• What I Learned When I Read 887 Pages of Project 2025 (Carlos Lozada, NY Times, 2-29-24) "There is plenty here that one would expect from a contemporary conservative agenda: calls for lower corporate taxes and against abortion rights; criticism of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and the “climate fanaticism” of the Biden administration; and plans to militarize the southern border and target the “administrative state,” which is depicted here as a powerful and unmanageable federal bureaucracy bent on left-wing social engineering. Yet what is most striking about the book is not the specific policy agenda it outlines but how far the authors are willing to go in pursuit of that agenda and how reckless their assumptions are about law, power and public service."
• The Truth About Project 2025 (Project 2025, Presidential Transition Project) The Left has spent millions fearmongering about Project 2025, because they’re terrified of losing their power. And they should be. Project 2025 offers a menu of solutions to the border crisis, inflation, a stagnant economy, and rampant crime. It shows how we can take on China, fix our schools, and support families. But most importantly, it dismantles the unaccountable Deep State, taking power away from Leftist elites and giving it back to the American people.
• How Project 2025 would change American life (Jacob Knutson, Axios 7-20-24) Trump's teams would "privatize" and "commercialize" segments of our federal system that provide us with key services (public broadcasting, student debt relief, free pre-school), plus shrinking the social safety net, capping funding for Medicaid, etc. Here are broad details on just one section of it:
Privatizing weather forecasts
The project calls for dissolving the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and either transferring its functions to other agencies or eliminating them entirely.
---It argues NOAA must be terminated because its research on the effects of human-caused climate change from greenhouse gas emissions "is harmful to future U.S. prosperity."
---The National Weather Service (NWS), one of NOAA's sub-agencies that produces free weather forecasts and warnings for the public, "should fully commercialize its forecasting operations," the plan recommends.
---Effectively privatizing weather data could hinder Americans' access to weather data and how the U.S. accesses other countries' weather models, the Atlantic reports.
Zoom out: Throughout all scientific agencies in the government, the plan calls on the president to "ensure appointees agree with administration aims," which may allow political ideologues to overrule the expertise of trained scientists.
• The Group at the Center of Trump’s Planning for a Second Term Is One You Haven’t Heard of (Ken Bensinger and David A. Fahrenthold, NY Times, 10-24-24) America First Policy Institute (AFPI) didn’t even exist four years ago. But it is poised to be more influential than Project 2025.
• Project 2025 video says a conservative administration should ‘eradicate’ climate change references (Rachel Frazin, The Hill, 8-12-24) In the climate-related video, Bethany Kozma, who was deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Trump administration, said: “If the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.”
Kozma added that climate change has “infiltrated” every part of the federal government and connected it to “population control.”
• Project 2025 (Wikipedia) Topics covered: Background. Advisory board and leadership. Philosophical outlook. Policies. (The Economist summarized the plan as containing some culture war issues, alongside others that are more sweeping in scope and break with past Republican orthodoxy, expanding deficits and the national debt.) Census citizenship question. Christian nationalism. Economy. Education and research. Environment and climate.Expansion of presidential powers. Personnel change. Foreign affairs. Nuclear policy. Health care and public health. Immigration reforms. Issues of identity. ('Project 2025 opposes what it calls "radical gender ideology" and advocates that the government "maintain a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family". To achieve this, it proposes removing protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual or gender identity, and eliminating provisions pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)—which it calls "state-sanctioned racism"—from federal legislation. Federal employees who have participated in DEI programs or any initiatives involving critical race theory might be fired."') Journalism. Law enforcement. National security. Pornography and adult content. Transportation infrastructure. Women's reproductive health (including Abortion).
• Project 2025: What's At Stake for Voting Rights (The Leadership Conference) "It’s a wish list of right-wing policies, reflecting an extreme Christian nationalist ideology, written by the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 other conservative groups as a blueprint for a potential conservative administration. It is an explicit effort to further empower the presidency, embed ideologues in nonpartisan civil service, and enable the executive branch to unravel the civil rights movement’s gains over the last seven decades. The full agenda, which is more than 900 pages long, would completely reshape our federal government in order to benefit white nationalists, the rich and powerful, and religiously motivated bigots."
• Project 2025 video says a conservative administration should ‘eradicate’ climate change references (Rachel Frazin, The Hill, 8-12-24)