,” and asserted that “dismantling the woke and weaponized Administrative State” is a matter of national survival. A Heritage ebook about critical race theory suggests that systemic racism cannot exist because racial discrimination is illegal.

Joining Roberts is Everett Piper (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/everett-piper/), the former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, a right-wing (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/right-wing-bonus-tracks-hold-the-line/) commentator (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/christian-college-president-everett-piper-slams-pete-buttigiegs-faith-and-proclivities/), and self-proclaimed proud (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/dec/7/proud-to-be-a-right-wing-religious-nut/) “right-wing religious nut.”

In 2017, RWW reported (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/values-voter-summit-agenda-reveals-religious-rights-hostility-to-constitutional-values/):

Everett Piper (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/everett-piper/) is the president of a Christian college who has found success on the Religious Right speaking circuit by attacking (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/world-congress-of-families-closer-everett-piper-wcf-critics-hate-god/) the “ideological fascism” of gay-rights supporters and other liberals, who he says area waging a “war against Christians” in academia and the broader culture. Piper gave a rousing culture warrior’s closing keynote to the 2015 summit of the World Congress of Families, which works to restrict LGBT rights and reproductive freedom around the globe. Piper has described (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/world-congress-of-families-closer-everett-piper-wcf-critics-hate-god/) WCF’s critics as “a hateful people who hate anyone who dares stand in their way of hating God.” At a 2015 conference organized by anti-gay activist Jim Garlow, Piper described the Obama White House as “seemingly more aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood than Franklin Graham.” Piper was listed earlier this year as a member of the education committee of the secretive far-right Council for National Policy (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/council-for-national-policy/).

Commentator Dennis Prager (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/dennis-prager-heterosexual-aids-and-campus-rape-are-liberal-lies/) will be lending his “expertise” as well, which is ironic given that the educational materials (https://www.mediamatters.org/dennis-prager/research-file-we-watched-every-prageru-kids-video-here-are-lowlights) produced by Prager’s own organization (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/pragerus-awful-defense-of-statues-honoring-robert-e-lee/) are rife with (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/animated-frederick-douglass-calls-slavery-compromise-prageru-video-rcna99246) disinformation (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/desantiss-florida-approves-climate-denial-videos-in-schools/) and right-wing propaganda (https://www.mediamatters.org/prageru/lessons-florida-public-school-students-will-learn-prageru-kids).

In 2023, RWW wrote (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-abcs-of-moms-for-liberty-summit-speakers/):

Dennis Prager is a prominent far-right propagandist (https://www.prageru.com/press/10-years-and-5-billion-views-prageru-is-the-undeniable-conservative-media) whose PragerU videos have been viewed billions of times. Prager argued against (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/pragerus-awful-defense-of-statues-honoring-robert-e-lee/) the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from the U.S. Capitol. Prager is allied with Christian nationalists and promotes their false claims (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/charlie-kirk-keeps-spreading-baseless/) about U.S. history. When Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to Congress and chose a Quran for his ceremonial swearing in, Prager slammed him for not using a Bible, saying, “If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress.”

Unhinged far-right (https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1583484388808921089) broadcaster (https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1636060178792497160) Steve Deace (https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-deace/blazetv-host-steve-deace-praises-parent-not-accepting-their-lgbt-child-claiming-lgbt) has also been named a member of Walters’ committee, despite his repeated (https://www.mediaite.com/tv/a-blaze-tv-host-is-calling-for-the-execution-of-covid-officials-over-biomedical-facism/) calls (https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1567569247294947329) for violence (https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-deace/blazetvs-steve-deace-vaccine-proponents-start-hanging-people-now-lets-just-skip-trials) against his political opponents, including openly declaring (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/steve-deace-wants-to-see-trump-hang-some-antifa-members/) that he wants to see “antifa members hanging from gallows in Trump ties.”

IFrame Content (https://player.vimeo.com/video/432166126?h=42eda74240)

Finally, and most alarmingly, Christian nationalist (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-christian-nationalists-at-wallbuilders-insist-christian-nationalism-is-nothing-to-worry-about/) pseudo-historian (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-keeps-spreading-false-christian-nationalist-history/) David Barton has been named to Walters’ committee. As RWW has noted before (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/what-it-means-that-the-new-house-speaker-is-an-acolyte-of-christian-nationalist-pseudo-historian-david-barton/), Barton is almost single-handedly responsible for creating the Christian nationalist myths that the far-right uses to justify its push (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/christian-nationalists-seek-to-go-on-offense-to-take-advantage-of-the-far-right-supreme-court/) to enact harmful public policies that weaken the separation of church and state, undermine women’s rights, and deny legal equality to LGBTQ Americans.

RWW profiled (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/what-it-means-that-the-new-house-speaker-is-an-acolyte-of-christian-nationalist-pseudo-historian-david-barton/)Barton in 2023 after Rep. Mike Johnson, who credited Barton with having a “profound influence on me and my work and my life,” was elected Speaker of the House:

David Barton has built an entire career out ofmisusing (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-misrepresents-charles-finney-to-claim-political-involvement-is-key-to-bringing-about-national-spiritual-revival/), misrepresenting (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-is-constantly-unveiling-new-and-misleading-claims-about-american-history/), and outright falsifying history (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-bartons-history-simply-cannot-be-trusted/), the Bible (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/is-david-barton-biblically-illiterate-or-just-deliberately-misleading-his-audience/), and current events (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-doesnt-just-lie-about-history-he-lies-about-current-events-too/) and doing so to promote his Christian nationalist political agenda (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-and-chad-connelly-are-recruiting-pastors-for-gotv-in-midterms-hoping-to-duplicate-2021-success-in-virginia/). He has been highly influential (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-went-70-for-71-in-shaping-the-gop-platform/) not only within Republican politics (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/anti-gay-psuedo-historian-david-barton-tapped-to-run-ted-cruzs-super-pac/), where he has many fans among current (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rep-barry-loudermilk-wants-david-barton-to-chair-trumps-1776-commission/) and former (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/house-speaker-paul-ryan-reportedly-listens-to-hack-historian-david-barton-all-the-time/) GOP legislators (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/huckabee-americans-should-be-forced-at-gunpoint-to-learn-from-david-barton/), but also internationally (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ukrainian-leaders-are-using-david-bartons-theocratic-pseudo-history-to-build-their-nation/). On top of that, Barton’s Christian nationalist pseudo-history (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-bartons-god-filled-government-curriculum-is-now-ready-to-be-used-in-public-schools/) is shaping (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/how-david-barton-is-secretly-shaping-curricula-across-the-nation/) both Christian (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/staver-bartons-book-is-required-reading-for-all-liberty-university-law-students/) and secular (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-named-to-texas-school-board-experts-panel/) educational institutions (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-will-be-training-christians-to-conquer-the-mountain-of-government/) across the country.

Barton, who has repeatedly (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/does-david-barton-have-a-ph-d-even-he-doesnt-seem-to-know/) misrepresented (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-removes-video-claiming-he-has-an-earned-doctorate/) his academic credentials (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-once-again-insists-ive-got-a-ph-d/) and personal history (https://wthrockmorton.com/2015/02/25/oral-roberts-university-there-is-no-record-of-david-barton-ever-playing-basketball-for-oru/), had his book on Thomas Jefferson pulled by his own publisher (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/08/09/158510648/publisher-pulls-controversial-thomas-jefferson-book-citing-loss-of-confidence) in 2012 after it concluded that “basic truths just were not there.”

Undaunted, Barton has soldiered on, repeatedly declaring that Christians who share his far-right worldview are supposed to be choosing our elected leaders (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-says-the-bible-instructs-religious-leaders-to-recruit-political-candidates-for-office/) and ruling the world (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-and-andrew-wommack-say-that-christians-are-supposed-to-be-ruling-in-this-world/) because everything must operate according to biblical principles (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-everything-should-operate-according-to-biblical-principles/).

Barton falsely insists (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/for-the-fifth-time-david-barton-falsely-claims-the-constitution-is-full-of-direct-quotations-out-of-the-bible/) that our Constitution (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-claims-the-founding-fathers-used-the-exact-language-of-the-bible-to-write-the-constitution/) and entire system of government (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-biblical-law-was-incorporated-into-the-constitution-through-the-seventh-amendment/) are based on the Bible and thus asserts that everything from the minimum wage (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-jesus-opposed-the-minimum-wage/) to the income tax (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-misrepresents-the-bible-to-claim-that-jesus-opposes-the-income-tax/) to the teaching of evolution (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-founding-fathers-were-against-teaching-evolution-revolution-was-fought-to-end-slavery/) are unconstitutional because they supposedly violate Biblical teachings. Barton also believes that there should be literally no limits (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-there-should-be-no-limits-on-the-second-amendment/) on the Second Amendment, meaning that average citizens are entitled to own tanks, fighter jets (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-second-amendment-guarantees-an-individual-right-to-own-a-tank-or-fighter-jet/), and even nuclear weapons (https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1174008280299069441).

Predictably, Barton takes a far-right position on issues like abortion—going so far as to proclaim that life actually begins before conception (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-life-begins-before-conception/)—and on LGBTQ issues (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-intolerance-of-gays-is-a-sign-of-spiritual-revival/), asserting repeatedly that AIDS is God’s punishment for sin (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-aids-is-gods-penalty-for-those-who-engage-in-shameful-sexual-acts/) and therefore a cure (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/barton-suggests-we-cant-cure-aids-because-it-is-punishment-for-sin/) will never be found (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-barton-the-bible-says-there-will-never-be-a-vaccine-for-hiv-because-aids-is-the-penalty-for-homosexuality/).

In his press release, Walters’ proclaimed that the “unparalleled expertise” of these panelists “will help craft new academic standards that will serve as a mode for the nation and help Oklahoma students for years to come.” In reality, what will likely emerge from this process is a curriculum warped by political bias and riddled with intentional disinformation designed to indoctrinate students with right-wing propaganda.

---

---

mma

  1. ### Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts: “The overlap is tremendous” between Trump's campaign platform and Project 2025

07/11/24 3:43 PM EDT

  1. ### Trump and his allies are denying any association to Project 2025 and its architects. History speaks for itself.

07/11/24 3:02 PM EDT

  1. ### Project 2025's plan to upend Medicare should set off alarm bells

07/11/24 2:01 PM EDT

  1. ### Watch CNN's report that at least 140 former Trump employees contributed directly to Project 2025

07/11/24 1:49 PM EDT

  1. ### Project 2025 would benefit the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us

07/11/24 12:41 PM EDT

  1. ### MSNBC's Chris Hayes details how Project 2025 would undermine climate action

07/11/24 11:02 AM EDT

  1. ### Only 4% of national TV news segments about Hurricane Beryl mentioned climate change

07/11/24 10:53 AM EDT

  1. ### The long history of ugly right-wing media attacks against VP Kamala Harris

07/11/24 10:36 AM EDT

  1. ### Unearthed video: Project 2025 director said project has “great” relationship with Trump and he’s “very bought in with this”

07/11/24

---

AN 7 24

Trump and some of his supporters, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), have been making a concerted effort to distance the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee from Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation's controversial 900-page blueprint for a second Trump presidency.

On his Truth Social platform, Trump claimed that he had nothing to do with Project 2025 and even criticized some of its proposals as "absolutely ridiculous and abysmal." But Trump's critics have been quick to respond that the Heritage Foundation will be a major participant in the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, and that Project 2025 was crafted by many people who worked with Trump closely during his four years as president.

