Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

More On Project 2025

In a weird way, it really doesn’t matter who heads up either the Republican or Democratic national tickets–because this election is rapidly becoming a referendum on the U.S. Constitution and what it means to be an American.

If Republicans win the Presidency and Congress, we are very likely to jettison the Constitution in favor of the provisions of Project 2025. The forces that produced Project 2025 represent the real power structure of today’s GOP; its members see Trump as a convenient “front” because he is ignorant, stupid (those aren’t the same thing) and interested only in garnering attention–thus easily manipulated. Should he be replaced at the top of the ticket, it would either be with someone equally malleable or with a Project 2025 true believer.

Fortunately, the Democrats–unlike the Borg (look it up)–don’t believe that resistance is futile. As Joyce Vance has recently reported, Democrats have created a task force to combat what can accurately be described as an extension of the January 6th coup attempt. The task force has been created by California Congressman Jared Huffman, who described its formation and purpose.

We started by getting leaders from groups across the political spectrum of our House Democratic Caucus to sign on – Progressives, New Dems, CHC, CBC, API, Pro-Choice, Labor, LGBTQ Equality, and, of course, the Congressional Freethought Caucus I co-founded with Jamie Raskin!  From there, several other members signed on, including two from leadership (Joe Neguse and Ted Lieu).  Our ranking Appropriator, Rosa DeLauro, just joined us this week, bringing the Task Force to 15 members, including some of the most effective communicators in Congress.

We’re working closely with experts from more than a dozen leading advocacy groups, including Accountable.US, Democracy Forward, Center for American Progress, ACLU, Protect Democracy, Court Accountability, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and more.

Our work plan starts with over half a dozen subject matter briefings for Task Force members and staff by the end of August.  We’ve already had the first two:  last week on messaging/communications, including some recent polling on Project 2025, and this week, an ominous briefing on how the various elements of Project 2025 link together in a very strategic attack on democracy and civil liberties.  As we complete these “deep dive” briefings, we’re developing and pushing out messaging materials for Task Force members, outside partner groups, and the media.  In September, we will have a big, congressional hearing-like event where we publicly roll out highlights of the various briefings in conjunction with the outside groups.  The hearing will feature testimony from leading experts and different Task Force members will take the lead in presenting different parts of Project 2025.  We believe this event will get a lot of attention and will distill Project 2025 for the American people in a way that helps them understand how radical and destructive it is, why it must be taken very seriously, and how we can stop it.

After added discussion about the task force plans, Huffman addressed the central issue: what would the enactment of Project 2025 mean for the American experiment?

As Huffman explained, Project 2025 is a sweeping attack on democracy and fundamental American freedoms–an attack on health care and reproductive liberty, social justice, the livability of our planet, and much more.

It aims to systematically dismantle our democratic checks and balances and consolidate unprecedented power in a second Trump presidency.  It’s truly a roadmap to make Trump, already an aspiring dictator, into a real one, and to impose a radical social/religious order on all of us.  It exudes an “any means necessary” philosophy, including the explicit embrace of dystopic authoritarian measures like domestic military deployments, detention camps, mass deportations, an unprecedented political purge of the federal workforce, political weaponization of federal law enforcement, and more.  These are my greatest concerns because they would end American democracy as we know it.

There are certainly other worrisome parts of Project 2025, including dramatically weakening public education (with a goal of ending secular public education), sweeping attacks on the environment and rollbacks of climate action, clear threats to our social and retirement safety net, and privatization schemes and other reckless giveaways to powerful special interests.

Rick Wilson has said that Project 2025 “polls like Ebola,” which explains why Trump is suddenly trying to dissociate himself from it, but Heritage worked with over 100 extreme Rightwing groups that are at the heart of Trump’s political base, along with several of the most loyal (and scary) members of the prior Trump administration –- Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller, Peter Navarro, and several others.

The GOP roadmap that is Project 2025 is breathtakingly clear. Those of us who want to keep the Constitution need to ensure that voters know where that roadmap would take us.

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Heritage Makes It Explicit

When I was much younger, I would have bristled if someone told me to vote a straight ticket. I was one of those scolds who insisted that one’s duty as a citizen was to research the bona fides of all candidates, from President to coroner, and vote accordingly. And in a perfect–or even marginally better–world, I would probably stand by that assertion.

But we are in uncharted territory. Thanks, ironically, to decades of weakening political party structures and influence, the voting public has separated itself into two blocs, one of which is a more-or-less normal political party spanning a fairly wide range of policy preferences and engaging in relatively typical intra-party disputes, while the other has morphed into a cohesive racist cult that threatens the most fundamental bases of the American Idea.

