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Trump Disingenuously Tries to Distance Himself from Project 2025

If one wants to get an idea of what a Trump 2.0 regime would look like, look no farther than Project 2025, a 900+ page agenda that would radically attack career civil servants and replace them with Trump loyalists, make white "Christian" nationalism the de facto state religion, and drastically roll back the civil rights of gays and racial and religious minorities.  The ever more extreme Heritage foundation is behind the project working with some of worse extremists from Trump's first regime and groups of hate merchants across the far right religious and social spectrum.  I have downloaded a copy and it is both arduous and frightening reading. For the LGBT community, it's a safe bet that same sex marriage would be rescinded and it is not outside the realm of possibility that the sodomy laws could be revived and "don't say gay" laws and abortion bans would be nationwide.  Some of the authors are so extreme that I don't doubt that they'd love to bring back the Jim Crow laws while they are at it. The media has been far too slow in publicizing what's in Project 2025 which could push anyone who isn't a white supremacist or Christofascist away from the GOP overall.  With coverage of this extreme agenda for a second Trump regime beginning to belatedly get coverage, Trump seems to be sensing how unpopular Project 2025 may become and is disingenuously, trying to distance himself from it.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Trump's deceptive dance:

Former president Donald Trump sought Friday to distance himself from a conservative think tank’s plan for the next Republican presidency, as Democrats work to make it a political vulnerability for Trump in the November election.

The plan from the Heritage Foundation, known as Project 2025, pitches a sweeping overhaul of the federal government should Trump win a second term, including far more power for the executive branch. Many people involved in the effort are former Trump administration officials, and Trump publicly allied himself with the think tank as president.

Despite that, Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he knows “nothing about Project 2025.”

“I have no idea who is behind it,” he wrote Friday. . . . Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, generated controversy three days ago for claiming in a media appearance that the country was in the middle of a “second American revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”

“Project 2025 is the extreme policy and personnel playbook for Trump’s second term that should scare the hell out of the American people,” Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement on Trump’s effort to distance himself from the plan. “Project 2025 staff and leadership routinely tout their connections to Trump’s team, and are the same people leading the [Republican National Committee] policy platform and Trump’s debate prep, campaign, and inner circle.” . . . . the project represents more than 110 conservative groups planning for the next GOP president. “But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement.”

Trump’s campaign last year sought to downplay Project 2025 as “policy recommendations from external allies.” But Biden’s campaign and other Democrats have made an aggressive effort to make Trump answer for the plan.

Last month, House Democrats launched a task force to counter Project 2025. And on Friday, hours after Trump’s post about Project 2025, multiple speakers at a Biden rally in Wisconsin rallied supporters against the plan.

“When you go home, Google ‘Project 2025’ and tell everybody you know to do the same,” Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) said.

A centerpiece of the plan is a massive shake-up of the federal workforce to make it more loyal to the president, a proposal that aligns with Trump’s longtime complaints about a “deep state” bureaucracy that he accused of undermining his first-term agenda. Project 2025 touches on other politically sensitive issues, including calling for the Food and Drug Administration to “revisit and withdraw its initial approval” of the abortion pill mifepristone.

People involved in Project 2025 include Ben Carson, Trump’s former housing secretary; Peter Navarro, White House trade adviser under Trump; and Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump. Earlier this year, Trump and the Republican National Committee named Vought as policy director for the RNC committee crafting the party platform ahead of its national convention this month in Milwaukee.

Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is a senior partner in one of the groups advising Project 2025, the Conservative Partnership Institute. And John McEntee, director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump, serves as a senior adviser to Project 2025.

Biden’s campaign also pointed out that a Trump campaign spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, appeared in a September 2023 video promoting Project 2025′s training program for potential future political appointees. The video features several former Trump administration staffers identifying themselves, with Leavitt noting she was Trump’s assistant press secretary.

Biden’s campaign criticized the Heritage Foundation president’s comments about a “second American Revolution,” made just two days before the July Fourth holiday.

“248 years ago tomorrow America declared independence from a tyrannical king, and now Donald Trump and his allies want to make him one at our expense,” Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer said in a statement on Wednesday.

Trump and this group of zealots must be stopped by whatever means necessary.

