All posts tagged "heritage foundation"

This sinister rightwing group won — totalitarian rule is here

I had the opportunity to engage the author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, Paul Dans, last Saturday on BBC World News Radio. The essential question was whether Project 2025 was a document of totalitarian rule.

Dans, who was fired from the Heritage Foundation during the presidential campaign for linking Donald Trump to the fascist playbook, has returned in full force as a MAGA Senate candidate in South Carolina. He is a conservative committed to attacking democratic institutions, although he would claim that Project 2025 centers on returning the federal government to the hands of the people.

According to various trackers, the Project 2025 agenda has been nearly 50 percent completed. The assault on the federal system is well in hand. But is this totalitarianism?

Yes, it is.

I have written earlier about totalitarianism in the science policy of the White House. The totalitarian model extends further, up and down from the White House to the reactionary Supreme Court and especially to MAGAlytes in Congress. MAGA is devotion to a single-party system, a charismatic leader, closed political culture, and war on civic society.

First, recall that Project 2025 is a 900-page cornucopia of conservative delights.

It calls for the replacement of merit-based federal civil service workers with people loyal to Trump and for taking partisan control of such critical law-enforcement agencies as the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It promotes the closing of the Department of Education and the restructuring of museums, foundations, and even private universities to challenge fact-based institutions in their primary missions.

In the economy, Project 2025 institutionalizes trickle-down economics: It reduces taxes on corporations, cuts social welfare and medical programs, draws financial and communications firms into the totalitarian fold, and rewards wealthy collaborators and industrialists as Hitler did in Nazi Germany with access to the halls of power.

It promotes anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination; it ends Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. In fact, Project 2025 does not rein in the administrative state, its major stated goal, but gives additional tools to weaponize the corrupt Trump presidency.

Hence, Project 2025 reflects totalitarian political culture, in particular the persistence of a one-party system with an authoritarian leader who uses extra-legislative means to achieve his goals.

For example, Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to root out “inefficiency” in government, but he in fact directed the faux department to emasculate agencies he and Project 2025 adherents disliked. In subservience to the president, MAGA Republicans in Congress allowed DOGE to usurp their oversight. Further, while railing against executive orders (EOs) of past presidents, Trump has used them in fact to replace policy making. Trump averaged 55 EOs annually his first term; by mid-2025 he was averaging 330 per year with the goal to drown the courts and Congress in executive branch power.

Like in Hitler or Stalin who created a cult of personality, Trump has bullied MAGA to ensure allegiance to him as the all-powerful leader. This leader is the promoter of disorder, the arbitrator of conflict, the omniscient problem solver, the stager of domestic military sweeps and other Jeffrey Epstein flyovers to distract the populace, the organizer of state dinners and cabinet meetings in which his MAGAlytes sickeningly faun for him. He is the Department of War lobbyist for the Nobel Peace Prize and the UFC organizer for a wrestling event on the White House Lawn. One senses he is jealous that Russian President Vladimir Putin miraculously scored eight goals in a charity hockey exhibition game (no one checked him, strangely). He is certainly angry that Kim Jong-Il shot a 38 will 11 holes-in-one, while the president must cheat at his golf game at his courses to win trophies.

Totalitarian governments bathe the public sphere with propaganda; the Soviets were masters at misinformation. Putin has reestablished state control of all media. For his totalitarian push, Trump promotes branded presidential newspeak on his own channel, Truth Social. Such loyal media outlets as Fox help him spread false claims. Indeed, totalitarians want to control the medium and the message, not educate the public; destroy expert independence in government agencies, not encourage it; and in general to sully data, not analyze them. The complete weaponization of government comes in the selective assault of academic and intellectual freedom in the Trump administration attack on universities, law firms, and other private businesses.

The totalitarian state embraces the veneer of legality, but engages extrajudicial confiscation of power. Like the Stalin Constitution of 1936 or Nazi laws of the 1930s, MAGAlytes treat the US Constitution as vaguely important when its language fits their plans. Otherwise, they rely on executive branch overreach and on specious interpretation of congressional laws (the Enemy Aliens Act 1798; Posse Comitatus Act of 1878) to end due process and deploy military troops in blue states.

Partnering with such mega-MAGA-communications magnates as Peter Thiel, they deploy AI to create a surveillance state. DOGE sought personal information of US citizens to build a surveillance regime.

A signal action of totalitarian regimes is the identification of external and internal enemies, heavily colored with homophobia and xenophobia. AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Patel are aggressively prosecuting people who crossed the president: former adviser John Bolton, prosecutors, judges, and even congresspeople.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other unidentified government police, their faces covered, their uniforms obscured, their racism barely concealed, resemble Stalin’s NKVD in their black overcoats as they round up, subdue, and cart enemies away to secret facilities. The major enemies are undocumented immigrants, which the Supreme Court has now okayed to arrest on the basis of skin color alone. Recall that so fearful are the Trumpisti of immigrants that they have separated children from their parents to secret them out of the country; Putin, another authoritarian ruler, approves the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

Project 2025 harps on the fear of internal enemies over alleged supposed additional rights given to individuals based on gender and color (“DEI”). In fact, like the Nazi prosecution of homosexuals or the Putinite illegalization of LGBTQ+ public existence, so the Trump administration has set forth a litany of enemies to be deprived of rights. They include Venezuelan gangs, lesbians, gays, people of color, Democrats, and trans individuals, the last who may be denied the Second Amendment right to bear arms by a finding that they are insane (“mentally ill”).

