vought 2 scf

nom named head of OMB again trump 18 see 2025

SEE THREE 11 24 BACK TO OMB

now TWO (was mary)

see pjt 2025

merri ok

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MMA 11 24

Trump is planning to appoint Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist who has plotted to remake the federal workforce in MAGA’s image, to serve as his administration’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, according to CBS News. Vought held the same position during Trump’s first term. Since leaving office he has been a leading architect of Project 2025, a sprawling plan to provide staffing and policy options to the next Republican administration.

In his role at Project 2025, Vought was instrumental in ensuring that decimating the ranks of federal civil service became a conservative priority. He wrote the second chapter in Project 2025’s policy book — Mandate for Leadership — titled: “Executive Office of the President of the United States.” In it, he argued that “a President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences—or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country.”

As part of his anti-woke crusade, Vought has repeatedly defended and promoted Christian nationalism, at one point calling for an “army” of right-wing activists with “biblical worldview” to staff the next Republican administration. He wrote an op-ed for Newsweek in 2021 with the headline “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With 'Christian Nationalism?’” More recently, Politico reported that a document from the Center for Renewing America — a MAGA-aligned think tank Vought founded — listed “Christian nationalism” as a top priority for a second Trump term.

While at the helm of the Center for Renewing America, Vought has been outspoken in his advocacy of Schedule F — a scheme to reclassify career civil servants as political appointees. Trump attempted to implement Schedule F in the waning days of his first term, but its effects were blunted by his loss in 2020. If his incoming administration moves forward with the plan, which seems all but inevitable, as many as 50,000 career staffers could be replaced with MAGA loyalists. (Some other estimates put the number closer to 20,000.)

Vought has championed the use of congressional rules to defund and remove individual government employees for punishment and deploying “ideological purity tests” to ensure federal workers are loyal to Trump.

During a recent interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Vought argued that the “whole notion of an independent agency should be thrown out.”

Following a broad backlash to Project 2025, Vought was caught on hidden video discussing his work at the initiative and how it might play if Trump returned to the White House.

“Eighty percent of my time is working on the plans of what’s necessary to take control of these bureaucracies, and we are working doggedly on that,” Vought said. “Whether it’s destroying agencies’ notion of independence, that they’re independent from the president.”

In the interview, Vought claimed that he’d been working on “about 350 different documents that are regulations and things of that nature” for a future Trump administration.

“You may say, ‘OK, DHS, we want to have the largest deportation — what are your actual memos that a secretary sends out to do it?’ Like, there’s an executive order, regulations, secretarial memos,” Vought said. “Those are the types of things that need to be thought through so you’re not — you’re not having to scramble or do that later on.”

This early preparation includes creating documents to facilitate the “largest deportation in history” and to deploy the military to “maintain law and order” against civilian protesters. Vought elaborated that the mass deportations were part of a plan to “end multiculturalism” in the country.

As a hardline conservative, Vought has pushed to implement harsh austerity measures throughout the country. The Washington Post reported that Vought advocates for eliminating trillions of dollars of reductions in “anti-poverty programs such as housing, health care and food assistance.” He has called for massive cuts to Medicaid and floated future cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Toward that end, Vought and his colleagues at the Center for Renewing America are leading proponents of a radical interpretation of executive authority that claims the president can unilaterally refuse to spend money allocated by Congress. Known as the “impoundment” power, Vought and his fellow travelers assert that a 1974 law that mandates presidents spend money Congress has allocated — passed after President Richard Nixon refused to spend federal funds for clean water and schools — is unconstitutional. This theory, if Trump acts on it, would centralize budgeting power within the Oval Office and tilt the balance of power between the president and Congress even further towards the executive branch.

Aside from slashing the United States’ very limited safety net, Vought’s think tank released a budget proposal for fiscal year 2023 that would unleash the FBI against Trump’s declared enemies and “thwart the increasing societal destruction caused by progressive policies at the state and local levels that have defunded police, refused to prosecute criminals, and released violent felons into communities.”

Now, as he reprises his role as the head of OMB, he will wield considerable influence within the Trump administration and will almost certainly play a central role in the likely purge of the federal workforce.

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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: Conscript right-wing sheriffs for deportations

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.”

### Center for Renewing America defends “Operation Wetback”

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.

### Project 2025 embeds itself in Trump 2.0

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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an 11 24

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."

"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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pro pub an 10 24

“In Trauma”: A key Trump adviser says a Trump administration will seek to make civil servants miserable in their jobs.
Military: In private speeches, he laid out plans to use armed forces to quell any domestic “riots.”
1776 and 1860: He likened the country’s moment to those fractious periods in American history.

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.”

}

hidden video UK? climate activists

alternet-no lnx

How the morbidly rich are sabotaging the very system that made them wealthy

Thom Hartmann August 19, 2024

Recently, a reporter spoke with one of the chief architects of Project 2025 using a hidden camera and microphone and learned they’re still in tight with Trump, still planning to run his administration if he’s elected, still planning to gut the guardrails America has placed around capitalism over the past 100 years, and even planning to “pull the ladder up” to make it harder for entrepreneurs and small business people to succeed in America.

Their plan relies on a major reinvention of modern capitalism and is being pushed by people suffering from an identifiable metal illness. To see how they’re hoping to pull this off, it’s important and necessary to first understand that there are two types of capitalism: raw and regulated.

Raw capitalism — sometimes referred to as Laissez-faire (“leave alone”) or “unregulated” capitalism — reflects the very essence of predatory activity. As any Libertarian can proudly tell you, the only rule is that no capitalist can commit fraud against another capitalist and the only role for government is to provide a stable currency and a court system to prosecute fraud.

Raw capitalism could be called the law of the jungle; only the strong survive, and those who are the most ruthless and cutthroat end up with all the money and power while everybody else stands on the outside looking in. It favors psychopathy in the executive suite.

A handful of families, typically one for each industry, end up fabulously wealthy while their companies monopolize market sectors to keep new entrants and entrepreneurs out.

Workers, at the bottom of the hierarchy, are screwed: no unions are allowed, wages reflect how desperate working people are, and consumers live in a caveat emptor (“buyer beware”) world where ripoffs are common, food and products are often dangerous, and the environment is poisoned to keep cleanup costs low and thus profits high.

Raw capitalism is how most of the world ran until the first decades of the 20th century. You can read the story of it in most of Dickens’ novels. By the 1880s-1920s era, it had made a handful of families (Rockefellers/oil, Carnegie/steel, Vanderbilt/railroads, Astor/real estate, Armour/meatpacking, Morgan/banking, DuPont/chemicals, etc.) mind-bogglingly rich and succeeded in limiting the middle class to about 10 percent of Americans, mostly doctors, lawyers, and shopkeepers. Everybody else was dirt poor.

Regulated capitalism is an altogether different animal that expands a capitalist system to aid workers and consumers as well as capitalists.

With regulated capitalism, the rules of capitalism are expanded to benefit all of society, rather than exclusively the capitalists themselves. While it was championed in Adam Smith’s books A Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations(1776), and highlighted repeatedly by David Ricardo five decades later, it didn’t really come into fruition until the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. His embrace of Keynesian economics transformed America and, ultimately, the entire free world.

President Roosevelt, when accepting his renomination in 1936, took on the advocates of raw capitalism — which had run the world just four years earlier — head-on:

“[O]ut of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital—all undreamed of by the fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.”

It was a radical separation from the old order, and his audience cheered wildly as they realized FDR wanted to make capitalism, and America, a fairer and more compassionate nation.

“There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.”

He challenged the most powerful men and companies in America, promising to strip them of the power to write laws and control politicians that they’d enjoyed for over a century. He called them out and took them on.

“It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.”

And he pointed out how this corrupt system of raw capitalism had destroyed opportunity in America for average people while making a small group of “princes” richer than the kings of old.

“Throughout the Nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.”

Roosevelt beat the oligarchs and was successful in bringing regulated capitalism to America. His policies included the right of workers to unionize, aggressive enforcement of the nation’s new anti-monopoly laws, high levels of taxation on profits and great wealth, and consumer and worker protections guaranteed by government.

The result was the world’s first middle class that included more than half of all citizens.

Donald Trump, JD Vance, their billionaire donors, six Republicans on the Supreme Court, and Project 2025 have declared war on Roosevelt’s regulated capitalism; they want to turn the clock back to the raw capitalism Gilded Age of the 1920s by stripping regulatory agencies out of government, cutting taxes on the morbidly rich, and ending protections for labor.

Russell Vought was the guy who put Donald Trump's executive order banning the teaching of Black history (“CRT”) and other diversity training for federal employees into place when he was director of the Office of Management and Budget. Now he’s a principal architect of Project 2025 and the lead cheerleader for ending regulated capitalism and reverting to raw capitalism.

“Eighty percent of my time is working on the plans of what’s necessary to take control of these bureaucracies,” Vought said in the secretly-taped recording. “And we are working doggedly on that, whether it’s destroying their agencies’ notion of independence.”

In this effort, and the Supreme Court’s recent destruction of the Chevron Deference that authorized regulatory agencies to protect workers, consumers, and the environment, these reactionary (arguably “revolutionary”) Republicans are trying to pull up the ladder so a new generation of entrepreneurs will face a wall of monopolies and other barriers to achieving business success.

They are trying to gut the very system that created a large enough middle class to provide customers for their products, thus making them rich. They want to return us to the era of FDR’s libertarian “economic royalists,” an effort that will impoverish America just as it has every other country that’s tried it (Russia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, etc.).

When psychologist Eric Fromm identified people as having either a “doing” or a “being” orientation, he nailed the personality characteristics of the billionaires and their well-paid toadies who’re promoting this dystopian future for America.

He argued that there’s a specific “hoarder” personality afflicted with a compulsion to constantly accumulate more, more, more stuff. When they’re poor, their apartments fill up with newspapers and tin cans. When they’re rich, their money bins fill up with cash.

In either case, they’re mentally ill and perpetually miserable. If they’re rich enough, their mental illness causes them to mercilessly exploit others for their own gain.

This is the psychology of this generation of wannabee economic royalists, and their plan to replace regulated capitalism with the old laissez-faire system will also destroy the remnants of the American middle class that FDR created.

We can’t let them get away with inflicting their mental illness on the rest of us. Double-check your voter registration and show up this fall!

===

YMAIL 6 25 24

...NEW GILDED AGE

...This is the America Republicans want to return us to today. This is how, they assert, the Constitution wants us to live. The way things used to be.

In the decades immediately following the Civil War, American government was fundamentally altered. The process was sped up with the 16th Amendment, authorizing the income tax, and the 19th Amendment that allowed women to vote. Along with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, these changes provided the basis for the US government to intervene in the “free market” and create America’s first broad middle class.

FDR imposed a top income tax rate of 90 percent on the morbidly rich, 50% on corporate profits, and passed legislation giving average people the right to unionize, balancing the power equation between management and labor.

The result was that by 1980 well over 60 percent of Americans were in the middle class, the majority with a single household income.

This is the series of events to which Republicans object when they say they want to either “return America to constitutional principles” or enter into a “post-constitutional” era, depending on who’s speaking.

Libertarian billionaires consider any interference in the “magical free market” to be a violation of some sort of natural law that creates Dickensonian societies with massive concentrations of wealth at the top, widespread poverty among the working class at the bottom, and a small middle class made up almost entirely of entrepreneurs and professional people like doctors and lawyers.

This is why Republican intellectuals like former OMB Director Russell Vought, a major advisor to Trump andProject 2025, are, as Heather Cox Richardson noted in her brilliant Substack newsletter:

“[C]alling for draconian cuts to government agencies, student loans, and housing, health care, and food assistance. [Vought] called for $2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid over ten years, more than $600 billion in cuts to the Affordable Care Act, more than $400 billion in cuts to food assistance, and so on.”