CNN's Steve Contorno fact-checks Trump's claims about his connection to Project 2025 in an article published on July 11. According to a thorough review, at least 140 people who have been advisers for Trump in different capacities were part of the Heritage Foundation's lengthy document.

READ MORE: 'Flat-out nuts.': Conservative blasts Trump’s 'bananas' rant on 'law and order'

Contorno reports, "Donald Trump has lately made clear he wants little to do with Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the next Republican president that has attracted considerable blowback in his race for the White House…. Many people Trump knows quite well are behind it. Six of his former cabinet secretaries helped write or collaborated on the 900-page playbook for a second Trump term published by the Heritage Foundation."

The CNN reporter adds, "Four individuals Trump nominated as ambassadors were also involved, along with several enforcers of his controversial immigration crackdown. And about 20 pages are credited to his first deputy chief of staff."

Contorno notes that in order to "quantify the scope of the involvement from Trump's orbit" in Project 2025, CNN "reviewed online biographies, LinkedIn profiles and news clippings for more than 1000 people listed on published directories for the 110 organizations on Project 2025's advisory board."

"Overall, CNN found nearly 240 people with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump, covering nearly every aspect of his time in politics and the White House — from day-to-day foot soldiers in Washington to the highest levels of his government," Contorno explains. "The number is likely higher because many individuals' online résumés were not available. In addition to people who worked directly for Trump, others who participated in Project 2025 were appointed by the former president to independent positions."

READ MORE:'Horrible news' for Trump: 'The mask is coming off' — exposing facade of 'Project 2025' denial

*Read CNN's full report at this link.

REF

CNN —

Donald Trump has lately made clear he wants little to do with Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the next Republican president that has attracted considerable blowback in his race for the White House.

“I have no idea who is behind it,” the former president recently claimed on social media.

Many people Trump knows quite well are behind it.

Six of his former Cabinet secretaries helped write or collaborated on the 900-page playbook for a second Trump term published by the Heritage Foundation. Four individuals Trump nominated as ambassadors were also involved, along with several enforcers of his controversial immigration crackdown. And about 20 pages are credited to his first deputy chief of staff.

In fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, a CNN review found, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to “Mandate for Leadership,” the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch.

Dozens more who staffed Trump’s government hold positions with conservative groups advising Project 2025, including his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and longtime adviser Stephen Miller. These groups also include several lawyers deeply involved in Trump’s attempts to remain in power, such as his impeachment attorney Jay Sekulow and two of the legal architects of his failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman.

To quantify the scope of the involvement from Trump’s orbit, CNN reviewed online biographies, LinkedIn profiles and news clippings for more than 1,000 people listed on published directories for the 110 organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board, as well as the 200-plus names credited with working on “Mandate for Leadership.”

Overall, CNN found nearly 240 people with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump, covering nearly every aspect of his time in politics and the White House – from day-to-day foot soldiers in Washington to the highest levels of his government. The number is likely higher because many individuals’ online résumés were not available.

In addition to people who worked directly for Trump, others who participated in Project 2025 were appointed by the former president to independent positions. For instance, Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr authored an entire chapter of proposed changes to his agency, and Lisa Correnti, an anti-abortion advocate Trump appointed as a delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, is among the contributors.

Several people involved in Project 2025 didn’t serve in the Trump administration but were influential in shaping his first term. One example is former US Attorney Brett Tolman, a leading force behind the former president’s criminal justice reform law who laterhelped arrange a pardon for Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law. Tolman is listed as a contributor to “Mandate for Leadership.”

The extensive overlap between Project 2025 and Trump’s universe of allies, advisers and former staff complicates his efforts to distance himself from the work. Trump’s campaign has sought for months to make clear that Project 2025 doesn’t speak for them amid an intensifying push by President Joe Biden and Democrats to tie the Republican standard bearer to the playbook’s more controversial policies.

In a statement to CNN, campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said Trump only endorses the Republican Party platform and the agenda posted on the former president’s website.

“Team Biden and the (Democratic National Committee) are lying and fear-mongering because they have nothing else to offer the American people,” Alvarez said.

Heritage plan becomes a political headache

Behind Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation, a 51-year-old conservative organization that aligned itself with Trump not long after his 2016 victory. Heritage is led by Kevin Roberts, a Trump ally whom the former president praised as “doing an unbelievable job” on a February night when they shared the same stage.

Heritage conceived Project 2025 to begin planning so a Republican president could hit the ground running after the election. One of its priorities is creating a roadmap for the first 180 days of the new administration to quickly reorient every federal agency around its conservative vision. Described on its website as “a movement-wide effort guided by the conservative cause to address and reform the failings of big government and an undemocratic administrative state,” Project 2025 also aims to recruit and train thousands of people loyal to the conservative movement to fill federal government positions.

One organization advising Project 2025, American Accountability Foundation, is also putting together a roster of current federal workers it suspects could impede Trump’s plans for a second term. Heritage ispaying the group $100,000 for its work.

Many of Project 2025’s priorities are aligned with the former president, especially on immigration and purging the federal bureaucracies. Both Trump and Project 2025 have called for eliminating the Department of Education.

But Project 2025 has lately become a lightning rod for other ideas Trump hasn’t explicitly backed. Within “Mandate for Leadership” are plans toban pornography,reverse federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, exclude the morning-after pill and men’s contraceptives from coverage mandated under the Affordable Care Act, make it harder for transgender adults to transition, and eliminate the federal agency that oversees the National Weather Service.

Its voluminous and detailed plans also run counter to Trump’s desire fora streamlined GOP platform absent any language that Democrats could wield against Republicans this cycle.

Roberts recently faced backlash as well for saying in an interview that the country was “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Three days later, Trump posted to Truth Social: “I know nothing about Project 2025.”

“I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote.

In response to Trump’s social media post, a Project 2025 spokesperson told CNN in a statement it “does not speak for any candidate or campaign.”

“It is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to use,” the spokesperson said.

Trump’s campaign has repeatedly said in recent months that “reports about personnel and policies that are specific to a second Trump Administration are purely speculative and theoretical” and don’t represent the former president’s plans. Project 2025 and similar policy proposals coming from outside Trump’s campaign are “merely suggestions,” campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita wrote in a statement.

Vast network of Trump allies

However, Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025 have already encountered credibility challenges. The person overseeing Project 2025, Paul Dans, was a top official in Trump’s White House who has previously said he hopes to work for his former boss again. Shortly after Trump’s Truth Social post last week, Democrats noted a recruitment video for Project 2025 features a Trump campaign spokeswoman. On Tuesday, the Biden campaign posted dozens of examples of connections between Trump and Project 2025.

CNN’s review of Project 2025’s contributors also demonstrated the breadth of Trump’s reach through the upper ranks of the vast network of organizations working to move the country in a conservative direction – from women’s groups and Christian colleges to conservative think tanks in Texas, Alabama and Mississippi.

New organizations centered around Trump’s political movement, his conspiracy theories around his electoral defeats and his first-term policies are deeply involved in Project 2025 as well. One of the advisory groups, America First Legal, was started by Miller, a key player in forming Trump’s immigration agenda. Another is the Center for Renewing America, founded by Russ Vought, former acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, who wrote for Project 2025 a detailed blueprint for consolidating executive power.

Vought recently oversaw the Republican Party committee that drafted the new platform heavily influenced by Trump.

In addition to Vought, two other former Trump Cabinet secretaries wrote chapters for “Mandate for Leadership”: Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller. Three more former department heads – National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe, acting Transportation Secretary Steven Bradbury and acting Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella – are listed as contributors.

Project 2025’s proposals for reforming the country’s immigration laws appear heavily influenced by those who helped execute Trump’s early enforcement measures. Former acting US Customs and Border Protection chiefMark Morgan and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement chiefTom Homan – the faces of Trump’s polarizing policies – contributed to the project, as did Kathy Nuebel Kovarik,one of the policy advisers pushing to end certain immigrant protections behind the scenes. The Project 2025 chapter on overhauling the Department of Homeland Security was written by Ken Cuccinelli, a top official at the department under Trump.

Some of Trump’s most contentious and high-profile hires are credited with working on “Mandate for Leadership,” including some whose tenures ended under a cloud of controversy.

Before Trump adviser Peter Navarro went to prison for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena as part of the House investigation into the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack, he wrote a section defending the former president’s trade policies and advocating for punitive tariffs.

The culmination of their work, spread across 900 pages, touches every corner of the executive branch and would drastically change the federal government as well as everyday life for many Americans. In summarizing the undertaking, Roberts wrote in “Mandate for Leadership” that Project 2025 represented “the next conservative President’s last opportunity to save our republic.”

“Conservatives have just two years and one shot to get this right,” Roberts said. “With enemies at home and abroad, there is no margin for error. Time is running short. If we fail, the fight for the very idea of America may be lost.”

7 24 an raw

far-right conspiracy theorist webcaster Alex Jones is not happy with former President Donald Trump's about-face on Project 2025.

According to Newsweek, Jones took Trump to task this week for his attempt to distance himself from the infamous Heritage Foundation-backed policy agenda, which has triggered alarm among political scientists and is being used as a wedge issue by President Joe Biden's campaign to alarm moderate voters who may be considering a vote for the former president.

"Trump gets told by his advisers and people who really just don't want competition in his new White House … 'Oh God, these are radicals, sir. You've got to come out and distance yourself,'" Jones told his listeners. "It's the Heritage Foundation, Trump. And again, Trump's really smart; he's got good instincts. He doesn't understand Republican machinery."

Project 2025 calls for the top-to-bottom restructuring of the entire federal government, with most of the civil service being dismissed and replaced with party loyalists who stand ready to implement far-right policy, from codifying Christian nationalism to harshly scaling back immigration, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, military families' benefits, public transportation, and a wide variety of other programs and investments.

Amid the public attention on the program, Trump took to his Truth Social platform last week and proclaimed that, "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them."

This was followed up by Heritage Foundation officials also asserting that their proposals are not affiliated with the Trump campaign.

Despite these disavowals, many of the people who have helped to craft Project 2025, like John McEntee, previously served in the Trump administration, and Trump tried to implement at least some of the policies outlined in the project on his way out of office, like reclassifying federal employees to strip them of labor protections.

Jones, whose InfoWars radio program and associated dietary supplement empire has long been a staple of the far-right conspiracy theory ecosystem, entered bankruptcy after being found liable in a series of lawsuits by the families of Sandy Hook school shooting victims after he used his platform to proclaim them hoaxers and turned their lives upside down with harassment. A bankruptcy court last month approved the orderly winding down of InfoWars' parent company and the liquidation of Jones' personal assets.

His program remains on the air at least for the time being.

