Trump Is Project 2025

Trump claims he has “no idea who is behind” Project 2025.

Hogwash!

Project 2025’s nearly thousand-page plan for a total MAGA takeover of America was assembled by more than 25 of Trump’s own administration officials.

Trump’s Make America Great Again PAC is running ads calling it “Trump’s Project 2025.”

CNN found that at least 140 people who worked for Trump are involved in the project, including six of his cabinet secretaries.

Trump’s campaign press secretary and his adviser Stephen Miller star in Project 2025’s recruitment video.

If Trump has “no idea” who they are, that’s some serious cognitive decline!

I can see why Trump wants to distance himself from such a toxic plan. Page 5 calls for jailing teachers and librarians over banned books.

Page 455 calls for “abortion surveillance” and stripping Americans of reproductive freedom.

Pages 587 and 592 have plans to gut overtime pay rules.

Page 489 demands the government prioritize “married men and women” over any other type of family.

Page 371 proposes privatizing nuclear waste disposal. What could go wrong?

Trump has promised to be a “dictator” on Day One. The Supreme Court has given their blessing. Project 2025 is the how-to manual for Trump’s dictatorship.

Trump is Project 2025. He cannot escape it.

A story. In December of 2015, everyone who worked on climate issues was in Paris for the white-knuckled final negotiations of the historic accords. While that was going on, Big Oil’s friends in Congress passed—almost without debate—an end to the longstanding ban on oil exports from the U.S. I cobbled together—with the help of the Sierra Club’s Mike Brune—what may have been the only op-ed opposing the measure, in a Paris cafe fueled by pain au chocolat. But the Democratic Senators I reached out to back home laughed—it wasn’t a big deal, they said, and anyway they were getting a production tax credit for wind energy in return. They were wrong: America in a decade has gone from not exporting oil and gas to becoming the world’s biggest producer. Bigger than Russia and the Saudis.

The moral of the story is: Big Oil is sneaky, and they will use moments when attention is diverted (say, by the advent of a truly powerful new presidential candidate) to advance their agenda. And the point of the story is: They’re trying it again.

A couple of days ago—while all of us were paying attention to Brat Summer, heterosectionality, and the general splendor of Kamala Harris’ first week (huge thanks to the members of the climate community who came together online last night to raise huge money for the campaign)—Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) announced he had cobbled together a new proposal for “permitting reform.” On the face of it, some of the new proposal makes real sense: Among other things, it would ease the process of approving the badly needed transmission lines for moving solar and wind power back and forth across the continent.

This week saw the hottest temperatures on our planet in at least the last 125,000 years. Get real.

But remember: Joe Manchin has taken more money from the fossil fuel industry than anyone else in D.C. (Which is saying something—he’s the Simone Biles of corruption). And so it’s not surprising that there’s a huge cost for this sane policy change: The bill will also try and force the approval of huge new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals along the Gulf Coast. This is not only disgusting on environmental justice grounds (watch Roishetta Ozane explain the cost to her community) but it is also the single biggest greenhouse gas bomb on planet Earth.

Jeremy Symons, the veteran climate analyst who has supplied the most relevant climate analyses throughout the LNG fight, came up with these numbers last night. If enacted, he said, the LNG portion of the Manchin bill would “lock in new greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 165 coal-fired power plants or more” and “erase the climate benefits of building 50 major renewable electricity transmission lines.” It is exactly, to the letter, what Project 2025 has called for.

And yet it has some actual chance of passing. Martin Heinrichs, the Democratic senator from New Mexico, endorsed it on Wednesday—which makes a certain amount of local sense, since the state derives an outsized share of its government revenues from taxes on gas production. But Heinrichs is selling out the planet to help his state. The question is, how many of his fellow Democrats will go along? Enough to allow this legislation to move through the upper chamber?

Because remember: The ultimate goal of climate policy is not to rewire America so it can use more renewable energy. That is a good goal, and it will make money for solar and wind developers which is why many of them will support this bill. But the goal of climate policy is to prevent the planet from overheating. And if you make renewable energy easier in America at the cost of addicting developing Asian economies to exported American LNG, you have taken an enormous step backward. (You’ve also screwed over the American consumers who still depend on natural gas and will now pay more, which is one reason senators like Ed Markey (D-Mass.) have taken a dim view of this proposed law).

The big green groups have come out strongly against it. Here’s the position of the League of Conservation Voters, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and EarthJustice, and the Sierra Club, and Oil Change International. And here’s mine: This week saw the hottest temperatures on our planet in at least the last 125,000 years. Get real.