Its why Republicans are working so hard to disempower women in the workplace, starting with eliminating their control over their own reproductive capacity (which is what drove the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s post-Roe v Wade).

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 a “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 ended.

We see this in the ways 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.

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.

When the 1960s happened and workers, women, draft-age young men, Blacks, Hispanics, and gays were all simultaneously demanding equal rights and protection from exploitation, conservatives in the GOP believed they were seeing the actual, disastrous unraveling of America.

They argued that transferring even part of the wealth of rich people to help build a middle class is the first step in a socialist agenda that must ultimately end with torches, pitchforks, and rich people facing the guillotine in a full-blown communist takeover of America.

As Richardson notes:

“Vought argues that the United States is in a ‘post constitutional moment’ that ‘pays only lip service to the old Constitution.’ He attributes that crisis to ‘the Left,’ which he says ‘quietly adopted a strategy of institutional change,’ by which he appears to mean the growth of the federal government to protect individual Americans. He attributes that change to the presidency of President Woodrow Wilson beginning in 1913. Vought calls for what he calls ‘Radical Constitutionalism’ to destroy the power of the modern administrative state and instead elevate the president to supreme authority.”

These are the real stakes in this fall’s election:

— Democratic President Joe Biden believes that government intervening in the marketplace to build and sustain a broad and diverse middle class is good for all Americans. He holds up the success of the New Deal and the Great Society as exemplars, justification for programs holding corporate America to account and empowering women, minorities, and workers generally.

— Republican Donald Trump and his fellow billionaires in the GOP believe the middle class is still too large at today’s 49 percent and needs to be cut further down to size to take America back to the pre-1913 “constitutional” era when there was no income tax; women couldn’t vote, work, or have a checking account; there was no minimum wage or unemployment insurance; no Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid; and police routinely collaborated with employers to murder union organizers.

Republicans are dead serious about this. Your vote, and those of your friends and acquaintances, will determine which of these two dueling narratives about the future of the American middle class will win.

Choose wisely.

---

an 6 24

If he wins the election in November, former President Donald Trump's rumored top pick for his White House chief of staff would likely help him fast-track his plans to consolidate executive power and circumvent traditional checks and balances.

The Washington Post recently did a deep dive on Russ Vought — an avowed Christian nationalist who leads the far-right Center for Renewing America (CRA) — and his openly stated plans to help Trump fundamentally restructure the federal government. The Post cited anonymous sources familiar with Trump's thinking to report that Vought is under consideration to be selected as the former president's top deputy, should he defeat President Joe Biden this fall.

Under Vought's leadership, the CRA has become "a hub of Trump loyalists" according to the Post. The organization is staffed by people like former Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, who was indicted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in her Georgia election interference case. Another key CRA staffer is former Trump Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli, whose appointment was eventually ruled illegal by a federal judge. Both men could also have high-profile roles in a potential second Trump White House.

In September of 2022, Vought argued that Americans "are living in a post-Constitutional time," and called for a philosophy he referred to as "radical Constitutionalism" in order to crush the "deep state" and radically expand executive power. Vought's school of thought involves unorthodox ways of interpreting the Constitution in order to accomplish far-right political goals. This includes things like declaring the influx of undocumented immigrants to be an "invasion," then using wartime powers to handle immigration in ways that may be considered illegal.

"We showed that millions of illegal aliens coming across, and Mexican cartels holding operational control of the border, constitute an invasion,” Vought wrote in the essay. “This is where we need to be radical in discarding or rethinking the legal paradigms that have confined our ability to return to the original Constitution.”

Vought and the CRA are also closely tired to the far-right Project 2025 initiative championed by the Heritage Foundation. At the heart of Project 2025 is its 920-page blueprint for a radical restructuring of the federal government, which is entitled "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise." Vought authored the section on "the executive office of the President of the United States." He's also reportedly working on his own playbook for the first 180 days of a second Trump administration, which he has so far not publicly released. However, his past writings suggest his first six months as a possible White House chief of staff would be helping Trump gut the federal civil service and replace experienced career professionals with political loyalists and toadies.

According to the Post, Vought helped write Trump's "Schedule F" executive order, which would have stripped the civil service of numerous employment protection and greatly expanded the number of presidential appointees from around 5,000 to more than 54,000. President Joe Biden notably rescinded that order shortly after taking office.

Republican strategist Tim Chapman told the Post that the relationship between Vought and the 45th president was "a marriage of convenience."

“Russ has been pursuing an ideological agenda for a long time and views Trump’s second term as the best way to achieve it, while Trump needs people in his second term who are loyal and committed and adept at using the tools of the federal government," Chapman said.

One project Trump will likely trust Vought with is his stated goal of prosecuting his political enemies. Vought has argued against the DOJ being an independent agency, and insists that it ultimately be run at the direction of the sitting president. He told far-right activist Charlie Kirk on a podcast that he would be in favor of turning the DOJ against law enforcement officials who prosecuted Trump, and insisted the administration's response to efforts to hold Trump criminally accountable "can't just be hearings."

"It has to be investigations, an army of investigators that lead to firm convictions," he said.

Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).

---

===

mma 5 24

as the Republican National Committee quietly fights over how to approach abortion in its 2024 platform before the November election, Tony Perkins, president of the extreme anti-LGBTQ organization Family Research Council, is telling Republicans to embrace a rigid anti-abortion position.

According to a May 23 NBC report, the Trump campaign and its allies at the RNC are trying to prevent anti-abortion extremists from being elected as state delegates for the party’s platform committee, so as to not push the party too far right on contentious issues before the general election.

Perkins is a delegate to the GOP platform committee, a position he’s held twice in the past, and has indicated his intention to insist upon extreme anti-abortion policies. The Family Research Council is a partner of Project 2025, a right-wing extremist policy and staffing agenda for the next Republican administration, giving the group significant influence over a potential second Trump administration.

In a May 21 speech to the Muskegon County, Michigan, GOP[vid?

to Perkins’ YouTube page, the FRC president warned that Republicans are choosing to “retreat” from abortion and instructed them to instead commit to an “inflexible” anti-choice stance for 2024.

Video

CitationFrom the 2024 Muskegon County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner

He also published an open letter on May 22 to FRC’s blog, The Washington Stand, adapted from his speech. He again described “rumors and reports of an organized campaign to weaken” the GOP’s abortion stance — a campaign which, from the NBC story, appears to be led by Trump allies.

On the May 28 edition of Perkins’ podcast, Washington Watch, FRC’s Quena Gonzalez built upon the speech, calling on the audience to contact their state GOP chair and ask them to select anti-abortion delegates who will “protect life in the Republican national party platform.”

In April, Perkins suggested that the 2022 Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade did not go far enough, declaring: “This is not simply a state’s issue, this is for every level of government to protect the unborn.”

Additionally, Project 2025 partners Russ Vought, president of the Christian nationalist organization Center for Renewing America, and Ed Martin, president of the Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund, have both been announced recently as platform committee leaders.

Vought, the committee’s policy director, promotes Christian nationalism and has called to staff the next Republican administration with an “army” of conservatives who have a “biblical worldview.” Martin previously led the Republican National Coalition for Life, which denounces “fake pro-lifers” and commits to holding “Republican lawmakers accountable to the pro-life principles in our platform.”

Project 2025 and its partners are strongly anti-choice and their stances go past restricting abortion and criminalizing abortion medication, seeking to crack down on reproductive health care more broadly — including striking any mention of abortion from government laws, policies, and regulations.

### Media Matters weekly newsletter, May 24

05/24/24 10:44 AM EDT

### Key Project 2025 figure Russ Vought was appointed to the RNC's platform committee. Mainstream coverage of the move was minimal.

05/21/24 11:22 AM EDT

### Project 2025 director: A Trump administration will likely adopt many of the group’s policy suggestions

05/14/24

===

RSS key Project 2025 figure Russ Vought was appointed to the RNC's platform committee. Mainstream coverage of the move was minimal.](

https://www.mediamatters.org/project-2025/key-project-2025-figure-russ-vought-was-appointed-rncs-platform-committee-mainstream)

05/21/24

an 2 24 no lnx

Tuesday's episode of MSNBC's The ReidOut, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson spoke with host Joy Reid Tuesday about one of the most "frightening" aspects of a potential second Donald Trump administration.

Reid pointed to a Tuesday Politico report highlighting the fact that Russell Vought, former Trump director of the Office of Management and Budget is spearheading the potential administration's efforts to inject Christian nationalist ideals into the US government.

The MSNBC host emphasized that during a second Trump term, the United States government could eventually mirror Argentina's government — which has become an "the ultra-capitalist state" under its president — if the MAGA hopeful is successful in implementing a Christian nationalist state.

READ MORE: 'Handmaid’s Tale': Biden campaign blasts Trump Christian nationalism plans

"We don't want to do that. We really don't want to do that," Robinson replied. "I lived in Argentina. I love Argentina, the people and everything, but we don't want to follow their terms of government and how they raise their government. Vought wants to give Christian nationalism an image makeover and make it a bright and sunny and good thing. The Constitution — it doesn't really say separation of church and state, according to him. That piece — the Politico piece — about his plans is really frightening."

The longtime Post columnist emphasized, "One of the most frightening things is his apparent plans to bring back one of Trump's worst appointees, Michael Flynn, who pops up in that story later on. And he's become a christian nationalist nut. I guess he always was or has been for a long time. I'll tell you, this is extreme and it is — it's not irreversible, but this is really terrible for the country. And the Republican party is fine with this, and it's not only allowing it, but aiding and abetting it, and pushing it forward in a very deliberate way."

Watch the video below or at this link.

---

an 12 23

during his four years in the White House, former President Donald Trump clashed with a long list of conservative Republicans who served in his administration — including a secretary of state (Rex Tillerson), a national security adviser (John Bolton), a U.S. attorney general (Jeff Sessions) and a White House Chief of Staff (John F. Kelly). Former Vice President Mike Pence and former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr (a Sessions successor) were, for months, regarded as dedicated Trump allies, but in the end, even Pence and Barr became Trump critics.

Trump allies' Project 2025 agenda, according to reporting in the New York Times and the Washington Post, seeks to avoid such clashes during a possible second Trump Administration by making sure that only avowed loyalists are hired.

In a report published on December 15, the Wall Street Journal's Alex Leary describes some of the MAGA Republicans and loyalists who are helping Trump with plans for a possible return to the White House in 2025.

"When Donald Trump sat down in the office of his Bedminster, NJ golf club late this summer to flesh out his trade and border policy," Leary reports, "familiar faces were across from him: Robert Lighthizer and Russell Vought, two of the architects of the former president's populist first-term record. Trump's former trade representative and White House budget director, respectively, are part of a cadre of allies helping him shape policy proposals across a range of topics, laying the groundwork for what would be an aggressive and controversial second-term agenda."

Leary continues, "The group — which also includes Stephen Miller, driver of hardline immigration policies, former Housing Secretary Ben Carson and John Ratcliffe, former director of national intelligence, among others — is stocked with veterans of Trump's first term who are closely aligned with his vision of protectionist economic policies and an isolationist approach to foreign policy."

The WSJ reporter stresses that Trump and his allies want to make sure people picked for a second administration would be "on the same page" when it comes to immigration, foreign policy and economic policy.

According to Leary, other "key people" who "Trump and his team are in regular communication with over policy ideas" range from Brandon Judd (president of the National Border Patrol Council), Kevin Hassett (who formerly chaired the Council of Economic Advisers) and former Acting U.S. Attorney General Matt Whittaker (who came after Sessions and before Barr).

Leary notes that Trump's "policy agenda" has "excited core supporters while alarming Democrats and some Republicans."