Totalitarian states claim to give individual rights priority, but they seek control over private morality. Women’s rights are anathema to the conservatives of Project 2025 who mention abortion over 200 times in the 900-page document. They claim to be pro-life and pro-family, but they pursue regressive natalism and forced pregnancy such as that imposed on women in socialist Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu. More and more gerrymandered states are following the examples of Texas and Florida to criminalize women and their personal physicians for not carrying fetuses full term — no matter the circumstances (rape, insist, mortal risk to the mother).

It's all there in Program 2025. And it’s all there in the White House.

Paul Josephson is professor emeritus of history at Colby College and the author of 15 books, with 40 years of experience working in archives in Russia, Europe, and the U.S. on the political history of modern science.

Billionaire Timothy Mellon has poured $165 million into 2024 elections — mostly for Trump

This story was originally published by OpenSecrets.

Timothy Mellon, heir to Gilded Age industrialist Andrew Mellon, has continued to pour tens of millions into the campaigns of former President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Republican congressional candidates in 2024.

Mellon has pumped over $165 million into the 2024 election, making him the top donor fueling outside spending groups this year. Mellon is known as a “guardian angel donor,” a term given to contributors who are a political group’s top donor and account for more than 40% of the group’s funding.

In July, Mellon made a $50 million cash infusion to pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again, Inc., new Federal Election Commission filings show. This brings his total contributions to the group to $125 million this election cycle, including a $50 million check he wrote to the super PAC the day after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies.

Mellon’s latest $50 million contribution accounts for over 90% of what MAGA, Inc. raised in July. The super PAC ended the month with about $124.5 million cash on hand.

ALSO READ: Inside the Democratic National Convention corporate moneyfest

Mellon’s first major foray into federal elections was during the 2020 cycle, when he poured $60.1 million into federal political committees supporting Republican candidates, including $20 million to pro-Trump super PAC America First Action. With two months to go until the November election, Mellon has more than doubled his giving in 2024.

This outpouring of support for conservative organizations was not always the norm for Mellon, who once backed groups with a focus on environmental, womens' rights and Native American rights. Timothy Mellon is an heir to his grandfather Andrew Mellon’s dynastic fortune, which positioned the Mellons as the 34th richest family in America, as of February 2024.

Andrew Mellon served as the U.S. Secretary of Treasury from 1921-1932 and was known for authoring policies during the Coolidge administration that reduced corporate taxes and increased revenue following World War I. Before entering politics, Andrew Mellon commanded a vast industrial empire, spanning banking, oil, coal, aluminum and shipping.

ALSO READ: ‘Absolutely essential’: Son of Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes is all in for Kamala Harris

Aside from his recent multimillion-dollar donations, Timothy Mellon is known to maintain a low profile. It is impossible to find more than one or two pictures of his face on the internet.

Mellon has been criticized for stances taken in his personal autobiography, where he called US safety net programs a “slavery redux” responsible for making black people “even more belligerent.”

Independent presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy. Jr., whose hybrid PAC American Values 2024 received $25 million from Mellon earlier this year, is quoted on the book’s back cover, praising Mellon as a “maverick entrepreneur.” Kennedy faced allegations of being a "spoiler" candidate who could siphon votes from major party candidates before suspending his campaign on Aug. 23. and endorsing Trump.

The bulk of Mellon’s public political donations were made in the last three years. The top five all-time recipients of Mellon’s federal political donations are MAGA Inc., Congressional Leadership Fund, American Values 2024, Senate Leadership Fund and Sentinel Action Fund — which is aligned with the Heritage Foundation supporting Project 2025.

The Congressional Leadership Fund and Senate Leadership Fund are super PACs aligned with Republican leadership in their respective chambers of Congress, and dedicated to electing GOP candidates to Capitol Hill. During the 2022 midterms, the Congressional Leadership Fund spent over $227 million to bolster Republican candidates, with a total of $66 million spent opposing 23 candidates who ended up losing.

The hybrid PAC has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Republican congressional candidates this cycle, including Rep. Derek Merrin (R-Ohio) and Rep. Laurie Buck (R-N.C.), and over $5 million to oppose Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.).

While the vast majority of Mellon’s contributions are directed toward federal elections, he made one state-level contribution of $1 million earlier this year to a group called Fair Courts America in Wisconsin that opposes court-packing and prosecutors they claim have received support from Democratic megadonor George Soros.

“Fair Courts America will fight woke judicial activism and defend our courts,” its website reads.

Before 2018, Mellon had not made any public federal contributions exceeding one million dollars. However, it is possible that he might have given more donations in the past through dark money groups, which would allow him to preserve his anonymity.

Aug. 24, 2024: This article was updated to reflect Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s campaign suspension.

Project 2025: What scares Democratic delegates the most

CHICAGO — Saturday Night Live star alumnus Kenan Thompson and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis both appeared on the Democratic National Convention stage Wednesday night carrying a comically oversized book.

That prop, used throughout the third night of the convention, was intended to represent Project 2025, the controversial “presidential transition plan” from conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, that lays out a plan to overhaul the government with extremely conservative policies following a Republican presidential win.

ALSO READ: ‘Stop the Steal’ organizer hired by Trump campaign for Election 2024 endgame

Thompson performed a sketch where he called out specific pages in the book. He told an OB/GYN doctor, a diabetes patient, LGBTQ+ woman and a civil servant how their lives would change under the plan.