This week saw the explosion of joy that comes when politicians stand up to business as usual. Don’t undermine all of it with a “deal” whose main beneficiary is Big Oil. Don’t give Joe Manchin a gift on his way out the door. Don’t do what you did in 2015, when you opened the door to the oil and gas export boom. Don’t turn off the same young voters that U.S. President Joe Biden turned off by approving the Willow oil complex. Don’t get in the way of the momentum we’re trying to build as November approaches.

And on top of all that political reality, there’s reality reality as well. Physics doesn’t get a vote in Congress, but it gets the only vote that matters in the real world. Pay attention to it for once!

The back-to-back Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and news of U.S. President Joe Biden dropping out of the race offer the clearest strategy yet for Democrats to win in November: focusing all their energy on reminding voters of just how extreme former President Donald Trump is while offering an alternative vision for the future the American people can actually vote for.

In recent weeks, Trump has noticeably moderated his tone. He came out in support of IVF after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling led some providers to suspend their IVF programs, argued he does not support a nationwide ban on abortion, and even disavowed the infamous Project 2025. Trump may be an extremist, but he knows where the threats to winning the White House lie. But the red meat rhetoric, cult behavior, and gross incompetence on display at the RNC told the real story. Attempts to distance himself from fascist policies and call for unity after an unconscionable attack against him were ultimately a sham meant to confuse voters—and the MAGA, anti-freedom party is here for the long haul.

Trump’s introduction of Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate alone should dispel any illusion Trump was moving to the center. Trump could have picked a vice president with the ability to appeal to specific constituencies Democrats desperately rely on, lock a swing state, or further portray unity. But Vance is easily the most extreme choice of them all: a supporter of total abortion bans who will make Project 2025 a reality, anointed by Trump as the future of the party.

Everywhere Trump goes, turmoil follows and people lose their freedoms.

The vice president pick was followed by a sea of “Mass Deportation Now” signs; Nikki Haley getting booed while swallowing her pride and political conviction to endorse Trump; Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan, and Ultimate Fighting Championship’s Dana White offering a weird but revealing display of a hyper-masculinity; and extremists attacking Usha Vance online for her Indian heritage.

We can’t let Trump cynically exploit the shooting and position himself as both a martyr and God’s gift to Earth, saved in what he described as a “providential moment in his speech.” We can wholeheartedly condemn an assassination attempt while acknowledging Trump himself fomented the kind of political violence he fell victim to. Voters are with us: Most Americans blamed political rhetoric for the shooting, and nearly 40% blamed Trump himself. We need to talk about Trump not just as a general threat to democracy, but as an agent of chaos, someone whom turmoil follows everywhere in rhetoric and actions. Everywhere Trump goes, turmoil follows and people lose their freedoms.

Even as we remind voters of who Trump really is, our side can’t solely rely on the anti-Trump movement to win. A lot of folks are disillusioned and haven’t heard or felt the incredible progress made over the last four years despite the administration’s attempts to deploy surrogates on the road. And, as some voters don’t see or know about these accomplishments, they have not been hearing something to look forward to because Biden just hadn’t outlined a clear second-term vision. Only time will tell if his decision to drop out will help remove one layer of voter apathy and discontent, but the Democratic Party seemingly coalescing around Kamala Harris, who would offer many “firsts” if elected president, is a massive opportunity to change that dynamic.

Now, it’s on us to work with progressive activists and organizers on the ground, outside of the party machine, to paint a positive picture of why our values are worth supporting. Voters don’t have to vote for everything we stand for and every one of our leaders. But there is undoubtedly something that matters to them they can proactively cast a ballot for—and that’s what we need to remind them.

At the end of the last century, hoping to drive the United States from Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden sought to draw in the American military. He reportedly wanted to “bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil,” provoking savage asymmetric conflicts that would send home a stream of “wooden boxes and coffins” and weaken American resolve. “This is when you will leave,” he predicted.

After the 9/11 attacks, Washington took the bait, launching interventions across the Greater Middle East and Africa. What followed was a slew of sputtering counterterrorism failures and stalemates in places ranging from Niger and Burkina Faso to Somalia and Yemen, a dismal loss, after 20 years, in Afghanistan, and a costly fiasco in Iraq. And just as bin Laden predicted, those conflicts led to discontent in the United States. Americans finally turned against the war in Afghanistan after 10 years of fighting there, while it took only a little more than a year for the public to conclude that the Iraq war wasn’t worth the cost. Still, those conflicts dragged on. To date, more than 7,000 U.S. troops have died fighting the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other militant groups.