The accuracy of that last paragraph is demonstrated by the fact that I don’t have to tell you which is which.

A vote for anyone in the cult is a vote for the goals of Project 2025, because even Republicans who are personally conflicted about or even opposed to the MAGA zealots have shown zero willingness to confront the crazies who are firmly in control of their party. Those who recognize the threat and retain their spines have all declared their intent to vote Democratic.

And let’s be quite clear about that threat. 

Heather Cox Richardson has described it accurately and succinctly:

Project 2025 stands on four principles that it says the country must embrace: the U.S. must “[r]estore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”; “[d]ismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people”; “[d]efend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats”; and “[s]ecure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’”

In almost 1,000 pages, the document explains what these policies mean for ordinary Americans. Restoring the family and protecting children means using “government power…to restore the American family.” That, the document says, means eliminating any words associated with sexual orientation or gender identity, gender, abortion, reproductive health, or reproductive rights from any government rule, regulation, or law. Any reference to transgenderism is “pornography” and must be banned. 

The overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the right to abortion must be gratefully celebrated, the document says, but the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision accomplishing that end “is just the beginning.” 

Dismantling the administrative state starts from the premise that “people are policy.” Frustrated because nonpartisan civil employees thwarted much of Trump’s agenda in his first term, the authors of Project 2025 call for firing much of the current government workforce—about 2 million people work for the U.S. government—and replacing it with loyalists who will carry out a right-wing president’s demands. 

The plan asserts “the existential need” for an authoritarian leader to dismantle the current government that regulates business, provides a social safety net, and protects civil rights. Instead of the government Americans have built since 1933, the plan says the national government must “decentralize and privatize as much as possible” and leave “the great majority of domestic activities to state, local, and private governance.”

It attacks “America’s largest corporations, its public institutions, and its popular culture,” for their embrace of international organizations like the United Nations and the European Union and for their willingness to work with other countries. It calls for abandoning all of those partnerships and alliances. 

The current head of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, has remade what was formerly a Rightwing think tank into an organization focused upon “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Heritage has negotiated a formal partnership with Viktor Orban and is working to bring the neo-fascist policies of Hungary to the United States.

Unlike members of the MAGA base, Heritage and other Rightwing activists are well aware that Trump is an ignoramus wholly incapable of ushering in their desired policies; he’s basically a convenient tool.

In January 2024, Roberts told Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times that Project 2025 was designed to jump-start a right-wing takeover of the government. “[T]he Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start,” Roberts said. “And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.” 

The only thing that will stop the completion of the January 6th coup and the remakng of America along the lines of a Rightwing wet dream is a massive and comprehensive rejection of the GOP, from top to bottom. 

If the French could do it, surely we can.

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A Way Out Of The Doom-Loop?

I recently re-connected with an old friend who had moved out of state many years ago. Like so many of us “back in the day,” she was heavily involved in Republican politics, and like virtually all of us in that cohort, she is appalled by today’s GOP. Because she is politically sophisticated, she also understands that the takeover of that party and its successes at the polls have been enabled by manipulation of structural factors: gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the two-party system, etc.

Her question to me–which I was unable to answer–was: what avenues exist to modify/replace the structures that are obsolete, and/or might make it harder to misuse the others? What changes to our electoral systems could we work toward that might re-invigorate moderation and genuine, small-d democratic outcomes?

Not long after that conversation, I came across an interesting article in The New Republic, authored by two experienced political actors, one Republican, one Democrat, outlining one such possible change: fusion voting. (In the 1980s and 1990s, one had worked for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; the other had worked in Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns and co-founded a progressive third party.)

If America survives November, I think their approach offers hope…

The thesis of the article is fairly simple: while minor-party candidates are a waste of time, minor parties that can cross-endorse major-party candidates can make a huge difference.

What unites us is the understanding that our government is failing because politics is failing. At the heart of that political failure is a two-party system that pushes the citizenry into two hyper-polarized camps and discourages the coalitions and compromises essential to public problem-solving…

Substantial majorities tell pollsters that they want a way out of the “two-party doom loop.” But the solution is not a third party or independent presidential candidate: That always fails. At best they get a flurry of attention before fading into obscurity. A few are remembered, but only because they are seen, rightly or wrongly, as having played the role of a “spoiler.”

Still, the predictable failure of third-party candidates should not distract us from the need to solve the structural problems of the two-party system. The incentives baked into our system are in no small part responsible for bringing us to the precipice of authoritarianism.

The authors stress that this doesn’t require the invention of something new. Instead, they want to revive fusion voting, which was once commonplace in America. Fusion voting is the practice of a third party “cross-nominating” a candidate of one of the major parties. “This candidate appears on the ballot under two different labels, with the votes tallied separately but then added together—fused—to determine their total.”

