So by now you may know:
I’m focusing this month on Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation (and 80+ other extreme right wing org’s) plan to dismantle democracy after the November election (here are weeks one and two);
I’m spending 6 months on content related to our democracy in general; and
I’m providing the content here in writing once a week but also in video form (in a slightly different order) on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Twitter (and in Substack notes).
Also, there have been some really helpful suggestions for additional resources on Project 2025; I’ll share one at the bottom of this newsletter and one next week. And some of you are reflecting on how to discuss Project 2025 with your communities. YES! I LOVE THIS! And I promise to respond to any emails when I’m back from my trip with my mom next week!
So here we go, week three of Project 2025:
What’s going on right now:
This is week three of examining Project 2025, the 900-plus page manual put together by ideological extremist think tank the Heritage Foundation and their besties. An AP article shared this: “A chapter written by Trump’s former acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security calls for bolstering the number of political appointees, and redeploying office personnel with law enforcement ability into the field “to maximize law enforcement capacity.”
The article went on to say: “The Heritage coalition is taking its recruitment efforts on the road, crisscrossing America to fill the federal jobs. They staffed the Iowa State Fair [August 2023] and signed up hundreds of people, and they’re building out a database of potential employees, inviting them to be trained in government operations. “It’s counterintuitive,” [the Project 2025 campaign coordinator] acknowledged — the idea of joining government to shrink it — but he said that’s the lesson learned from the Trump days about what’s needed to “regain control.””
While the image of an army of anti-government bureaucrats might seem almost humorous, it poses a risk to everything from whether your bank has to give you your money to whether you have to pay for a weather report, as well as whether children will be guaranteed an education and whether we do anything about the environmental crisis other than make it worse.
Some relevant (recent) history
Several friends recommended I read the book The Fifth Risk when it came out in 2018, because I spent a little time working in Congress and found myself astonished at all the things our government does that go completely unnoticed but that we couldn’t survive without. I like some of Michael Lewis’s other books like The Big Short and Moneyball. But I only got around to reading The Fifth Risk in January, and at first I thought I had waited too long. It starts with a description of the Trumps and Pences grimly learning that they won the Presidency in November 2016 (the story is Mrs. Pence turned to her husband, spat, “You got what you wanted, Mike; now leave me alone,” and walked straight out of the hotel suite). It felt like from another era.
But it turns out this book is Michael Lewis’s love letter to unsung government bureaucrats. Lewis looks at people who were working at the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Commerce during the transition between administrations. I loved learning about the people who could have done anything but chose less pay and less recognition in order to do things like reduce the likelihood of a dirty bomb exploding during the Superbowl, or did actually do amazing things in the private sector and were convinced to turn those talents toward the common good, making food testing or feeding poor people so much more efficient and effective than it had been before. We’re usually very aware of what the government does wrong that it’s easy to want to throw it all away.
But this book reminded me of the people dedicated to making this country better…many of whom were driven out in 2017 and more of whom will be forced out depending on how the election goes. If you’re ambivalent about government (and aren’t we all?), pick up this book of VERY recent history and let me know what you take from it.
Ancestral wisdom for this moment
It can be easy to feel despair right now. I wanted to share with you the story of a shero of mine who took on equally aggressive pro-business and anti-people interests who held sway in the courts and in Congress. Her name is Frances Perkins, and she was the first woman in a Presidential cabinet, as FDR’s Secretary of Labor. She was accused by some members of Congress and even the Cabinet of being soft on immigration, because refugees could bring in radical politics. She also took on antisemitic and xenophobic State Department leaders when she fought to help German Jews fleeing the Nazis. And if every member of the National Association of Manufacturers didn’t have a voodoo doll of her, I would be shocked. They HATED that she cared about workers more than about them earning even more than they already did. She found the Congressional and labor allies she could, and she created programs like Social Security and the Civilian Conservation Corps.
I read up on her for a course last semester, and I was struck by the fact that she was clear that the reason she and FDR had any sort of synergy was because of their shared faith and how it shaped their understanding of creating economic justice.
If you ever find someone saying “get your government hands off my social security,” let them know a pro-immigrant, pro-Jewish, pro-worker Episcopal economist woman back in the 1930s made sure they had social security, and then say “You’re welcome.”
What now?
I was really grateful to get a helpful resource pointed out to me by the founder of Stop the Coup 2025, Anne-christine d’Adesky in response to my last newsletter. Here’s the comment Anne-christine posted that I hope you’ll find as helpful as I did!
“Our nonpartisan campaign, Stop The Coup 2025, launched last fall, is focused on public education and mobilization to fight Project 2025. Very comprehensive. We have complete easy-to-grasp summary and chapter breakdowns of each Project 2025 federal dept chapter, take home bullet-pt summaries of proposed reforms/ attacks, briefs on how the plan may affect you in diff sectors, resources and are consolidating strategies to fight back. We actively amplify ally info, too. We will be adding a slew of new tools to fight back shortly. In Spanish too. We offer a newsletter for campaign updates. — www.stopthecoup2025.org”
Just a personal note: while the site is new to me, and I don’t know Anne-christine personally, the content is excellent and the co-sponsors I know are solid. Plus, ANYTHING that Political Research Associates endorses on this issue is guaranteed to be legitimate.
Thank you:
I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to take in this content. If you’re a free subscriber and are using this as a tool for reflection or action, that brings me joy. It’s a labor of love. If you’re a paid subscriber, I know you’re also using it for reflection or action, and you’ve also been in a position to be generous, which means the world to me as I get the profound privilege of being paid to be a student for these next few years. And if you stumbled upon this and found it useful, I am so glad.
PS—bonus picture, since I mentioned I’m taking my mother on a once-in-a-lifetime trip; she walked a full two uneven and hilly miles the other day to laugh at the people about to do the 10-mile hike through the Virgin River (currently 44 degrees) at Zion National Park. Here’s a snap a fellow hiker offered to take because she and others called my mother “an inspiration” for managing that long distance. She also got LOTS of compliments on her shoes. I told her she’s ready for Pride!