One of those Republicans is Marc Short, who served in Trump's administration and later became an adviser for Pence's presidential campaign before Pence dropped out of the race.

Short told WSJ, "He's been pretty clear in saying he will use the levers of government to go after his political opponents, which is anathema to conservatives."

*Read the Wall Street Journal's full report at this link (subscription required).

---

rww 11 23

right Wing Watch reported in June 2022 that on the same day the Trump-enhanced right-wing Supreme Court majority overturned Roe v. Wade, a coalition of Christian nationalist, voter suppression, anti-LGBTQ-equality, Big Lie-promoting, and Trump-cheerleading groups had publicly launched a project that would “position the movement to take the reins of government” after a Republican victory in the 2024 presidential election.

Since then, the right-wing coalition has expanded, and reporting by national media outlets has fleshed out some frightening specifics of the “Project 2025” plan to conduct an ideological purge of the civil service and turn the entire executive branch into an enforcement arm of the MAGA movement—and if former President Donald Trump is elected, a weapon for personal retribution against his enemies.

The Washington Post reported Nov. 5 that Trump and some former administration officials are scheming with Project 2025 to abandon a rule-of-law principle embraced for decades that the Justice Department’s law enforcement decisions should be free of political pressure from the president.

Russ Vought, a former Trump official who launched a MAGA movement think tank after Trump’s defeat, told the Post, “You need an attorney general and a White House Counsel’s Office that don’t view themselves as trying to protect the department from the president.”

Even worse, Jeffrey Clark, who tried in the final days of the Trump administration to throw the weight of the Justice Department behind Trump’s false claims about the stolen election, is leading efforts to set the stage for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens—a step that some far-right leaders had urged Trump to take in 2020 to stay in power.

Politico also reported this month on a complementary project called American Moment launched after Trump’s defeat to recruit and vet young ideological warriors who would be prepared to fill lower level administration jobs created by mass firings of civil service employees. American Moment would provide an army of foot soldiers to carry out the battle plans against the “deep state” ordered by the higher-ranking officials that Project 2025 is preparing to put in place. American Moment is officially part of the Project 2025 coalition. Vought is among the MAGA movement leaders helping train American Moment’s operatives, who have served internships with Sens. J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio.

American Moment was launched with more than $300,000 from the Conservative Partnership Institute, which as Politico noted “has become a sort of administration-in-exile for former Trump staffers.” CPI has been an institutional home to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell, who participated in the notorious call on which Trump badgered Georgia’s secretary of states to “find” him the votes he needed to win the state, and was later picked to head up CPI’s “election integrity” project, which has lobbied against federal voting rights legislation.

Recognizing the threat that Trump and his MAGA Republican allies across the country pose to our rights and freedoms, People For the American Way is encouraging supporters to take a pledge to vote against authoritarian MAGA candidates and for progressive candidates in local, state, and federal elections.

---

Bannon’s “War Room” is the media home of Project 2025 and Trump’s retribution plans

Bannon’s show is a staging ground for Trump’s plans to gut the civil service and normalize deploying the military against civilians

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES

PUBLISHED 11/09/23

The podcast hosted by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is the media home of a sprawling right-wing effort, known as Project 2025, that’s designed to prepare policy papers and staffing assignments should a Republican win the presidency in next year’s election.

Bannon’s show, War Room, is a hub of election denialism, anti-immigrant bigotry, and promises to carry out retribution against insufficiently loyal Republicans — all hallmarks of former President Donald Trump’s first term in office and his campaign to retake the White House. Although Bannon has at times found himself isolated from Trump, he is once again “one of Trump’s most important advisers,” according to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl.

As a leading advocate for the MAGA wing of the conservative movement, Bannon has been a champion of Project 2025, organized by the increasingly far-right think tank The Heritage Foundation. The initiative has brought together more than 80 groups to provide hard-right personnel and white paper proposals for Trump — or another Republican administration — should he win next November.

According to The Washington Post, Trump and his allies at Project 2025 “have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.”

From his perch at War Room, Bannon has sought to normalize all of those ideas: deploying the military against protesters, weaponizing the Department of Justice against critics, and replacing the federal civil service with loyalist reactionaries.

Jeffrey Clark, who Trump attempted to install as acting attorney general in January 2021, has been on War Room several times this year and is also reportedly “leading the work on the Insurrection Act under Project 2025,” according to the Post. A Heritage spokesperson told the Post that “there are no plans within Project 2025 related to the Insurrection Act or targeting political enemies.”

Heritage’s denial notwithstanding, Clark — who is widely believed to be an unindicted co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment against Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election — has a record of supporting the use of the military to quash dissent. In July, Clark appeared on War Room to explain how he had advocated for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020.

:{Video

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

“I was actually summoned up to a meeting, you know, to discuss how to proceed in terms of that — what I would call an insurrection, because it was happening night after night,” Clark recalled to Bannon.

“Remember that [former Attorney General William] Barr is the one who had participated, when he was attorney general, in using the Insurrection Act against the L.A. riots, after the Rodney King case,” Clark said. “Why wasn’t that same aggressiveness used against the riots that were all across the country in the summer of 2020?”

Referring to a memo he’d written to Barr that included “some very creative ideas about how to enforce the law against those rioters,” Clark added, “If you want to see the legal advice I gave, it’s all blacked out,” strongly suggesting he’d supported deploying the military against civilian protesters.

The next month, Smith indicted Trump for his actions to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Clark was reportedly referred to in the indictment as “unindicted co-conspirator 4,” and is alleged to have suggested Trump use the military against civilians. On January 3, 2021, White House Council Patrick Philbin told Clark — who had just accepted the job of acting attorney general — that if the Trump-Clark coup plans went forward, “there would be riots in every major city in the United States."

“Well … that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act,” Clark responded.

In the Bannon interview from July, Clark also rejected the conventional wisdom that the Department of Justice is — or should be — independent from political pressure from the White House. In Clark’s telling, the DOJ shouldn’t be walled off, as it has been by most presidents following Richard Nixon’s targeting of his enemies during the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.

:{Video

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

Past administrations put in “post-Watergate ‘norms’ that say the president actually can’t make decisions about law enforcement,” Clark said. “It’s ridiculous, it’s unconstitutional, and the reason why they’re having a meltdown, Steve, is that the queen position in the administrative state is the Justice Department.”

“To say that the Justice Department is not independent is sort of the ultimate heresy,” Clark added. “This is all just post-Watergate ‘norms.’ Who cares about post-Watergate norms?”

Clark is a fellow at the Center for Renewing America, a MAGA-aligned think tank run by Christian nationalist Russ Vought — another major player in Project 2025 and frequent War Room guest. Vought wrote the second chapter of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” a combination manifesto and outline detailing how the coalition would approach the next Republican administration. In his chapter, Vought levies a broad critique of career staffers at executive branch departments and agencies, writing that “many agencies are not only too big and powerful, but also increasingly weaponized against the public and a President who is elected by the people and empowered by the Constitution to govern.”

Vought’s argument flows directly from Bannon’s long-running goal of a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” In an interview on War Room, Vought advocated for a change to budgeting rules that would allow Congress to target individual government workers, potentially canceling their funding, slashing their salary, or even firing them. He’s also a proponent of using so-called “Schedule F” to reclassify federal employees as at-will workers, an open attack on public unions and career staffers.”

Vought is especially interested in remaking the DOJ into a more explicitly reactionary institution, and his think tank has been clear that its goal is to unleash the FBI against its political enemies. As he told the Post: “You need an attorney general and a White House Counsel’s Office that don’t view themselves as trying to protect the department from the president.”

On November 6, Bannon floated a name for attorney general who would fit the bill: “Jeff Clark, you're on the short list of being attorney general for Trump, and I mean the very short list.” Bannon pitched Clark for the role at least once earlier this year and has suggested disgraced former national security advisor and QAnon adherent Michael Flynn serve as secretary of defense.

Bannon isn’t just engaging in a fantasy football-style draft though — he has interviewed Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025, several times this year. Although that’s a long way from installing Flynn as secretary of defense, it’s a sign that Bannon’s personnel preferences shouldn’t be dismissed simply as the rantings of a crank.

:{Video

CitationFrom the June 16, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

“Let me just say to the [War Room] posse: The posse has landed at Heritage, and, you know, I really respect what your program does,” Dans gushed during an appearance in June. “I’ve been a devotee since 2020.”

Dans added, with a hat tip to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts: “He brought me in in April. I started playing the War Room in May. We learned the word ‘based,’ and it's been spreading around the building. But we’re really taking over and infusing America First throughout the whole movement.”

Dans was back on the show in September with a promise to decimate the federal civil service by firing thousands of workers. “With 2025, we’re going to flood the zone,” Dans said, “It’s going to be more than 3,000 people.”

“Schedule F is one of our tools, but really the proposition of Schedule F is just saying: Look, when you come into the office, federal worker, each morning, and you’re in charge of policy, you’re not guaranteed your job when you walk out that afternoon,” Dans continued, “You have to perform. You’re going to become an at-will employee like the rest of us in real life, you know? Let’s make it look a lot more like America."

“Amen,” Bannon repeated as Dans spoke.

According to the Post, one of the top goals of another Trump administration and Project 2025 is investigating “onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former Attorney General William P. Barr.” War Room frequently indulges in these impulses.

On June 12, Bannon baselessly argued that FBI director Christopher Wray and former Attorney General Bill Barr had suppressed evidence that proved Joe Biden and his family had committed financial crimes, thereby installing him in the presidency as the result of an illegitimate election.

“You are freaking guilty of treason,” Bannon said, addressing an imaginary Barr.

Back in January, former Trump advisor and right-wing pundit Sebastian Gorka went after Kelly on War Room. “You are an insult to Quantico,” Gorka said, referring to the Marine base. “You were never a Marine.”

“Go to hell, John Kelly,” he concluded.

“Wow,” Bannon responded.

---

===

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/us/politics/trump-indictment-justice-department.html

Jeffrey Clark, Former DOJ Official Implicated in Attempts to Overturn 2020 Election, Now Has Put Forward Maximalist ...

Quite the theory, and quite ironic from the team that insists the Biden DOJ has politicized the indictment of trump. Share this:.

.1 day ago

The Radical Strategy Behind Trump’s Promise to ‘Go After’ Biden

Conservatives with close ties to Donald J. Trump are laying out a “paradigm-shifting” legal rationale to erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president.

Donald Trump stands on a stage and points. He is in front of large white columns outside his golf club and an American flag is on the stage.

“I will totally obliterate the Deep State,” Donald Trump said on Tuesday evening at an event at his club in Bedminster, N.J., hours after his arraignment on federal charges.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman

June 15, 2023

When Donald J. Trump responded to his latest indictment by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if he’s re-elected to “go after” President Biden and his family, he signaled that a second Trump term would fully jettison the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”

Mr. Trump’s message was that the Justice Department charged him only because he is Mr. Biden’s political opponent, so he would invert that supposed politicization. In reality, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, two Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents and the financial dealings of his son, Hunter.

But by suggesting the current prosecutors investigating the Bidens were not “real,” Mr. Trump appeared to be promising his supporters that he would appoint an ally who would bring charges against his political enemies regardless of the facts.

The naked politics infusing Mr. Trump’s headline-generating threat underscored something significant. In his first term, Mr. Trump gradually ramped up pressure on the Justice Department, eroding its traditional independence from White House political control. He is now unabashedly saying he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power.

Mr. Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the F.B.I., overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm — which many Republicans view as a facade — that the department should operate independently from the president.

Two of the most important figures in this effort work at the same Washington-based organization, theCenter for Renewing America: Jeffrey B. Clark and Russell T. Vought. During the Trump presidency, Mr. Vought served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Clark, who oversaw the Justice Department’s civil and environmental divisions, was the only senior official at the department who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.