Polis called the plan “Donald Trump’s roadmap to ban abortion in all 50 states” and noted it also calls for the governmental power to limit access to contraception and in-vitro fertilization.

“Project 2025 would turn the entire federal government and bureaucracy into a massive machine. It would weaponize it to control our reproductive and personal choices,” Polis said.

ALSO READ: ‘Absolutely essential’: Son of Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes is all in for Kamala Harris

But within the sprawling document, what single item scares Democrats more than any other?

Democratic delegates from around the country shared with Raw Story what parts of Project 2025 raise the most concerns for their personal lives.

“What concerns me number one is that my husband is an employee of the government for a large agency and that is one of the targeted areas,” said Carole Cadue-Blackwood, a Kansas delegate.

Kansas delegates Gina Spade and Carole Cadue-Blackwood (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)

Cadue-Blackwood, who identifies as an indigenous person, said she also is concerned about “taking care of our elders, that should be paramount.”

“As a gay man, the fact that they want to fundamentally change my right to marriage, the ability for workplaces to discriminate against me, restaurants to discriminate [against] me, personally, that's a huge issue for me,” said Guy Cecil, a delegate from Washington, D.C., and longtime Democratic political operative.

Guy Cecil, Washington, D.C. delegate (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)

Cecil also said he has a Black niece and nephew who would have “fewer rights than they did when they were born,” under Project 2025.

“There's a lot of things that are troublesome, but the reality is, it's their overall approach to creating essentially an autocratic government that wants to have control over every aspect of our lives, which is ironic given that’s their argument against Democrats,” he said.

Mayra Rivera-Vazquez, a South Carolina delegate, said the deportations of immigrants proposed in the plan are of most concern to her as a Latina.

Mayra Rivera-Vazquez, a South Carolina delegate (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)

“We’re not taking jobs from no one. We’re coming here to achieve the American Dream, so everybody deserves a chance to thrive,” Rivera-Vazquez said.

Gina Spade, a Kansas delegate, was worried about the Department of Education and other civil servants who could lose their jobs if they don’t support a Trump administration.

“I used to be a federal employee and the idea that they can just replace people who gained expertise, worked for years on these issues, especially the scientific issues, just is crazy, really harms the country,” Spade said.

Tony Vauss, a New Jersey delegate and mayor of Irvington, N.J., said the scariest part of the plan was it being “supposedly drafted in secret.”

Tony Vauss, a New Jersey delegate and mayor of Irvington, N.J. (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)

“There's so many different aspects of the whole 900-plus pages that is scary for democracy, is scary for the future of this country,” Vauss said.

Trump disavowed Project 2025 last month, saying he knows nothing about it or who is behind it.

"President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” said Trump campaign advisers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, in a statement on July 30. “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign— it will not end well for you."

The Trump campaign acknowledged Raw Story’s questions about Project 2025 but did not respond to them.

The Project 2025 website notes that Paul Dans and Spencer Chretien, who served in the Trump administration and advised the president, are leading the project. The website also says historically “the Trump administration relied heavily on Heritage’s ‘Mandate’ for policy guidance, embracing nearly two-thirds of Heritage’s proposals within just one year in office.”

Vauss doesn’t buy Trump’s alleged ignorance about the Heritage Foundation’s plan.

“For Donald Trump, everything is a means to an end,” Vauss said. “People discovered it. He wanted to back away from it, so I really don't trust anything he says.”

Don’t be fooled: Project 2025 is already happening

Project 2025, Donald Trump’s authoritarian playbook on Christian nationalism, is already in motion. While the media debates Trump’s disingenuous disavowals of the masterplan, the real story is the extent to which the Supreme Court has already begun implementing it.

Project 2025 seeks to degrade civil rights nationwide by outlawing abortion, mandating Christianity and reducing LGBT+ citizens to second class status.

But these culture war flashpoints are merely a ruse, a distraction for the media to consume while its backers disguise their real objective. Project 2025 is a massive undertaking financed by fossil fuel wealth to protect fossil fuels, abetted by Supreme Court justices with ties to Big Oil.

Trump’s connection to — and disavowal of — Project 2025

Project 2025 was launched by the rightwing Heritage Foundation with Trump’s blessing.

In 2022, Trump described Project 2025 as “the groundwork,” a detailed plan “for exactly what our movement will do ... when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

Despite Trump’s embrace, emerging details about Project 2025 have become so unpopular that Trump now claims to know nothing about it, and says he has “no idea” who is behind it.

ALSO READ: We asked 10 Republican senators: ‘Is Kamala Harris Black?’ Things got weird fast.

Trump can’t plausibly claim ignorance, at least not outside the MAGA bubble.

As Politico reported, Project 2025 is the brainchild of Trump’s closest advisers, who helped write the plan’s main components to protect fossil fuels: Bernard McNamee, who served in Trump’s Energy Department, urges the repeal of climate laws; Perry Pendley, who led Trump’s Bureau of Land Management, argues that fossil fuel extraction is more important than preserving federal lands and monuments; and Mandy Gunasekara, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency chief of staff, wrote the plan to gut EPA staff and reduce EPA enforcement of environmental regulations.

Supreme Court advances Project 2025’s agenda

While many pundits have acknowledged the implausibility of Trump’s “lack of knowledge” about Project 2025, few (none?) have noted that the Supreme Court has already begun to implement its key objectives.