===

  1. ### Donald Trump Jr. calls to “abolish” the FBI, CIA, and IRS

07/08/24 10:20 PM EDT

  1. ### On MSNBC's Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone discusses Project 2025: “A mechanism for enacting the very revenge that Trump promised”

07/08/24 8:18 PM EDT

  1. ### Sean Hannity says Democrats will “play dirty” in “this election”

07/08/24 7:02 PM EDT

  1. ### Donald Trump on Heritage’s Kevin Roberts, who oversees Project 2025: “He’s going to be so incredible”

07/08/24 2:58 PM EDT

  1. ### Larry Hogan will attend fundraiser with Newsmax’s Rick Santorum, who has repeatedly compared abortion to slavery

07/08/24 1:32 PM EDT

  1. ### Oklahoma state superintendent says pastor and right-wing commentator suggested his new Bible mandate in public schools

07/08/24 9:59 AM EDT

  1. ### Project 2025 partner lays foundation for Trump to ignore congressional spending in major power grab

07/08/24 mma

===

Former President Donald Trump told one of his least convincing lies last week, posting on his Truth Social platform that he “has nothing to do” with Project 2025, the devastating plan by former Trump administration officials and MAGA movement allies to “take the reins of government” if he wins in November. “I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump claimed.

Reporters and commentators were quick to call out Trump’s ridiculous claim. Rolling Stone noted, “Meanwhile, over at the Republican National Committee, at least seven of the individuals tasked with overhauling the party’s platform in anticipation of Trump’s second term in office have connections to Project 2025 — starting with Russell Vought, who was director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s administration.”

Robert Reich took on Trump’s lie in his substack newsletter Saturday, pointing out the central role played by former Trump administration officials and noting, “The Trump campaign platform is basically Project 2025. Trump’s Make America Great Again PAC is running ads calling it‘Trump’s Project 2025.‘ The Make America Great Again PAC also created the website TrumpProject2025.com.”

President Joe Biden’s campaign also weighed in on Trump’s claim, noting in a statement Saturday that Project 2025 “was written for him, by those closest to him.”

Trump’s literally unbelievable claim was repeated by campaign surrogates J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio on Sunday talk shows, suggesting that the attempt to distance Trump from Project 2025 is a strategic decision by his campaign, one driven by extensive news coverage of Project 2025’s far-reaching and devastatingly harmful agenda. Former Trump aide Stephen Miller claimed that he has “never been involved” in Project 2025 even though the organization he runs—America First Legal—is on the project’s advisory board.

Columnist Will Bunch wrote on Sunday, “Republicans are in a state of panic now that voters are paying attention to Project 2025, their plan for dictatorship.” In the two years since Right Wing Watch reported on the Heritage Foundation’s launch of Project 2025, and with greater intensity in recent months,national news outlets and advocacy organizations have been digging into the agenda for simultaneously giving the president virtually dictatorial power over the federal government while gutting federal agencies’ ability to protect Americans’ safety, health, environment, and fundamental rights.

Bunch credits actress Taraji P. Henson’s warning about Project 2025 at this year’s BET awards—and her challenge “Look it up!”—for initiating a “major vibe shift.” Notes Bunch,

An electorate that largely rolled its eyes when Biden or other Democrats told them that “democracy is on the ballot” in November suddenly has an ominous, TikTok-friendly two-word catch phrase for the very real and growing fearsthat a cult-like GOP, aided by the corrupt Supreme Court it imposed on America, has a scheme for dictatorship. Indeed, “Project 2025″ sounds a lot like the kind of conspiracy theory about a run-amok government that goes viral in the Age of Disinformation — except it’s not a conspiracy. It’s real — and set in type for anyone to read.

In a conversation on Political Research Associates’ “Inform Your Resistance” podcast, I suggested that Project 2025 has actually done a bit of a public service by making it clear just how serious the threat is. By making the unpopular right-wing agenda so explicit, Project 2025 organizers have given those of us who disagree with that agenda an opportunity to remind Americans how much of the progress made over the past century could be reversed if the far right takes power.

---

2025 trashed by fetterman on fox

===

an ah 7 24

Whether Democrats stick with President Joe Biden as their 2024 presidential nominee or look for someone else, one of their key arguments against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump is that his MAGA movement is pushing an authoritarian agenda. Democrats have been slamming Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation's detailed, in-depth blueprint for a second Trump Administration — as a recipe for autocracy.

Yet Trump, in some interviews, downplays the more extreme ideas he has promoted.

In a blistering editorial published on July 7, the Washington Post's editorial board slams the Trump campaign's "strategic ambiguity" as a "cynical" effort to obscure just how extreme and "unpopular" some of his proposals have been.

READ MORE: Historian warns Trump 'imperial presidency' will be 'huge shock' to Americans: 'Never been here before'

"Abortion is the issue Mr. Trump's team most fears," the Post's editorial board argues. "The GOP's 2016 platform endorsed a 20-week national ban on the procedure…. There are other thorny issues."

The board continues, "The 2016 platform said Congress and states should be allowed to ban same-sex marriage and supported the rights of parents to force their gay children into conversion therapy…. Sidestepping divisive questions might be politically expedient, limiting attention on the party's increasingly out-of-step agenda."

The post board, stresses, however, that voters need to know what Trump's "far-right administration-in-waiting wants to impose on the nation" — from abortion to Project 2025.

"(Trump) and his allies are floating ideas that would be disastrous for America, including 10 percent across-the-board tariffs, deporting millions of undocumented immigrants and politicizing the civil service," the Post's editorial board warns. "He has said that he's running to exact 'revenge' and 'retribution' against his critics while promising not to be a dictator 'other than Day One.'"

READ MORE:'Myth of institutionalism': John Roberts lays out blueprint for dictatorship

The Post editorial writers add, "He gets away with such talk in part because he does not let himself get pinned down on specifics. Voters should demand better than such cynical strategic ambiguity."

READ MORE:[Beware: Trump is Project 2025 — and he cannot escape it]

*Read The Washington Post's full editorial at this link (subscription required).

===

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badash an 7 24

Political strategists and journalists are responding to Donald Trump’s sudden, strident, and illogical denial that he has any knowledge of Project 2025, the far-right Heritage Foundation’s 920-page action plan to entirely remake the executive branch of the federal government, creating an all-powerful president in charge of a Christian nationalist authoritarian America. A Trump campaign official reportedly said the criminally convicted ex-president’s denial Friday was “a direct response” to “the Biden campaign running ads on Project 2025.”

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, a self-avowed Christian nationalist who’s been described as a “cowboy Catholic” and a culture warrior, has been making the cable news rounds recently, promoting Project 2025. Late last month he gave a lengthy interview to MSNBC’s Symone Sanders-Townsend, declaring Heritage’s goal is to institutionalize “Trumpism” as a new version of conservatism.

IFrame Content

On Tuesday, Roberts went all-in on celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court’s declaration that presidents have “absolute” immunity for “official” acts.

READ MORE: In First Post-Debate Interview Biden Calls Trump a ‘Felon’ and Strongly Defends His Record

He then issued remarks some have called “threatening violence“: “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Roberts’ comments made headlines, apparently so much so that Trump late Friday morning moved to wholly distance himself from the multimillion dollar far right wing project that is authored in part by, according to an NCRM review, at least 18 former Trump officials, and, as of February, had 100 right-wing partners.

Insisting he both knows “nothing” about Project 2025 and has “nothing” to do with it, while insisting he “disagrees” with some of it but wishes them luck, Trump declared: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery notes, “All three of the guys behind Project 2025 worked in the White House for Trump when he was president.”

READ MORE: ‘Total Collapse’: Trump Campaign Mocks ‘Every Democrat’ Calling on Biden to Quit

CNN’s Alayna Treene reports: “A senior Trump adviser noted [Trump’s] post is a direct response the Biden campaign running ads on Project 2025 & tying it to the Trump campaign.”

“Project 2025’s agenda would radically reshape the federal government & includes many objectives Trump himself has floated,” she adds.

Democratic strategist Josh Schwerin responded, “Trump is lying because he knows his agenda is toxic with voters.”

Another Democratic strategist, Max Burns, calls Trump’s denial a “great sign that Democrats should be doubling down on highlighting the extreme far-right plans contained in Project 2025. The @GOP is obviously seeing some internal polling showing how unpopular it is. Now is the time to make sure every single American knows Project 2025.”

Attorney and MeidasTouch.com editor in chief Ron Filipowski observes, “Trump’s move today claiming to disavow Project 2025 is just like how he bragged about overturning Roe then tried to distance himself from extreme laws implemented by many states after he saw the polling. Same drill. Wasn’t me!”

The Biden campaign blasted Trump:

“FACT CHECK:

—His Super PAC is running ads promoting Project 2025, calling it “Trump’s Project 2025”

—His top aide and former bag boy John McEntee is the guy behind Project 2025

—His press secretary is starring in recruitment ads for Project 2025

—Trump himself said he “needs” the Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025, to enact his MAGA agenda”

Wonkette managing editor Evan Hurst added, “Trump and his campaign are terrified that people are learning about #Project2025.”

READ MORE: ‘Crowned Trump King’: SCOTUS Immunity Decision ‘Death Knell for Democracy’ Experts Warn

===

---

an 7 24

Despite his long history of making extremes statements — from Holocaust denial to saying that women shouldn't have been given the right to vote — far-right MAGA Republican Mark Robinson, according to some polls, is quite competitive in North Carolina's 2024 gubernatorial race. An East Carolina University poll in June found Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee, leading Robinson by only 1 percent.

Robinson has made no effort to soften his image during his gubernatorial campaign. And according to The New Republic's Greg Sargent, the far-right MAGA Republican made some more extreme statements during a June 30 speech in a church in White Lake, North Carolina.

Robinson told the crowd, "Some folks need killing. It's time for somebody to say it. It's not a matter of vengeance. It's not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It's a matter of necessity."

READ MORE: Historian warns Trump 'imperial presidency' will be 'huge shock' to Americans: 'Never been here before'

Sargent notes that those Robinson advocated "killing" included "wicked people" as well as socialists and communists, adding that the North Carolina lieutenant governors has a "long history of wildly radical and unhinged moments."

According to Sargent, "He has linked homosexuality to pedophilia, called for the arrest of trans women, pushed hallucinogenic antisemitic conspiracy theories, endorsed the vile 'birther' conspiracy about Barack Obama, described Michelle Obama as a man, hinted at the need to violently oppose federal law enforcement and the government, and posted memes mocking and denying the brutal, violent assault on Nancy Pelosi's husband, among many other things."

Sargent adds, "His latest rant is yet another example of an ugly game widely played on the MAGA right, one supercharged by Donald Trump. It entails hinting that right-wing political violence is necessary and justified because a ubiquitous, all-seeing, all-powerful leftist threat — one that is pure invention — is already supposedly attacking and persecuting conservatives on a mass scale."

The journalist emphasizes that Robinson's comments are not an anomaly, but part of a pattern of MAGA Republicans calling for violence against political opponents. And he cited Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts as an example.

Roberts recently said of the right-wing think tank's Project 2025, "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."

Sargent warns, "In this, Roberts essentially said that if liberals and Democrats too vehemently resist MAGA's intent to stock the government with corrupt loyalists to Trump and unleash mass persecution of the opposition, violence will be necessary to crush them — and if so, it will be their fault for not meekly accepting what they have coming to them."

The journalist adds, "Meanwhile, Trump himself recently suggested that political violence may erupt if the presidential election isn't conducted with 'fairness' and is stolen from him, by which he really means, 'if I don’t win.'"

READ MORE: Several Democratic governors 'not supportive' of Biden staying in 'and want a change': report

*Read Greg Sargent's full New Republic article at this link.