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Hurricane Beryl Is a Terrifying Omen

Living on the mid-Atlantic coast, if one isn't unconscious, one tends to follow news and forecasts on hurricanes. Our former home flooded three times over 20 years during hurricanes and/or their remnants, one of the reasons we moved after waterproofing the former home as much as possible and installing a whole house generator to power large sump pumps.  We know the impact of hurricanes all too well. The forecast for this year is troubling with the possibility of more record breaking storms. Meanwhile, Republicans continue to deny that climate change is real and in some states (think Florida and Texas - and, yes, Virginia) nowhere near enough is being address the changing climate and what it will mean for coastal communities.  The consequences of climate change will also impact America's agriculture system.  Hurricane Beryl, which has broken past records and will likely hit south Texas, is an ominous reminder that denying climate change is real and failing to face the growing dangers is not a sane or responsible approach. Having lived through Hurricane Frederic's direct hit on Mobile, Alabama, years ago, far too many coastal residents have no comprehension of or are oblivious to the growing dangers.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at Beryl's warning to us.  Here are excerpts:

Hurricane Beryl is an unprecedented storm. It’s been at least 173 years since certain parts of the Caribbean have experienced a storm this brutal. Over just a few days, Beryl has ripped through the region, leaving devastation on the islands in its path. The doors and roofs have been torn off homes. Trees have been snapped in half and branches thrown into the street. Cows have been killed in the fields where they grazed. At least six people have died in the storm, and officials expect the number to rise. According to the prime minister of Grenada, the Category 4 hurricane "flattened" the island of Carriacou, where it made landfall yesterday, in just half an hour. And that was all before Beryl leveled up to Category 5 last night, reaching wind speeds of 165 miles an hour.

Beryl transformed from a tropical depression to a Category 4 hurricane in two days, faster than any hurricane has ever done before the month of September, Brian McNoldy, a senior research scientist at the University of Miami, told me. It is the easternmost hurricane to emerge in the tropical Atlantic Ocean in the month of June. It’s the first storm to strengthen to Category 4 in the Atlantic in June, and now the earliest on record to hit Category 5. Hurricane Beryl “is not normal, in any way, shape, or form,” Ryan Truchelut, a meteorologist in Tallahassee, Florida, who runs the consulting firm WeatherTiger, told me.

We’re only a month into the Atlantic hurricane season, and already, the boundaries that normally govern it are breaking. The cause is abnormally hot ocean waters—warmed by El Niño last year, but also by centuries of burning fossil fuels. Climate change “does not make a storm like Hurricane Beryl exist, but it certainly helped,” McNoldy said. Monster hurricanes like Beryl shouldn't happen this early. They shouldn't arise in this particular part of the Atlantic basin. And they shouldn't be intensifying at such astonishing rates, before the season has even gotten into full swing. But they are, and will probably continue to do so as long as our oceans continue to simmer.

Experts have been warning of unusual events like Beryl for weeks now. Global sea-surface temperatures have been historically high for more than a year, and warm water provides plenty of moist air that fuels storms as they move along. In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted an extraordinary season of eight to 13 hurricanes, compared with the usual seven. Between four and seven of those could count as major, between Category 3 and 5. A typical season sees only three.

Beryl’s dramatic arrival echoes some of the nastiest moments in Atlantic hurricane history. The previous record for easternmost tropical Atlantic hurricane was set in 1933, which saw six major hurricanes. The season in which a Category 5 storm took shape earliest was 2005, the year of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. . . . . “Those are the two most scary, active hurricane seasons that have ever been observed.” According to the Colorado State University meteorologist Phil Klotzbach, as of this afternoon, Beryl has generated more energy than 1983’s entire, quiet season.

Right now, the Caribbean Sea is as hot as it typically is in late August and September—how much warmer will it be in two months? Plus, forecasters’ dire predictions for this hurricane season are heavily influenced by La Niña, El Niño’s cooler opposite, which also allows hurricanes to become stronger than they otherwise would. But La Niña isn’t even here yet. It’s expected to arrive later this summer. “I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t expect more high-end events to happen this year,” McNoldy said. The strongest, most destructive storms are still yet to come.

Experts had anticipated a storm as extreme as Beryl, but they’re still awed when faced with the real thing. “Everybody in tropical meteorology is just shocked by this,” Truchelut said. And if ocean warming continues apace, more people may soon find themselves similarly shocked. Beryl is a horrifying reminder that, in a warmer world, more people live in the path of potentially catastrophic storms.

In this hurricane season, and those to come, even people who live in regions that experience storms every year will need to recalibrate their approach. A grizzled Texan or Floridian might say they haven’t had to evacuate in decades. But hurricanes are fundamentally changing. Americans seem to have escaped this nightmare storm, but “we might not be so lucky next time,” Truchelut said. “The next one might be pointed at the southeastern United States.”