Jeffrey B. Clark was the only senior official in the Justice Department who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.

Image

Along with Mr. Clark, Russell T. Vought argues that presidents should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency.

Mr. Trump wanted to make Mr. Clark attorney general during his final days in office but stopped after the senior leadership of the Justice Department threatened to resign en masse. Mr. Clark is now a figure in one of the Justice Department’s investigations into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power.

Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought are promoting a legal rationale that would fundamentally change the way presidents interact with the Justice Department. They argue that U.S. presidents should not keep federal law enforcement at arm’s length but instead should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency. They are condemning Mr. Biden and Democrats for what they claim is the politicization of the justice system, but at the same time pushing an intellectual framework that a future Republican president might use to justify directing individual law enforcement investigations.

Mr. Clark, who is a favorite of Mr. Trump’s and is likely to be in contention for a senior Justice Department position if Mr. Trump wins re-election in 2024, wrote a constitutional analysis, titled “The U.S. Justice Department is not independent,” that will most likely serve as a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Like other conservatives, Mr. Clark adheres to the so-called unitary executive theory, which holds that the president of the United States has the power to directly control the entire federal bureaucracy and Congress cannot fracture that control by giving some officials independent decision-making authority.

There are debates among conservatives about how far to push that doctrine — and whether some agencies should be allowed to operate independently — but Mr. Clark takes a maximalist view. Mr. Trump does, too, though he’s never been caught reading the Federalist Papers.

In statements to The New York Times, both Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought leaned into their battle against the Justice Department, with Mr. Clark framing it as a fight over the survival of America itself.

Conservatives have been attacking President Biden and the Justice Department, claiming it has been “weaponized.”Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

“Biden and D.O.J. are baying for Trump’s blood so they can put fear into America,” Mr. Clark wrote in his statement. “The Constitution and our Article IV ‘Republican Form of Government’ cannot survive like this.”

Mr. Vought wrote in his statement that the Justice Department was “ground zero for the weaponization of the government against the American people.” He added, “Conservatives are waking up to the fact that federal law enforcement is weaponized against them and as a result are embracing paradigm-shifting policies to reverse that trend.”

Mr. Trump often exploited gaps between what the rules technically allow and the norms of self-restraint that guided past presidents of both parties. In 2021, House Democrats passed the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a legislative package intended to codify numerous previous norms as law, including requiring the Justice Department to give Congress logs of its contacts with White House officials. But Republicans portrayed the bill as an attack on Mr. Trump and it died in the Senate.

The modern era for the Justice Department traces back to the Watergate scandal and the period of government reforms that followed President Richard M. Nixon’s abuses. The norm took root that the president can set broad policies for the Justice Department — directing it to put greater resources and emphasis on particular types of crimes or adopting certain positions before the Supreme Court — but should not get involved in specific criminal case decisions absent extraordinary circumstances, such as if a case has foreign policy implications.

Since then, it has become routine at confirmation hearings for attorney general nominees to have senators elicit promises that they will resist any effort by the president to politicize law enforcement by intruding on matters of prosecutorial judgment and discretion.

As the Republican Party has morphed in response to Mr. Trump’s influence, his attacks on federal law enforcement — which trace back to the early Russia investigation in 2017, the backlash to his firing of then-F.B.I. director James B. Comey Jr. and the appointment of Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel — have become enmeshed in the ideology of his supporters.

Mr. Trump’s top rival for the Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, also rejects the norm that the Justice Department should be independent.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has likewise argued that the Justice Department should be an extension of the executive branch.

“Republican presidents have accepted the canard that the D.O.J. and F.B.I. are — quote — ‘independent,’” Mr. DeSantis said in May on Fox News. “They are not independent agencies. They are part of the executive branch. They answer to the elected president of the United States.”

Several other Republican candidates acknowledged that Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents — as outlined in the indictment prepared by the special counsel, Jack Smith, and his team — was a serious problem. But even these candidates — including Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Vice President Mike Pence — have also accused the Justice Department of being overly politicized and meting out unequal justice.

The most powerful conservative think tanks are working on plans that would go far beyond “reforming” the F.B.I., even though its Senate-confirmed directors in the modern era have all been Republicans. They want to rip it up and start again.

“The F.B.I. has become a political weapon for the ruling elite rather than an impartial, law-enforcement agency,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, a mainstay of the conservative movement since the Reagan years. He added, “Small-ball reforms that increase accountability within the F.B.I. fail to meet the moment. The F.B.I. must be rebuilt from the ground up — reforming it in its current state is impossible.”

Conservative media channels and social media influencers have been hammering the F.B.I. and the Justice Department for months since the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago, following a playbook they honed while defending Mr. Trump during the investigation into whether his campaign conspired with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.

Senator Tim Scott is among the other Republican presidential candidates who say the Justice Department is politicized.Credit...Travis Dove for The New York Times

On its most-watched nighttime programs, Fox News has been all-in on attacks against the Justice Department, including the accusation, presented without evidence, that Mr. Biden had directed the prosecution of Mr. Trump. As the former president addressed his supporters on Tuesday night at his Bedminster club, Fox News displayed a split screen — Mr. Trump on the right and Mr. Biden on the left. The chyron on the bottom of the screen read: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.”

As president, Mr. Trump saw his attorney general as simply another one of his personal lawyers. He was infuriated when his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from the Russia investigation — and then refused to reverse that decision to shut down the case.

After firing Mr. Sessions, Mr. Trump believed he had found someone who would do his bidding in William P. Barr, who had been in the role during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. Mr. Barr had an expansive view of a president’s constitutionally prescribed powers, and shared Mr. Trump’s critical views of the origins of the Russia investigation.

Under Mr. Barr, the Justice Department overruled career prosecutors’ recommendations on the length of a sentence for Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser, Roger J. Stone Jr., and sought to shut down a case against Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who had already pleaded guilty. Both cases stemmed from the Russia investigation.

But when Mr. Trump wanted to use the Justice Department to stay in power after he lost the election, he grew enraged when Mr. Barr refused to comply. Mr. Barr ultimately resigned in late 2020.

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. @jonathanvswan

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.” @charlie_savage • Facebook

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. @maggieNYT

A version of this article appears in print on June 16, 2023, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Allies Plan to Stifle Justice Dept.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/jeanine-pirro/foxs-jeanine-pirro-appears-christian-nationalist-program-flashpoint-warn-takedown

On May 30, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro joined the Christian nationalist show FlashPoint for an interview where she pushed Christian nationalist rhetoric about a supposed “takedown of religion,” framed American Christians as increasingly under attack from “transgender nonsense,” and announced that she will be at the show's in-person “tent revival” event in June.

FlashPoint, a show that Rolling Stone recently described as “a rising media platform for Christian nationalists,” airs twice weekly on The Victory Channel’s TV and streaming channels, including on Rumble. The show is helmed by a panel of regular contributors who are longtime Christian nationalist figures and self-proclaimed “prophets,” including pro-Trump “prophets” Lance Wallnauand Hank Kunneman. Wallnau and Kunneman often push hard-right politics and make apocalyptic predictions about political opponents. In the last few months, Wallnau has called Biden the “antichrist,” referred to opponents of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill as the “trans taliban,” andwarned that God may soon start killing those who are “persecuting” Trump, while Kunneman said last year that Biden should be in prison for “treason” and a “demonic agenda.”

Christian nationalism, which contends that the U.S. is a fundamentally Christian nation and should be governed by right-wing Christian beliefs, has been on the rise in Republican politics and among right-wing media figures. FlashPoint has seemingly leveraged this wave of Christian nationalism to attract more mainstream conservative media figures as guests, including Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, former President Donald Trump, and now, Fox’s Jeanine Pirro.

Pirro, who currently co-hosts Fox’s top-rated program The Five, appeared on the May 30 edition of FlashPoint, where the host, megapastor Gene Bailey, noted that his audience is “mainly conservative Christians” and that the show is not “fair and balanced,” adding, “We're the — way to the right of center. We’re unabashedly bold about who we are.” (Unlike Fox’s former motto “fair and balanced.”) The host asked Pirro: “When you see the left and what they’re doing, what is it you think … our audience needs to know that you feel like most of America doesn't understand about this current situation?”

Pirro warned the audience of a “takedown of religion” and erosion of “Judeo-Christian ethics” in America, claiming, “America is moving so far from that foundation that we are in a dangerous point that every person who is a person of religion or a person of God understands the inherent dangers of what is happening in America today.” Pirro elaborated that due to moving away from religion, “we are flirting with the kind of destiny that only destroyed nations and fallen empires find themselves in.” During the interview, Pirro also framed Christians as persecuted and warned that “people of faith need to worry about not just what's being taught in schools in terms of transgender nonsense, but what is happening in our society today against religion." [vid]

gENE BAILEY (HOST): When you see the left and what they're doing, what is it that you think — now our audience,Judge, is mainly conservative Christians — we don't say we're fair and balanced. We say we're the — way to the right of center. We're unabashedly bold about who we are. What is it that our audience needs to know that you feel like most of America doesn't understand about this current situation?

JEANINE PIRRO (GUEST): Well, you know, I think that — look, this country was found on the Judeo-Christian ethics.We, you know, when I was the judge in my courtroom above my bench, it said “In God we trust.” I think that America is moving so far from that foundation that we are in a dangerous point that every person who is a person of religion or a person of God understands the inherent dangers of what is happening in America today.

We are flirting with the kind of destiny that only destroyed nations and fallen empires find themselves in. And so that's why I wrote the book Crimes Against America. What the left is doing to our children in schools and to Americans across the board, and especially to those believers, people who believed in God and are faith-driven, is it is destroying them.

And, you know, we saw it with the Dobbs decision. When our own Department of Justice would not follow its own rules of making an arrest of anyone who is parading or protesting in front of a Supreme Court justice’s home in the hope of getting them to change their opinion. Not one of those people was arrested, but you could rest assured that everyone, everyone who was involved in any way — and some of them who were clearly innocent and found to be not guilty by juries later — who got involved in any kind of pro-choice objection ended up being arrested and ended up being prosecuted.

But any of the pro-life centers or the pregnancy centers, any of the attacks on them were not even — they were not even investigated. And so, when you look at what is happening, the takedown of religion in America, it forebodes a very difficult future.

…

And I think that people of faith need to worry about not just what's being taught in schools in terms of transgender nonsense, but what is happening in our society today against religion.

Pirro was also recently announced as a guest for an in-person FlashPoint Live “tent revival” event next week. Past FlashPoint Live events have made headlines for their overt Christian nationalism and for appearances by high-profile Republican politicians such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). One of FlashPoint’s regular guests, right-wing apostle Dutch Sheets, prayed over Greene at one such event and insisted she was “covered in the blood of Jesus.”

In addition to the Christian nationalist figures such as Wallnau and Kunneman appearing at FlashPoint Live’s June 8-9 event in Ohio along with Pirro, the lineup includes actor Jim Caviezel, who recently openly embraced the QAnon conspiracy.

[vid]

pirro’s interview on FlashPoint and upcoming “tent revival” appearance are just two examples of Fox’s apparent connections to the Christian nationalist movement. Fox has regularly hosted Russ Vought, the Christian nationalist figure who is reportedly advising Republicans on how to gut the federal aid programs, and the network has also propped up a harassment campaign against libraries that pushed the movement’s talking points. Additionally, since November, Fox Business has been profiting from weekly sermons from a Christian nationalist pastor airing on the network as paid programming.

===

open ltr ~ jan 6

another vaxx: # spot?! CLETA NO AFFILIATION?

will use this for russ bak 922

november 4, 2021

Washington, DC

Conservatives are strongly opposed to the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate and urge all Members of Congress to oppose it in forthcoming spending bills.

