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Don't Believe the Hype: Project 2025 Is Still Alive - The Wednesday AM Quickie 7/31/24

By Corey Pein —

Some Italians are arguing that the fencing competition at the Paris Olympics was rigged because some of the judges were Asian, and an Asian fencer won the gold. In so many words, they're claiming Anti-Italian Discrimination. I wish I was making this up. - Corey

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THE BIG NEWS

Trump Cannot Disavow His Own Record and Agenda

Deranged felon Donald Trump has claimed to have "nothing to do" with Project 2025, the toxic and profoundly unpopular 900-page plan to remake the US government as a christofascist theocracy if he wins a second term, cooked up by his friends and former staff at the Heritage Foundation. It's a tough sell, especially since his hapless vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, wrote a glowing forward to a new book by Heritage President Kevin Roberts, in which he specifically praised the foundation as "the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump." Now the Trump campaign wants people to believe that Project 2025 is dead and that Trump killed it. This is yet another lie, one based on the coordinated announcement that Heritage is "winding down" the project. The Washington Post pours cold water on the campaign spin:

Project 2025 published its playbook in 2023, and it always planned to wind down the policy program and hand off recommendations to the official presidential transition when it starts this summer. Another arm of the project, a personnel database of more than 20,000 applicants for potential political appointments should Trump be reelected, will remain in operation, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has not established a[n official] transition, even though it is almost August.

Politico confirms that the departure of Heritage project director Paul Dans, who previously served as Trump's White House liason at the Office of Personnel Management, "does not mean the project...is shutting down" and that its policy work and personnel planning "will continue."

The campaign's feint here is similar to how Trump bullied his party into pretending not to support a nationwide abortion ban, but applied to his entire first-term record and second-term agenda. People do have short memories, but I'm not sure many will be convinced that Trump, the beloved God-Emperor of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, is some kind of moderate, and not a global leader of what he now calls the "severe right." Besides, Trump can't really help himself. One rather significant policy proposal he hasn't run away from is his pledge to be a "dictator on day one." The New York Times reports that in a Fox News interview this week he "repeated his recent assertion that Christians will never have to vote again if they vote for him this November, and brushed aside multiple requests to walk back or clarify the statement." "I'll straighten out the country, you won't have to vote anymore. I won't need your vote," he told Laura Ingraham. Sounds like a man with a plan.

Future of Democracy Watch: 'Say It to My Face,' Harris Goads Trump Over Debate

  • Democratic Delegates to Begin Virtual Roll-Call Vote for Harris Tomorrow; Her Veep Pick Expected By Tuesday "No other candidate met the threshold of securing 300 delegate signatures" to qualify for the electronic vote, which begins at 9am Thursday and ends 6pm Monday; on Tuesday, Harris rallies in Pennsylvania (although VP short-lister Gov. Josh Shapiro says he hasn't spoken to her since the day Biden dropped out). via the Washington Post and Politico.
  • Trump Attacks Majority of Jews Who Vote Democratic as 'Absolute Fool[s]' Meanwhile, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate testified that investigators found a social media account belonging to Trump's would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks and containing more than 700 posts with "antisemitic and anti-immigration themes." via Politico and the Guardian.
  • Fascist Freakshow Kari Lake Wins Arizona Senate Republican Primary "If the final margins stay well below the 30-percentage point difference Lake's campaign cited in mid-June, it could deepen longstanding concerns among Republicans in Arizona and nationally that she cannot defeat Democrat Ruben Gallego in November." via NBC News and the Arizona Republic.
  • UAW Prepares Harris Endorsement as Identity Groups Coalesce Around the Candidate None other than Jeff Bridges joined a "White Dudes for Harris" fundraising call, which raised $4 million from 200,000 participants; right-wing propaganda network X then suspended the account "due to a user report." via Politico and the Los Angeles Times.

