Recommended Reading: Reports of the Death of Project 2025 Are Greatly Exaggerated
Recommended Reading: Reports of the Death of Project 2025 Are Greatly Exaggerated
This Week's Recommended Reading on Substack: Chris Geidner, Parker Molloy, Ken Klippenstein, Erin Reed, Noah Berlatsky, Juliet Jeske, and Blake Chastain
This Week's Recommended Reading on Substack:
writes that “it’s true that there are power struggles on the right, and it’s doubtless that a second Trump administration would continue down the path of some of the dysfunction that characterized Trump’s first term. And yet, as the right tries to say there is no Project 2025 or that Project 2025 doesn’t represent Trump’s vision (even where it clearly does and even though some chapters are written by his people) and Trump and Vance try to distance themselves from it or whatever else they try next, there is one key thing to keep in mind.”
writes that “this week. X files its new lawsuit, targeting GARM, the World Federation of Advertisers, and several major brands. And wouldn't you know it? It's back in front of Judge O'Connor. The strategy is clear: use the legal system as a cudgel. Force critics and ‘non-compliant’ parties to spend money they don't have, exhausting them into submission. It's not about winning in court; it's about winning through attrition.”
writes that “the depiction of Trump as an existential threat to democracy that, uh, trumps all other concerns is the Democratic Party’s favored rhetorical cudgel for beating back public debate. Meanwhile, another risk to democracy is brewing, one which threatens in not-so-subtle terms the same protesters Harris addressed on Wednesday, but which has received hardly any attention.”
writes that “Attacks on transgender people have little record of electoral success, with similar efforts failing in many campaigns over the last few elections… Nevertheless, it appears that Trump and Republican operatives will intensify their anti-transgender attacks against the Democratic ticket in the 2024 election, a strategy may signal desperation in the wake of falling poll numbers.”
writes that “the fact that Trump’s tactics here are so clunky, though, reveals the mechanism of the MAGA mindset more clearly than when he the orange bile belcher is (marginally) more plausible and skillful. So it’s worth explicating Trump’s approach here at a bit more length. And that approach has two parts—entitlement and empathy.”
Juliet Jeske writes that “instead of accepting the new reality of a younger more formidable Democratic competitor for the presidential race Fox News created its own reality of a scary world full of Christian persecution, men infiltrating women’s sports and Trump fighting an oppressive biased media. Last week anyone watching Fox News exclusively might have missed out on stories about dangerous mudslides in India, a famine in Sudan and North Darfur, as well as the Biden administration’s plans to curb the flow of fentanyl into the United States.”
writes that “regardless of whether or not you’re currently involved in evangelical churches and circles, the loudest and most powerful voices within white American evangelicalism have consistently been the conservative ones. They carry a perennial chip on their shoulder & an unearned persecution complex (they have dominated American politics for my entire millennial lifetime), and they routinely demonize their opponents within and without.”