We also urge all senators to sign the letter being circulated by Sen. Roger Marshall, pledging to oppose legislation which funds or enables the enforcement of the vaccine mandate.

---

The Honorable Edwin Meese III Attorney General President Ronald Reagan (1985-1988)	The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell Chairman,Conservative Action Project (CAP) Chairman, Constitutional Congress, Inc.
The Honorable Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II Chairman Election Transparency Initiative	Lori Roman President ACRU Action Fund
Mary Vought Executive Director Senate Conservatives Fund	The Honorable Bob McEwen U.S. House of Representatives Former Member, Ohio
The Honorable David McIntosh President Club for Growth	Scott T. Parkinson VP for Government Affairs Club for Growth
The Honorable Becky Norton Dunlop White House Advisor President Ronald Reagan (1981-1985)	Alfred S. Regnery President Republic Book Publishers
L. Brent Bozell III Founder and President Media Research Center	The Honorable Matt Schlapp Chairman American Conservative Union (ACU)
Jenny Beth Martin Chairman Tea Party Patriots Citizen Fund	Myron Ebell Director, Center for Energy and Environment Competitive Enterprise Institute
Penny Y. Nance President & CEO Concerned Women for America	Kelly J. Shackelford, Esq. President and CEO First Liberty Institute
The Honorable Jim DeMint Chairman, Conservative Partnership Institute Member, US Senate (SC 2005-2013)	Ed Corrigan:{ Vice Chairman, Conservative Action Project President & CEO, Conservative Partnership Institute}:
William L. Walton Managing Editor and Host The Bill Walton Show	Wesley Denton Chief Operating Officer Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI)
Steve Moore Co-Chair Committee to Unleash Prosperity	Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin (Ret.) Executive Vice President Family Research Council
Rachel A. Bovard Senior Director of Policy Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI)	The Honorable Tony Perkins President Family Research Council
Thomas Fitton President, Judicial Watch, Inc. President, Council for National Policy	Terry Schilling Executive Director American Principles Project
Cleta Mitchell, Esq.	Tom Jones Co-Founder American Accountability Foundation
David Bozell President ForAmerica	The Honorable Morton C. Blackwell President The Leadership Institute
Richard Manning President Americans for Limited Government	Noah Wall Executive Vice President FreedomWorks
The Honorable Paul S. Teller, Ph.D. Executive Director Advancing American Freedom	Heather R. Higgins Chief Executive Officer Independent Women’s Voice
Carrie Lukas President Independent Women’s Forum	The Honorable James C. Miller III Budget Director for President Reagan, 1985-1988
The Honorable Scott Walker President Young America’s Foundation	Craig Shirley Reagan Biographer Presidential Historian
Steven Ertelt Editor LifeNews.com	Phil Kerpen President American Commitment
Randy Page Chief of Staff Bob Jones University	Sean Noble President American Encore
Ron Pearson Executive Director Conservative Victory Fund	Jeremy Cerone Chairman, William F. Buckley Jr. Council Council for National Policy
Michelle Easton President Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women	Kevin Freeman Founder NSIC Institute
Colleen Holcomb President Eagle Forum	Chad Connelly President Faith Wins
Marc Little Executive Director CURE America Action	Joseph A. Morris Partner, Morris & De La Rosa Chairman, The Heartland Institute
Khadine Ritter President Eagle Forum of Ohio	The Honorable George K. Rasley Jr. Managing Editor ConservativeHQ.com
C. Preston Noell III President Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.	Gregory Quinlan President Center for Garden State Families
Jack Park Conservative Activist and Donor Law Offices of Jack Park	Andresen Blom President Hawaiian Values
Dr. Paige Patterson President Sandy Creek Foundation	G. Eric Georgatos Executive Producer America Can We Talk?
Twila Brase, RN, PHN President and Co-founder Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom	Tim LeFever Chairman Capitol Resource Institute
The Honorable Gary L. Bauer President American Values	Kathleen Patten President & CEO American Target Advertising, Inc.
Seton Motley President Less Government	Rod D. Martin Founder & CEO The Martin Organization, Inc.
Sherri R. Martin Trustee Florida Baptist Children’s Homes	Haley E. Martin Past President The Martin Foundation
Guillermo J. Aragon Senior Partner Corbere Partners	Christina Murphy Lusk President The Martin Foundation
Lourdes Cosio Campaign for the American Future	Shawn A. Mitchell Former National Chaplain National Federation of Republican Assemblies
Lady Brigitte Gabriel Founder & Chairman ACT For America	Martha Boneta President Vote America First
Allen Hebert Chairman American-Chinese Fellowship of Houston	Jason Jones President Movie to Movement
Judson Phillips Founder Tea Party Nation	Randy M. Long Founder Long Business Advisors, LLC
Brian Rogers President The Jesse Helms Center	Dr. Richard Rounsavelle Trustee Media Research Center
William W. Pascoe, III Our Man in Washington Tea Party Patriots Action	The Honorable Diana Denman President The Reagan Legacy Forum
Sheryl Kaufman Board of Directors Americans for Limited Government	Brandon Zehm Businessman
Kielle C. Horton President The Lindsey Foundation	Donna Rice Hughes CEO Enough Is Enough
Tom DeWeese President American Policy Center	David N. Bossie President Citizens United
Nancy Schulze Founder, President RCW Speakers	Kay R. Daly President Coalition for a Fair Judiciary
Anne Schlafly Cori Chairman Eagle Forum	Jay Mount President MDS Communications Corporation
Dr. Chris Hughes Founder & Chairman The Citizens for America Foundation	Paavo Ensio Chairman Universal Minerals Group
Trent England Executive Director Save Our States	The Honorable Stephen Stockman U.S. House of Representatives Former Member, Texas
Lee A. Beaman CEO Beaman Ventures	The Honorable Peter J. Thomas Chairman The Conservative Caucus
Joan Holt Lindsey President Lindsey Communications	The Honorable Mike Hill Former Member Florida State Representative
Robert Alt President & CEO The Buckeye Institute	Shannon O. Royce President Christian Employers Alliance
The Honorable T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr. Chief Domestic Advisor President Ronald Reagan (1987-1988)	The Honorable Russ Vought Director Office of Management and Budget (2020-2021)

The Honorable Edwin Meese III

Attorney General

President Ronald Reagan (1985-1988)

The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell

Chairman,Conservative Action Project (CAP)

Chairman, Constitutional Congress, Inc.

The Honorable Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II

Chairman

Election Transparency Initiative

Lori Roman

President

ACRU Action Fund

Mary Vought

Executive Director

Senate Conservatives Fund

The Honorable Bob McEwen

U.S. House of Representatives

Former Member, Ohio

The Honorable David McIntosh

President

Club for Growth

Scott T. Parkinson

VP for Government Affairs

Club for Growth

The Honorable Becky Norton Dunlop

White House Advisor

President Ronald Reagan (1981-1985)

Alfred S. Regnery

President

Republic Book Publishers

L. Brent Bozell III

Founder and President

Media Research Center

The Honorable Matt Schlapp

Chairman

American Conservative Union (ACU)

Jenny Beth Martin

Chairman

Tea Party Patriots Citizen Fund

Myron Ebell

Director, Center for Energy and Environment

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Penny Y. Nance

President & CEO

Concerned Women for America

Kelly J. Shackelford, Esq.

President and CEO

First Liberty Institute

The Honorable Jim DeMint

Chairman, Conservative Partnership Institute

Member, US Senate (SC 2005-2013)

Ed Corrigan:{

Vice Chairman, Conservative Action Project

President & CEO, Conservative Partnership Institute}:

William L. Walton

Managing Editor and Host

The Bill Walton Show

Wesley Denton

Chief Operating Officer

Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI)

Steve Moore

Co-Chair

Committee to Unleash Prosperity

Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin (Ret.)

Executive Vice President

Family Research Council

Rachel A. Bovard

Senior Director of Policy

Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI)

The Honorable Tony Perkins

President

Family Research Council

Thomas Fitton

President, Judicial Watch, Inc.

President, Council for National Policy

Terry Schilling

Executive Director

American Principles Project

Cleta Mitchell, Esq.

Tom Jones

Co-Founder

American Accountability Foundation

David Bozell

President

ForAmerica

The Honorable Morton C. Blackwell

President

The Leadership Institute

Richard Manning

President

Americans for Limited Government

Noah Wall

Executive Vice President

FreedomWorks

The Honorable Paul S. Teller, Ph.D.

Executive Director

Advancing American Freedom

Heather R. Higgins

Chief Executive Officer

Independent Women’s Voice

Carrie Lukas

President

Independent Women’s Forum

The Honorable James C. Miller III

Budget Director for President Reagan, 1985-1988

The Honorable Scott Walker

President

Young America’s Foundation

Craig Shirley

Reagan Biographer

Presidential Historian

Steven Ertelt

Editor

LifeNews.com

Phil Kerpen

President

American Commitment

Randy Page

Chief of Staff

Bob Jones University

Sean Noble

President

American Encore

Ron Pearson

Executive Director

Conservative Victory Fund

Jeremy Cerone

Chairman, William F. Buckley Jr. Council

Council for National Policy

Michelle Easton

President

Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women

Kevin Freeman

Founder

NSIC Institute

Colleen Holcomb

President

Eagle Forum

Chad Connelly

President

Faith Wins

Marc Little

Executive Director

CURE America Action

Joseph A. Morris

Partner, Morris & De La Rosa

Chairman, The Heartland Institute

Khadine Ritter

President

Eagle Forum of Ohio

The Honorable George K. Rasley Jr.

Managing Editor

ConservativeHQ.com

C. Preston Noell III

President

Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.

Gregory Quinlan

President

Center for Garden State Families

Jack Park

Conservative Activist and Donor

Law Offices of Jack Park

Andresen Blom

President

Hawaiian Values

Dr. Paige Patterson

President

Sandy Creek Foundation

G. Eric Georgatos

Executive Producer

America Can We Talk?

Twila Brase, RN, PHN

President and Co-founder

Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom

Tim LeFever

Chairman

Capitol Resource Institute

The Honorable Gary L. Bauer

President

American Values

Kathleen Patten

President & CEO

American Target Advertising, Inc.

Seton Motley

President

Less Government

Rod D. Martin

Founder & CEO

The Martin Organization, Inc.

Sherri R. Martin

Trustee

Florida Baptist Children’s Homes

Haley E. Martin

Past President

The Martin Foundation

Guillermo J. Aragon

Senior Partner

Corbere Partners

Christina Murphy Lusk

President

The Martin Foundation

Lourdes Cosio

Campaign for the American Future

Shawn A. Mitchell

Former National Chaplain

National Federation of Republican Assemblies

Lady Brigitte Gabriel

Founder & Chairman

ACT For America

Martha Boneta

President

Vote America First

Allen Hebert

Chairman

American-Chinese Fellowship of Houston

Jason Jones

President

Movie to Movement

Judson Phillips

Founder

Tea Party Nation

Randy M. Long

Founder

Long Business Advisors, LLC

Brian Rogers

President

The Jesse Helms Center

Dr. Richard Rounsavelle

Trustee

Media Research Center

William W. Pascoe, III

Our Man in Washington

Tea Party Patriots Action

The Honorable Diana Denman

President

The Reagan Legacy Forum

Sheryl Kaufman

Board of Directors

Americans for Limited Government

Brandon Zehm

Businessman

Kielle C. Horton

President

The Lindsey Foundation

Donna Rice Hughes

CEO

Enough Is Enough

Tom DeWeese

President

American Policy Center

David N. Bossie

President

Citizens United

Nancy Schulze

Founder, President

RCW Speakers

Kay R. Daly

President

Coalition for a Fair Judiciary

Anne Schlafly Cori

Chairman

Eagle Forum

Jay Mount

President

MDS Communications Corporation

Dr. Chris Hughes

Founder & Chairman

The Citizens for America Foundation

Paavo Ensio

Chairman

Universal Minerals Group

Trent England

Executive Director

Save Our States

The Honorable Stephen Stockman

U.S. House of Representatives

Former Member, Texas

Lee A. Beaman

CEO

Beaman Ventures

The Honorable Peter J. Thomas

Chairman

The Conservative Caucus

Joan Holt Lindsey

President

Lindsey Communications

The Honorable Mike Hill

Former Member

Florida State Representative

Robert Alt

President & CEO

The Buckeye Institute

Shannon O. Royce

President

Christian Employers Alliance

The Honorable T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr.