===

---

The largest donor of the 2024 presidential campaign, by far, is Timothy Mellon, the reclusive billionaire and heir to the Mellon banking fortune. Mellon was already the largest donor after donating $25 million each to the Super PACs supporting the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump (MAGA Inc.) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (American Values 2024). Then, Mellon donated another $50 million to MAGA Inc. on May 31, the day after Trump was convicted of committing 34 felonies.

Mellon's $75 million contribution to MAGA Inc. represents almost half of the group's total fundraising. Mellon has also donated millions more to other conservative causes this cycle.

Despite his political spending, little is known about Mellon. The most detailed account of Mellon's views comes from his self-published 2015 autobiography. "This book was not ghost-written: every single word is my own," Mellon said in a press release announcing its publication. People who wanted to purchase the book were required to make a $9 donation to Hillsdale College, a private Christian institution that aggressively promotes right-wing ideology or another conservative group.

According to a 2020 article published in the Washington Post, Mellon writes that Black people have become "even more belligerent and unwilling to pitch in to improve their own situations" after social safety net programs were expanded in the 1960s and 1970s. Mellon writes that they are now "slaves of a new Master, Uncle Sam."

Mellon also derided programs intended to lift people out of poverty as "Slavery Redux." Mellon claimed that in exchange for "delivering their votes in the Federal Elections, they are awarded with yet more and more freebies: food stamps, cell phones, WIC payments, Obamacare, and on, and on, and on." According to Mellon, who inherited his fortune, "[t]he largess is funded by the hardworking folks, fewer and fewer in number, who are too honest or too proud to allow themselves to sink into this morass.”

Mellon also blasted universities for offering college students the opportunity to learn about the history of Black people, women, and the LGBTQ community. "Black Studies, Women’s Studies, LGBT Studies, they have all cluttered Higher Education with a mishmash of meaningless tripe designed to brainwash gullible young adults into going along with the Dependency Syndrome," Mellon wrote.

In response to scrutiny of the book, Mellon stood firm. "I said everything I wanted to say,” Mellon told Bloomberg. “I don’t have any regrets.”

But now, Mellon is trying to rewrite history. The website Mellon used to sell the book, timsstory.com, has been taken offline. The book doesn't appear to be available to purchase anywhere. Instead, later this month, Mellon is publishing a new autobiography with the same title. This time, the cover includes a gushing blurb from Kennedy.

Mellon's new book is being published by Skyhorse Publishing, which is run by Tony Lyons. He also serves as the co-chair of American Values 2024, Kennedy’s Super PAC. Skyhorse Publishing has published Kennedy’s books about vaccine conspiracy theories and the works of other conspiracy theorists, including Alex Jones. According to the promotional material, Mellon's new book reveals "a life not merely lived on inherited wealth but on conviction, leadership, and the audacity to defy convention."

Mellon's connection to Project 2025

In addition to his donations to Super PACs supporting the campaigns of Trump and Kennedy, Mellon donated $4 million to Sentinel Action Fund, a Super PAC created by Heritage Action, a subsidiary of the Heritage Foundation. (Contributions directly to Heritage Action or the Heritage Foundation are not disclosed.)

The Heritage Foundation is the leading organization behind Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Project 2025 is a 920-page document that lays out a radically different future for the United States. The document details a "Christian nationalist vision of the United States, one in which married heterosexuality is the only valid form of sexual expression and identity; all pregnancies would be carried to term, even if that requires coercion or death; and transgender and gender-nonconforming people do not exist."

In addition to the detailed policy guide, the Heritage Foundation is vetting thousands of "conservative warriors" who can come to Washington, D.C., to implement the plan.

Why is Mellon supporting Kennedy?

Mellon's $25 million donation to Kennedy's Super PAC is keeping his cash-strapped campaign afloat. But why is Mellon supporting Kennedy?

In 2023, before Kennedy dropped out of the Democratic primary, Mellon expressed his support for Kennedy in a statement released by the super PAC. “The fact that Kennedy gets so much bipartisan support tells me two things: that he’s the one candidate who can unite the country and root out corruption and that he’s the one Democrat who can win in the general election.” Mellon “has also been a ‘supporter’” of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine non-profit Children’s Health Defense, Mark Gorton, co-founder of the American Values super PAC, told NOTUS.

Mellon, however, also has a history of supporting candidates that he thinks will damage the Democratic Party.

In 2018, for example, Mellon donated $2,700 to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). In an interview with Bloomberg, Mellon explained the donation was because “he thought that, if elected, her outspokenness would cause headaches for Democrats.” Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign tried to refund the donation, but Mellon said he would “neither cash nor deposit the check but rather, frame it.” The Wall Street Journal reported that Mellon also donated $5,800 to Senator Joe Manchin (I-WV) in 2021 and 2022 and $2,900 to Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) in 2022, two politicians who have a history of obstructing Democratic policy priorities.

Mellon's other massive donation

In 2021, Mellon donated $53 million to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s (R) fundraising campaign to build a border wall. According to the Texas Tribune, Mellon’s donation “contributed nearly 98% of the fund’s total donations.”

In June 2021, Abbott announced a plan to build a state-funded wall on the Mexico border. Abbott “expected people to both donate their own money and volunteer their land for the barrier.” The plan is part of Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, which seeks to subvert federal immigration policy. In addition to the barriers, some of which are topped with razor wire, Texas has authorized “Texas National Guard soldiers and state troopers to arrest” undocumented migrants. This has created safety concerns and “essentially criminalizes seeking asylum,” which migrants have the right to pursue under federal law.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “people familiar with [Mellon’s] thinking” said that “[o]ne of the main issues driving Mellon’s giving is immigration.” In 2010, Mellon gave $1.5 million “to help the state of Arizona defend a controversial law that required police to determine the immigration status of people suspected of living in the U.S. illegally, which critics said could lead to racial profiling.”

---

BAK

===

SEE TWO 7 24

primary heritage prez trifecta

merri OK

see heritage 2, 2 action

SEE PJT 2025

SEE MOMS 4 LIB

SEE TIM MELLON FUNDER

Tags: Ed Feulner Kevin Roberts Heritage Foundation

trump raga war games, tppf

===

7 24 second am revo 116 peaceful if left lets it = self-fefense BS polar demonization/ projection

---

JUDD 7 24

The largest donor of the 2024 presidential campaign, by far, is Timothy Mellon, the reclusive billionaire and heir to the Mellon banking fortune. Mellon was already the largest donor after donating $25 million each to the Super PACs supporting the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump (MAGA Inc.) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (American Values 2024). Then, Mellon donated another $50 million to MAGA Inc. on May 31, the day after Trump was convicted of committing 34 felonies.

Mellon's $75 million contribution to MAGA Inc. represents almost half of the group's total fundraising. Mellon has also donated millions more to other conservative causes this cycle.

Despite his political spending, little is known about Mellon. The most detailed account of Mellon's views comes from his self-published 2015 autobiography. "This book was not ghost-written: every single word is my own," Mellon said in a press release announcing its publication. People who wanted to purchase the book were required to make a $9 donation to Hillsdale College, a private Christian institution that aggressively promotes right-wing ideology or another conservative group.

According to a 2020 article published in the Washington Post, Mellon writes that Black people have become "even more belligerent and unwilling to pitch in to improve their own situations" after social safety net programs were expanded in the 1960s and 1970s. Mellon writes that they are now "slaves of a new Master, Uncle Sam."

Mellon also derided programs intended to lift people out of poverty as "Slavery Redux." Mellon claimed that in exchange for "delivering their votes in the Federal Elections, they are awarded with yet more and more freebies: food stamps, cell phones, WIC payments, Obamacare, and on, and on, and on." According to Mellon, who inherited his fortune, "[t]he largess is funded by the hardworking folks, fewer and fewer in number, who are too honest or too proud to allow themselves to sink into this morass.”

Mellon also blasted universities for offering college students the opportunity to learn about the history of Black people, women, and the LGBTQ community. "Black Studies, Women’s Studies, LGBT Studies, they have all cluttered Higher Education with a mishmash of meaningless tripe designed to brainwash gullible young adults into going along with the Dependency Syndrome," Mellon wrote.

In response to scrutiny of the book, Mellon stood firm. "I said everything I wanted to say,” Mellon told Bloomberg. “I don’t have any regrets.”

But now, Mellon is trying to rewrite history. The website Mellon used to sell the book, timsstory.com, has been taken offline. The book doesn't appear to be available to purchase anywhere. Instead, later this month, Mellon is publishing a new autobiography with the same title. This time, the cover includes a gushing blurb from Kennedy.

Mellon's new book is being published by Skyhorse Publishing, which is run by Tony Lyons. He also serves as the co-chair of American Values 2024, Kennedy’s Super PAC. Skyhorse Publishing has published Kennedy’s books about vaccine conspiracy theories and the works of other conspiracy theorists, including Alex Jones. According to the promotional material, Mellon's new book reveals "a life not merely lived on inherited wealth but on conviction, leadership, and the audacity to defy convention."

Mellon's connection to Project 2025

In addition to his donations to Super PACs supporting the campaigns of Trump and Kennedy, Mellon donated $4 million to Sentinel Action Fund, a Super PAC created by Heritage Action, a subsidiary of the Heritage Foundation. (Contributions directly to Heritage Action or the Heritage Foundation are not disclosed.)

The Heritage Foundation is the leading organization behind Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Project 2025 is a 920-page document that lays out a radically different future for the United States. The document details a "Christian nationalist vision of the United States, one in which married heterosexuality is the only valid form of sexual expression and identity; all pregnancies would be carried to term, even if that requires coercion or death; and transgender and gender-nonconforming people do not exist."

In addition to the detailed policy guide, the Heritage Foundation is vetting thousands of "conservative warriors" who can come to Washington, D.C., to implement the plan.

Why is Mellon supporting Kennedy?

Mellon's $25 million donation to Kennedy's Super PAC is keeping his cash-strapped campaign afloat. But why is Mellon supporting Kennedy?

In 2023, before Kennedy dropped out of the Democratic primary, Mellon expressed his support for Kennedy in a statement released by the super PAC. “The fact that Kennedy gets so much bipartisan support tells me two things: that he’s the one candidate who can unite the country and root out corruption and that he’s the one Democrat who can win in the general election.” Mellon “has also been a ‘supporter’” of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine non-profit Children’s Health Defense, Mark Gorton, co-founder of the American Values super PAC, told NOTUS.

Mellon, however, also has a history of supporting candidates that he thinks will damage the Democratic Party.

In 2018, for example, Mellon donated $2,700 to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). In an interview with Bloomberg, Mellon explained the donation was because “he thought that, if elected, her outspokenness would cause headaches for Democrats.” Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign tried to refund the donation, but Mellon said he would “neither cash nor deposit the check but rather, frame it.” The Wall Street Journal reported that Mellon also donated $5,800 to Senator Joe Manchin (I-WV) in 2021 and 2022 and $2,900 to Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) in 2022, two politicians who have a history of obstructing Democratic policy priorities.

Mellon's other massive donation

In 2021, Mellon donated $53 million to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s (R) fundraising campaign to build a border wall. According to the Texas Tribune, Mellon’s donation “contributed nearly 98% of the fund’s total donations.”