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We Must Declare Independence from the Monarchial Presidency

Today we celebrate the 13 colonies' declaration of independence from the British crown and what the colonists viewed as a tyrannical monarchy,  yet on this past Monday the extremist majority on the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling which gives the president almost monarchal powers with not accountability if actions - seemingly no matter how extreme - so long as they are dressed up as "official acts." Combined with this frightening ruling is Project 2025 authorized by right wing zealots that if implemented by a monarchial president (think Donald Trump) would role back the rights of many Americans, including women, gays and non-whites, and make white Christian nationalism the official religion of the nation. It is not hyperbole to say that a stage has been set for the end of American democracy and the rise of a regime as dangerous as that of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi Party which lead to the deaths of millions, incalculable suffering and ultimately, Germany's destruction. Sadly, Republicans and MAGA cultists seem just fine with a de facto monarchy which they believe will punish (or worse) those they deem "other" and allow them to benefit either politically or through an enhanced white superiority.  At this point, only American voters can stop this nightmare scenario, assuming they end their sleepwalking and pull their heads out of the sand as laid out in a column in the Washington Post: 

On this Independence Day 2024, we find ourselves, as a nation, back under a monarchy’s hold on America. Credit this astonishing turn of events to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., plus the Supreme Court’s five other royalists who joined him to fashion a decision that bestows upon the American president immunity from accountability for “official” acts that might leave him open for prosecution were he an ordinary citizen. In her ferocious dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority’s decision makes the president a “king above the law.” So here we are, having defeated King George III in 1783, only to end up two centuries later with an American sovereign with powers that would make previous tyrants drool.

Were that not enough, the country is faced with the prospect of twice-impeached felon and former president Donald Trump returning to the White House. The thought of the mendacious, narcisstic, vengeful Trump with those powers is terrifying. Dismiss the notion that “there’s no telling what he would do.” We know better. Trump and his inner circle have told us what he’ll do.

It falls to people who cherish and live by democratic values to stave off that danger. The courts won’t do it. President Biden, healthy or otherwise, cannot do it by himself. Only we, the people, can do what needs doing, to wit: reject Trump and all that he stands for at the polls on Election Day.

Yes, votes are there to keep Trump out of the Oval Office, as they were in the previous presidential election. Trump, simply put, can’t win with only his base of MAGA supporters and fellow travelers, no matter how rabid they are.

Don’t get hung up for the moment on who should be the Democratic standard-bearer. There’s plenty of time to get that sorted out. . . . . Better to keep focused, and spread the word to family, friends and neighbors, about the world that awaits them if Trump takes the oath of office.

Prosecutions will warp into persecutions. Political foes, real and imagined, in the press and online and in the politicians’ suites, will be subjected to Trump’s whims and power. Pardons and clemency will rain down like manna on Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists. Russian President Vladimir Putin will once again have a friend in the White House and an ally against NATO and the West. Immigrants and people from Muslim-majority countries will face an aggressively hostile federal government. Civil rights and LGBTQ+ progress will grind to a halt. The economy will function on behalf of the haves, to the detriment of the have-nots and the left-out.

So, right now and until Election Day, no matter who is at the top of the ticket, concentrate on defeating Trump and regaining Democratic control of the House and preventing a GOP takeover in the Senate. Visualize Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress. Can you imagine a Republican House doing anything to rein Trump in? A Republican Senate doing anything but acquiescing to any underqualified, politically subservient appointment he chooses to make? Can mules whistle? Armed with Roberts’s ruling, dictator Trump could operate with impunity.

Thus, here we are on the Fourth of July with democracy on the line.

Let this be the day a second Declaration for Independence is launched, proclaimed on behalf of people who reject the notion of an imperial president, and who hold dear democratic ideals and principles. Let us pledge to defend it with our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Let us begin today.