Chief Domestic Advisor

President Ronald Reagan (1987-1988)

The Honorable Russ Vought

Director

Office of Management and Budget (2020-2021)

All organizations listed for IDENTIFICATION purposes only. = cap FINGERPRINT

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Current board members as of August 2021. All organizations listed for identification purposes only. OFFICERS. Joan Pirkle Smith (President).

From: Gary Marx - Faith and Freedom Coalition https://www.ffcoalition.com › from-gary-marx

Dec 4, 2012 — ... Faith & Freedom Coalition (All organizations listed for Identification purposes only) ANY “GRAND BARGAIN” MUST INCLUDE:.

Coalition Letter in Opposition to New Gun Control Package https://www.iwv.org › News & Media

Jun 16, 2022 — All organizations listed for IDENTIFICATION purposes only. The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell Chairman, Conservative Action Project Chairman, ...

puts the cash in patel?

https://www.alternet.org/send/jim-jordan-trump/

marh 3

a trio of witnesses being called as "whistleblowers" by the GOP committee investigating the "weaponization" of government were paid off by a Trump ally and spread conspiracy theories, reportedThe New York Times on Thursday.

"The first three witnesses to testify privately before the new Republican-led House committee investigating the 'weaponization' of the federal government have offered little firsthand knowledge of any wrongdoing or violation of the law, according to Democrats on the panel who have listened to their accounts," reported Luke Broadwater and Adam Goldman. "Instead, the trio appears to be a group of aggrieved former F.B.I. officials who have trafficked in right-wing conspiracy theories, including about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, and received financial support from a top ally of former President Donald J. Trump."

"The roster of witnesses, whose interviews and statements are detailed in a 316-page report compiled by Democrats that was obtained by The New York Times, suggests that Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the panel, has so far relied on people who do not meet the definition of a whistle-blower and who have engaged in partisan conduct that calls into question their credibility," said the report. "And it raises questions about whether Republicans, who have said that investigating the Biden administration is a top goal, will be able to deliver on their ambitious plans to uncover misdeeds at the highest levels."

The three witnesses in question, per the report, are "George Hill, a retired F.B.I. supervisory intelligence analyst from the bureau’s Boston field office; Stephen Friend, a former special agent who worked in the Daytona Beach office; and Garret O’Boyle, a special agent from the field office in Wichita, Kan., who has been suspended."

They have promoted conspiracy theories; Hill wrote on Twitter that the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was a "set up." Meanwhile, O'Boyle and Friend have admitted to receiving financial aid from Kash Patel, a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Trump associate who has testified in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

"The Democratic report includes excerpts from depositions and evidence of conspiratorial social media posts," noted the report. "It also details the ties between Mr. Trump’s inner circle and the witnesses. For instance,Mr. Patel found Mr. Friend his next job, working as a fellow on domestic intelligence and security services with the Center for Renewing America,which is run byRuss Vought. The center is largely funded by the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is run by Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, and former Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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Manhattan DA schools Jim Jordan for demanding he testify in ongoing Trump investigation - Alternet.org ›
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===

https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/right-wing-media-provides-safe-space-house-republicans-call-cuts-social-security

right-wing media figures and activists continue to call for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, even as leaders of the Republican Party deny that slashing benefits for seniors is a goal. Conservative pundits are making these demands against the backdrop of ongoing debt ceiling negotiations between the White House and the Republican-controlled House, perpetuating the myth that federal spending is out of control as an excuse to push austerity policies.

Conservative orthodoxy has long held that Social Security and Medicare need to be “reformed,” a euphemism for cutting benefits or the raising eligibility age for future enrollees of either program. Nearly 90% of people over 65 were receiving Social Security checks as of the end of last year, representing about 30% of their income, according to official figures. As of last September, more than 65 million people were on Medicare. Slashing federal spending for either of those programs is politically unpopular, and some conservatives have changed their messaging — if not their underlying ideology — as a result.

Former President Donald Trump, for example, recently released an ad attacking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – who is expected to announce his candidacy shortly – for backing cuts to the programs. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has also promised not to include the programs in the massive spending reductions his party is seeking.

But old habits die hard, and there is no shortage of recent examples of conservative media figures, activists, and politicians who have made it clear that their goal is to weaken and undermine these programs, often under the pretext of protecting them in the long term.

Townhall editor Katie Pavlich illustrated this dynamic last week on Fox News, when she referenced the national debt as a justification for cutting benefits to seniors.“The bottom line is that for either party in Washington, if they want to actually address this $32 trillion problem, someone is going to have to propose spending -- legislation that takes on reforming social security and Medicare,” Pavlich said. “Those are the things that are driving the debt." vid]

fox News anchor John Roberts showed how the Republican talking point infiltrates the network’s so-called straight news coverage.

“There’s all this talk about how to get spending under control, and I think people on both sides rationally know there is no way to get spending under control unless you start to implement reforms to things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, but neither side wants to come forward unilaterally and say, ‘Here’s our plan to do it,’” Roberts said. “There needs to be cooperation, they need to reach out across the aisle and until they do that, that debt ceiling is just going to keep bumping up and bumping up and bumping up — look at where it is now, more than $31 trillion, it's stunning.”

Roberts’ argument rests on the unstated and incorrect assumption that the US budget is analogous to a household budget, a fallacy that has been repeatedly debunked.

Earlier this month, Fox News host Mark Levin called for cuts on his radio show, even as he denied he was doing so. “Now, this isn't about cutting them,” Levin said. “This is about changing certain variables in these programs for future generations.”

“One of the proposals that was made several years ago, and I think what DeSantis voted for, and I would have voted for it too, was to raise the retirement age to 70,to grandfather in all current beneficiaries and those who will bebeneficiaries within the next 10 years, so anybody 55 and older, because it's not gonna exist,” he continued.

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk similarly advocated for reducing benefits to seniors in the future, also positioning himself as telling a harsh but necessary truth. “Current beneficiaries, I don't think anything should be touched, but yes, there need to be some adjustments for future retirees,” Kirk said. “And if you even say that, it's like the third rail.”

The right-wing outlet The Epoch Times positively covered presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s calls to gut Social Security and Medicare as well, with the headline: “Haley Promises Supporters She Will Address the Nation’s Huge Deficit.”

Speaking in a barn in the legislative district where she got her political start, Nikki Haley, former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor, said the nation needs to get its fiscal house in order.

…

And that work, she said, will include reforming entitlements.

“Social Security will be bankrupt in 10 years. Medicare will be bankrupt in five,” she said.

Fellow Republican presidential primary candidate Mike Pence also advocated for reductions to Social Security and Medicare, saying “we’ve got to put them on the table in the long term.”

On former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) broke from the official leadership line to consider reducing seniors’ benefits. “I believe that we have to have a discussion about raising the age of Social Security,” Gaetz said.

Right-wing site The Daily Caller was more honest than most in a story from earlier this month headlined: “Despite The Establishment’s Best Efforts, Some Republicans Want To Reform Entitlements.”

National Review, which has long positioned itself as the intellectual vanguard of the conservative movement, has also been open about their desire to weaken Social Security and Medicare.

In a blog post pegged to Trump’s attack ad, senior writer Noah Rothman defended DeSantis on the grounds that “the longtime Republican lawmaker once evinced support for longtime Republican positions: specifically, the urgent and undeniable national imperative for reforming America’s unfunded entitlement programs before they collapse.”

In another, contributor Jack Salmon called for “raising the retirement age to at least 68, indexing retirement age to life expectancy, and adopting chained Consumer Price Index [CPI] as the preferred metric for measuring annual cost-of-living adjustments.” Research shows that moving to chained CPI would reduce benefits for seniors.

Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist sympathizer and the founder of the right-wing think tank the Center for Renewing America, has been at the center of the debt ceiling debate, including pushing for massive cuts to social welfare programs. Like McCarthy, Vought’s official line is that his organization isn’t targeting Social Security or Medicare, but diverges from the House leader in acknowledging that those programs are only off the table for the short term.

“The House Republicans are not making Social Security and Medicare a fight on this debt limit,” Vought said on Fox News last month. He added that his organization’s budget targeted Medicaid, while also admitting that when it came to Social Security and Medicare, “We have to reform those programs over time.”

While Social Security and Medicare are universal programs that benefit seniors, and are incredibly politically durable as a result, Medicaid is a targeted anti-poverty program whose recipients conservatives are happy to demonize.There is no small irony that the faux-populist wing of the Republican Party — which includes Bannon and Vought — are doing their best to deny health care to the working class.

Vought frequently expresses his eagerness to slash Medicaid coverage by implementing work requirements. Public health experts call that a “terrible idea,” but it is nonetheless one that conservatives keep proposing. “You’ve been talking about the work requirements,” Bannon said to Vought on an April 24 edition of War Room.

Vought responded, arguing to get significant fiscal reductions in spending “you have to really begin to reform Medicaid, as I’ve proposed, andget people who are adults without children off of the Medicaid program.”

Bannon has repeatedly advocated for reducing the federal budget by cutting Medicaid. On April 18, he reiterated that “Medicare and Social Security are off the table,” but “you can get there” by “getting into Medicaid.” He similarly called for “massive cuts” to Medicaid earlier this year at the Conservative Political Action Conference, citing Vought’s work.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the House GOP plan to add work requirements to Medicaid would result in 10 million people losing their coverage.

The through-line from all of these statements are clear. Conservatives in government and right-wing media are laying the foundation to eviscerate the limited but important social programs for seniors and the working class. Their denials are paper-thin, when they’re even offered at all.

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/critical-race-theory/anti-civil-rights-activist-chris-rufo-has-extensive-ties-christian-nationalist

no vid twt

anti-civil rights activist Christopher Rufo has extensive ties to a leading MAGA-aligned think tank led by a Christian nationalist that’s at the heart of several high-profile political battles in Washington, D.C. The think tank, the Center for Renewing America, was founded by Russ Vought, who has called for an “army” of believers with a “biblical worldview” to transform the federal bureaucracy into an ideological weapon to further his hard-right agenda. Vought and Rufo are both conservative media mainstays, and each appears frequently on Fox News and right-wing streaming shows.

Rufo’s ties to CRA are not hidden, but nor are they particularly well-known outside of the cloistered bubble of conservative activism. Although Rufo is primarily known for his rhetorical attacks on critical race theory (which he has admitted he knows nothing about) and LGBTQ people, he shares CRA’s goal of taking over existing institutions and remaking them as supposed paragons of conservatism.

That desire has been most clearly realized in Rufo’s hostile takeover of New College of Florida, facilitated by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to appoint him and several other hard-liners to the school’s board of trustees. Rufo and DeSantis’ scheme bears significant resemblance to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s remaking of Central European University in Budapest, one of many points of overlap between U.S. conservatives and their European counterparts. Rufo is currently spending a month in Hungary, according to his Substack newsletter.