In June 2021, Abbott announced a plan to build a state-funded wall on the Mexico border. Abbott “expected people to both donate their own money and volunteer their land for the barrier.” The plan is part of Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, which seeks to subvert federal immigration policy. In addition to the barriers, some of which are topped with razor wire, Texas has authorized “Texas National Guard soldiers and state troopers to arrest” undocumented migrants. This has created safety concerns and “essentially criminalizes seeking asylum,” which migrants have the right to pursue under federal law.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “people familiar with [Mellon’s] thinking” said that “[o]ne of the main issues driving Mellon’s giving is immigration.” In 2010, Mellon gave $1.5 million “to help the state of Arizona defend a controversial law that required police to determine the immigration status of people suspected of living in the U.S. illegally, which critics said could lead to racial profiling.”

===

mma 6 24

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and others in MAGA media have recently praised disgraced Sen. Joe McCarthy and his blacklists, a tactic that Project 2025 partner organization the American Accountability Foundation is attempting to bring to the White House should Donald Trump win in November.

According to The Associated Press, AAF is planning to create and publicly post a list of “100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be … ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings,” with a focus on “those in senior executive positions who could put up roadblocks to Trump’s plans for tighter borders and more deportations.”

The plan is reportedly underwritten by a $100,000 grant from conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation as part of Project 2025, its far-reaching and extreme effort to provide policy and personnel recommendations for a potential second Trump administration. One of Project 2025’s top priorities is the implementation of “Schedule F,” a scheme to remove job protections from federal workers by reclassifying career staffers as political appointees — a direct attack on federal unions that could be used to fire civil servants deemed insufficiently pro-Trump.

AAF is one of more than 100 conservative organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board, and its initiative — synergistically dubbed Project Sovereignty 2025 — is the latest broadside against the 2.2 million people who work for the federal government. The AP article notes that the group’s list of what Heritage referred to as “anti-American bad actors” echoes the blacklist era of McCarthy, the disgraced anti-communist crusader whose name became synonymous with one of the most repressive periods in U.S. history.

Notably, MAGA media have been attempting to rehabilitate McCarthy’s illiberal tactics and goals using rhetoric that often dovetails with justifications for AAF’s project.

In a Decemberinterview,

vid]

Project 2025’s Schedule F and AAF’s proposed blacklist are clear, direct descendants of the literal McCarthyism that MAGA media figures are so quick to praise. The McCarthy era saw massive purges of left-wing federal employees as part of the Cold War’s rightward shift in national politics, halting the potential for American social democracy and helping to plant the seeds for the neoliberal turn of the 1970s and the ensuing rise in inequality that accompanied it.

McCarthy and fellow anti-communists like FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover also directed their oppressive tactics toward gay people — and those suspected or accused of being gay — who worked for the federal government during a period known as the Lavender Scare. McCarthy “directly linked homosexuality and Communism,” depicting gay people working in government as a national security threat. Historians estimate that between 5,000 and 10,000 federal workers were forced to resign during this period, often behind closed doors for fear of their gay identity — real or perceived — becoming public.

McCarthyist attacks on workers extended far beyond federal government employees. The broader Red Scare was disastrous for unions and the working class, hollowing out organized labor’s power and setting the stage for the wage stagnation and exploding wealth inequality that have defined the United States since the early 1980s. As leading historian of McCarthyism Ellen Schrecker writes, “labor's declining percentage of the workforce” had its “roots in that grim moment."

MAGA media’s celebration of that “grim moment” for workers further highlights the superficial rhetoric of right-wing populism.

Now, Project 2025 has taken up the mantle of targeting the federal workforce — and the working class at large— with effects that could be just as long lasting. As Roberts told Bannon in June, “What we're doing here is building not just for 2025, Steve, but for the next century in the United States."

===

===

no lnx $

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/politics/trump-plans-2025.html

Donald J. Trump intends to bring independent regulatory agencies under direct presidential control.

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies.

Jonathan SwanCharlie Savage Maggie Haberman

By Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman

Published July 17, 2023

Updated July 18, 2023

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

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Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.

“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Mr. Trump and his advisers are making no secret of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website, describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.

The strategy in talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” before the election, Mr. Vought said, is to “plant a flag” — both to shift the debate and to later be able to claim a mandate. He said he was delighted to see few of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary rivals defend the norm of Justice Department independence after the former president openly attacked it.

A Divided Congress

[Under Scrutiny: A licensing agreement between Ford Motor and a major Chinese battery maker is facing questions by Republican lawmakers, who say the deal could make Ford reliant on a company with links to forced labor.

Air Travel: The House overwhelmingly passed bipartisan legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration for the next half-decade, moving at a time of growing dysfunction and disruption in the system to make a number of changes that affect passengers.

Supreme Court Ethics Bill: The Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would impose strict new ethics rules on the Supreme Court, moving over Republican objections to address revelations about justices receiving financial benefits from wealthy benefactors.

U.C. Berkeley: A House select committee is requesting more information about a partnership between the university and several Chinese entities that it said could help China gain access to cutting-edge research.]

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said in a statement that the former president has “laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.” He added, “Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all.”

The two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.

Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.

That work at Heritage dovetails with plans on the Trump campaign website to expand presidential power that were drafted primarily by two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, with input from other advisers, including Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s hard-line immigration agenda.

Some elements of the plans had been floated when Mr. Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Mr. Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.

“It would be chaotic,” said John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Its legal underpinning is a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory.

The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them. Reagan administration lawyers developed the theory as they sought to advance a deregulatory agenda.

“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”

Personal power has always been a driving force for Mr. Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right todo whatever I wantas president.”

Mr. Trump made the remark in reference to his claimed ability to directly fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry, which primed his hostility toward law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He also tried to get a subordinate to have Mr. Mueller ousted, but was defied.

Early in Mr. Trump’s presidency, his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, promised a “deconstruction of the administrative state.”But Mr. Trump installed people in other key roles who ended up telling him that more radical ideas were unworkable or illegal. In the final year of his presidency, he told aides he was fed up with being constrained by subordinates.

Now, Mr. Trump is laying out a far more expansive vision of power in any second term. And, in contrast with his disorganized transition after his surprise 2016 victory, he now benefits from a well-funded policymaking infrastructure, led by former officials who did not break with him after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

One idea the people around Mr. Trump have developed centers on bringing independent agencies under his thumb.

Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)

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Presidents of both parties have chafed at the agencies’ independence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal created many of them, endorsed a proposal in 1937 to fold them all into cabinet departments under his control, but Congress did not enact it.

Later presidents sought to impose greater control over nonindependent agencies Congress created, like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is run by an administrator whom a president can remove at will. For example, President Ronald Reagan issued executive orders requiring nonindependent agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for review. But overall, presidents have largely left the independent agencies alone.

Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review.Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them “under presidential authority.”

Such an order was drafted in Mr. Trump’s first term — and blessed by the Justice Department — but never issued amid internal concerns. Some of the concerns were over how to carry out reviews for agencies that are headed by multiple commissioners and subject to administrative procedures and open-meetings laws, as well as over how the market would react if the order chipped away at the Federal Reserve’s independence, people familiar with the matter said.

The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn in the White House.Credit...John Tully for The New York Times

The Federal Reserve was ultimately exempted in the draft executive order, but Mr. Trump did not sign it before his presidency ended. If Mr. Trump and his allies get another shot at power, the independence of the Federal Reserve — an institution Mr. Trump publicly railed at as president — could be up for debate. Notably, the Trump campaign website’s discussion of bringing independent agencies under presidential control is silent on whether that includes the Fed.

Asked whether presidents should be able to order interest rates lowered before elections, even if experts think that would hurt the long-term health of the economy, Mr. Vought said that would have to be worked out with Congress. But “at the bare minimum,” he said, the Federal Reserve’s regulatory functions should be subject to White House review.

“It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution,” Mr. Vought said.

Other former Trump administration officials involved in the planning said there would also probably be a legal challenge to the limits on a president’s power to fire heads of independent agencies. Mr. Trump could remove an agency head, teeing up the question for the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in 1935 and 1988 upheld the power of Congress to shield some executive branch officials from being fired without cause. But after justices appointed by Republicans since Reagan took control, it has started to erode those precedents.

Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University and a critic of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, argued that it is constitutional and desirable for Congress, in creating and empowering an agency to perform some task, to also include some checks on the president’s control over officials “because we don’t want autocracy” and to prevent abuses.

“The regrettable fact is that the judiciary at the moment seems inclined to recognize that the president does have this kind of authority,” he said. “They are clawing away agency independence in ways that I find quite unfortunate and disrespectful of congressional choice.”

Mr. Trump has also vowed to impound funds, or refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. After Nixon used the practice to aggressively block agency spending he was opposed to, on water pollution control, housing construction and other issues, Congress banned the tactic.

On his campaign website, Mr. Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.

Mr. Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.

The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, “CreatingSchedule F in the Excepted Service,” that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.

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Mr. Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but President Biden rescinded it. Mr. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.

Critics say he could use it for a partisan purge. But James Sherk, a former Trump administration official who came up with the idea and now works at the America First Policy Institute — a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials — argued it would only be used against poor performers and people who actively impeded the elected president’s agenda.

“Schedule F expressly forbids hiring or firing based on political loyalty,” Mr. Sherk said. “Schedule F employees would keep their jobs if they served effectively and impartially.”

Mr. Trump himself has characterized his intentions rather differently — promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.

“We will demolish the deep state,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive outthe globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off thesick political class that hates our country.”

[Jonathan Swan is a political reporter who focuses on campaigns and Congress. As a reporter for Axios, he won an Emmy Award for his 2020 interview of then-President Donald J. Trump, and the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award for “overall excellence in White House coverage” in 2022. More about Jonathan Swan

Charlie Savage is a Washington-based national security and legal policy correspondent. A recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, he previously worked at The Boston Globe and The Miami Herald. His most recent book is “Power Wars: The Relentless Rise of Presidential Authority and Secrecy.” More about Charlie Savage

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent and the author of “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. More about Maggie Haberman

A version of this article appears in print on July 17, 2023, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump and Allies Seeking Vast Increase of His Power. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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https://www.mediamatters.org/moms-liberty/salems-eric-metaxas-defends-moms-liberty-quoting-hitler

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https://www.mediamatters.org/moms-liberty/inside-moms-libertys-summit-big-money-and-even-bigger-conspiracy-theories

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last weekend’s Moms for Liberty summit cemented the group as a key player in Republican politics, with the party’s presidential primary front-runners Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis addressing attendees both at the conference and at home via livestream. But it’s what happened in the breakout strategy sessions that were closed to the press that reveals why the group has become so effective — and dangerous. 

In session after session, speakers offered a warped view of reality aimed at manipulating parents into believing they’re righteous liberators battling some ambiguous enemy located in public schools. They warned audience members that theteachers unions and other school officials that are “indoctrinating our kids” are on a mission to do everything from grooming their children to securing “world domination.” 

I’ve been following Moms for Liberty for over two years, and it’s now the fastest-growing self-described “parental rights” organization in the United States, hiding behind the innocuous descriptor to covertly push a far-right agenda. Its meteoric rise has coincided with an alarming increase in harassment and threats directed at teachers, administrators, and school officials across the country — so much so that theSouthern Poverty Law Center designated Moms for Liberty as an extremist group this year.

What always strikes me about Moms for Liberty is the leadership’s ability to provoke such intense and hateful reactions from members, like threatening gun violence against librarians and bringing a 10-year-old to tears. I was morbidly curious about what exactly they were telling them. Although I pieced together a decent enough picture by viewing recorded meetings, streamed events, documents, and interviews, I felt like I was missing something because I was behind a desk, not on the ground.

