Pummeled Again

After Trump’s blanket pardon of 1500 January 6th rioters, I dug out my journal of that day and read my entry, the handwriting shaky with fear, describing the violent attack on the Capitol as I watched it unfold on TV. Millions of us were witnesses, and no amount of white-washing can change the facts. I am afraid of what lies ahead in this country, for now unrecognizable as the America of “justice under the law” and “all men are created equal.” Rather than try to recapture the emotions of that day in light of the pardons, I decided to re-post my blog from 2020. Wistfully, I note the optimism of the closing paragraph: 

Waves of fury and incredulity pummel my mental shores. Naïve as I am, despite the pundits’ prediction that Senate Republicans would vote to acquit Trump, I believed that dedication to democracy, oaths of office, oaths of impartiality, and love of country would win out over party politics in the face of evidence and the terror of personal experience.

But no.

Buffeted by cross currents, America has been twisted and tortured like its flag in an insurrectionist’s grip. Abused were the stars and stripes on January 6^th as they were wielded as a weapon to bludgeon police. Those who derided Black Lives Matter protesters this summer with calls to “Back the Blue” swarmed the Capitol howling “Stop the Steal” as they brandished the American flag along with their arsenal of bats, fence posts, and pitchforks to bloody those defending the Capitol.

When I was a child, I was told to kiss the flag 100 times if it touched the ground by mistake. Was this my parents’ invention or a national rule? I don’t know, but the message was clear. Dave’s father too, a WW II veteran, taught his grandchildren the solemn lesson “Honor the soldiers and the flag.”

Although they sought to appropriate the motives of America’s revolutionaries, the Trump supporters who breached the Capitol can lay no claim to heroism. They desecrated American symbols while impeding certification of an adjudicated election, endangered lawmakers, spread feces, and destroyed and stole national treasures. Thugs were these, not patriots. The fever of doing Trump’s bidding superseded respect for the flag, democratic process, and human life.

What to make of Mitch McConnell? He refused to call the Senate to session when the House Managers were ready to present the case in mid-January. There was time for a trial, and the former president was still in office. Mitch had not the balls to vote “guilty,” but had the gall after the count to affirm the House Managers’ evidence of Trump as inciter-in-chief. Although the Senate had already addressed the Constitutionality by a majority vote, McConnell defended himself with the timing technicality he created.

In his closing remarks, lead House manager Jamie Raskin looked around the Senate chamber at those before him and quoted Benjamin Franklin, saying, “If you make yourself a sheep, the wolves will eat you. Don’t make yourself a sheep.” How else but as sheep are we to see Senators who believed Trump guilty, yet in their fawning loyalty, absolved him of accountability at the expense of our democracy?

What now? In betraying their oaths and ignoring the result of the vote on the impeachment’s constitutionality, those senators eviscerated the Senate of its credibility and power. They did not “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” when Trump and his mob sought to hold power despite the vote of the people. They waived their sworn charge, and clung to a technicality already dismissed by majority vote.

By that acquittal, the Senate has granted future presidents a “January Exception” for whatever purposes he or she might have in that final month in office; Congress and the Republic be damned. After his final summation of the evidence of Trump’s efforts to prevent the transfer of power, delight at the attack, and refusal to send help, Representative Raskin said, “If that’s not a high crime and misdemeanor, then nothing is.”

It is work to contain my fury and contempt, but friends remind me of reasons for optimism. President Biden has remained focused on the people and the planet. Vaccinations have doubled. A COVID relief bill will soon pass. The U.S. has re-entered the global community in positive ways, re-joining the Paris Climate Accord and the WHO. In discrediting their vote and abdicating their responsibility, the Senate has re-affirmed what has always been true: it is up to us, the people, to govern wisely with our votes.

Project 2025: What Would Change? What Would We Lose?

Project 2025, or The Presidential Transition Project, is no secret. A quick Google search opens Project 2025.com, and those interested can read on. Given the document’s daunting 900+ pages and extravagant language however, few people will. So, beyond the introduction that follows, I recommend the 17-page Foreword by Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, and a selective wade into the areas of greatest concern to you.

Because you should be concerned. We all should. If the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity didn’t shake you, familiarity with the changes Project 2025 proposes in our government policies, programs, and personnel will. 