This is the hidden reality of Project 2025: Trump’s remaking of the Supreme Court in his authoritarian image has already enabled the Court’s majority to adopt key components of the plan:

Abortion: The high court facilitated Project 2025’s anti-abortion goals with the Dobbs decision. In overturning Roe v. Wade after 50 years of protected abortion access, Justice Samuel Alito summarily declared that the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause could no longer protect women’s medical privacy, because the Supreme Court previously determined “that a State’s regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classification.” After Roe deemed abortion access a “liberty” protected by the Due Process and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Alito and his Catholic colleagues ruled that “classification precedent” and ancient common law history were more important.

Bribery: SCOTUS implemented Project 2025’s deference to a strong (and crooked) chief executive in Snyder v. the United States. Republicans on the Supreme Court declared in Snyder that bribing an elected official isn’t bribery if it’s paid to the official after the fact, because then it’s really more of a “gratuity.” Despite (because of?) two justices facing backlash for accepting lavish gifts from donors with cases before the Supreme Court, the majority in Snyder weakened the federal anti-corruption statute, 18 U.S. Code § 666, which made it a crime for officials to corruptly solicit, accept or agree to accept “anything of value intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with” any business or transaction worth $5,000 or more.

Weakening federal regulations: The Supreme Court continued implementing Project 2025’s goal of killing the administrative state and stopping “the war on oil and gas” in Loper Bright Enterprises vs. Raimondo. In Loper, Republicans on the Court overturned the well-established Chevron doctrine, the law of administrative agencies for the last 40 years, ruling outrageously that judges should not rely on federal experts’ scientific or medical expertise, but should rely instead on their own personal opinion, bias and scientific ignorance in interpreting statutory ambiguities. This ruling, coupled with other recent cases eviscerating the regulatory power of the EPA, will cripple climate initiatives in service to Project 2025 donors for years to come if this rogue court is not stopped.

Advancing Christian nationalism: The Supreme Court helped advance Project 2025’s Christian nationalism in 303 Creative LLC and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. In 303 Creative, the conservative majority designated the right to refuse to do business with gay people not as discriminatory conduct but as “free speech,” and held that requiring web designers to serve same sex couples was “coercing” them to make “statements” with which their Christian religion disagreed.

In Kennedy, the court’s religious bloc ruled that a football coach could lead his team in prayer on a public school football field despite Establishment Clause precedent dating back to the 1940s. Until Kennedy, courts prohibited school prayer because of the coercive pressure it put on atheist, Jewish, Muslim and other non-Christian students to either pray along or be ostracized. In both 303 Creative and Kennedy, the court’s extreme bloc distorted the 1st Amendment’s shield – freedom of religion – into a sword: Christians’ freedom to impose their religion on others.

Biden’s extraordinary response to a rogue court

Each of these decisions, punctuated with the shocking presidential immunity ruling that presidents can break criminal laws with impunity, is in lockstep with the authoritarian goals of Project 2025.

This Trump-packed Supreme Court is so extreme, its roughshod violation of legal precedent so dangerous, that even President Joe Biden, an avowed institutionalist who has long resisted Supreme Court reform, now urges it.

Last week, Biden wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post outlining the Biden-Harris proposal to rein in the court, starting with term limits of 18 years.

He correctly noted that the United States “is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court,” and attributed the court’s current dysfunction to lifetime appointments. Biden’s candid observation that “what is happening now is not normal” was an understatement many Americans won’t understand for years, after the damage is evident.

Biden, like many Americans, was aghast when the Supreme Court’s Republican majority granted Trump broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. As Biden put it, “If a future president incites a violent mob to storm the Capitol and stop the peaceful transfer of power — like we saw on Jan. 6, 2021 — there may be no legal consequences.”

Or, for Trump extremists on the Supreme Court, that was exactly the point.

Without recusal, justices in bed with Big Oil will impede climate action

Term limits must be accompanied by an enforceable Code of Ethics requiring justices to recuse from all cases in which they are conflicted. This last point will continue to stick, because each of the six Republican-nominated justices is in bed with fossil fuels.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s father was a “highly active and respected member of the American Petroleum Institute for more than two decades.”

Justice Samuel Alito’s family leases over 100 acres of land for oil and gas private development.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who has accepted over $4 million in “gifts” from conservative donors, has been in fossil fuel investor Harlan Crow’s pocket for years.

ALSO READ: Texas sheriffs engage conspiracy theorist who created Trump enemies 'target list'

Not only do Coney Barrett, Alito and Thomas have direct, personal ties to fossil fuels, all six conservative justices belong to the Federalist Society, and are backed by the Heritage Foundation.

Both of these organizations, funded in large part by secret money, are driven by fossil fuel wealth, and it is no mere coincidence that Big Oil affiliated Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News amplifies their false messaging. Although they use non-stop culture wars to distract the voting public, they and Project 2025 exist largely to advance climate change denial to protect their own formidable, private wealth.

Project 2025 and its uber-wealthy puppeteers aren’t going away, regardless of what happens in November, because climate wars to hold Big Oil accountable for climate destruction are just getting started. Voters need to understand that American, Russian and Hungarian authoritarians are weaponizing Christianity in a coordinated attack to distract from their true efforts to protect fossil fuels.

