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In today’s edition:
- Donald Trump and Project 2025 are intimately linked, no matter what he says
- Democrats can get people to trust government again
- Where does Robert Hur go for his apology?
What is Project 2025?
On Tuesday, President Biden tweeted three words: “Google Project 2025.” Google Trends saw search interest surpass even that of Taylor Swift this week.
Unfortunately for the Biden campaign, searching the term first yields the project’s own shiny homepage, complete with fireworks and flags and soaring language. So what is Project 2025 really?
In short, it’s a playbook for dramatically overhauling the federal government should Republicans win control. Technically, it comes from the Heritage Foundation and not the GOP presidential campaign, which allows Trump to claim he knows no more than the average confused Googler. “Don’t fall for it,” Catherine Rampell writes. Project 2025 and the MAGA machine are inextricable, with hundreds of Trump officials taking part in the planning.
The planning of what? Let’s take a look:
- Project 2025 would steeply reduce Medicaid funding and remove medication abortion drugs from the market.
- It would shutter LGBTQ+ health programs and have the government declare that heterosexual couples are the superior family structure. The term “sexual orientation” would be forbidden from federal legislation.
- It would terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that allows “dreamers” to stay in the United States and would lower legal immigration limits, as well.
- It would bring the FBI under direct control of the president and eliminate the Education Department.
- It would stop expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy.
- It would make p*rnography illegal and imprison people who make it.
- It would officially recognize the Sabbath and infuse Judeo-Christian values throughout government.
- And it lays out how the president could purge nonpartisan civil servants and install loyalists who would accomplish all of this.
But don’t worry: Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has promised that this revolution will be “bloodless” if the left acquiesces.
It is no wonder, the Editorial Board writes, that Trump wants the official GOP platform “to be as anodyne and vague as possible.” But his intentions are anything but.
Catherine allows that Trump might not know some of the particulars of Project 2025 — “few would mistake the man for a policy wonk.” Even if so, that’s just as dangerous; Trump delegated major decisions to his underlings last time and would do so again.
The underlings who are writing Project 2025.
Chaser: President Biden says he’s going to give it “my all” to stop all this from transpiring. Alexandra Petri wonders: Would we accept the same from a pilot landing our plane?
From political strategists Celinda Lake and Justin Zorn’s op-ed on the crisis of trust in government. The piece is full of statistics about how Americans’ distrust levels are not only increasing but also diverging, with Republicans putting their limited remaining stock in very different institutions from the ones favored by Democrats.
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But this should be your top-line takeaway: Things can get better.
Lake and Zorn point out that “Republicans have a strategic advantage in an age of distrust,” with individual-oriented skepticism at the heart of the conservative message. That does not mean, though, that Democrats can’t adapt to the political culture.
The writers lay out a game plan for doing just that — for example, “working to redefine voting and political participation as not just civic duties but ways to attack lobbyists’ power or transform entrenched systems.”
Chaser: Matt Bai provides some pointers on how Biden should run if he’s really intent on staying in the race: No more “bridge” presidency; he needs to be a boomer off-ramp.
More politics
Robert Hur deserves his reputation back.
Hur, Chuck Lane reminds us in a column, was the special counsel who pulled together a report on Biden’s retention of classified documents after leaving the vice presidency in 2017, a report that went out of its way to comment on the current president’s age-related memory failings.
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At the time, many observers impugned Hur’s work — with Post Opinions writers variously calling it an “egregious abuse” and “political hatchet job.”
Or was it just an “honest account from an objective outsider” (if laid on a bit thick)? So says Chuck, who adds that “if Democrats had not met Hur’s report with such an outpouring of denial, but treated it as a warning, they might not be in such a predicament today.”
Smartest, fastest
- Robert Wright coined the term “progressive realism,” now adopted — and updated a bit — by Britain’s new foreign secretary. But what does progressive realism really mean?
- Jason Rezaian continues his Tastes Like Home series with a visit to a restaurant ready to reintroduce the Balkans to diners, burek-first.
- Netflix lured us from the mall to the couch. Marc Fisher looks at the streamer’s new brick-and-mortar projects and wonders: Can it tempt us back?
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Deny how you like
There is no separating
Planners from the plan
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