Until I attended this year’s summit.

The gathering lasted from Thursday night until Sunday morning, drawing over 700 attendees and a steady group of protesters positioned outside of the hotel. It was divided into two types of events: general sessions and breakout sessions. General sessions included big name speakers — Trump, DeSantis, Nikki Haley — catered meals, and a designated press area.

Both the breakout sessions and the main stage included speakers doubling down on a local Indiana chapter's uncritical use of an Adolf Hitler quote printed on the front of their newsletter. NBC News reported that a speaker at a breakout session told attendees to “never apologize.” At Saturday night's general session, co-founder Tiffany Justice said, “One of our moms in a newsletter quotes Hitler. I stand with that mom.” The crowd cheered.

Manufacturing terror to mobilize parents

We wanted to get a closer look at how Moms for Liberty instructs members behind closed doors, so Madeline Peltz, my colleague who was with me at the summit, and I split up the breakout sessions to cover more ground.

Kim Hermann, a lawyer affiliated with the Southeastern Legal Foundation, spoke in a breakout session which, according to the event description, was about “navigating legal challenges and advocating for your family.” She began by warning parents that they were “fighting a constitutional war.”

She said those running schools (“teacher unions, those that are indoctrinating our kids”) want to “undermine our republic and our way of government” and claimed that schools are intentionally withholding information from kids about their constitutional rights.

Her speech only got more extreme from there: She claimed that thesesame powerful actors are “trying to get rid of our Constitution” — somehow through critical race theory — and that their ultimate goal is to “destroy” America.

In another breakout session,Deb Fillman, a “homeschool consultant,” spent over an hour ranting about a faceless enemy attacking children through the weapon of social-emotional learning.

Fillman said that while she didn’t exactly know who benefits from this alleged child exploitation, she tends to agree that they’re probably “Marxists or globalists.”

But whoever they are, they’re out to “replace parents,” groom your children by creating an inappropriate “trust bond,” gather your child’s data to manipulate them, and ultimately pursue “world domination.” 

Conspiracy theories about impending child microchips and Bill Gates were sprinkled in the presentation, too. Fillman suggested that math software owned by Gates’ Microsoft is being nefariously used to “get every data point they possibly can on a kid.” In the same vein of corrupt data collection, she told audience members that she fears that microchips tracking students in schools (allegedly an “experiment” in China) is coming to the United States soon, which means the government would “know everything.” 

Education consultants teach how to overwhelm opponents 

Amid all of the conspiracy theories and fearmongering, there were select breakout sessions that offered actual strategies to “fight” the evils attendees had learned about.

Education consultant Jordan Adams’ presentation was focused on successfully flipped school boards, and it included detailed instructions about how to get newly elected board majorities to bulldoze through Moms for Liberty policy priorities.

Adams presented audience members with a how-to guide on destabilizing school districts within the first 100 days of taking office, including a worksheet that he encouraged participants to fill out listing a timeline of tangible steps meant to overwhelm the opposition (the image includes my notes for his suggested actions based on the presentation). The reverse side of the handout encouraged attendees to familiarize themselves with and counter common talking points from adversaries.

In order to pass controversial policies without backlash, Adams suggests that school boards bombard the district with an array of demands and changes so that the opposition can’t keep up. “These [school] boards, these majorities, they need to be meeting on multiple fronts, multiple issues,” he said. “They need to keep moving, and the idea is that the other side, the powers that be, they cannot keep up with all of it. Right? Oftentimes there will be one small thing, one thing at a time. And they can rally people around that. They can’t counter everything.”

Some of the first steps include putting school administrators “on notice that they need to cooperate with all of this” and advertising “the values” the new board is implementing when posting job ads for new teachers.

The second month is defined by policies: “Start introducing policies on CRT [critical race theory], eliminating DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] offices, reviewing contracts and initiatives, eliminate student surveys.” He also suggested putting a “moratorium on new technology.” 

Nearly every action step Adams discussed was also a consulting service he could both provide and profit from. Adams runs Vermilion Education, an education consulting business specializing in transparency audits, curriculum design, board advising, and teacher training. Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler (who also chairs the Sarasota County school board) suggested hiring Adams to her school system, which was the first to consider it. 

Meanwhile, Adams suggested that schools are “raking in cash from the state, from taxpayers” and “funneling it off to their friends.”

His wasn’t the only session to highlight school finances.

The Heritage Foundation runs the show

Learning that there was going to be a “dark money in education” breakout session at the summit made me laugh (the irony!). Learning who the speakers were — Katie Gorka (former research fellow at The Heritage Foundation and wife of far-right political commentator Sebastian Gorka) and Rhyen Staley (a researcher at Koch-connected Parents Defending Education) — made me attend.

The message of the session was “follow the money.” Aside from some absurd conspiracy theories about the Centers for Disease Control trying to install puberty blockers “without the barrier of parental permissions”and Gorka’s claim that there’s dark money behind critical race theory, sex education, drag queen story hour, and transgenderism, the session loosely taught the audience how to determine who is really behind different educational organizations.

To determine influence, the speakers instructed audience members to look at who sponsors conferences and what foundations are giving them money in order to exert control. The examples they used were aboutteachers unions, but they could have also pointed to the summit’s sponsors.

The event, held in Philadelphia, was lavish: Nearly every meal was elaborately catered and served by waiters. The organizers also booked the Museum of the American Revolution and chartered buses to get attendees there, which wasn’t a cheap endeavor.They had money, but whose? Ticket sales and meager membership dues wouldn’t likely cover this kind of costly event.

Applying the same logic I learned in the “dark money” session to Moms for Liberty would suggest that the group’s chapters are shills for organizations like The Heritage Foundation and The Leadership Institute, a decades-old nonprofit that trains young conservative activists and policy leaders to sell right-wing ideals.

Both Heritage and Leadership sponsored the summit at the highest tier possible. Both have regularly partnered with and given resources to Moms for Liberty since the group’s infancy. And co-founder Ziegler is now running the Leadership Institute’s School Board Leaders Program. 

And there’s more. Breakout session speaker “Billboard Chris” Elston, a Canadian anti-trans activist, revealed that the Heritage Foundation identified and brought together 40 people, including him, in March 2022 to “fight gender ideology” — indicating that the think tank is helping to organize this coalition.

In the same session, Jay Richards, a senior research fellow at Heritage, claimed that he was the first one to approach Heritage with the idea to “fight gender ideology”and has spearheaded that movement.

Moms for Liberty was awarded Heritage’s Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship in 2022 for embodying “the virtues of the American Founding.” It also came with a nice little $25,000 prize.

Backed by and affiliated with individuals and organizations attempting togut and privatize public schools, Heritage is one of the leading crusaders trying to destabilize public education. So it’s no surprise that it’s using Moms for Liberty members as pawns to further that cause.

Having closely monitored Moms for Liberty longer than just about anyone else, I can say with confidence that the group is only becoming more openly extreme. It’s been headed that way for years, but now the mask is off.

Moms for Liberty is embracing rhetoric that not only appeals to far-right conspiracy theorists, but creates them.

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the Heritage Foundation for more than a year has been drafting a policy playbook in preparation for a Republican administration to take over the federal government in 2025. The hope is that this time around conservatives won’t be caught flat-footed like they were in 2016.

The conservative think tank has produced a transition project ever since Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980. But Heritage says this effort stands out in terms of level of involvement and vigor.

“We’re really starting ahead of time,” Paul Dans, director of Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project,said in an interview late last year. “We’re looking to bring new blood to Washington."

the effort has been something of a pet project for Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who took over in fall 2021 after five years leading the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a nonprofit backed by GOP donors and oil money.

“I would describe it as an obsession,” said a former Heritage employee who was granted anonymity to speak freely about his former workplace. “It is one of the main priorities of senior leadership.”

The revved-up effort from Heritage comes as the venerable think tank, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last week, has struggled in recent years through leadership changes and staff turmoil.

Roberts came on after complaints from conservatives like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson over the leadership of Kay Coles James, who stepped down amid the criticism. And in the post-Trump era, several new organizations are now competing on policy turf once dominated by Heritage.

The transition project also seems to be a way to regain stature for Heritage and distinguish itself from those competitors, some outside observers interviewed for this story said.

The project has three pillars. One involves creating something of a “conservative LinkedIn” to ensure hundreds of political appointees are primed to immediately descend on federal agencies should a Republican prevail in 2024. The second involves training videos for those appointees about how to serve in an administration.

And the third part creates a policy playbook with input from more than 400 outside conservative contributors and nearly 50 member organizations that meet monthly — if not more often in an informal setting. The idea is to hammer out ideological differences, including about whether or not to support Ukraine aid.

Conservatives say they learned a lesson from President Joe Biden, who managed to staff up nearly a thousand political posts within hours of his inauguration. Many of those picks came from the Obama alumni network.

In contrast, in 2017, Republicans had trouble filling positions in the new Trump administration. Trump wound up bringing in few people with real government experience.

Dans, a former top official at Trump’s Office of Personnel Management, likened the early approach to “preseason scrimmaging.”

He said the group plans to release their policy playbook this spring. “This is not the end-all, but we are getting enough people in the room to say this is the majority” opinion on certain policies, Dans said.

Heritage said it is still finalizing policies it would recommend to an incoming GOP president, but a spokesperson pointed to a 2020 white paper from the group that is something of a free-market wish list.

Its recommendations includeending all energy-related tax credits and subsidies, eliminating all loan guarantees, ending the renewable fuel standard, spinning off environmental reviews to the states, expanding leasing on federal lands, repealing new source review, and ending the social cost of carbon.

Competition on the right

Nearly a dozen conservative policy experts and advocates interviewed for this story, who were all granted anonymity to speak candidly, alluded to the growing influence of Heritage Action.

It is the separate lobbying arm of the organization that churns out newsletters describing critical race theory and the investing strategy known as environmental, social and governance as “woke left attacks.”

Heritage has also been highly critical of big technology companies and has called for big cuts to defense spending, echoing calls on the far right.

Last week, Heritage announced that Carlson, who has dabbled in white nationalist theories, will be the keynote speaker for its 50th anniversary gala in April.

Roberts praised him as a “fearless American who is unafraid to challenge the Washington regime.”

Heritage’s lurch toward populism has been raising eyebrows among some.

“Heritage will have to decide whether it wants to stick with its conservative principles or evolve to more nationalist-type of policies,” one conservative policy advocate said.

Divisions at Heritage are illustrative of larger tensions within the Republican Party, observers noted.

One hypothesized that the transition project was in part a way for Heritage to regain some stature. Others noted it is not entirely unusual for think tanks to be at odds with their lobbying arms.

When asked about the influence of Heritage Action, Rob Bluey, vice president of communications, said the partnership between Heritage and its campaign arm is “even stronger today under Jessica Anderson’s leadership.”

“Heritage Action advocates for the American people in Washington, D.C., and state capitals based on the principles espoused by The Heritage Foundation,” he said.

A second conservative policy advocate thought it was unusual how far in advance Heritage launched the 2025 project, which has already been underway for more than a year.

“That’s something you don’t usually see in Washington, D.C.,” the advocate said.

He thought that could sideline the organization’s efforts to conduct rigorous oversight of the Biden administration for the next two years.

“It’s just interesting that Heritage is willing to take on a project that won’t have any impact until 2025,” the person said.