Court reform, as embraced by Kamala Harris but deemed “dead on arrival” by Trump republicans, has now become an election imperative. The media needs to step up, expose the dark money ties between Project 2025, Trump and the six conflicted justices defending fossil fuels. Most critically, anyone concerned about rising temperatures and disappearing water sources needs to vote in November as if their lives depend on it.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Project 2025 group makes immediate splash at Republican National Convention

MILWAUKEE — For attendees of the Republican National Convention, there’s nothing remotely subtle about the role of the Heritage Foundation — the Washington, D.C.-based conservative group behind the highly contentious Project 2025 "presidential transition" plan.

Fly into Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport, and the first evidence that the GOP convention is taking place in this Wisconsin city is a set of giant signs that read: “Heritage welcomes you to the RNC Convention in MKE.”

A digital billboard inside the airport atrium flashes a similar message.

Only after the Heritage Foundation PR bombardment will convention-goers be greeted by signs from C-SPAN, the Daily Signal and generic welcome-to-Milwaukee banners.

Go to the website advertised on the Heritage Foundation's airport signs and you're invited to watch the upcoming "Heritage’s Policy Fest" live stream — an event Monday morning and afternoon that "will unite and inspire conservatives around the promise to our country and a plan to target the moral and foundational challenges America faces in this moment of history."

The Heritage Foundation's event promises to feature "remarks from elected officials, prominent media figures, and other conservative leaders!"

While the come-on doesn't specifically mention Project 2025, the full plan is available just a click away on the website of the Heritage Foundation,

Project 2025 has become a flashpoint not only between Republicans and Democrats, but within the Republican Party itself.

Former President Donald Trump, who is expected to name his vice presidential running mate this week before formally accepting the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nomination, this week distanced himself from Project 2025, saying he he knows "nothing" about it despite former members of his administration writing it.

Project 2025 contains a litany of goals that range from mass deportations and mass federal government firings to a nationwide abortion ban and dismantling of the Education department. It also aims to empower Trump to directly control the Justice Department and the FBI.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported earlier this week that the Heritage Foundation signed on as a major sponsor of the Republican National Convention.

It's not yet known how much it donated to either the Republican National Committee's federal convention account or the separate, nonprofit Milwaukee host committee, which is responsible for much of the logistical, promotional and civic-related work surrounding the convention.

The host committee is required to disclose its financing to the Federal Election Commission two months after the Republican National Convention's completion, according to federal rules.

Trump's far-right army is threatening bloodshed — believe them

Kevin Roberts, who heads the Heritage Foundation (largely responsible for Project 2025) just implicitly threatened Americans that if we don’t allow him and his hard-right movement to complete their transformation of America from a democratic republic into an authoritarian state, there will be blood in the streets.

“We’re in the process of taking this country back,” he told a TV audience, adding:
“The reason that they are apoplectic right now, the reason that so many anchors on MSNBC, for example, are losing their minds daily is because our side is winning. And so I come full circle on this response and just want to encourage you with some substance that we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

He’s not wrong. America has been changed as a result of a series of corrupt rulings by Republicans (exclusively; not one of these rulings has been joined by a Democratic appointee) which have changed America’s legal and political systems themselves.

As Roberts notes, this is really the largest issue we all face, and our mainstream media are totally failing to either recognize or clearly articulate how radically different our country is now, how far the Republicans on the Court have dragged us away from both our Founder’s vision and the norms and standards of a functioning, modern democratic republic.

These actions — corporate personhood, money as speech, ending the Chevron deference to regulatory agencies, and giving the president life-and-death powers that historically have only been held by kings, shahs, mullahs, dictators, and popes — have fundamentally altered the nature of our nation.

READ: Only WE can save our democracy

First, in a series of decisions — the first written by that notorious corporatist Lewis Powell (of “Powell Memo” fame) — Republicans on the Court have functionally legalized bribery of politicians and judges by both the morbidly rich and massive corporations.

This started with Powell’s 1978 Bellotti opinion, which opened the door (already cracked a bit) to the idea that corporations are not only “persons” under the Constitution, but, more radically, are entitled to the human rights the Framers wrote into the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments).

Using that rationale, Powell asserted that corporations, like rich people (from the Buckley decision that preceded Belotti by two years), are entitled to the First Amendment right of free speech. But he took it a radical step farther, ruling that because corporations don’t have mouths they can use to speak with, their use of money to spend supporting politicians or carpet-bombing advertising for a candidate or issue is free speech that can’t be tightly regulated.

Citizens United, another all-Republican decision with Clarence Thomas the deciding vote (after taking millions in bribes), expanded that doctrine for both corporations and rich people, creating new “dark money” systems that wealthy donors and companies can use to hide their involvement in their efforts to get the political/legal/legislative outcomes they seek.

Last week the Republicans on the Court took even that a huge step farther, declaring that when companies or wealthy people give money to politicians in exchange for contracts, legislation, or other favors, as long as the cash is paid out after the deed is done it’s not a bribe but a simple “gratuity.”

So, first off, they’ve overthrown over 240 years of American law and legalized bribery.

Last week they also gutted the ability of federal regulatory agencies to protect average people, voters, employees, and even the environment from corporations that seek to exploit, pollute, or even engage in wage theft. This shifted power across the economic spectrum from a government elected by we the people to the CEOs and boards of directors of some of America’s most predatory and poisonous companies.

Finally, in the Trump immunity case, the Court ruled that presidents are immune from prosecution under criminal law, regardless of the crimes they commit, so long as they assert those crimes are done as part of their “official” responsibilities. And who decides what’s “official”? The six Republicans on the Supreme Court.

