Tag: Project 2025

May rambling: To Secure These Rights

Charles Strouse

To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. HARRY S. TRUMAN, The White House, December 5, 1946.

How Civil Rights Were Made—and Remade—By Black Communities In the Jim Crow South

In HR 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed by the House of Representatives, Sec. 70302: “This section limits the ability of U.S. courts to enforce a citation for contempt for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order. Specifically, if no security was given when the injection or order was issued, the citation of contempt may not be enforced using appropriated funds. This limitation applies to injunctions or orders issued before, on, or after the date of enactment.”

The AKG Museum exhibit honoring the people killed in the shootings at Tops Market in Buffalo, 5-14-2022, including the poem Mourning Until Morning by Jillian Hanesworth

The ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Uncensored Oral History of a Revolution

My Father Prosecuted History’s Crimes. Then He Died in One. He was a Nazi hunter — and was killed in the Lockerbie bombing. What does it mean to seek justice for his death?

Wendy McMahon Resigns as Head of CBS News: “Company and I Do Not Agree on the Path Forward”

This Channel Is Biased
A business owner tested whether customers would pay more for American-made products. The results were ‘sobering.’
Revisiting Biden’s Decline
The Long, Strange Trip of the Titanic Victims Whose Remains Surfaced Hundreds of Miles Away, Weeks After the Ship Sank
And…
Baby Is Healed With the World’s First Personalized Gene-Editing Treatment. The technique used on a 9½-month-old boy with a rare condition has the potential to help people with thousands of other uncommon genetic diseases.
John shares some extremely good news six years into Nerdfighteria’s effort to improve maternal and child health in Sierra Leone.
No One Knows When They Don’t Die
Legendary comic book writer Peter David dies at age 68
James McEachin, Star of ‘Tenafly’ and Perry Mason Telefilms, Dies at 94
George Wendt, the Beer-Loving Norm on ‘Cheers,’ Dies at 77
Discover® is now part of Capital One as of May 18, 2025
June Squibb on Her Nonagenarian Career High
Why Teacher Jamal Roberts is the New American Idol

Autocephality is a fancy word for self-governance. It’s mainly used in the context of Eastern Orthodox Churches that independently govern their spiritual affairs without a higher ecclesiastical authority.

Now I Know: It’s Not Easy Being Clean and Why Purple is the Royal Color and The Secret Code of Central Park’s Lamp Post and It’s Not Easy Driving Green

On and on…

Yes, this is Project 2025 (ft. Liz Dye)

The Greatness Paradox: His notion of national greatness is stuck in the Napoleonic Era, which is causing him to destroy everything that makes America great today.

Harvard Derangement Syndrome

Him & The Press: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

His CFPB kills the data broker rule

When He Was the One Taking Land From Farmers and How His Embrace of Afrikaner “Refugees” Became a Joke in South Africa

She Devoted Her Life to Serving the U.S. Then DOGE Targeted Her. A veteran who returned from Iraq injured and transformed, Joy Marver is now facing a crisis at home.

We’re Experts in Fascism. We’re Leaving the U.S.

Why Eliminating the NEA Would Be a Disaster For Our Country

The New DEI — Discrimination, Exclusion, and Inequity

All Hail Our Rococo President!

Strange Bedfellows and Long Knives, about the secret engine of sweeping political upheavals (like Trumpism) and their inherent fragility

 

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” -Harry S. Truman, 33rd US president (8 May 1884-26 December 1972)
Heather Cox Richardson, May 23 (in part)

After S.V. Date of HuffPost noted last week that the White House had published fewer than 20% of [his] speeches, the White House has stopped publishing a database of official transcripts of [his] announcements, appearances, and speeches altogether and has taken down those it had published. Instead, it will just post videos. And yet it is publishing just a few of the videos of the president’s term: so far, fewer than 50 videos of the first 120 days of his term, according to Brian Stelter of CNN.

A presidential administration traditionally publishes the president’s words promptly to establish a record. The White House, in contrast, says removing the transcripts will enable people to get a better sense of him by watching his videos. But it’s likely closer to the truth that his appearances since he took office have been erratic, and removing the transcripts will make it harder for people to read his nonsensical rambles.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “The [FOTUS] White House is the most transparent in history,” but of course, it’s objectively not. White House officials have made it impossible to tell who is making decisions at the Department of Government Efficiency, for example, or who gave the order to render migrants to El Salvador. Now the president’s words, too, will be hidden.