Vought and CRA have been at the forefront of advocating for a policy known as Schedule F,a Trump-era scheme that allowed the administration to sidestep job protections for non-political career staffers. In an appearance on The Charlie Kirk Show, Vought and Kirk promoted the idea of implementing “ideological purity tests” for federal civil servants, and Vought estimated that he would need to fire around 10 percent of the workforce at federal agencies and departments. Vought has also argued the House of Representatives should adopt new rules to allow the chamber to target and possibly remove individual civil servants.

CRA occupies a divided position in the conservative political landscape at the moment, seemingly straddling the line between the Trump and DeSantis camps. Vought, the organization’s leader, is a frequent guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room, which has taken a pro-Trump, anti-DeSantis editorial position. The think tank more broadly is often described as being aligned with Trump as well. But Rufo is closely associated with DeSantis, for now at least, due to his appointment to the board at New College. And CRA senior fellow Ken Cuccinelli recently launched a pro-DeSantis PAC, urging the governor to run for president.

Probably the most important link between Rufo and Vought came during the Trump administration. When Rufo was able to transform critical race theory from a relatively obscure legal discipline into a right-wing bogeyman — thanks in large part to an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight— it was Vought, then the head of the Office of Management and Budget, who was tasked with carrying out Trump’s order to remove any mention of CRT from federal trainings. Since then, their affinity appears to have grown.

Rufo reportedly recently held a private summit at the Santa Monica, California, outpost of The Manhattan Institute, where he is a senior fellow.The gathering’s focus was “planning for the next White House,” a priority Rufo shares with CRA. In a short video summarizing his thoughts on the event, Rufo praised Vought’s behind-the-scenes efforts in Congress’ ongoing battle over the federal budgetas an opportunity to inject far-right values into final legislation.

in the video, Rufo argued that earlier generations of conservatives tried to win budgeting arguments using dry facts and figures, but that that’s changing now.

“Some people, most notably Russ Vought, who is President Trump’s former OMB director, have pioneered a new approach to talking about the budget that I think has enormous potential,” Rufo said. “Russ talks about the ‘woke and weaponized bureaucracy.’ He talks about defunding $150 billion that is currently being spent to advance left-wing priorities that are antithetical to the values of the majority of citizens.”

“He’s saying, ‘You know what? We want to defund thewoke bureaucrats and DEI commissars who are putting critical race theory in all of the agencies of the government,’” Rufo added. The official CRA Twitter account posted Rufo’s video, and Vought replied, thanking Rufo for the shout-out.

In the YouTube description of the video, Rufo praisesWade Miller, CRA’s executive director, who apparently attended the private summit. Miller, a former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), describes himself as anti-antiracism in his Twitter bio. He recently posted a racist tweet claiming, without evidence, that Stanford medical school awarded postings to new surgery applicants based on their race and ethnicity, and that those selected probably weren’t the most qualified. [twt]

rufo also has ties to CRA visiting fellow Michael Young, who is prominent on right-wing Twitter under the handle @wokal_distance, primarily for invoking 1990s nostalgia toward reactionaryends. Rufo worked with Young and CRA on his anti-LGBTQ pamphlet “A Parent’s Guide to Radical Gender Theory.” The two interact regularly on Twitter, praising each other’s acumen and execution.

Whether CRA can keep one foot in on either side of the Trump dividing line without drawing the former president’s ire is an open question, as is the impact that DeSantis’falling poll numbers could have on Rufo’s brand and influence. For now, Rufo and Vought are trying to find ways to find a broader audience for their cruel, anti-civil rights proposals, and they’re willing to burn down anything that stands in their way.

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/house-gop-reportedly-relying-christian-nationalist-and-right-wing-media-darling

mma 3 23

house budget overdue b/c benghazi fuckery?

right-wing media mainstay and former Trump official Russ Vought is advising a House Republican charge to drastically reduce federal aid for the working class and those in poverty, with an eye toward expanding the cuts to include universal programs — like Medicare and Social Security — in the future.

From a New York Times report:

After decades of futile efforts to cut the enormous costs of Social Security and Medicare, Republicans have pledged not to touch the biggest entitlement programs, whose spending grows automatically and are on an unsustainable trajectory as more Americans reach retirement age. Coupled with their promise not to raise taxes, that leaves the G.O.P. to consider a slash-and-burn approach to a slew of federal programs and agencies whose budgets are controlled by Congress.

As they meet privately to develop their plan, Republicans say they are relying heavily on a budget outline developed by Russell T. Vought, the former Trump administration budget director who now leads the far-right Center for Renewing America.

Vought, a Christian nationalist, heads the right-wing Center for Renewing America, a think tank closely aligned with former President Donald Trump and staffed with several officials from his administration. In addition to Vought, who served as head of the Office of Management and Budget, CRA’s staff also includes coup plotter Jeffrey Clark, former Pentagon official Kash Patel, and former Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli.

Speaking with the Times, Vought argued conservatives should attempt to dismantle targeted programs before setting their sights on larger entitlement spending. “[A] work requirement food stamp program is a lot easier to sellthan premium support,” Vought told the Times, referencing a proposed change that would turn Medicare into a voucher system.

In an interview on Fox News a day before the Times piece came out, Vought made it clear that the larger goal was to go after Social Security and Medicare down the line. “The House Republicans are not making Social Security and Medicare a fight on this debt limit,” Vought said.

“The budget that I put forward, that they’re looking at, uses Medicaid and other easier-to-go entitlements, mandatory programs, and discretionary spending to get to balance in 10,” Vought said, referring to his goal of balancing the budget in 10 years.

He then returned to Social Security and Medicare. “We have to reform those programs over time, but I think if you care about those programs and you're a budget cutter the most important thing is to make progress on what you can cut in the appropriations process,” Vought continued. “The bureaucracy that's aimed against your people and then to go after the social safety net that has become a benefit hammock." [fox vid]

in contrast to the conservative approach, the Biden administration has proposed to increase taxes on income over $400,000 to address Medicare’s budget.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon referenced Vought when he demanded “massive cuts” to federal programs, including Medicaid, last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Bannon regularly hosts Vought on his War Room podcast, and Vought is a common presence on Fox Business and occasionally on Fox News.. When Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and others on the far-right flank of the GOP House caucus opposed Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) speakership bid earlier this year, they turned to Vought for guidance. His think tank’s budget has become something of a north star for the House MAGA caucus, and he has made clear that he wants to rid the federal government of civil servants he and his supporters deem insufficiently committed to their far-right agenda.

Now, as Congress and the White House prepare for what is likely to be a long and painstaking budgetary process, Vought and the House Republicans who have aligned themselves with him are looking to eviscerate what little social safety net spending still exists in the United States. From the Times:

The outline includes a 45 percent cut to foreign aid; adding work requirements for food stamp and Medicaid beneficiaries; a 43 percent cut to housing programs, including phasing out the Section 8 program that pays a portion of monthly rent costs for low-income people; cutting the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence budget by nearly half; and eliminating Obamacare expansions to Medicaid to save tens of billions of dollars.

Nearly 40 states have accepted federal funding for expansion under the Affordable Care Act, providing health care coverage for an estimated 12 million individuals living near or below the poverty line.

Despite Vought’s vicious attacks on the working class, he is often presented in mainstream and conservative media as a populist figure. Conservative Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen wrote that Vought was pushing ideas that “animate the new populist conservatism.” Bloomberg described Vought’s think tank as one of the “organizations designed to push [Trump’s] populist agenda.” The conservative Daily Caller described CRA as “a right-populist group Vought helms.”

In a blog post introducing his think tank, Vought decried, in typically pompous prose, the “decades-long plundering of the American economy by multinational corporationseager to claim the benefits of American law while disclaiming all responsibility to provide remunerative employment to American workers.”

He added that the Center for Renewing America would focus on “challenging the policy architecture that has hollowed out productive work for America’s working class and transferred the gains of the American economy to the service-sector elites.”

The reality is that Vought is selling the same basic framework of anti-poor, anti-working class policies championed by Republicans for decades. Whatever conservative orthodoxies Trumpism may have broken with, right-wing populism is an empty set of ideas. Vought has nothing to offer to address the material needs of the working class; to the contrary, he is their class enemy and antagonist.

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/rep-matt-gaetz-r-fl-and-former-trump-official-russ-vought-discuss-using-new-house

REP. MATT GAETZ (GUEST HOST): Let's start with the Holman Rule. Talk about what it means for any member of Congress to be able to get up and defund a particular bureaucrat.

RUSS VOUGHT (PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR RENEWING AMERICA; FORMER OMB DIRECTOR): It's huge. And so you know I come from the executive agency before this role, and we would have all of these career bureaucrats that we would be having to work with and the American people would largely not know their names, until Covid happened and now everyone knows who Tony Fauci is. But think about the ability to go to the House floor and have a debate about a particular bureaucrat. That is enormous. It changes the entire game right now.

I would have situations where our staff would do anything they possibly could not to necessarily give me what I needed, because they were worried about their own ability to stay anonymous. The Holman Rule makes sure that those career bureaucrats are no longer anonymous, and that they are put in the crosshairs to the same extent – in the arena – that you are. That I am.

So that is a game changer in having the appropriations debate. Also, not just what the message it sends, but the extent to which it itself focuses the appropriations process on the deep state, on theadministrative state that exists, that is now woke, and it's weaponized.And that has to be the biggest fiscal priority that we have, to go after the woke and weaponized bureaucracy.

GAETZ: Russ, if we'd have had this tool, we would have obviously directed it at Anthony Fauci, right? So, if you're comparing and contrasting, we would have had the ability – if we had the rules that we now have in place – if we'd have had those in place in the last Congress, you could actually force a vote on funding Fauci or not funding Fauci. As we look at a weaponized system across the apparatus of government, give us some examples or advice for who are some of the bureaucrats that enjoy their anonymity now? What are some of the agencies we should look at to target and take this tool out of the toolkit and actually put it to use?

VOUGHT: Well, there's all sorts of the types of people that you'd want to get in with Labor, HHS, and the COVID fascism that we've saw as a result of kind of lockdown-era policies. But we're going to want to use this in the Department of Justice. We're going to want to find those people that participated in the Russia hoax, that participated in going to FISA and lying to get warrants that are cooked up against the American people. So as you bring that aspect of what you negotiate, along with the Church-style committee that will sit within Judiciary, those are the kinds of things that you can say in real time that makes this enforcing.

The battle is certainly not over. We've got to show up at every stage, but it is self-enforcing.You enforce it, the 20 enforce it.And that was what makes this different than anything else that we've seen in recent memory, because not only is your voting no confidence in real speak – your motion to vacate present, but you also have the Rules Committee that is enforcing this on a bill-by-bill basis. So it's enormously successful and you've got a lot of potential to use it against thatbureaucrat that you'd identify that's standing in your way at NASA or the EPA – who's the EPA bureaucrat that put Joe Robertson, a 77-year-old Navy veteran in jail for building four ponds on his ranch to be able to fight wildfires. That's the person we want to use the Holman rule on.

===

an 1 23

while former President Donald Trump reiterated his support for would-be Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday, former Trump official Russ Vought rallied right-wing activists to “keep fighting” against McCarthy, and a group of religious-right leaders who supported Trump’s efforts to stay in office released a statement slamming McCarthy and praising the “courageous” far-right representatives who prevented him from getting a majority in six votes on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“McCarthy must go,” Vought wrote in a Wednesday evening email to supporters of Citizens for Renewing America, a group he started after Trump was dumped by voters. The group has actively promoted MAGA movement culture wars over “cultural Marxism” and “critical race theory.”

Vought wrote that his team was in “close contact” with many of the roughly 20 House Republicans who denied McCarthy victory in six votes on Tuesday and Wednesday—a group Vought described as “a band of America First patriots.” Vought also went on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” this week to portray the fight against McCarthy as a chance to “dismantle the establishment.”