I remember when New York’s Conservative Party still engaged in that “fusing,” typically endorsing a Republican candidate for Mayor or Governor in return for certain policy commitments. As the authors of the article explain,

In a fusion system, minor parties are both independent and relevant. They retain a “threat of exit” should neither major party nominate an acceptable candidate. More commonly, fusion parties will push or prod a major-party candidate to be better on a few key issues, and in return will nominate them. This is more constructive for the polity and more satisfying to the voter than a spoiler or wasted vote. “Vote for the candidate you prefer,” says the fusion party organizer, “under the party label closest to your values.

Fundamentally, fusion voting produces more choices for the voter—but it’s more parties, not more candidates. The path out of the two-party doom loop runs not through eliminating or weakening parties but rather through a system that encourages and rewards coalitions between parties.

Fusion allows minority parties to demonstrate that they have meaningful support among voters, support that allows them to negotiate with a major-party ally.

No doubt the major parties disliked having to bargain with minor-party partners, but bargaining is essential in politics. The Whigs were mushy on slavery, and Free Soilers spined them up. Democrats were nervous about taking on the trusts, but the Populists insisted that they stand up for debtors and farmers. Fusion creates incentives for compromise between groups that do not agree on everything but do agree on enough to get things done.

The two major parties managed to get fusion voting outlawed in most states, but reinstating it would work to re-energize the multitude of voters who shrink from extremism of either Left or Right and are unwilling to identify wholly with either party. 

It’s certainly worth a try.

 
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So Long, America–It Was Nice Knowing You…

The New York Times summarized the rogue Supreme Court’s immunity ruling in a sentence: “the Supreme Court has extended sweeping legal protections to presidents that apply to no one else in the country.”

In other words, in the most recent of a string of appalling and unprecedented rulings, this disgraceful Court has eviscerated the essence of the rule of law: that no one is above the law. Sources close to the Rightwing extremists behind Project 2025 immediately began planning how to use the Court’s decision to help them implement their unAmerican policy agenda, and Trump immediately called for jailing his political opponents.

The Court has demonstrated the naiveté of those Republican voters who justified sticking with Trump because “there are guardrails–laws that will keep him from doing the craziest shit.” Not anymore, there aren’t.

Toto, we aren’t in Kansas anymore.

I have never been so afraid for my country. Lest you think I am over-reacting, I will turn the rest of this post over to the considered reactions of people I respect.

There were the pundits, of course, many of whom bring solid legal credentials to the discussion. I can sum up their reactions by citing to Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, whose opinion piece was titled “God Save Us from this Dishonorable Court” and was subtitled “An egregious, unconscionable ruling on presidential immunity from the Supreme Court.”

But the most incisive and horrified analyses came from the scholars. 

Historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote:

This is a profound change to our fundamental law—an amendment to the Constitution, as historian David Blight noted. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that a president needs such immunity to make sure the president is willing to take “bold and unhesitating action” and make unpopular decisions, although no previous president has ever asserted that he is above the law or that he needed such immunity to fulfill his role. Roberts’s decision didn’t focus at all on the interest of the American people in guaranteeing that presidents carry out their duties within the guardrails of the law….

There is no historical or legal precedent for this decision. The Declaration of Independence was a litany of complaints against King George III designed to explain why the colonists were declaring themselves free of kings; the Constitution did not provide immunity for the president, although it did for members of Congress in certain conditions, and it provided for the removal of the president for “high crimes and misdemeanors”—what would those be if a president is immune from prosecution for his official acts? The framers worried about politicians’ overreach and carefully provided for oversight of leaders; the Supreme Court today smashed through that key guardrail…

Today, observers illustrated what Trump’s newly declared immunity could mean. Political scientist Norm Ornstein pointed out that Trump could “order his handpicked FBI Director to arrest and jail his political opponents. He can order the IRS to put liens on the property of media companies who criticize him and jail reporters and editors.” Legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted that a president with such broad immunity could order the assassination of Supreme Court justices, and retired military leader Mark Hertling wrote that he was “trying to figure out how a commander can refuse an illegal order from someone who is issuing it as an official act.” 

Lawyer and legal scholar Robert Hubbell minced no words:

Today, the Supreme Court overthrew the American Revolution and anointed the US president as a modern-day king. Their betrayal of the American revolutionaries, Founders, and Framers is all the worse because they did so to promote the most corrupt, dangerous, depraved person to disgrace the office of the presidency…

Trump v. United States will be overruled. The decision is so bad it will not stand. Like Dred Scott (holding that enslaved people are not citizens entitled to judicial protections), Plessy v. Ferguson (upholding segregation), Koramatsu v US (upholding the Japanese internment camps), today’s decision will be overturned by the acclamation of history in due course. It will be remembered as a mark of shame for the Roberts Court just as Dred Scott tarnishes Chief Justice Taney’s legacy to this day.