MUSIC
Charles Strouse, Tony-winning composer of Annie, Applause, and Bye Bye Birdie, dies at 96. He’s known for such songs as “Tomorrow,” “It’s the Hard Knock Life,” “Put on a Happy Face,” and the ‘All in the Family’ theme song, “Those Were the Days.” He also wrote scores for motion pictures, including The Night They Raided Minsky’s
That’s Trump Derangement! – A Randy Rainbow Song Parody
Pamela Bondi – Marsh Family parody of The One and Only sung by Chesney Hawkes (by Nik Kershaw)

New Day Will Rise  – Yuval Raphael

Rick Derringer, a Zelig-like rocker, the guitarist, singer, and songwriter, dies at 77. Hang On Sloopy – The McCoys. Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo – Rick Derringer. Eat It – Weird Al Yankovic (Rick plays lead guitar; he produced six of Al’s albums)

Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In)-The New Edition, featuring Kenny Rogers

Somewhere Over Laredo – Lainey Wilson 

On an American Spiritual  by David R. Holsinger
Leucadia Uncompromised – Peter Sprague
The Firebird suite by Igor Stravinsky

Coverville 1534: Brothers in Arms Album Cover and Devo Cover Story

Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)‎ ‎- Taylor Swift ‎ ‎
Don’t You (Forget About Me) – Simple Minds
Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck covering Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready
Crazy For You –  Madonna
Harry Truman – Chicago

Stop Project 2025 comic!

It includes enabling the president to have much more power than the constitution allows.

 

Authoritarianism_0

Here’s your problem: trying to tell all your friends about Stop Project 2025 and why they should care. It’s difficult because the plan is dense, vaguely incomprehensible, and perhaps a little bit boring. I point to this great page, which is quite thorough. 

It includes a 38-minute video, a quiz, and lots of words—important words, to be sure, but still. It does direct you to that four-and-a-half-minute song I’ve linked to before.   

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Several people created the Stop Project 2025 Comic, which you should share. Why did they make this?

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“We’ve made comics to explain some of that agenda, and move you to vote against it.

“We did this because you shouldn’t have to read this monstrosity. After all, it’s more than fifty times as long as the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution…combined.

“Our two founding documents are short because it doesn’t take a lot of words to say, ‘You matter, and you have a voice.’

“Project 2025 is longer because it’s a detailed plan to shut you up and shut you out.

“Don’t let it do either.

“Read on, then vote.”

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Project 2025 is a detailed plan to shut you up and shut you out.

You matter, and you have a voice.

Related – Election Subversion 2024: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Is immigration something you do or something you are? 

When Trump Rants, This Is What I Hear from Carlos Lozado, a NY Times writer who came to the United States at age three, is touching. The article is probably behind a firewall, but here are a few paragraphs.

djt’s “eating the dogs” rant prompted Lozado “to look back on his xenophobic cacophony, building so relentlessly over the past decade, in attacks that have narrowed the distance for me between immigration as a memory and being an immigrant as a present identity…

“When Trump told four Democratic women in Congress to ‘go back’ to their countries, he unknowingly trivialized how often I’ve gone back in my mind, wondering what that other life, that other person, might have been like.

“When he mocked immigrants for not speaking English, he ignored the interplay between native tongues and new ones and how demanding purity in language — and in people — is utterly self-defeating.

“How can immigrants ‘poison the blood’ of the nation when we have always been its lifeblood? With his accusations, Trump is administering his own brand of venom, one whose cumulative effect is to disfigure a nation, not exalt it.”

Project 2025: Schoolhouse Rock-like

immigration

You don’t need to read about the 900-page Project 2025.  “Here’s a look at Project 2025 as it might be explained if Schoolhouse Rock was still around.”

