Tag: republicans
So Exactly Which 'Parts' Of Project 2025 Do Trump And Vance Support?

So Exactly Which 'Parts' Of Project 2025 Do Trump And Vance Support?

Former President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he supports parts of Project 2025, the far-right agenda authored by a slew of his former staffers under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation.

During a typically sycophantic phone interview, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Trump to respond to Democrats who “keep on tying you to Project 2025” and to give his opinion of the proposal itself. The former president responded by claiming both that he knows “nothing” about the nearly 900-page document and that he supports elements of it.

No one on Fox & Friends bothered to try to get Trump to reveal which parts of Project 2025 he thinks are “fine” and which parts he finds “absolutely ridiculous.” That’s not surprising — Fox in its current form shies away from discussing the unpopular elements of the GOP agenda in favor of providing propaganda to help Trump and his allies gain power so they can execute those policies.

But news outlets not dedicated to Trump’s political success owe it to their audiences to try to get Trump to identify which parts of Project 2025 he is willing to publicly support.

That extremist blueprint includes:

It’s unsurprising that Trump and his cronies would try to create some distance from that toxic document. But former Trump aides oversaw and authored the bulk of Project 2025; Trump previously celebrated implementing Heritage’s policy recommendations during his presidency and gushed over its “incredible” president, Kevin Roberts; and Heritage has bragged about its influence over him, while Roberts touted how the conservative movement had “unified” behind Project 2025 and authored a book featuring a foreword written by Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.

There was little plausible daylight between Trump and Project 2025 — and now the Republican presidential nominee has opened the door to questions about which parts of the extremist agenda he supports.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Louis DeJoy

Biden Takes A Big Step Toward Replacing DeJoy At Postal Service

Ever since Postmaster General Louis DeJoy — a major Republican donor — was selected to head the United States Postal Service (USPS) in 2020, he's been enacting massively unpopular policies criticized by postal workers and Democrats alike. Now, President Joe Biden may soon be able to replace him.

On Thursday, Politico congressional correspondent Anthony Adragna reported that Biden was nominating former Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) to fill the last remaining vacancy on the USPS Board of Governors. She, along with former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, are now awaiting confirmation by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI).

Should both Demings and Walsh be confirmed, that would give Biden seven appointees on the nine-member board overseeing USPS. And because the Postmaster General's hiring and firing is up to the board and not Biden, that could mean that DeJoy could be removed from his post by the time Biden leaves office in January of 2025.

Biden appointees have held a majority on the USPS board since 2022, when three of his appointees were confirmed by Peters' committee. However, his appointees have been slow to fire DeJoy given his close partnership with the Biden administration on clean energy policy. Politico reported last year that DeJoy is rolling out a plan to add roughly 106,000 new electric vehicles to the USPS' fleet of mail delivery trucks, with 66,000 of those trucks on the road by 2028. Biden's landmark Inflation Reduction Act allocated $3 billion to the initiative, and DeJoy has partnered with veteran Democratic strategist John Podesta to implement his plan.

However, DeJoy is still reviled for his efforts to consolidate USPS sorting facilities, which has severely impacted the speed of mail delivery — particularly in populated metropolitan areas in battleground states like Atlanta, Georgia and Richmond, Virginia. In one heated exchange earlier this year, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) confronted Ossoff about complaints from his constituents that they weren't getting important mail until after weeks of delays.

“You don't have months to fix 36 percent of the mail being delivered on time," Ossoff said. "I've got constituents with prescriptions that aren't being delivered. I've got constituents who can't pay their rent and their mortgages. I've got businesses who aren't able to ship products or receive supplies.”

During that committee hearing, Ossoff gave DeJoy a two-week deadline to address his concerns. When that deadline came and went with no action, Ossoff again pressed him for solutions. The two finally met earlier this month to talk about how to streamline mail delivery in Atlanta, and the Georgia Democrat asserted that he was still not confident in DeJoy's leadership after their conversation.

"For months I have sustained relentless pressure on USPS management to fully resolve disastrous performance failures impacting my constituents in Georgia. I’m still hearing from Georgia families and businesses about the difficulty they continue to face sending and receiving their mail, which is why I met today with Postmaster General DeJoy to again reiterate the need for further improvements and greater transparency," Ossoff stated. "I will not rest until my constituents are well and fully served by the U.S. Postal Service."

After pressure from numerous senators urging DeJoy to reconsider his consolidation plans that would harm the speed of mail service in rural communities, DeJoy finally relented and announced he would be postponing the initiative. However, questions still remain about whether voters relying on voting by mail in the November election will be able to receive their ballots in time to vote, and whether the USPS will deliver their ballots to be counted on time.

“We’re approaching a major November election,” Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), who represents parts of Houston, said in March. “We need to make sure that we iron out any difficulties, any obstacles, any barriers, any issues now, so that we don’t end up in a situation much like we were in with the November ballots.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

 J.D. Vance

Vance Proves To Be Historically Unpopular Veep Choice

Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick is backfiring on him—big time. Appearing on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront Tuesday evening, data analyst Harry Enten dug into the polling and found bad news for Ohio Sen. JD Vance and the GOP. The numbers do not lie: Vance is the least liked running mate in 44 years.