As lethal as those Islamist fighters have been, however, another “enemy” has proven far more deadly for American forces: themselves. A recent Pentagon study found suicide to be the leading cause of death among active-duty U.S. Army personnel. Out of 2,530 soldiers who died between 2014 and 2019 from causes ranging from car crashes to drug overdoses to cancer, 35%—883 troops—took their own lives. Just 96 soldiers died in combat during those same six years.

The war that bin Laden kicked off in 2001—a global conflict that still grinds on today—ushered in an era in which SEALs, soldiers, and other military personnel have continued to die by their own hands at an escalating rate.

Those military findings bolster other recent investigations. The journalism nonprofit Voice of San Diego found, for example, that young men in the military are more likely to take their own lives than their civilian peers. The suicide rate for American soldiers has, in fact, risen steadily since the Army began tracking it 20 years ago.

Last year, the medical journal JAMA Neurology reported that the suicide rate among U.S. veterans was 31.7 per 100,000—57% greater than that of non-veterans. And that followed a 2021 study by Brown University’s Costs of War Project which found that, compared to those who died in combat, at least four times as many active-duty military personnel and post-9/11 war veterans—an estimated 30,177 of them—had killed themselves.

“High suicide rates mark the failure of the U.S. government and U.S. society to manage the mental health costs of our current conflicts,” wrote Thomas Howard Suitt, author of the Costs of War report. “The U.S. government’s inability to address the suicide crisis is a significant cost of the U.S. post-9/11 wars, and the result is a mental health crisis among our veterans and service members with significant long-term consequences.”

Military Shocked (Shocked!) by a Rise in Suicides

In June, a New York Times front-page investigation found that at least a dozen Navy SEALs had died by suicide in the last 10 years, either while on active duty or shortly after leaving military service. Thanks to an effort by the families of those deceased special operators, eight of their brains were delivered to a specialized Defense Department brain trauma laboratory in Maryland. Researchers there discovered blast damage in every one of them—a particular pattern only seen in people exposed repeatedly to blast waves like SEALs endure from weapons fired in years of training and war-zone deployments as well as explosions encountered in combat.

The Navy claimed that it hadn’t been informed of the lab’s findings until the Times contacted them. A Navy officer with ties to SEAL leadership expressed shock to reporter Dave Philipps. “That’s the problem,” said that anonymous officer. “We are trying to understand this issue, but so often the information never reaches us.”

None of it should, however, have been surprising.

Unfortunately (though Osama bin Laden would undoubtedly have been pleased), the military has a history of not taking suicide prevention seriously.

After all, while writing for the Times in 2020, I revealed the existence of an unpublished internal study, commissioned by U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), on the suicides of Special Operations forces (SOF). Conducted by the American Association of Suicidology, one of the nation’s oldest suicide-prevention organizations, and completed sometime after January 2017, the undated 46-page report put together the findings of 29 “psychological autopsies,” including detailed interviews with 81 next-of-kin and close friends of commandos who had killed themselves between 2012 and 2015.

That study told the military to better track and monitor data on the suicides of its elite troops. “Further research and an improved data surveillance system are needed in order to better understand the risk and protective factors for suicide among SOF members. Further research and a comprehensive data system is needed to monitor the demographics and characteristics of SOF members who die by suicide,” the researchers advised. “Additionally, the data emerging from this study has highlighted the need for research to better understand the factors associated with SOF suicides.”

Quite obviously, it never happened.

The brain trauma suffered by SEALs and the suicides that followed should not have been a shock. A 2022 study in Military Medicine found Special Operations forces were at increased risk for traumatic brain injury (TBI), when compared with conventional troops. The 2023 JAMA Neurology study similarly found that veterans with TBI had suicide rates 56% higher than veterans without it and three times higher than the U.S. adult population. And a Harvard study, funded by SOCOM and published in April, discovered an association between blast exposure and compromised brain function in active-duty commandos. The greater the exposure, the researchers found, the more health problems were reported.

Studies on the Shelf

Over the last two decades, the Defense Department has, in fact, spent millions of dollars on suicide prevention research. According to the recent Pentagon study of soldiers’ deaths at their own hands, the “Army implements various initiatives that evaluate, identify, and track high-risk individuals for suicidal behavior and other adverse outcomes.” Unfortunately (though Osama bin Laden would undoubtedly have been pleased), the military has a history of not taking suicide prevention seriously.