“Delete the terms sexual orientation, gender equality, awareness and sensitivity, diversity, equity, inclusion, abortion, reproductive health, and reproductive rights out of every rule, regulation, contract, grant, and piece of federal legislation that exists…” and that’s an actual quote.
Immigration

“Project 2025 proposes to severely roll back both legal and unauthorized immigration through a number of untested, novel approaches that extend far beyond the policies of Trump’s first term. The plan would potentially make hundreds of thousands of people vulnerable to deportation through the loss of temporary protected status, and could ensnare their families, those they live with, and other members of their communities. Extreme anti-immigration organization the Center for Immigration Studies has partnered with Project 2025 in supporting these radical immigration policy ideas.”

But you don’t have to wait until 2025. djt put the kibosh on the admittedly imperfect bipartisan bill this year.
Worse, JD Vance was on the Sunday morning talk shows on 9/15, admitting on  CNN the stories he and djt spewed regarding Haitian immigrants were bogus. He defended his lies, “If I have to create stories to get the media to pay attention then that’s what I’ll do!” Vance says he and his running mate have to “create stories” about migrants eating cats and dogs “so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people.”
WHAT? The real-world consequences of these unfounded, unhinged rantings are substantial.
As the Guardian noted, Vance was saying, “‘Basically, if I have to lie and demonize innocent people and they are then targeted for violence by my hateful unhinged followers, I will. Collateral damage. So what? Because that’s what it takes to scare Republicans into voting for me.’ I don’t care how you slice it; that’s right out of the Josef Goebbels Reich Minister of Propaganda playbook.”
Community asset
Meanwhile, the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, OH, are a boon to the industry in town.

Weekly Sift guy writes: “How racism manifests. To begin with, the Haitian Fright of 2024 provides a teaching opportunity about racism. I am constantly seeing accounts from White people online and on television, who believe they are not racist because they don’t internally experience what they imagine racism to be: a blind and senseless hatred of other races. ‘I don’t hate anyone,’they claim, and believe that they are telling the truth.But the Haitian Fright points out a more subtle and widespread kind of racism: a propensity to believe (and even pass on) negative stories about other races without requiring evidence.”

Another important point: “Many Americans claim that they don’t object to immigrants per se, but only to illegal immigrants. If people would only come to America ‘the right way, as my ancestors did,’ they would be welcomed…

“You know who else is here the right way? The Haitians in Springfield. They qualify for a program known as ‘temporary protected status,’ which provides legal status to people from countries that (because of either natural disaster or political unrest) are not safe to return to. Others came ‘as part of a parole program that allows citizens and lawful residents to apply to have their family members from Haiti come to the United States.'”
Finally, “As for the liberal memes, I have changed my mind several times. Yes, Trump deserves to be ridiculed for this. And yet I find myself agreeing with media studies scholar Whitney Phillips:

While Phillips said she doesn’t begrudge people “having fun online,” she warned that liberals who think they’re cutting Trump down to size risk giving oxygen to a trope that ultimately plays into his hands — and endangers the Haitians who were its original targets.

“When you’re making a joke using the frame” of immigrants as cultural invaders, she said, even if you’re pushing back on it, “the frame is still amplified.”

Project 2025: LGBTQ rights

Climate change

“Project 2025 takes extreme positions against LGBTQ rights, seeking to eliminate federal protections for queer people and pursue research into conversion therapies in order to encourage gender and sexuality conformity. The policy book also lays out plans to criminalize being transgender and prohibit federal programs from supporting queer people through various policies.”

From GLAAD: The Heritage Foundation’s “stated support for freedom and limited government does not extend to LGBTQ Americans, as evidenced by decades of waging losing battles against:

“Project 2025 aims to gut protections for the LGBTQ community, which its organizers believe exists in opposition to the ‘traditional American family’ and its Christian nationalist underpinnings. The Project would prioritize families ‘comprised of a married mother, father, and their children’ and would eliminate any federal policies that promote LGBTQ equality or that assist single mothers.”

From GPAHE: “Under the banner of “Restoring the Family,” Project 2025 aims to gut protections for the LGBTQ+ community… The Project would privilege ‘family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including the tax code’ to favor traditional families…  Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on ‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage. These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families.'”

Of course, you don’t have to read the document to know the position of the National Republican Committee. Just watch Day 1 of the convention.