It’s almost impossible to overstate the significance of this, or its consequences. We no longer live in America 1.0; this is a new America, one more closely resembling the old Confederacy, where wealthy families and giant companies make the rules, enforce the rules, and punish those who irritate or try to obstruct them.

In America 2.0, there is no right to vote; governors and secretaries of state can take away your vote without even telling you (although they still must go to court to take away your gun).

They can destroy any politician they choose by simply pouring enough cash into the campaign system (including dark, untraceable cash).

The president can now go much farther than Bush’s torturing and imprisoning innocent people in Gitmo without legal process: he can now shoot a person on Fifth Avenue in plain sight of the world and simply call it a necessary part of his job. Or impoverish or imprison you or me with the thinnest of legal “official” rationales.

We no longer live in America 1.0; this is a new America, one more closely resembling the old Confederacy, where wealthy families and giant companies make the rules, enforce the rules, and punish those who irritate or try to obstruct them.

America 2.0 is not a democracy; it’s an oligarchy, as I wrote about in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy. The South has finally — nearly — won the Civil War.

While it will be months or more likely years before all of these new powers the Republicans on the Court have given the president, rich people, and corporations begin to dawn on most Americans, they will, step-by-step transform this country into something more closely resembling Hungary or Russia than the democracies of Europe and Southeast Asia.

The only remedy at this late stage in this 50+ yearlong campaign to remake America is a massive revolt this fall at the ballot box, turning Congress — by huge majorities — over to Democrats while holding the White House.

If we fail at this, while there will be scattered pockets of resistance for years, it’ll be nearly impossible to reverse the course that America’s rightwing billionaires have set us on.

There has never been a more critical time in the history of our nation outside of the last time rich oligarchs tried to overthrow our democracy, the Civil War. Like then, the stakes are nothing less than the survival of a nation of, by, and for we the people.

READ: Only WE can save our democracy

'We do really want to burn it all down': Trumpworld says it isn’t 'bluffing' on 2nd term

An unnamed Republican source close to former President Donald Trump is confirming that reports of the former president wanting to establish a far-right, authoritarian government in a second term are not hyperbole.

In a recent Rolling Stone article, reporters Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng spoke with several unnamed GOP-aligned sources who are in Trump's orbit, and they made no efforts to assuage concerns that Trump would drastically reshape the federal government if he took power again. Rather, these sources instead confirmed that reports of a term-limited Trump eliminating all guardrails that would stand in the way of him wielding absolute unchecked executive power and pursuing vengeance against his political opponents are accurate.

"Of course we aren’t f—ing bluffing," a source identified as a "close Trump adviser and former administration official" said. Another told the publication that, "yes, we do really want to burn it all down," referring to the more moderate wing of the GOP that may seek to hamstring Trump's worst impulses in a second term.

Sarah Matthews, who was a deputy White House press secretary in the Trump administration, has since turned on the former president and endorsed his chief rival, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, in the 2024 GOP primary. She told Rolling Stone that if he wins a second term, Trump won't have people around him to curb his most authoritarian impulses, like Generals James Mattis and John Kelly, who served as Secretary of Defense and White House chief of staff, respectively.

"When he first came into office, Trump didn’t know what he was doing. But now, he understands the levers of government in ways that he can manipulate it and game the system. I take him and his people at their word when they say they’re not bluffing," she said. "The personnel he’s going to surround himself with now, it’s going be a bunch of Yes Men who will not push back on some of his more radical ideas. That’s something that is super concerning to me about what a second term would look like."

One major element of a potential second Trump term is the far-right Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" initiative. A key plank of Project 2025 is the passage of an executive order dubbed "Schedule F," which would bulldoze all existing guardrails in place for the federal civil service and drastically increase the number of presidential appointees serving in federal agencies from roughly 5,000 to more than 54,000.

Those potential new federal employees are already being vetted by Heritage Foundation staff. Even though Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita has said that proposals from outside groups are not accurate and that only Trump himself would be deciding on executive policy and staffing, Project 2025 brought on former Trump White House Presidential Personnel Office Director John McEntee as a senior adviser.

Additionally, Russ Vought — who leads Project 2025 partner organization Center for Renewing America — is rumored to be a favorite candidate to be Trump's White House chief of staff should he win the November election. In recent writings, Vought described contemporary America as being in a "post-Constitutional time," which means extremely broad interpretation of the Constitution in order to justify far-reaching executive power.

Vought notably wrote the section of the Project 2025 playbook on "the executive office of the President of the United States," and the Schedule F executive order is his brainchild.

"[W]e need to be radical in discarding or rethinking the legal paradigms that have confined our ability to return to the original Constitution," Vought wrote in a 2022 essay.

Click here to read Rolling Stone's report in its entirety (subscription required).

‘Creepy weirdos’: Senator fears Trump WH staff would destroy government from ‘inside’

WASHINGTON — Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) is raising alarms over the quality of staffers the Republican Party is vetting in preparation for a second Donald Trump administration.

“He's just going to have a bunch of creepy weirdos working in the White House that are intent on destroying government from the inside and pursuing their super creepy, weird political agendas,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told Raw Story.

Murphy’s not alone. In response to the far-right Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — a sweeping blueprint for a future Republican president to upend the federal workforce as we know it — a handful of House Democrats have formed a working group to combat the sweeping changes for which conservatives are calling.

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Murphy sees things a tad differently.