It may take a few years or decades to overturn Trump v. US, but the American people are the ultimate power under the Constitution. Majorities in the House and Senate can pass a bill to expand the Supreme Court, and a Democratic president can sign it. The reactionary majority can be overwhelmed by the appointment of four new justices, although expanding the Court by eight or more would be appropriate given the nearly hundred-fold growth in the US population since six justices were appointed in 1789.

The problem is, if Donald Trump wins in November–or if MAGA neo-fascists control either the House or Senate– there won’t be a United States in which the judicial process can self-correct. 

America as we’ve known it will be gone.

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The New McCarthyism

Americans have long demonstrated a distrust of bureaucracy–generally seeing the growth of that managerial cohort as exclusively governmental, although it is typical of any large corporation or organization. More recently, MAGA Republicans have deepened the hostility to government workers by accusing civil servants of being a malevolent “deep state.”

That “deep state” of MAGA imagining is a cabal of anti-American “woke-ism,” dedicated to helping “those people” and restricting the God-given rights of the good White Christian men who are the only “real Americans.” Any government officials with the temerity to block one of Trump’s fever dreams is clearly a member of that “deep state.”

And according to Project 2025, the denizens of the “deep state” must be removed.

The public is gradually becoming aware of Project 2025, the detailed, thousand-page “transition plan” produced by a consortium of far-Right think tanks led by the Heritage Foundation. These culture warriors have (accurately) determined that their Presidential candidate– profoundly ignorant of government and rapidly losing touch with reality–would, if re-elected, be even more incapable of ushering in their desired changes than he was during his first term, so they have come together to provide a road-map.

That road map is filled with horrifying policy positions, a large number of which are (currently) unconstitutional. One of them, as described in the linked report from Talking Points Memo, takes aim at that hated “deep state.” (When I read it, it triggered a vision of Joseph McCarthy waving a paper and claiming he had the names of multiple Commies working for the government…)

The Heritage Foundation is funding the creation of a blacklist of federal government workers who MAGA loyalists claim might obstruct the Trump II agenda, the Associated Press reported Monday.

The work of compiling the list of names of some 100 government employees is being done by a Kentucky fellow named Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation. The work is being financed with the help of a $100,000 “Heritage Innovation Prize” from the Heritage Foundation, long a bastion of Reagan conservatism in DC but now fully in MAGA mode. Heritage announced the prize winner back in May, referring to “the presence of anti-American bad actors burrowed into the administrative state.”

In announcing the prize, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts touted it as effort to expose the “Deep State”:

“The weaponization of the federal government under President Joe Biden is only possible because of the deep state of entrenched Leftist bureaucrats in the White House and its agencies. I am proud to support the outstanding work of AAF in their fight to hold our government accountable and drain it of bad actors determined to undermine our constitutional republic and weaponize government against the American people, our economy, and our institutions.”

Notably, the plan is to publish the list online. A doxxing in the public square as it were, with all the obvious historical echoes, as the AP rightly notes:

The public list-making conjures for some the era of Joseph McCarthy, the senator who conducted grueling hearings into suspected communist sympathizers during the Cold War. The hearings were orchestrated by a top staffer, Roy Cohn, who became a confidant of a younger Trump.

As for the criteria used to determine who makes the list and how those criteria are applied, the AP provides this chilling methodology: “They’re relying in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including workers.”

Civil service protections are only one of the many, many elements of American government that would be jettisoned by Project 2025. If even a small number of the desired changes were to become law, America would be a profoundly different place–and far less hospitable to women, non-fundamentalist Christians and minorities.

As Congressman Jared Huffman explained,when he announced the creation of a Stop Project 2025 Task Force:

“Project 2025 is more than an idea, it’s a dystopian plot that’s already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at church-state separation, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes on basic liberties and violates public will.

Project 2025 advocates placing all government workers– including employees of independent agencies like the Department of Justice– under direct presidential control, allowing the president to “efficiently” implement policies in a number of areas. Civil service employees would be replaced by “loyal” political appointees.

In other words, Separation of Powers would be replaced with a “streamlined” dictatorship.

So much for those silly Founders, and their devotion to “checks and balances”…Meanwhile, people upset with Biden’s debate performance want to replace him, a mere ten weeks before early voting starts.  They are mimicking Nero, who–you will recall– fiddled while Rome burned.

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