The conservative landscape changed in the Trump era, and in recent years a number of conservative policy shops popped up, like the Center for Renewing America led by Russ Vought, the former White House budget director. The Center for Renewing America sits on the project’s advisory board.

In recent years, several dozen staffers left the 275-person foundation, news which was first reported in September by the conservative-leaning Dispatch.

A Heritage spokesperson did not refute turnover but said the organization also brought on 90 new hires in all of 2022 — the year after Roberts took over.

“His optimistic vision and always-on-offense approach to policymaking are helping us build an exceptional team,” said Bluey. “As a result, Heritage experienced tremendous growth in 2022, proudly welcoming many talented policy experts and outstanding conservative leaders to the organization.”

‘Brainwashing our kids’

One of those new hires is Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a longtime economist who joined last August as the director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment. She worked at both the Transportation and Treasury departments under the Trump administration. Before that she spent nine years as a director at the Manhattan Institute, a think tank.

At a January forum held at Heritage, Furchtgott-Roth complained to Rep. Kevin Hern, the chair of the Republican Study Committee from oil-and-gas rich Oklahoma, about how decarbonization efforts from the Biden administration were, as she put it, “completely changing the American way of life.” She wondered how Republicans planned to “fight back an area that they are brainwashing our kids about.”

Replied Hern: “Well, I’m from Oklahoma, next question.” The crowd laughed.

In a recent interview, Furchtgott-Roth espoused familiar GOP energy views promoting all-of-the-above energy sources.

But another observer noticed more “red-meat critiquing” from her shop. A recent article she wrote suggested Biden favored clean energy merely to boost Chinese markets after reports surfaced that the Penn Biden Center received Chinese donations.

Similarly, one of her first events at the organization featured authorsJerome Corsi and Marc Morano— both reject mainstream climate science — to speak on a panel about “The Politics of Climate Change.”

“This is not as much an economics question but a political question, and that’s why we are so glad to have these two authors with us today,” Furchtgott-Roth said in opening remarks.

Corsi suggested climate advocates adopted the term “climate change” “because they know global warming cannot be true.” He rejected the idea carbon dioxide contributes to extreme weather like hurricanes. “It’s completely a lie,” he said.

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the Heritage Foundation, a massively funded right-wing “think tank” that currently functions as a marketing and political enforcement arm of the MAGA movement, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week. A line-up of Republican politicians addressed the group Thursday, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will speak Friday. The celebration will culminate in a Friday evening keynote address by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which may tell you everything you need to know about the intellectual seriousness and integrity of Heritage as it turns 50.

Heritage was founded by right-wing corporate and foundation funders as one of the movement-building investments that followed future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell’s 1971 memo calling for corporate America to fund a multifaceted response to what he described as an attack on the free enterprise system in education, the media, and the courts. Heritage made a big splash with its “Mandate for Leadership,” a right-wing policy wish list that became the governing agenda for the Ronald Reagan administration.

A pillar of the conservative wing of the Republican establishment for decades, Heritage has moved aggressively toward the far right over the past decade, shedding conservative scholars in favor of ideological warriors in its rush to align itself with the party’s Tea Party wing. During the Obama administration, and especially under the leadership of former Sen. Jim DeMint, Heritage favored obstructionism over governing, pressuring Republicans to shut down the government in an attempt to crush the Affordable Care Act.

During the Trump era, Heritage was all-in for the former reality star turned president, filling his transition team and administration with appointees and helping fill the courts with judges who could be counted on to advance the political agendas of the GOP’s hard right. Much of its updated “Mandate for Leadership”—including massive tax cuts heavily favoring the wealthiest Americans—became Trump policy.

Since Trump’s defeat, Heritage’s MAGAfication has continued. In 2022, Heritage’s president, Kay Cole James, left to work for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and was replaced by Kevin Roberts, “a Texas firebrand more determined to fight pandemic restrictions, critical race theory in schools, and ‘teaching transgenderism to kindergartners,’” in the words of the Washington Post. Roberts, now competing for right-wing funding with newer Trump-aligned organizations like the Center for Renewing America, can be heard on Fox denouncing “woke corporations.”

In his speech opening this week’s celebrations, Roberts said the 2024 election “may be our last, best chance to rescue this nation from a woke, socialist left bent on its destruction.” He portrayed the governmental response to the COVID-19 crisis as “tyranny” and mocked “non-vaccine vaccines” and “useless masks.” He declared that there must be no bargaining with the “woke left” and asserted that “dismantling the woke and weaponized Administrative State” is a matter of national survival.

Today, Heritage and Heritage Action are part of the dishonest and harmful right-wing campaign against public schools and school boards. A Heritage ebook about **critical race theory suggests that systemic racism does not exist in the United States because racial discrimination is illegal, a ridiculous claim akin to suggesting that illicit drugs cannot be a problem in the U.S. due to their being illicit.

Heritage is also leading the “2025 Presidential Transition Project,” a coalition of Christian nationalist, voter suppressing, anti-LGBTQ, anti-government, Big Lie-promoting, and Trump-cheerleading groups to “position the movement to take the reins of government” after what they hope will be Trump’s return to power—or the election of another Republican in 2024. Under Heritage’s leadership, the coalition is pushing for mass firings of federal employees to “dismantle the deep state that undermined Trump.”

As Heritage celebrates its 50th anniversary, Right Wing Watch offers this brief and admittedly non-comprehensive look at some of the ways this powerful institution works to make the U.S. less democratic, free, and equal.

Making American Less Equal

Heritage has opposed virtually every advance toward legal equality for LGBTQ Americans and portrayed those advances as dire threats. Immediately after the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling in 2015, Heritage promoted a plan to overturn it. Heritage’s role in the far right’s current war on the rights of trans people includes model legislation that exposes the right’s hypocrisy in claiming to act on behalf of “parents’ rights” while undermining parents who affirm their trans kids.

Making America Less Welcoming

Heritage brags that it played a leading role to “crush” bipartisan immigration reform in 2007. Heritage founder Ed Fuelner backed Trump’s controversial claim that he could use an executive order to eliminate the birthright citizenship guarantee of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In a 2017 email, Fuelner called birthright citizenship “just another form of amnesty” and claimed (wrongly and contrary to Supreme Court precedent) that Congress could eliminate it simply by passing a resolution. Heritage infamously published a report making bogus claims about immigrants’ cost to society, written by a fellow who had argued in a previous paper that immigration policy should take into consideration that Hispanic people have lower IQs than white people.

Making America Less Free

Heritage backed the long right-wing campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs and Republicans taking a House majority that same year, Heritage called for anti-choice lawmakers to “go on offense,” calling on Congress to “restrict or prohibit” the availability of abortion medication by mail and telemedicine.

Making America Less Democratic

Heritage has aggressively promoted bogus election-fraud claims as justification for states to pass more restrictive voting laws. Heritage Fellow Hans von Spakovsky, a longtime promoter of debunked claims about voting fraud, was a member of Trump’s short-lived sham “election integrity” commission to which he urged that no Democrats or moderate Republicans be appointed. (The commission shut down a short time later after failing to find any instances of widespread fraud.) Von Spakvosky also denounced a 2021 federal voting rights bill—the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act—as “an invasion of state sovereignty.” In 2018, a federal judge slammed von Spakovsky for making “myriad misleading statements” about purported voting by noncitizens.

Making America Less Just

Heritage played a key role in the long right-wing campaign to take dominion over the Supreme Court and federal judiciary. Heritage Action helped identify and then promote Trump’s Supreme Court nominees; it called Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination “our chance to secure the Supreme Court for decades to come.” Kevin Roberts, Heritage’s current president, has said that the hard-right court majority cemented with Trump’s justices “could open new avenues of constitutional entrepreneurism.”

Making America Less Safe

Heritage has pushed to limit the ability of the federal government to regulate corporate behavior in ways that protect workers, consumers, communities, and the environment. In his address to Heritage on Thursday, Sen. Mike Lee argued that regulation by federal agencies is contrary to the Constitution and amounts to “tyranny.” Heritage aggressively opposed the Affordable Health Care Act and the expansion of Medicaid, both of which have granted millions of Americans access to health care. Heritage officials have also pushed climate change denialism, ignoring the plight of Americans facing extreme weather and climate change in favor of energy companies’ bottom line.

Deep Pockets

Heritage has plenty of resources to bring to its aggressive plans to steer America’s future course far to the right. In 2021, its revenue topped $100 million and its net assets $367 million.And that’s not counting the resources of the mini-Heritage Foundations that make up the State Policy Network and push similar agendas at the state level.

Such funding, partnered with red-state Republicans aggressively pushing Heritage’s agenda into law all around the country, helps explain Roberts’ optimism that Heritage will triumph in this “existential” struggle. “The left started this new culture war,” he declared at Thursday’s celebration. “We will finish it.”

Tags: Ed Feulner Kevin Roberts Ron DeSantis Tucker Carlson Election 2024 Heritage Foundation

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11 22

kevin Roberts is an American academic who is the president of The Heritage Foundation. Prior to assuming his current role, he was the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin, Texas.[1] Roberts served as the president of Wyoming Catholic College from 2013 to 2016.[2][3]^

Education[

Roberts earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, a Master of Arts in history from Virginia Tech, and a Ph.D. in American history from University of Texas at Austin.[1]^

Career[

Wyoming Catholic College[

He served as president of Wyoming Catholic College from 2013 to 2016 when he accepted his position as executive vice president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

During his tenure as president of Wyoming Catholic College, Roberts led the institution to an outright rejection of Title IV federal student loans and grants, citing religious liberty concerns.[4] This decision garnered significant national attention, as it made the college one of just a few nationally to reject such funding. In an article on the decision, The New York Times described Roberts and his students as "cowboy Catholics" for their independence.[5]^

Heritage Foundation[

In October 2021, it was announced that Roberts had been selected to replace Kay Coles James as president of The Heritage Foundation.[6][7]^

References[

  1. ^ ^Jump up to:^a ^b^ ^"Texas Public Policy Foundation staff biographies".
  2.  Samuels, Brett (October 14, 2021). "Heritage Foundation names new president". The Hill. Retrieved October 14, 2021.
  3.  Wermund, Benjamin (October 14, 2021). "Texan Kevin Roberts, 'a D.C. outsider,' picked to lead conservative Heritage Foundation". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved October 18, 2021.
  4.  "Catholic College Won't Compromise Beliefs, Rejects Federal Financial Aid". FOX News Insider. 2015-03-29. Retrieved 2017-04-03.
  5.  Healy, Jack (2015-04-11). "To Keep Free of Federal Reins, Wyoming Catholic College Rejects Student Aid". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-04-03.
  6.  "Heritage Names 'D.C. Outsider' Roberts as New President | RealClearPolitics". www.realclearpolitics.com. Retrieved 2021-10-18.
  7.  Samuels, Brett (2021-10-14). "Heritage Foundation names new president". TheHill. Retrieved 2021-10-18.

Categories: 

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/heritage-foundation/

no lnx twt vid

Conservative think tank pays $1.3 million to air anti-LGBTQ ad during Thanksgiving weekend

Daniel Villarreal and The New Civil Rights Movement November 24, 2022

The Heritage Foundation, an anti-LGBTQ think tank, is reportedly spending $1.3 to air an anti-LGBTQ ad on TV and online during Thanksgiving weekend.

The ad seeks to turn public sentiment against The Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would require U.S. states to legally recognize same-sex marriage.