“I'm not worried about Project 2025. I'm worried about Donald Trump being the president of the United States,” Murphy said. “It’s gonna be a disaster, and Project 2025 is part of the book of evidence.”

Besides policy proposals, Project 2025 also includes a long list of conservatives eager to join a second Trump administration in order to unwind the federal government from within.

In his first administration, some conservatives within his cabinet stood up to Trump — from then-Vice President Mike Pence to former Attorney General Bill Barr.

Democrats such as Murphy are worried that many of those principled conservative voices have been ostracized by Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

“So he's not gonna have anybody to protect the country, and the White House is just going to have a bunch of really off-the-wall radicals working for him,” Murphy said.

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Democrats need to wake up, Murphy says. He’s predicting a second Trump administration would be marked by the political vengeance and retribution Trump is promising on the campaign trail.

“One of the first things he would do is clear out anybody who stands in the way of his desire to persecute political opponents,” Murphy said. “So if he wins, it's very possible this could become a banana republic within weeks. So like, I think everyone is vastly under estimating how serious this is going to get very quickly.”

At present, President Joe Biden and Trump are statistically tied in most national polls, as well as statistically tied in most polls taken within key swing states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. As president, Trump enjoys a slight edge in Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina.

Biden and Trump are scheduled to square off Thursday in their first presidential debate.

The debate comes two weeks ahead of Trump’s scheduled sentencing after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and three weeks ahead of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump is slated to officially become the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee.

Internet hammers right-wing group for 'absolutely unamerican' display after Trump verdict

A conservative think tank with a controversial plan for if Donald Trump wins the presidential election was under fire on Friday after flying their headquarters' flag upside down and then advertising it.

Heritage Foundation, known in part for its "Project 2025" plan to remake the government in MAGA's image, posted a photo of its upside-down flag on social media after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in a hush money cover-up case in New York. The stunt is likely a reference to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, whose wife reportedly flew an upside-down American flag in response to a neighbor's anti-Trump signs and a follow-up fight.

It didn't play well on social media.

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National security journalist Marcy Wheeler weighed in on it.

"Heritage Foundation, which had masterminded plan to exact revenge on those who believe in democracy, flies a flag of distress because he's a fraudster who f------ a porn star," she wrote.

The Bulwark's Will Saletan also chimed in with a reference to the Alito scandal: "Don’t be alarmed. This was posted by the Heritage Foundation’s wife. The Foundation bears no responsibility."

Dem strategist Ally Sammarco said, "Reminder that the Heritage Foundation is the organization behind Project 2025."

Progressive columnist Brian Beutler noted that "Heritage Foundation circa 20 years ago would say Heritage Foundation today is 'with the terrorists' (and would be correct)."

Andrew L. Seidel, an attorney, said, "The outfit that brought you Project 2025 wants you to know that it, like some Supreme Court Justices, does not believe in the rule of law, democracy, or the peaceful transfer of power."

Former Republican lawmaker Adam Kinzinger said it was "absolutely unamerican" to fly the upside-down flag at Heritage.

"How far has Heritage fallen. Sick. This must be defeated," he wrote.

Keeping Trump from the White House is all that matters

The danger and consequences locally and globally of electing Donald Trump for a second time must be stressed every hour of every day between now and Nov. 5.

That’s because this election is first and foremost a matter of national security at home and abroad, and Trump poses a grave threat to both.

This election is not a matter of politics as usual.

Nor is this election about the “crucifixion” of Trump by a “deep state.”

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Or the selling of an overpriced Bible by a lifelong atheist portraying himself as a Christian on Easter Sunday and International Transgender Day of Visibility.

The 2024 election is about Trump posting a video on Truth Social of a picture of President Joe Biden hog-tied on the back of a MAGA pickup truck allegedly on its way to a funeral of a New York police officer killed in the line of duty.

This election had also been about gag orders not going far enough and the failure to implement sanctions to lock Trump up for threatening prosecutors, judges, family members and witnesses — at least until Monday night's ruling in the Manhattan case by Judge Juan Merchan.

The deference to Trump thus far has had absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment or the fact that he is running for president. It has had everything to do with the institutional failure of the U.S. criminal justice system to treat Trump — who faces 88 felony charges across four separate criminal cases — the same as anyone else who threatens the fair administration of the due process of justice.

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A victory this fall by Trump threatens the end of American democracy as we have known it for some 250 years.

At best, a second Trump administration would usher in a new domestic order of illiberal democracy and disinformation. At worst, it would result in the United States’ entry into an anti-democratic axis of autocratic, plutocratic and kleptocratic nations.

Open recognition of these realities must become an everyday part of the 2024 presidential election.

Trump’s desired illiberal democracy or authoritarian regime is being brought to the nation by the thinking and planning of Turning Point USA, the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Conservative Partnership Institute.

This coalition of conservative “stink” tanks led by the Heritage Foundation are all in with Trumpism and they have helped to produce Project 2025. This 920-page report was published in 2022 and “promises revenge, oppression, and autocratic rule,” says Thomas Zimmer writing for Democracy Americana.

The foreword, “Mandate for Leadership,” was written by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. According to Zimmer, “In just 17 pages, it captures and oozes the siege mentality, self-victimization, and grievance-driven lust for revenge that is fueling the Right and animating the plans for a second Trump administration.”

ALSO READ: 11 ways Trump doesn’t become president

Their agenda is also in alignment with the conservative decision making of the U.S. Supreme Court that, since 2010, has been empowering corporations, stripping individuals of their rights and chipping away at the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution.