While the Navy, for example, officially mandated that a suicide hotline for veterans must be accessible from the homepage of every Navy website, an internal audit found that most of the pages reviewed were not in compliance. In fact, according to a 2022 investigation by The Intercept, the audit showed that 62% of the 58 Navy homepages did not comply with that service’s regulations for how to display the link to the Veterans Crisis Line.

Last year, a Pentagon suicide-prevention committee called attention to lax rules on firearms, high operational tempos, and the poor quality of life on military bases as potential problems for the mental health of troops.

The New York Times recently investigated the death of Army Specialist Austin Valley and discovered gross suicide prevention deficiencies. Having just arrived at an Army base in Poland from Fort Riley, Kansas, Valley texted his parents, “Hey mom and dad I love you it was never your fault,” before taking his own life. The Times found that “mental healthcare providers in the Army are beholden to brigade leadership and often fail to act in the best interest of soldiers.” There are, for example, only about 20 mental-health counselors available to care for the more than 12,000 soldiers at Fort Riley, according to the Times. As a result, soldiers like Valley can wait weeks or even months for care.

The Army claims it’s working to eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health support, but the Times found that “unit leadership often undermines some of its most basic safety protocols.” This is a long-running issue in the military. The study of Special Operations suicides that I revealed in the Times found that suicide prevention training was seen as a “check in the box.” Special operators believed their careers would be negatively impacted if they sought treatment.

Last year, a Pentagon suicide-prevention committee called attention to lax rules on firearms, high operational tempos, and the poor quality of life on military bases as potential problems for the mental health of troops. M. David Rudd, a clinical psychologist and the director of the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Memphis, told to the Times that the Pentagon report echoed many other analyses produced since 2008. “My expectation,” he concluded, “is that this study will sit on a shelf just like all the others, unimplemented.”

Bin Laden’s Triumph

On May 2, 2011, Navy SEALs attacked a residential compound in Pakistan and gunned down Osama bin Laden. “For us to be able to definitively say, ‘We got the man who caused thousands of deaths here in the United States and who had been the rallying point for a violent extremist jihad around the world’ was something that I think all of us were profoundly grateful to be a part of,” U.S. President Barack Obama commented afterward. In reality, the deaths “here in the United States” have never ended. And the war that bin Laden kicked off in 2001—a global conflict that still grinds on today—ushered in an era in which SEALs, soldiers, and other military personnel have continued to die by their own hands at an escalating rate.

The suicides of U.S. military personnel have been blamed on a panoply of reasons, including military culture, ready access to firearms, high exposure to trauma, excessive stress, the rise of improvised explosive devices, repeated head trauma, an increase in traumatic brain injuries, the Global War on Terror’s protracted length, and even the American public’s disinterest in their country’s post-9/11 wars.

Bin Laden is, of course, long dead, but the post-9/11 parade of U.S. corpses continues.

During 20-plus years of armed interventions by the country that still prides itself on being the Earth’s sole superpower, U.S. military missions have been repeatedly upended across South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa including a sputtering stalemate in Somalia, an intervention-turned-blowback-engine in Libya, and outright implosions in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the peoples of those countries have suffered the most, U.S. troops have also been caught in that maelstrom of America’s making.

Bin Laden’s dream of luring American troops into a meat-grinder war on “Muslim soil” never quite came to pass. Compared to previous conflicts like the Second World War, Korean, and Vietnam wars, U.S. battlefield casualties in the Greater Middle East and Africa have been relatively modest. But bin Laden’s prediction of “wooden boxes and coffins” filled with the “bodies of American troops” nonetheless came true in its own fashion.

“This Department’s most precious resource is our people. Therefore, we must spare no effort in working to eliminate suicide within our ranks,” wrote Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a public memo released last year. “One loss to suicide is too many.” But as with its post-9/11 wars and interventions, the U.S. military’s effort to stem suicides has come up distinctly short. And like the losses, stalemates, and fiascos of that grim war on terror, the fallout has been more suffering and death. Bin Laden is, of course, long dead, but the post-9/11 parade of U.S. corpses continues. The unanticipated toll of suicides by troops and veterans—four times the number of war-on-terror battlefield deaths—has become another Pentagon failure and bin Laden’s enduring triumph.

By Ralph Nader July 25, 2024 Labor Day in Reality for September 2, 2024 is a huge, ignored asset, except by the commercial interests offering “sales.” A neglected Labor Day symbolizes the decline of labor unions and the absence of vigorous leadership generating higher levels of energy for Labor supremacy over Capital. Up to now, many…