Authored by contributors from over 100 conservative organizations and facilitated by The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a game plan for the next conservative president and his administration. As Paul Dans, Project 2025 director states in his opening note, “Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.” (pg. xiv)

When Donald Trump won the 2016 election, he was surprised, unprepared, and ill-equipped. The chaos caused by his style and lack of experience in governing was, to some degree, offset by civil servants with expertise in their fields as well as the checks and balances established in the Constitution… inconveniences that Project 2025 seeks to address. 

One might hope Congress would be a check on the expanded presidential power outlined in Project 2025, but beyond the divisiveness and inertia apparent in that body, impoundment is a means to circumvent policies by withholding money already appropriated by Congress. We saw impoundment in action when the former president sought to withhold money from Ukraine unless President Zelenskyy launched an investigation into Hunter Biden. Also, the document states that some significant offices and acts, such as those within the FBI, can be eliminated “without any action from Congress.” (pg. 550)

In the work of deconstruction, the crosshairs of Project 2025 are focused on ending the independence of the Department of Justice and the FBI. The document aims to “place the FBI under a politically accountable leader” (pg. 550) and “prepare a plan to end immediately any policies, investigations, or cases that run contrary to law or Administration policies.” (pg. 557, italics, mine.) In this, one can foresee a rash of pardons and dropped court cases related to January 6th.

In his Foreword, Kevin Roberts states, “There are many executive tools a courageous conservative President can use to handcuff the bureaucracy.” (pg. 9) The word “handcuff” is certainly troubling, but that aside, another tool, Schedule F, would reclassify nonpartisan, merit-based, career civil servants – experts in fields such as science, health, etc. -  to facilitate firing those viewed as inadequately dedicated to the president’s agenda. Reportedly tens of thousands of jobs could be affected, making way for that army of loyalists who lack independence and expertise in arenas important to the American people.  

It's fair to say that those arenas are, to some degree, common to most of us. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” covers them well, assuming our health and well-being and that of our loved ones fall under those headings. But as much as Project 2025 pays lip service to reducing the size and scope of government, its recommendations send that conservative army nosing into bedrooms, bathrooms, and mailboxes to gnaw away at established freedoms in ways not seen in half a century, the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment be damned. 

Project 2025 proposes new goals for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): “Protecting life, conscience, and bodily integrity.” Existing social services such as Head Start, school meal programs, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) would be abolished or reduced. In reinforcing the “traditional family” – married mother, father, and their  children – programs supporting single mothers and funding for out-of-home daycare would be curtailed, all the better to restrict women’s job opportunities beyond motherhood. 

Across all departments, policies related to the LGBTQ+ community, gender-affirming care, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) would be assessed and for the most part, repealed. In the belief that “abortion pills pose the single greatest threat to unborn children in the post-Roe world,” Project 2025 states that the FDA should reverse approval of Mifepristone. Invoking the Comstock Act of 1873, the mailing and interstate sale of such medications would be prohibited. As Roberts affirms in the Foreword, “the Dobbs decision is just the beginning.” (pg. 6)  

The danger to women’s health in the wake of overturning Roe vs. Wade has been apparent in publicized cases of doctors immobilized by uncertainty as to abortion laws in their state. Whereas the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) was enacted to protect medical professionals deeming an abortion necessary for the health of the mother, Project 2025 states, “the EMTALA requires no abortion, preempts no pro-life laws, and explicitly requires stabilization of the unborn child.” (pg. 473) 

Funding for Planned Parenthood would be eliminated, and coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for “women’s preventative services” – i.e. contraception – would be rescinded. Despite a litany of new rules directed to women, their bodies, and reproductive rights, and in denial of the mutual responsibility for pregnancy, men are mentioned only to say that men’s “preventive services” should not be considered under a mandate for women.  

If the Christian Nationalism theme has not yet been apparent, Project 2025 proposes to change the name of the Office for Civil Rights to “Conscience Enforcement.” Feel free to think about that while your conscience is your own.

Beyond that, the Project seeks to rescind countless Biden initiatives and dismantle, reform, and reduce many departments and regulations established and enacted to protect and preserve the people, the planet, and the creatures. The authors ignore or disdain the reality of the importance of the health and connectivity of this shared Earth and global community in sustaining us all in terms of climate, trade, agreements, and alliances. 