The bill would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the 1996 law that prohibited federal government recognition of same-sex marriages. The act requires federal and state governments to recognize same-sex marriages that occur in states that provide them. Any state that refuses can be sued by the married same-sex couples.

The Heritage Foundation’s ad disingenuously says that the bill would “expose religious schools and nonprofits to lawsuits and attacks from the IRS just because they believe in traditional marriage.”

“Before Republicans can take over the U.S. House, liberals are hurrying to cram through their far-left agenda,” the ad adds. “[Politicians in Washington D.C.] think you won’t stop this attack on people of faith.”

The 30-second ad will air in local broadcasts during the NFL Thanksgiving Day matchups between the New England Patriots and Minnesota Vikings, Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions, and New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys. The ad will also be seen during coverage of four rival college football games, including Iowa Hawkeyes vs. Nebraska Cornhuskers on Friday and Indiana Hoosiers and Purdue Boilermakers on Saturday,” Fox News reported.

The ad directs people to visit the foundation’s website. One of its articles admits that discriminating against same-sex couples is similar to racist discrimination. It also admits that it wants to protect this right to discriminate.

As proof that the bill would harm religious individuals and organizations, the article mentions legal challenges against businesses that refused to provide services to same-sex couples. But these legal challenges predate the bill and occurred, not because of the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing marriages, but because the individuals involved violated state anti-discrimination protections.

Rather than informing the public, the ad is really meant to compel voters to call their Republican senators to get them to oppose the bill. Twelve Republican senators already voted in favor of furthering the bill towards a full vote.The vote is expected to occur after Thanksgiving. If these 12 senators all vote in favor of the bill, it’ll become law barely a month before Republicans gain a House majority.

Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee recently introduced an amendment to the bill that would specifically provide an exception for religious groups and individuals to discriminate. He and 20 other Republican senators signed a letter asking the 12 Republicans who supported the law to withdraw their support.

However, a revised version of the bill submitted earlier this month added a section that pledged to uphold all federal “religious liberty and conscience protections.” No individual or group will be forced to “solemnize” same-sex marriages nor will the legislation threaten any individual or group’s tax-exempt status, the revised bill states.

Watch above or at this link.

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badash AN 9 22

Heritage Foundation is ranked as the third most influential think tank – left or right – in the U.S. A right-wing D.C. organization, it’s where Donald Trump went to deliver a speech in April when he was trying to reposition himself as someone who was getting ready to run for president again, this time with “policies.”

Policies are what once made the Heritage Foundation the jewel of the conservative movement. It provided Ronald Reagan with the backbone of his body of work that transformed the American right into what it was until Trump took it over. It’s now home to at least four former top Trump administration officials, including former Vice President Mike Pence.

Critics on both sides of the aisle overnight were stunned and outraged when the new head of the Heritage Foundation, Dr. Kevin Roberts, applauded Italy’s election this weekend of a fascist, Giorgia Meloni, to be its new prime minister.

READ MORE: How Trump’s Big Lie Is Threatening the Future of Elections

“Italy’s far-right coalition led by Meloni wins election, exit polls say,” is the headline at European news agency France 24, calling her a “neo-fascist.

Here in the U.S., ABC News’ headline reads: “How a party of neo-fascist roots won big in Italy.”

“A century after Benito Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome, which brought the fascist dictator to power, Meloni is poised to lead Italy’s first far-right-led government since World War II and Italy’s first woman premier,” the article, from the Associated Press makes clear.

It also makes clear Meloni’s fascist focus: “Yes to the natural family. No to the LGBT lobby. Yes to sexual identity. No to gender ideology,” the AP says she “thundered” at a rally.

The Heritage Foundation has assets of around $400 million. Its latest annual report, 2021, is titled, “Always on Offense.” The cover boasts a flattering quote praising the organization from former Trump Secretary of State and possible 2024 presidential hopeful Mike Pompeo.

Dr. Kevin Roberts leads Heritage. He’s the former CEO of the far-right wing Texas Public Policy Foundation, based in Austin, Texas.

READ MORE: Critics Blast Top US Conservative Think Tank President for Applauding Italy’s Election of a ‘Neo-Fascist’ Prime Minister

TPPF has received funding from Koch Industries, is a big supporter of school vouchers, and an even bigger supporter of climate change denialism.

Its Fueling Freedom Project, it says, is working to “Explain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels.”

Back in 2016 Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott proposed nine major changes to the U.S. Constitution. He chose to make his announcement at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Those proposals could have led to the elimination of many federal LGBTQ protections, including same-sex marriage.

Dr. Roberts is a former president of Wyoming Catholic College. In 2015 he decided to opt out of accepting federal financial aid, citing the school’s religious beliefs against LGBTQ people as part of the reason.

“Roberts said that his university loves all people and has charity towards all, but they would have problems with the admissions and employment of transgender individuals or people with a same-sex sexual orientation,” Fox News reported at the time.

So perhaps it’s unsurprising that Roberts celebrated Italy’s election of a fascist leader with a strong anti-LGBTQ agenda Sunday evening – urging conservatives to fuel more elections of people like Meloni.

“If exit polls are right, then conservatives will come to power in Italy, just weeks after conservatives in Sweden won,” he tweeted, glossing over the fascistic aspects of their conservatism.

“This can be a trend,” he urged, “conservatives everywhere need to define the choice as what it is—US vs THEM, everyday people vs globalist elites, who’ve shown they hate us.”

[twt]

roberts was highly criticized, even by fellow conservatives.

Tom Nichols, a staff writer at The Atlantic who is the popular and now retired U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security, blasted Roberts.

READ MORE: Watch: Torba Warns GOP to Not ‘Disavow or Condemn Us’ Because ‘Christian Nationalists Are the Republican Party’

“The president of a DC think tank explains how he’s just a regular guy helping the little people against the globalists, and not all aligned with a political movement that trades in hateful rhetoric,” tweeted Nichols, a Never Trump conservative.

Former Bloomberg Opinion columnist Noah Smith who writes about economics at Substack mocked Roberts.

“‘Globalist elites’? Man, you have a PhD and you’re the president of a think tank that fights for free trade. Who do you think you’re kidding??” he tweeted.

Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the right wing Manhattan Institute, slammed Roberts’ remarks.

“I’d just like a party that stands for free markets, less government, originalist judges, strong defense, and against woke excess. Count me out with this Pat Buchanan-style tinfoil hat populism,” he tweeted, referring to the far-right anti-immigration former Nixon-Ford-Reagan advisor.

A former editor for the right wing Cato Institute also criticized Roberts.

“When the president of your think tank is cheering on the electoral victories of actual fascism, that’s probably a sign it’s time to resign from the organization if you’re an employee, or pull your dollars if you’re a donor. American conservatism mustn’t continue down this path,” warned Aaron Ross Powell.

“Recovering libertarian” writer and editor Jay Stooksberry also mocked Roberts.

“Careful, Kev. If I saw somebody with the title ‘Ph.D. and CEO of one of the largest, most influential think tanks in D.C.’, I’d assume they were one of the ‘global elite’. Us-versus-them populism is some raunchy, anti-intellectual, and dangerous thinking, my dude.”

Conservatives weren’t the only ones criticizing the Heritage Foundation head, with some seeing his “globalist elites” remarks as antisemitic.

“American fascists, crawling out of their holes,” wrote Jay Bookman, author and award-winning journalist.

“We see you and your cutesy code words. You want to embrace fascism? We will stop you and your ilk. Our democracy will destroy your fascism,” David Sugarman, an Oregon attorney, wrote.

Writer and director David Avallone did not mince words in response to Roberts’ remarks.

“L’Shanah Tovah, you absolute fucking Nazi scumbag,” he tweeted. “Stop being a pants shitting coward. Just say ‘Jews’ when you mean Jews.”

===

war games

Among these luminaries were figures such as John Eastman—lawyer for Donald Trump and author of a memo advising Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally block certification of Joe Biden’s win in order to buy time for GOP-controlled state legislatures to send competing slates of electors—and K.T. McFarland, who served as deputy national security advisor under Michael Flynn in the Trump White House.

Other participants includeKevin Roberts, then-executive director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (soon to be head of the Heritage Foundation), Jeff Giesea, “a [Peter] Thiel protégé and secret funder of alt-right causes,” and Charles Haywood, a fringe blogger who anxiously awaits an American “Caesar, authoritarian reconstructor of our institutions.”

The distinguished wargamers.===

https://www.heritage.org › staff › kevin-roberts-phd

Kevin Roberts, Ph.D. | The Heritage Foundation

Oct 14, 2021President Dr. Kevin Roberts serves as the seventh president in Heritage's 49-year history. Request an Interview Download Headshot Kevin Roberts, Ph.D., was named president of The Heritage...

https://www.heritage.org › the-kevin-roberts-show

The Kevin Roberts Show | The Heritage Foundation

As a former college professor and current president of The Heritage Foundation, America's most influential policy organization, Dr. Roberts has spent his career learning, educating, and taking...

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redirect.heritage.org › staff › kevin-roberts-phd

Kevin Roberts, Ph.D. | The Heritage Foundation

Kevin Roberts, Ph.D., was named president of The Heritage Foundation in October 2021. He succeeded former Heritage President Kay C. James as the seventh president in the organization's 49-year history.

heritage.stage.heritage.org › staff › kevin-roberts-phd

Kevin Roberts, Ph.D. | The Heritage Foundation

Kevin Roberts, Ph.D., was named president of The Heritage Foundation in October 2021. He will succeed Heritage President Kay C. James later this year as the seventh president in the organization's...

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Kevin_Roberts_(academic)

Kevin Roberts (academic) - Wikipedia

Education. University of Louisiana, Lafayette ( BA) Virginia Tech ( MA) University of Texas at Austin ( PhD) Kevin Roberts is an American academic who is the president of The Heritage Foundation. Prior to assuming his current role, he was the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin, Texas. [1] Roberts served as the president of Wyoming Catholic College from 2013 to 2016.

https://www.linkedin.com › in › kevin-d-roberts-5ba65047

Kevin D. Roberts - President - The Heritage Foundation | LinkedIn

Shared by Kevin D. Roberts Join now to see all activity Experience President The Heritage Foundation Dec 2021 - Present11 months Texas Public Policy Foundation 5 years 8 months Chief Executive...

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Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) / Twitter

Kevin Roberts. @KevinRobertsTX. President, @Heritage. | PhD, American history, @UTAustin. ( #HookEm) | Teacher, professor, headmaster & college president | Chair, Texas #1836Commission.

redirect.heritage.org › the-kevin-roberts-show

The Kevin Roberts Show | The Heritage Foundation

The Kevin Roberts Show is available on Apple Podcasts, IHeartRadio, Spotify, Ricochet, YouTube, and more. Each episode of The Kevin Roberts Show is a weekly rallying cry for lovers of freedom everywhere, packed with Dr. Roberts ' analysis on the issues of the day and deep conversations with the movers and shakers of American politics and culture. And all of it backed by the academic excellence of The Heritage Foundation.

:{:{}:{https://www.youtube.com}::{ › watch?v=qOqVdiA0S9Y}:}:

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The Heritage Foundation 235K subscribers Dr. Kevin Roberts, a conservative leader with extensive experience in education and public policy, will serve as the next president of The Heritage...

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The Kevin Roberts Show on Apple Podcasts

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