The Daily Populous Sunday July 7th, 2024 day edition
Authored by theguardian.com and submitted by Kevombat

“Project 2025” is nothing short of a 900-page blueprint for guiding Donald Trump’s second term of office if he’s re-elected.

After the Heritage Foundation unveiled Project 2025 in April last year, when Trump was seeking the Republican nomination, he had no problem with it.

But now that the nation is turning its attention to the general election, Trump doesn’t want Project 2025 to draw attention. Its extremism is likely to turn off independents and moderates.

So Trump is now claiming he has “no idea who is behind” Project 2025.

This is another in a long line of Trump lies.

The Project 2025 playbook was written by more than 20 officials whom Trump himself appointed during his first term. If he has “no idea” who they are, he’s showing an alarming cognitive decline.

One of the leaders of Project 2025 is Russ Vought. Vought was Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, a key position in the White House. Vought is also drafting Trump’s 2024 GOP platform.

Another Project 2025 leader is John McEntee, another of Trump’s top White House aides. (McEntee recently went viral in a video in which he claimed he gives counterfeit money to homeless people to get them arrested.)

Even the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign appears in the Project 2025 recruitment video.

Trump says he “knows nothing” about Project 2025. And he says he “disagrees” with it.

Let’s be clear: the Trump campaign platform is basically Project 2025

As the former chairman of the Republican party Michael Steele put it: “OK, let’s all play with Stupid for minute … so exactly how do you ‘disagree’ with something you ‘know nothing about’ or ‘have no idea’ who is behind, saying or doing the thing you disagree with?”

Trump may also be worried that the Heritage president, Kevin Roberts, could alarm independents and moderates. On Wednesday, Roberts raised the prospect of political violence. “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts told the War Room podcast, founded by the Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

But let’s be clear. The Trump campaign platform is basically Project 2025. Trump’s Make America Great Again Pac is running ads calling it “Trump’s Project 2025”.

The Make America Great Again Pac also created the website TrumpProject2025.com. In case there’s any doubt that Trump and the Heritage Foundation are working in close partnership, Trump can be seen in this video praising the Heritage Foundation and saying he “needs” them to “achieve” his goals.

The close relationship between Trump and the Heritage Foundation goes back years. In 2018, the Heritage Foundation bragged that Trump had implemented two-thirds of their policy recommendations in his first year – more than any other president had done for them.

The goals of Project 2025 are the same goals Trump tried to achieve in his first term or has been advocating in this campaign.

One key goal of Project 2025 is to purge all government agencies of anyone more loyal to the constitution than to Trump – a process Trump himself started in October 2020 when he thought he would remain in office.

Trump has promised to give rightwing evangelical Christians what they want. Accordingly, Project 2025 calls for withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market, expelling trans service members from the military, banning life-saving gender affirming care for young people, ending all diversity programs, and using “school choice” to gut public education.

Project 2025 also calls for eliminating “woke propaganda” from all laws and federal regulations – including the terms “sexual orientation”, “diversity, equity, and inclusion”, “gender equality”, and “reproductive rights”.

Other items in the Project 2025 blueprint are precisely what Trump has called for on the campaign trail, including mass arrests and deportations of undocumented people in the United States, ending many worker protections, dropping prosecutions of far-right militias like the Proud Boys, and giving additional tax cuts to big corporations and the rich.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that climate change is a “hoax”. Project 2025 calls for expanding oil drilling in the United States, shrinking the geographic footprint of national monuments, terminating clean energy incentives, and ending fossil fuel regulations.

Trump has said he’d seek vengeance against those who have prosecuted him for his illegal acts. Project 2025 calls for the prosecution of district attorneys Trump doesn’t like, and the takeover of law enforcement in blue cities and states.

Project 2025 is, in short, the plan to implement what Donald Trump has said he wants to do if he’s re-elected.

Trump may want to distance himself from Project 2025 in order to come off less bonkers to independents and moderates, but he can’t escape it. The document embodies everything he stands for.

Infidel8 on July 7th, 2024 at 01:01 UTC »

At the end of the day, Trump is just a trojan horse for white nationalists and other assorted flavors of extremist bigots.

When they get that Schedule F plan into plan, everyone in the government will be Steve Bannon.

CompassionateCedar on July 7th, 2024 at 00:04 UTC »

Tbh I dont understand how they think it wont backfire. Even if we ignore the culture war parts, some of the things in there would just ruin the economy. There is a point of no return in an economy where so much wealth is accumulated at the top that nothing works anymore. You need regular people spending to keep it running.

Who is the major meat packer that co-wrote it? Dropping almost all quality regulations on meat for interstate commerce seems like a bad idea. The entire part about meat feels like it is designed to drive small farmers out of business and buy them out.

Sure monompolies are fun for a while, and not having to pay your workers for healthcare is nice too when you can easily fire and replace them. But at some point they are going to run out or rebel.

AprimeAisI on July 6th, 2024 at 22:44 UTC »

What is the obsession with no fault divorce. I saw that as part of the project 2025 agenda.