Interior Department Finds at Least 973 Indigenous Children Died in Abusive Government Boarding Schools

The first Native American Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, has been holding listening sessions over the past two years with survivors of the government-chartered boarding schools for Native American children that carried out a policy of forced assimilation over a period of 150 years. The department's second investigative report into the schools, spearheaded by Haaland and coming on the heels of a similar inquiry in Canada, was published yesterday. In addition to detailing the horrifying abuse students suffered, it documents 973 child deaths in 74 marked and unmarked graves at 65 former schools across the country. "Those are grandmas and grandpas that never came home," Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren tells the Washington Post. The actual number of deaths is likely higher. As the Associated Press reports, Congress is considering legislation to establish a "Truth and Healing Commission" to further document boarding school injustices, but Catholic bishops are lobbying to water down the legislation by ensuring any such commission lacks subpoena power.

QUICKEST QUICKIES

  • At Least 16 Dead in Venezuela Amid Protests Over Election Marked By 'Complete Lack of Transparency' "Come after me. I'll be waiting for you in Miraflores," the presidential palace in Caracas, Nicolás Maduro taunted opposition candidate Edmundo González at a rally yesterday. "Come after me, coward." via the Washington Post and the Associated Press.
  • Israel Claims Killing of Hezbollah Commander in Beirut, But Mum on Assassination of Hamas Leader in Tehran "We do not believe that an all-out war is inevitable. We believe that it can still be avoided," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said after Israel's airstrike yesterday in a densely populated Lebanon suburb. via the New York Times and the AP.
  • Senate Passes Kids Online Safety Act 91-3 Over Opposition from Tech Companies and Civil Liberties Groups Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the only Democrat to vote against the bill, says he fears it "could be used by a future administration to pressure companies to censor transgender health information," while Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, another "no" vote, "seems to fear it will allow kids to see it." via the AP and the Verge.
  • LA Tourism Workers Demand Minimum Wage Increase Ahead of 2028 Olympics Meanwhile at Disneyland, four unions representing 14,000 resort workers voted to ratify a contract with sizable wage increases and more favorable sick leave policies, averting a strike. via the Los Angeles Times and the Post.

SOME NUMBER

653,100

That's the federal government's estimate of the number of people living without a home in the US last year, a 12 percent increase from the prior year. The Washington Post interviewed 30 people in 17 states who recently became homeless while holding down a job, and "nearly all said exorbitant rents had not only tipped them into homelessness, but also were preventing them from securing new housing." Meanwhile in California, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to reaffirm its policy of not jailing people for violating anticamping ordinances after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered state agencies to remove encampments.

ON THE SHOW TODAY

7/31: It’s Hump Day! Sam speaks with Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones, author of Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It, to discuss President Biden's recent proposals to reform the Supreme Court. Then, he speaks with Adam Johnson, co-host of the Citations Needed podcast & writer at The Column newsletter on SubStack, to discuss labor unions efforts to gain commitments from the Harris campaign to stop sending military aid to Israel. Then, he speaks with Seth Fleisher & Emily Baldwin, co-founders of the political action organization Walk the Walk!

DON'T MISS MR CLIPS‌

Biden Signs Executive Order to Protect Pensions of 70,000 Workers and Retirees

Wonk out with Sam about the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation.

British Doctor Corners MP Over Gaza Atrocities

That's doctor Amer Shoaib and Labour MP Jeff Smith.

PARTING WORDS

"In terms of media literacy, and those kinds of things, I guess I was already in the mud rolling around. ... I have really enjoyed thinking about his team and all of the idiots associated with him having to grapple with this."

-- "Rick," a leftist office worker who ran the @rickrudescalves social media account, speaking to Business Insider about having been the first person online to claim that Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance had sex with a couch. Rick says he was inspired by the authors Jorge Luis Borges, John Fowles, and Hunter S. Thompson, as well as the filmmaker Werner Herzog's concept of "the 'ecstatic truth' — in Herzog's words, 'a kind of truth that is the enemy of the merely factual,' encompassing falsehoods that 'make some essence of the man visible.'"

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