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Day Two of Donald Trump's Dictatorship

 

Tomorrow is the 4th of July and I do not think I have ever been so worried and afraid about the future of America.  The vast majority of Americans appear to be sleepwalking towards disaster just as too many Germans did as Hitler was rising to power.  By the time many in the 1930's belatedly opened their eyes, it was too late to avoid disaster - a disaster that saw millions lose their lives and Germany left in ruins. Apiece in Salon looks at the looming danger of a Trump dictatorship and the seeming unconsciousness of too many Americans and an unsupported belief that somehow things will turn out alright. The piece also touches on those who have prostituted themselves to Trump and/or are going along for short term gain with no thought of how history shows that once in power, dictators will then go against those in their own ranks who are perceived as insufficiently loyal, possible rivals, or simply no longer needed to achieve.  These individuals ignore the examples from Nazi Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China and other dictatorial regimes.   When will people wake up to the danger?  Here are column highlights:

You will obey! This is the mission statement for authoritarians and autocrats such as aspiring dictator Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. Donald Trump and his agents’ and allies’ revolutionary plans to end American democracy are not secret: they have been publicly announced and are detailed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, on Trump’s own campaign website as Agenda 47, and throughout the right-wing “news” media disinformation echo chamber. And now blessed by the highest court in the land. 

These enemies of American democracy would not be so bold if they were not reasonably certain of their success.

In series of recent interviews, MSNBC host and author Rachel Maddow has been trying to warn the American people about the existential danger to their freedom, lives, and safety from Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, and larger neofascist project. As Maddow told CNN’s Oliver Darcey, Trump's threats are no joke: 

I'm worried about the country broadly if we put someone in power who is openly avowing that he plans to build camps to hold millions of people, and to 'root out' what he's described in subhuman terms as his 'enemy from within. Again, history is helpful here. He's not joking when he says this stuff, and we've seen what happens when people take power proclaiming that kind of agenda. I think there's a little bit of head-in-the-sand complacency that Trump only intends to go after individual people he has already singled out. Do you really think he plans to stop at well-known liberals?

It also seems pretty clear that some people in politics might think they'll be on the safe side — that they might even benefit from it — if they side with Trump. Ask Mike Pence about how that works out in the end. When Trump invokes the Insurrection Act to deploy the U.S. military against civilians on his first day in office, do you think he then rescinds the order on day two? For that matter, what convinces you that these massive camps he's planning are only for migrants?

Rachel Maddow is correct. History has repeatedly shown that authoritarian and fascist movements almost always expand the groups of people they target as the enemy or some type of Other. Eventually, these movements target their own supporters in a cycle of escalating violence and suffering, as they finally, as seen in Nazi Germany, consume themselves in destruction. Ultimately, almost all Americans are imperiled by Trumpism and American neofascism.

One of the great failures of the mainstream news media in the Age of Trump (and especially its hope-peddlers, institutionalists, and professional centrists) is treating aspiring dictator Donald Trump and the right-wing’s plan(s) to end multiracial pluralistic democracy as a hypothetical or something imagined and fantastical instead of as a real and present and growing danger.

In their new essay at Slate, Norm Ornstein and Dahlia Lithwick write with uncommon clarity and force about how the news media and the country’s political class have mostly failed in their responsibilities to warn the American people about the imminent dangers and reality of Trumpism and American neofascism

Americans have a normalcy bias. It leads them to believe anyone who tells them that everything is awesome and that a system is “holding” — even as that system is hanging together by way of dental floss…..And many journalists have a normalcy bias so acute they wouldn’t know how to cover an authoritarian takeover if it meant that one of the two presidential candidates threatened jail for his political opponents—even as he continues to refer to these journalists as “the enemy of the people.” . . .

[W]e’re normalizing the abnormal, covering the election as a horse race between democracy and illiberalism without mentioning illiberalism or considering the stakes and the consequences, and repeatedly applying a false equivalence to Trump and Biden…. The signals are flashing red that our fundamental system is in danger. “The system is holding” is not a plan for a knowable future. It never was.

The Republican Party will basically be made into the country’s official national party. Voting for the Democrats or other political parties that are deemed to be a threat to the MAGA movement will be made prohibitively difficult through voter intimidation, nullification and purges. White Christianity will be made into America’s official state religion. The civil rights of Black and brown people, the LGBTQ community, and women will be severely curtailed. Women will have their reproductive rights and freedoms taken away. . . . . Trump and his forces will target the human “vermin” who are polluting the “blood” of the nation, including but not be limited to non-whites, Muslims, Jews, and disabled people.

Universities and colleges will be targeted with censorship, lawsuits and other efforts to defund and close them down – as well as to threaten and intimidate faculty and administrators – if they do not sufficiently support the Trump regime and the larger right-wing reactionary and revolutionary project.

Freedom of the press and freedom of speech will be severely limited. President Biden and other leading Democrats, Republicans deemed to be disloyal, and any other individuals and groups who are targeted as the enemy will face the possibility of being put in prison for “treason” and then being executed. Donald Trump and his propagandists and other agents and allies have repeatedly made such explicit threats and promises of “revenge” and “retribution”.