Dozens of right-wing movement leaders, including Vought and Ginni Thomas, signed the anti-McCarthy statement released by the Conservative Action Project, which is affiliated with the secretive and influential Council for National Policy. The first signer, Conservative Action Project chair Kenneth Blackwell, was revealed by the Jan. 6 committee to have been involved in the effort to pressure Mike Pence to act unconstitutionally and illegally to prevent congressional affirmation of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. In December 2020, members of the Conservative Action Project falsely claimed that Trump had won, urged state legislators in swing states won by Biden to name pro-Trump electors anyway, and called on congressional Republicans to contest electoral votes from those states.

Also on Wednesday, Trump’s fellow Floridian Rep. Matt Gaetz sent his own fundraising email disparaging the GOP’s House leader as “Cavin’ McCarthy” and “Kiev Kevin” and calling him a “California liberal” and “spineless RINO.”

Tags: Donald Trump Ginni Thomas Ken Blackwell Kevin McCarthy Russ Vought House Speaker Election Center for Renewing America Conservative Action Project Council for National Policy Republican Party

===

off bs

Mary G. Vought is the President and Founder of Vought Strategies and the Executive Director of the Senate Conservatives Fund in Washington, D.C.

Prior to that, she worked in the U.S. Senate for Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) as his Communications Director and then senior advisor. She also worked in the U.S. House for several Members of Congress serving in many communications roles including working on the House leadership staff for then-Representative Mike Pence (R-IN).

Her work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, the New York Post and other leading publications. Vought has a bachelor's degree in communications and one in political science. She graduated with high honors fromVanguard Universityin Southern California.

Her husband, Russ Vought, served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget for the Trump Administration. They have two children and reside in Arlington, Virginia.

https://ballotpedia.org/Senate_Conservatives_Fund

no lnx

senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) is a political action committee (PAC). As a PAC, the group can spend money on elections, but is not run by a party or individual candidate. On its website, the SCF states that its goal is to support candidates who prioritize limiting the size of the federal government.[1]

The organization makes endorsements in races for the U.S. Senate as well as the U.S. House and can donate money to parties or candidates it supports.

Mission

As of July 2017, the website for the SCF listed the following mission statement for the organization:[2]

“ SCF is a national grassroots organization that seeks to bring bold conservative leadership to Washington by supporting candidates who will fight for the timeless conservative principles of limited government, strong national defense, and traditional family values.[3] ”

Background

SCF was founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) in 2008.[4] The organization initially worked to put conservative lawmakers into seats held by Democrats. In 2012, the SCF moved to also challenge Republican incumbents.[5] In 2014, Politico reported that the organization was "instrumental in pressuring conservative lawmakers to take the hard-line strategy demanding a defunding of Obamacare, even though it led to the government shutdown last October."[6]

Work

2018 elections

In July 2017, after the Senate could not ensure enough votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act or begin debate on the Republican replacement, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the SCF announced its intent to challenge Republican senators who did not support the repeal. In a statement, the group said, "Working with the grassroots across the country, we will seek to identify, recruit, and fund conservative challengers against Republican senators who vote against repeal."[7]

Endorsements

As of July 2017, the SCF had endorsed the following candidates for 2018 congressional elections:

U.S. Senate

Josh Mandel (R-Ohio)

Ted Cruz (R-Texas)

2017 elections

The SCF endorsed the following candidates for 2017 congressional elections:[8]

U.S. House

Green check mark transparent.png Ralph Norman (R-S.C.)

Defeated Christopher Herrod (R-Utah)

2016 elections

Endorsements

According to its website, the SCF endorsed the following candidates for 2016 congressional elections:[9]

U.S. Senate

Green check mark transparent.png Mike Lee (R-Utah)

Defeated Darryl Glenn (R-Colo.)

Defeated John Fleming (R-La.)

U.S. House

Green check mark transparent.png Jim Banks (R-Ind.)

Green check mark transparent.png Warren Davidson (R-Ohio)

Green check mark transparent.png Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.)

Green check mark transparent.png Ted Budd (R-N.C.)

Green check mark transparent.png Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.)

Green check mark transparent.png Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.)

Green check mark transparent.png Rod Blum (R-Iowa)

Defeated Scott Garrett (R-N.J.)

Green check mark transparent.png Tom Garrett (R-Va.)

Green check mark transparent.png Mike Johnson (R-La.)

Expenditures

In the 2016 elections the SCF spent a grand total of $942,105 in independent expenditures: $937,105 for Republicans and $5,000 against Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. [10]

Top 10 largest Senate Conservatives Fund expenditures in 2016

Candidate State Party Office Total For Against

Darryl Glenn Colo. Republican Party U.S. Senate $321,678 $321,678 $0

Mike Lee Utah Republican Party U.S. Senate $166,743 $166,743 $0

Marlin Stutzman Ind. Republican Party U.S. Senate $111,178 $111,178 $0

Ron DeSantis Fla. Republican Party U.S. House $104,438 $104,438 $0

Jim Banks Ind. Republican Party U.S. House $55,260 $55,260 $0

Mary Thomas Fla. Republican Party U.S. House $44,907 $44,907 $0.00

Josh Mandel Ohio Republican Party U.S. Senate $24,323 $24,323 $0

Warren Davidson Ohio Republican Party U.S. House $20,693 $20,693 $0

Mike Johnson La. Republican Party U.S. House $14,665 $14,665 $0

James Bridenstine Okla. Republican Party U.S. House $11,254 $11,254 $0

2014 elections

Endorsements

Defeated Chris McDaniel (Miss.): McDaniel ran against Sen. Thad Cochran in the Republican primary for the seat. [11]

Defeated Matt Bevin (Ky.): Bevin challenged Sen. Mitch McConnell in the Kentucky Republican primary election.[11]

Green check mark transparent.png Ben Sasse (Neb.): Sasse ran for the open U.S. Senate seat, which was held by retiring Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.).[11]

Defeated Milton Wolf (Kan.)[11]

Defeated Rob Maness (La.): Maness ran against Bill Cassidy in the Republican primary.[12]

Green check mark transparent.png Joni Ernst (Iowa)[13]

Green check mark transparent.png Tom Cotton (Ark.)[13]

Targeted candidates

See also: United States Senate special election in Oklahoma, 2014

The Senate Conservatives Fund announced on January 20, 2014, that it would not back James Lankford in the special election to replace retiring Sen. Tom Coburn.[14]

In a statement, executive director Matt Hoskins said, “We won’t support Congressman Lankford’s bid for the Senate because of his past votes to increase the debt limit, raise taxes, and fund Obamacare. We have reviewed his record and it’s clear that conservatives cannot count on him to fight for their principles.”[14]

House conservatives project

In 2013, Senate Conservatives Fund created an initiative to support conservative House members in order to "advance conservative policies in the House and potentially run for the U.S. Senate in the future." As a part of this project, the group endorsed the following candidates in the 2014 election cycle:

Green check mark transparent.png Jim Bridenstine (Okla.)[11]

Green check mark transparent.png Dave Brat (Va.)[13]

Green check mark transparent.png Barry Loudermilk (Ga.)[13]

Green check mark transparent.png Alex Mooney (W.Va.)[13]

Green check mark transparent.png John Ratcliffe (Texas)[13]

Defeated Zach Dasher (La.)[13]

Expenditures

In the 2014 elections the SCF spent a grand total of $3,573,240 in independent expenditures: $80,026 against Democrats, $3,471,714 for Republicans, and $21,500 against Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. [15]

Top 10 largest Senate Conservatives Fund expenditures in 2014

Candidate State Party Office Total For Against

Ben Sasse Neb. Republican Party U.S. Senate $838,297 $838,297 $0

Rob Maness La. Republican Party U.S. Senate $460,112 $460,112 $0

Matt Bevin Ky. Republican Party U.S. Senate $458,870 $458,870 $0

Joni Ernst Iowa Republican Party U.S. Senate $361,012 $361,012 $0

T.W. Shannon Okla. Republican Party U.S. Senate $359,864 $359,864 $0

Chris McDaniel Miss. Republican Party U.S. Senate $274,758 $274,758 $0.00

Alex Mooney W.Va. Republican Party U.S. House $161,209 $161,209 $0

Tom Cotton Ark. Republican Party U.S. Senate $160,770 $160,770 $0

Milton Wolf Kan. Republican Party U.S. Senate $118,361 $118,361 $0

Mark Pryor Ark. Democratic Party U.S. Senate $75,126 $0 $75,126

Campaign ads

Senate Conservatives Fund: Nothing

Senate Conservatives Fund: Rightful Heirs

2012 elections

Endorsements

Senate Conservatives Fund endorsed the following candidates in the 2012 elections:[16]

Green check mark transparent.png Deb Fischer (Neb.-Sen)

Defeated George Allen (Va.-Sen)

Defeated Tom Smith (Pa.-Sen)

Defeated Dan Bongino (Md.-Sen)

Defeated Richard Mourdock (Ind.-Sen)

Green check mark transparent.png Ted Cruz (Texas-Sen)

Defeated Todd Akin (Mo.-Sen)

Defeated Josh Mandel (Ohio-Sen)

Expenditures

In the 2012 elections the SCF spent a grand total of $3,546,738 in independent expenditures: $20,000 against Democrats and $3,529,869 for Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. [16]

Top 10 largest Senate Conservatives Fund expenditures in 2012[16]

Candidate Party State Office Total For Against

Don Stenberg Republican Party NE Senate $996,246 $996,246 $0

Ted Cruz Republican Party TX Senate $985,381 $985,381 $0

Josh Mandel Republican Party OH Senate $303,462 $303,462 $0

Richard Mourdock Republican Party IN Senate $216,280 $216,280 $0

Jeff Flake Republican Party AZ Senate $201,840 $201,840 $0

George Allen Republican Party VA Senate $163,775 $163,775 $0

Tom Smith Republican Party PA Senate $163,186 $163,186 $0

Deb Fischer Republican Party NE Senate $159,515 $159,515 $0

Dan Bongino Republican Party MD Senate $155,131 $155,131 $0

Todd Akin Republican Party MO Senate $121,346 $121,346 $0

Leadership

As of July 2017, the website for the SCF listed the following individuals as the organization's leadership:[2]

Ken Cuccinelli, President

Mary Vought, Communications advisor

Kristin Szafranski, Director of operations

Tom Jones, Political advisor

Scott Travis, Digital advisor

Matt Hoskins, Finance advisor

Spencer Schulze, Development associate

Finances

The following is a breakdown of the SCF's annual contributions and expenditures from 2008 to 2016, as reported to the FEC.

Annual contributions and expenditures for the SCF, 2008-2016

Year Annual contributions Annual expenditures FEC records

2016 $3,827,382 $3,680,860 Filing

2015 $1,974,942 $2,167,659 Filing

2014 $8,891,899 $9,171,711 Filing

2013 $7,733,854 $8,083,425 Filing

2012 $11,581,121 $11,512,062 Filing

2011 $4,363,737 $4,370,686 Filing

2010 $7,940,272 $6,816,185 Filing

2009 $1,315,860 $1,406,561 Filing

2008 $304,222 $190,723 Filing

Legal status

The SCF is a political action committee (PAC). PACs are political committees established and administered by corporations, labor unions, membership organizations or trade associations. The general definition is a group that spends money on elections, but is not run by a party or individual candidate. However, PACs can donate money to parties or candidates they support. These committees raise funds either from individuals associated with the corporation (Separate Segregated Funds) or from any individuals who wish to contribute to the committee (Nonconnected PACs).[17] Nonconnected PACs are financially independent and pay for themselves via the contributions they raise. Separate segregated funds are funded by the organization they are associated with.[18]

vought 2 scf

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