“I have gone all the way back since 1980. He is the first guy immediately following a convention—a VP pick—who actually had a net negative favorable rating, that is underwater,” Enten told Burnett. “The average since 2000 is plus 19 points. JD Vance—making history in the completely wrong way.”

“Frankly, I don’t really understand the pick,” Enten said. “And apparently, neither do the American voters because we take a look at the net favorable rating for JD Vance—that’s the favorable minus unfavorable. It’s in negative net territory. Look at that. Negative 6 points.”

Vice presidential candidates usually enjoy a nice bounce following their party’s convention, and polls reflect the favorable opinions. There’s sort of a “new car smell” shininess to them, thanks to their big introduction on the national stage in all the hoopla of a convention. But as Enten says, “in this case, he’s dragging Trump down.”

Tapping Vance for the Republican ticket was a questionable decision in the first place, Enten points out. He performed far below other GOP candidates in his Senate win two years ago, even among the voters he and Trump most rely on—working-class white men.

“He was the worst performing Republican candidate in 2022 up and down the ballot in the state of Ohio,” Enten said. “He adds nothing there.”

It’s not likely to get better for the Republican ticket as the campaign continues and voters find out a lot more about Vance, who is a relative newcomer to the political scene.

They’ll be seeing things like this People magazine headline at the checkout counter and in their dentist’s waiting room: “J.D. Vance Isn't the Bridge-Building VP That Moderates Wanted: What He's Said About Women, Voting and Project 2025.”

That article includes such gems as:

  • “Vance wants to end abortion, and once called rape and incest exceptions 'inconvenient'”
  • “Vance suggested that people should stay in 'violent' marriages to preserve their kids' happiness”
  • “Vance said he wants to ban pornography, and blamed it for low birth rates”
  • “Vance opposes LGBTQ+ rights and has pushed harmful 'groomer' rhetoric about gay people”
  • “Vance is the VP candidate that Project 2025's leaders wanted”

(By the way, a shout out to People for putting Project 2025, the far-right government blueprint crafted by Trump cronies, out into the mainstream.)

It’s no wonder Trump allies are increasingly nervous about this pick.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Democrats To 'Pull The Guts Out' Of GOP Effort To Deny Harris Ballot Access

Democrats To 'Pull The Guts Out' Of GOP Effort To Deny Harris Ballot Access

Republicans – with the assistance of the far-right Heritage Foundation (architects of Project 2025) — are planning a last-ditch effort to stop Vice President Kamala Harris from getting ballot access. But Democratic-aligned attorneys are already waiting to shut it down.

Heritage has been planning for the possibility of President Joe Biden exiting the race since late June. Mike Howell, who is the director of Heritage's Oversight Project, laid out how Republicans could exploit laws in several swing states to challenge a non-Biden nominee's efforts to qualify for the ballot. But in a Tuesday report for Rolling Stone, reporters Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng wrote that the GOP's goal of preventing Harris from getting on the ballot is likely to fail.

"I am going to bet that if [Republicans] try to do this, it’ll be something that we can pull the guts out of in the time it takes to have lunch," an unnamed Democratic lawyer said.

The attorney, who called the effort "some of the dumbest bulls— I’ve ever had to read," went on to compare the effort to deny ballot access to Harris to one by former President Donald Trump's disgraced ex-attorney, John Eastman. He argued in 2020 that Harris didn't meet the presidency's natural-born citizen requirements despite being born on U.S. soil, due to her parents being immigrants. Eastman simultaneously believed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was an eligible candidate in 2016 despite being born in Canada.

Perez and Suebsaeng previously reported that an unnamed "senior source" within the Trump campaign, as well as an individual involved with Project 2025 confided that they knew the effort to keep Harris off of ballots would fall apart. However, those sources said the goal was more to distract Democrats from the campaign trial with complex litigation in the final months of the election cycle.

“Such litigation is extremely unlikely to be successful,” Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project At UCLA’s Law School, told the outlet. “I fully expect the Democrats’ nominee to be on the ballot in every state and Washington, D.C."

Before he dropped out of the race, Biden and his campaign reportedly had calls with attorneys and legal experts who pored over how to respond if Heritage tried to argue in court that Harris wasn't able to replace Biden on the ballot. Democratic lawyers tended to agree that their arguments to the court would be "as condescending as possible" in the event Heritage followed through on their legal threats. According to Rolling Stone, one idea kicked around on the call was "scolding these Republicans for supposedly not understanding how basic terms like 'presumptive nominee' work."

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) hinted that Democrats would run into "legal impediments" if they tried to replace Biden on the top ballot line. But Democratic election attorney Marc Elias dismissed that as "frivolous threats of frivolous litigation by an election denier." He also stated that no Democratic nominee would be official anyway until after delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month officially select their party's general election candidate.

“There is currently no nominee of the Democratic Party, and so the notion that the Democratic Party is somehow precluded from choosing its nominee, pursuant to its bylaws and its rules, is preposterous,” Elias said.

“I am here to say that with 100 percent certainty that when the Democratic National Committee nominates its candidate and transmits that to the states, that person will be on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia," he added.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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