Climate change

“Project 2025 would eliminate environmental protections and further delay climate action. In the foreword, Heritage President Kevin Roberts calls environmentalism a ‘pseudo-religion,’ claiming ‘environmental extremism is decidedly anti-human’ because it promotes ‘population control and economic regression’ by ‘regarding human activity itself as fundamentally a threat to be sacrificed to the god of nature.'”

From The Hill: “The project… proposes chopping up several agencies. It called for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the nation’s oceans, weather, climate, and fisheries science agency, to be ‘dismantled.’

“NOAA is home to the National Weather Service (which the plan says should henceforth focus on commercial operations), as well as the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (which the plan says should be ‘downsized,’ with much of its climate research “disbanded”).

“The plan would also eliminate offices within the Energy Department that focus on renewable energy, climate technology and energy technology research.”

Watch the Legal Eagle piece on Project 2025: A Hellish Legal Vision For America ft. Liz Dye, which touches on the whole 900-page document.

Media Matters on Project 2025

I thought Americans didn’t want a king

A LOT of folks I know IRL have said, online and occasionally in person, that we all need to know more about Project 2025. I agree. My first mention was in a link in August 2023, but it bears repeating.

Check out the Media Matters website.

“The initiative is backed by a coalition of over 100 organizations and individuals, at least two-thirds of which receive funding from the Koch network or conservative philanthropist Leonard Leo. The project is also heavily promoted by MAGA-connected media figures such as Steve Bannon, who has called it the ‘blueprint’ for Trump’s second term on his War Room podcast.”

The presumptive Republican nominee claims, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Or, less politely, he lies.

This is – let me think of a kind way to put this – disingenuous.  Just before he went to prison for a few months, Bannon told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that he had regularly been in touch with djt. “John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office and one of Trump’s most trusted aides, is a senior adviser for the project. McEntee said in April that the Trump campaign and Project 2025 plan to ‘integrate a lot of our work’ this summer, according to the liberal watchdog Media Matters.”

Peter Navarro, Ken Cuccinelli,  Stephen Moore, Christopher Miller, Roger Severino, and others who worked in his administration are all involved in Project 2025. In other words, he has implausible deniability.

A fundraising email from the Heritage Foundation also lays it on thick. “The Biden campaign has declared an all-out war on The Heritage Foundation and our Project 2025 initiative.

“The social media feeds for the campaign, and all their surrogates are filled with lies about our work. Their website even has a page dedicated to attacking Project 2025.

“They are terrified of Project 2025 because they know it will save our country from the radical Left’s destructive agenda.”

Here’s a video dispassionately explaining Project 2025, noting five criticisms of the program. It’s the type of resource that tries to be nonpartisan.

Immunity

Project 2025 is made more threatening by SCOTUS’ decision regarding immunity.

Once again, the Heritage Foundation says that Biden lied. “‘For all… practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do,’ Biden claimed.” He also suggested “that ‘the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self-imposed by the president alone.’ This accusation is objectively false.”

The prevarication belongs to the Heritage Foundation. The generally apolitical The Legal Eagle notes WE’RE F*CKED. In the description: “This is one of the worst SCOTUS decisions ever.” Trump Is Immune. He argues that djt’s “limited immunity,” in practical terms, is anything but limited.

New Civil Rights Movement: “Two hundred and three days after Special Counsel Jack Smith’s first request, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision along partisan lines… ruled an American President has ‘absolute‘ immunity from criminal prosecution if his actions are ‘official acts’ of Office.

Frank S. Robinson wrote in  The Supreme Court, Presidential Immunity, and the Implacable Tide: “The court unnecessarily pronounced [an overly broad] doctrine of presidential immunity. Practically deeming the president above the law, saying one can’t be prosecuted for any ‘official acts’ — only for stuff done in their ‘private capacity.’ Quite a limited carve-out. Worse yet, the Court’s majority, having promulgated a standard, failed to take the next step and apply it to the facts at hand.”

The Weekly Sift guy: “Roberts and the conservative majority have embedded a time bomb in the Constitution. That bomb could sit peacefully for decades until it is disarmed by some future Court, or it could go off as soon as next January.”

Am I scared? Yes, I am. Will I vote for whoever has the best chance of beating djt in November, even if he’s 81 and arthritic? I absolutely will. 

Ramblin' with Roger
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