Science that conflicts with the presidential agenda of “Energy Dominance” is seen as a threat. Offices, acts, and regulations that contain references to climate change, clean energy, renewable resources, and sustainability are viewed as impediments to the project’s reorientation of America’s energy programs toward nuclear research and development and increased drilling and mining for fossil fuels, natural gas, and coal. 

Viewed as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” as it monitors and alerts the public to weather, storms, and rising temperatures, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated. “Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy. Particular attention must be paid to appointments in this area.” (pg. 677)  

Through revocation of funding and termination of personnel, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would be reduced in size and scope. Provisions of the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act would be reviewed as possible infringements on private property rights. Clean air standards related to interstate pollution, downwind impacts, greenhouse gases, etc. would be “reconsidered or repealed.” 

Redirection of Department of Commerce services would reduce protections for critical habitat and threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). In this time of rising seas and temperatures, extinctions, extreme storms, subsequent human migrations, and international turmoil, it is at our peril that experienced scientists and experts would be relegated to the visions of a president and his or her loyalists. 

Project 2025 recommends abolishing the federal Department of Education and turning that responsibility and funding over to the states, thereby eliminating national standards for academics, civil rights, and psycho-social support. Programs and references to DEI, gender identity, and Critical Race Theory would be purged. Rather than an emphasis on meeting the needs of students, the Project’s contention, voiced by Kevin Roberts, is that “schools serve parents.” (pg. 5) 

National security under Project 2025 will undergo a “most significant shift” in discerning “who are friends and who are not.” (pg. 179) The State Department must “right the ship,” and presumably in a quaint reference to President Lincoln’s hat, “Bureaucratic stovepipes of the past should be less important than commitment to, and achievement of, the President’s foreign policy agenda.” (pg. 176) The text is clear that those stovepipes are existing international treaties, agreements, and organizations. Since it is not George Washington running for president, one must question what that foreign policy might look like under a president who admires authoritarian leaders and stores classified documents in his bathroom.

In the “execution of U.S. policy that is focused on [the president’s] vision for the nation and the world” (pg. 196), the authors propose dismantling the Department of Homeland Security while investing in a Department of Defense (DOD) devoted to “warfighting.” Additionally, military personnel would be deployed to prevent illegal crossing at U.S. points of entry as well as assist  in completion of the wall at the southern border. The Department of Energy would veer from alternative energy initiatives toward nuclear research programs and expansion of the nuclear arsenal. International nonproliferation agreements with the United Nations and Iran would be terminated.  

DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is viewed as “unlawful,” thereby opening the “Dreamers” previously protected to inclusion in the expanded and expedited arrests, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants outlined in Project 2025. State and local enforcement officials, as well as the military and secret service personnel not involved in a protective capacity, would also be enlisted in these actions. 

While Candidate Trump has claimed lack of knowledge or support for the Project, 25 of the 36 principal authors are involved in the former president’s current campaign or served in his administration. His speeches and posts have reflected many of the stances and policies outlined in the document. Presidential adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law is a drumbeat throughout the pages of Project 2025, but that rings hollow in the face of January 6, election denial, and 34 counts of falsifying business records.  

Federal safety nets for American citizens, from children to seniors, would be compromised as food programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and the like are reduced or eliminated. In fact, the long-standing role, in a broad sense, of the United States federal government as a safety net for humans, planetary ecosystems, and world peace would be abdicated in consolidating power to serve the president’s agenda. Economics – bolstered by resource exploitation, military sales, and elimination and reduction of “entitlements” – would take precedence. States’ rights, touted as a cornerstone of Project 2025, would remain in force only in areas that suit that agenda. State policies governing environmental regulations, immigrant protections, and women’s health and reproductive rights would be overridden.  

Throughout their writings, the Founders considered the needs of future generations in an America beyond 1787. They enshrined the guard rails of checks and balances to protect against the rise of a dictator and included amendments to allow for a changing world. Partisanship has weakened those safeguards. Christian Nationalism and near-unbounded presidential power dominate Project 2025, and Americans are left with a new take on our unalienable rights as: Life (certainly for fetuses), “ordered Liberty” (whatever that means), and the Pursuit of “Blessedness” (or doing “what we ought.” Pg. 13). 

If that’s not your vision, VOTE… for Democracy.