There are prominent voices among the news media and political class (and general public) who will push back that this is all “hysterical”, “doomsaying”, and that “the institutions” and “the rule of law” will stop aspiring dictator Donald Trump and Project 2025 and his Agenda 47 and the other plans to end the country’s democracy.

Are you afraid? You should be. Where is the massive public resistance to aspiring Dictator Donald Trump and the other neofascist forces and enemies of American democracy and freedom? As compared to how Europeans are responding to ascendant neofascism in their own respective countries, the mobilization (or lack thereof) by the American people can reasonably be described as pitiful.

The insanity of doing the same thing over and over — begging millions of utterly tuned-out voters to like the (undeservedly, in my opinion) unpopular President Joe Biden and expecting a different result on Nov. 5 — isn’t working.

The American people would be wise to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. At this point, given the early 2024 polls, fundraising, and other measures – most notably the enduring if not growing popularity of convicted felon and aspiring dictator Donald Trump, the worst is the far more likely outcome. Given the obvious and growing danger, the American people cannot say that they were surprised or not told what awaits them and their democracy if Dictator Trump and his regime take power. They chose to sleepwalk eyes open into a disaster.

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The Supreme Court Rules to Restore the Monarchy

A sarcastic column in the Washington Post looks at the insanity of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Donald Trump's immunity claim which seems to seek to restore a monarchy with little accountability or control over the president.  The dissenting justices recognized the abject danger opened by the ruling whereas the anti-democracy right wing majority seems to opening the door for the end of democracy and allowing someone like Trump with no honor and no morality to rule like a king.  Vladimir Putin must be applauding from afar. So to other despots around the world. The question now is whether democrats will use this ruling as a weapon in the manner Trump hopes to do should he regain the White House and begin his revenge campaign against anyone and everyone who has offended him or publicly recognized his moral bankruptcy. Be very afraid for the future.  Here are column excerpts:

Happy Fourth of July from the nine unelected magistrates of the Supreme Court! Great news: After a lot of clamor for the past 250-odd years, we are bringing back the monarchy!

Why should ruling the country in robes, unaccountable to anyone, be solely our province? We have really loved this level of unchecked power that allows us to do whatever we want, vacationing and flying flags willy-nilly until the moment of our deaths, and we felt it might be fun for the country if the president also got to experience this rush. . . . Consequences for your actions? No, thank you!

That’s why we issued the ruling we did in Trump v. United States. Sure, in the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton argued that “in England, the king is a perpetual magistrate … unaccountable for his administration, and his person sacred,” whereas in a republic, “every magistrate ought to be personally responsible for his behavior in office.” But he didn’t know what he was talking about! . . . Actually, the president should be unaccountable for his administration, and his person sacred. So we fixed it: You’re welcome, America!

Indeed, we studied the original intent of the Founders long and hard, and found something that should not have surprised anyone: A lot of them spent most of their lives as loyal citizens of a king! George Washington even fought in his army!

Why is this missing from the history books? Why are the Constitution and Declaration of Independence so unaccountably down on the notion of a singular, unrestrained executive? Just because the Founders soured on their ruler later in life should not turn the rest of us against this pleasant, efficient system.

“Isn’t that all acts you commit during your presidency?” you might wonder. Not at all! The president-king will be sure to respect the distinction and, when he wants to do crimes, say, “I’m taking off my president hat now and committing a crime as a random civilian!” Then, we’ll be able to prosecute them accordingly.

“Okay, but take, say, bribery. Obviously, bribes would not be offered to a random civilian; if they didn’t think you had power, they wouldn’t bother trying to bribe you. So isn’t it kind of impossible to take your president hat off there?” you might wonder. Well! Hmm. We are sure that will not happen! Just look again at how we ourselves are unaccountable and have done nothing bad!

There are just so many wonderful upsides to having an unaccountable executive who is above the law: much greater clarity if aliens arrive demanding to be taken to a leader; much less confusion for the attorney general when deciding whether to pursue the president’s individual vendettas or enforce the law; more military parades; fewer pesky elections; all the things we’ve been doing with our rollback of reproductive rights, just on an even broader scale; the ability to relax and know that some people are rulers and some people are ruled.

And best yet, when you’re inevitably paying your little bribes because you want to drive on the road, imagine: just the one smiling face on all the coins.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

 

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