As we have all witnessed, the far-right supermajority Supreme Court is all in with Trumpism. They have been busy running interference for the insurrectionist-in-chief and delaying the trials of the four time criminally indicted presumptive GOP nominee.

The New York Times Magazine published an extensive interview with the Heritage Foundation’s Roberts back in January of this year entitled: Inside the Heritage Foundation’s Plans for "Institutionalizing Trumpism."

Some of the highlights from this interview included that Roberts had nothing but praise for Viktor Orbán’s autocratic regime in Hungary. Echoing Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, he acknowledged that he, too, wants to destroy the administrative state. Roberts also wants to fire 50,000 federal workers.

Roberts echoes McCarthyism, as well, when he asserts that Chinese communists have infiltrated the U.S. government. He also believes that there is a communist plot in the highest echelons of American power, although he has conceded this may only be a socialist plot.

Who said you can’t make this stuff up?

The administration of Trump 1.0 (2017-2021) was uninitiated and disorganized. It was full of chaos and disorder. It experienced resistance from within its own corridors of power. Beyond the Oval Office, it was still subject to institutionalists, to checks and balances, to the rule of law.

As Barton Gellman has reflected in The Atlantic’s special issue, “If Trump Wins,” the former president “tried and failed to cross many lines during his time in the White House. He proposed, for example, that the IRS conduct punitive audits of his political antagonists and that Border Patrol officers shoot migrants in the legs.”

That didn’t happen.

But following Biden’s victory in 2020, Trump and a sizable number of his supporters operationalized several schemes to overturn a legitimate election, including a failed insurrection that violated section three of the 14th Amendment.

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The contending forces of political power combined were barely enough to impede Trump from his desire to remain — at any cost — in the White House as an unelected commander-in-chief.

Many politicians and politicos, as well as former officials from the Trump 1.0 administration, believe that if Trump is re-elected that he will not leave office after a second term. As former Rep. Liz Cheney has been saying, a vote for Trump may very well become “the last election that you ever get to vote in.”

Trump may face criminal referral from Jan. 6 committee, Cheney saysFormer Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has questioned whether American democracy will survive another Trump presidency. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

Trump 2.0 (2025-?) would be very different from Trump 1.0 for several reasons:

First, Trumpian lawlessness, corruption and weaponization of state attorney generals has taken over and spread throughout the Republican Party.

Second, the next Trump administration will be experienced and far better organized around Trumpian goals than the last one.

Third, the internal resistance and the threat of governmental institutionalists will have subsided. Rule of law itself will even become a secondary threat to Trump so long as he’s a free man.

Fourth, in the next administration, only political loyalists need apply for work. And loyalty oaths — not to the U.S. Constitution but to dictator Trump — will almost assuredly be implemented throughout the administration and civil service, if not across American society.

The continuing if not escalating assault on American democracy and the rule of law since Jan. 6 by Trump and his captured GOP including their desire to sanction the fourth estate, to deconstruct democratic institutions, and to weaponize law enforcement are all in sync with the rising waves of anti-democratic and authoritarian movements worldwide.

In the contemporary world, Trump’s nationalist “America first” vision of the United States has aligned with other illiberal and authoritarians engaged in populist rule underpinned by xenophobia, scapegoating and political targeting. What all these countries share in common is that they are trending toward fascism, standardization and disinformation.

For example, 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, we have President Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine and promising another Russian Empire.

In Brazil, there was former Army Captain Jair Bolsonaro elected to office in a landslide in 2018. He had surfed an anti-corruption wave promising to put an end to the “old politics” — only to be defeated in 2022 by the progressive and former jailed President Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro, a Trump ally and fellow failed insurrectionist, hung out at Mar-a-Lago after his defeat. After only six months, the Brazilian Electoral Court barred Bolsonaro from running again for political office until 2030.

In Argentina, there is the self-described “narco-capitalist-libertarian” and recently elected President Javier Milei. The 53-year-old economist and TV pundit ran on a ticket promising to reduce the size of government and three decades of triple-digit inflation. With the backing of the International Monetary Fund and the Davos crowd, Milei broke the hegemony of the nation’s two leading political forces — the Perónists, or left-of-center party, and the older conservative party, the Union Civica Radical.

Most recently in the Netherlands, there was the election of the anti-Islamic leader Geert Wilders. As the new prime minister, he is promising to spread the populist message, shake up democratic institutions and break a few rules.

So what do we have to do to save American democracy from its impending demolition?

In the long term, we must change and modify the electoral and constitutional systems of politicking and governing that have brought the United States to this historical quagmire in American democracy. There are no shortages of necessary reforms, recommendations, and programs waiting in the wings to be implemented for ameliorating our dysfunctional “bipartisan” democracy.

I have summarized these in Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy that was published on April 1.

However, without the defeat of Trump in November, there will be no chance or opportunity to correct the existential crisis that consumes us all.

In the short term, therefore, we must do everything in our collective power to make sure that Biden is returned to office for a second term in 2025.

This entails convincing all voters, especially anti-Trump Republicans, independents and short-sighted Democrats, as well, that this election has little to do with partisan politics and policies.

It has everything to do with saving our democratic republic from Trump, Trumpism and the former Grand Old Party that has morphed and metastasized into something unrecognizable and dangerous.

Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice and the author of several books on the crimes of the powerful, including Criminology on Trump (2022) and its 2024 sequel, Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy.