When the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) handed down its decision in Trump v. United States on Monday, the entire world gasped. Supporters of the Orange Felon, as we will refer to him in this opinion, were surprised that the decision had gone his way as much as it had. Everyone else on the planet, however, was concerned, not only Americans but both our allies and our enemies. This is not a decision that quietly fades into the shadows and is considered only by legal scholars. This decision has real-world consequences and the potential for those consequences has generated a great deal of fear. Let’s see if we can weed out facts from hyperbole.
First, much of the attention centers around the text of Associate Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor with Justices Kagan and Jackson joining. Let’s look at the first part of that dissent.
Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President, ante, at 3, 13, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent.
The most important part of the dissent, which can possibly be used by a subsequent court as a basis for overturning this decision, lies in the last sentence. The Constitution does not even contain any form of or relative to the word immunity. The Court’s majority did some incredible backflips and twisting of the law to create their opinion. Immunity is not Constitutional and that alone is the basis for dissent.
Why? Because the Supreme Court has one job: To decide what is or is not Constitutional. They are not there to make determinations based on what is politically expedient. They are not there to rule on what might be convenient to a contemporary setting. They are not there to fabricate laws that are not elsewhere mentioned. The entire purpose of the Supreme Court and its only authority is in interpreting the Constitution. In this particular case, they have failed in that duty. There is little reasonable question about that fact, only partisan opinion.
Unfortunately, that aspect of the dissent is not where Americans are focusing. Instead, they’re focusing on a later part of the dissent that carries what seems more of a sound bite intended to stir those watching the evening news. Justice Sotomayor writes:
Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 246 (1944) (Jackson,
J., dissenting). The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the
majority’s message today.
Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.
Justice Sotomayor then concludes:
The majority’s single-minded fixation on the President’s need for boldness and dispatch ignores the countervailing need for accountability and restraint. The Framers were not so single-minded. In the Federalist Papers, after “endeavor[ing] to show” that the Executive designed by the Constitution “combines . . . all the requisites to energy,” Alexander Hamilton asked a separate, equally important
question: “Does it also combine the requisites to safety, in a republican sense, a due dependence on the people, a due responsibility?” The Federalist No. 77, p. 507 (J. Harvard Library ed. 2009). The answer then was yes, based in part upon the President’s vulnerability to “prosecution in the common course of law.” Ibid. The answer after today is no.
Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop.
With fear for our democracy, I dissent.
Justice Sotomayor was so concerned that her dissent, which is thoroughly researched and demonstratively dismantles the majority opinion, might be overlooked, she read the entire dissent from the bench, an act that rarely happens. Almost immediately, the press took hold of a particular question: Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.
Could a Commander-in-Chief order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival and not face criminal prosecution? As Commander-in-Chief, the president holds unique powers over the military and, within the realms of military convention and rules of engagement, he can order the military to do a lot of things. However, just as the President does not have the power to unilaterally declare war (only Congress can do that), the President does not have the power to order the assassination of anyone.
Why? Because the military does not swear its oath to the President. Every military member, including Seal Team 6 and all other special military operatives, swears their allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. It is the Constitution, not Presidential orders, by which they are judged. Even if the President attempted to invoke such an order, all military officials, from the Pentagon down, would refuse to comply. The President could be angry, perhaps invoke the CIA to carry out the order (if it were on foreign soil), but Seal Team 6 cannot be coerced to assassinate a political rival.
That does not mean that the remaining dangers that Justice Sotomayor mentions are equally moot. Organize a military coup? Only in terms of organizing a military-styled coup utilizing private militias. As we’ve already discussed, the US military cannot and will not take illegal orders from a President. Even if the President were to nationalize the National Guard, as some have suggested he might, they can only be used for restoring and maintaining order within the confines of the Constitution. They cannot overturn an election or deny anyone the right to vote.
However, as we saw with the January 6 insurrection, a President might bring to bear the troublesome and undisciplined power of private militias. Militias exist in a legal gray area. Their establishment is set in the Second Amendment as a means of establishing a military-type force in the absence of a national military.
The Founders believed that “a well-regulated militia” was necessary to keep the federal government from becoming tyrannical. They had good reason to include this in the Constitution because they were all too familiar with how the British military was used against them in the Revolutionary War, and would soon be used again in the War of 1812. The United States was still new, there were still a number of questionable issues to work out. Few fully trusted the authority of a singular centralized government because they’d had such a horrible experience with King George III and the British monarchy.
However, over 200 years later, we’re well past the need for any kind of militia operating outside the established military. The National Guard is generally considered to be the “well-established militia” that the Constitution requires and other private, independently operated militias are looked upon as fringe groups that are more likely to cause trouble and break laws than they are to solve them. As the January 6 insurrection showed, a President can definitely wreak some havoc with a private militia, but any call to create a separate militia specifically to overthrow the federal government would definitely be in violation of the Constitution and, therefore, it would be the responsibility of US forces to put down such an effort, regardless of what the President might desire.
This is not to say that there are not some clear and present dangers to the Court’s decision. There are many. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts thinks that the Court’s decision makes it easier for extreme right-wing conservatives to take over the country. That might be true if a President were to wholly embrace the concept of Revolution that the Heritage Foundation has been pushing since its inception. While the Orange Felon seems to have adopted the Project 2025 plan that the Heritage Foundation created, there are a number of aspects to the plan that are not achievable even with the President’s immunity from breaking the law.
The Heritage Foundation possesses no special power that you, I, or other progressive organizations don’t already have. They are a private entity that makes a lot of noise by saying absurd and ridiculous things. Form an organization that says equally absurd things about conservatives and they’ll get the same amount of righteous hand-wringing that Project 2025 is getting now. At the end of the day, organizations like this only have the power that YOU, the voter, give to them. If you don’t fund them, if you don’t vote for the candidates they support, then they become absolutely powerless and no amount of Presidential immunity can help them out.
What’s more concerning is the international response to the fact that the US President now how qualified immunity for “official acts.” The Court’s decision puts us in questionable company with other countries who hold their Presidents immune from prosecution. Among those: Russia, China, Chile, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Rwanda, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uruguay, and Uzbekistan, none of whom we should be any too anxious to emulate.
Rosalind Dixon, a professor of law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, told the New York Times that the decision was “out of line with global norms.” She further said, “I think that what is occurring in the United States in terms of the court’s ruling and the presidential election should be of grave concern to all of America’s allies.”
“If the U.S. president is free from the restrictions of criminal law, if he has that level of criminal immunity, the other leaders of the allied nations cannot trust the U.S.,” said Keigo Komamura, a professor of law at Keio University in Tokyo. “We cannot maintain a stable national security relationship.”
Adam Shinar, a professor of law at Reichman University in Tel Aviv, said, “If this decision came down in the 1950s with Eisenhower as president, would we be as concerned or as outraged? Maybe not,” he said. “If we don’t trust our politicians to do good things anymore, then we need other things to step in, for example the criminal justice system. But if we have declining trust in our political institutions at the same time that there is growing immunity for our politicians, there’s a problem with that.”
Indeed, the question of whether any US President can be trusted is an issue as long as the Court’s decision on immunity is allowed to stand. How can we trust our own President when lying to Congress, an act for which previous Presidents have been impeached, is no longer a crime for a President who believes they are responding within the duties of their office? The ambiguity of the decision opens the doors to any number of potential crimes and misdemeanors for which, up until now, a President could be removed from office.
President Biden responded Monday night pretty much as one might expect. Speaking from the White House, he said:
You know, at the outset of our nation, it was the character of George Washington, our first president, that defined the presidency. He believed power was limited, not absolute, and that power would always reside with the people — always.
Now, over 200 years later, with today’s Supreme Court decision, once again it will depend on the character of the men and women who hold that presidency that are going to define the limits of the power of the presidency, because the law will no longer do it.
I know I will respect the limits of the presidential power, as I have for three and a half years. But any president, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the law.
I concur with Justice Sotomayor’s dissent today. She — here’s what she said. She said, “In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law. With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” end of quote.
So should the American people dissent. I dissent.
The dissent of the American people should be loud. There should be posts on social media. There should be calls to members of Congress. In my opinion, there should be marches in city streets. We have to respond loudly and demonstrably to make sure that everyone in power knows that we do not take this decision lightly. SCOTUS broke the very law they are mandated to uphold. There is nothing in the Constitution that justifies the ridiculous decision granting any level of immunity to the President or anyone else.
Don’t give into the fear. Stand up, my friends. Yell. Scream, Stomp your feet. And by all means, VOTE! THIS is how we dissent!
Sunday Sermon: Yellow Shirts and Project 2025: A Call to Action
Growing up, there was a frequently enforced social rule that one didn’t discuss religion or politics in polite company. Religion was saved for church, that was where it was most appropriate. Politics was the domain of campaign speeches and everyone made up their mind as to whether anything said was believable. Local politicians were held to their promises. If they didn’t produce what they said they would, or at least make a respectable show of trying, they were replaced.
I’ll admit that during that Pollyannish time, there was a lot that went unnoticed. Marital infidelity was just as high in the 1950s as it is now. Sexual abuse by religious figures was even more rampant because no one was holding them accountable. What politicians did behind closed doors, deals made with devils no one knew about, were closely guarded secrets. Few people realized the depths of deprivation that were present within the country. The few who were in the know either had no sizeable platform for communication or were shouted down by the majority and labeled as kooks.
We now live in a vastly different world. We know more. We have access to more immediate and more detailed information than any society that existed before us. As this world continues to change and things happen that have never happened before, we have to adjust the rules. The rules our grandparents and great-grandparents lived by depended to a large degree on mass naivete. Now, the more we know, the greater is our responsibility to fill those holes, patch the places that are broken, and in some cases, throw the whole concept out and replace it with more appropriate ideals.
Change does not come without pain, however. There are those who have been exploiting the brokenness, slipping through the holes, and taking advantage of the general lack of knowledge and understanding. As society grows more aware, those who have been in power become more frightened of what they stand to lose and attempt to take more drastic and dramatic action as they yell, “We must fight to preserve our tradition!” What they really mean is, “We must fight to preserve our crime, our abuse, and our scandal.”
One of the most ear-catching opening songs to a musical comes from “Fiddler on the Roof.” As Tevye and the chorus sing “Tradition!” we are introduced to the town, the people in it, and the traditional roles that they play. But then, as the musical develops, we witness how every last one of those traditions is turned on their ears, even to the point that they are forced to pack everything and leave their homes.
We are facing a moment not unlike the 1905 destruction of the Pale of Settlement (Cherta Osedlost) in Imperialist Russia. Many of these uniquely Jewish villages had existed since 1772 and had formed deep roots and a strong culture even as they were surrounded by all the political upheavals of Russia. By 1897, somewhere in the neighborhood of five million Jews lived in the Pale. Less than 200,000 could be found outside it in European Russia. By 1905, though, riots and open aggression against Jews were increasingly common as part of the “revolution” against Tsar Nicholas II. Many of these “pogroms” were organized by the League of the Russian People, or “Black Hundreds.” The Black Hundreds were right-wing extremists who were passionately anti-Semitic. By November 1905, they were actively involved in the removal of millions of Jews from the Pales, many of whom ended up relocating to Poland.
Fundamental to the rise of the Black Hundreds was who was involved. Merchants, Christian clergy, and ultra-conservative local politicians trying to hold onto their power were the primary force behind the xenophobia that not only was responsible for destroying the Pales but also pushing Ukrainians further North, away from traditional Russian lands. “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationalism” was their cry. Their propaganda incited pogroms and terrorist acts generally committed by para-military groups known as Yellow Shirts. It would take the actions of Lenin and his Bolsheviks to finally put down the Yellow Shirts. Not that his movement turned out much better.
Can you see the similarities? Once again, we are faced with a groundswell of right-wing extremists who favor Christian orthodoxy, the absolute power of a President with immunity for “official acts,” and an extremely dangerous level of Nationalism that carries with it such anti-immigrant rhetoric as to advocate for the relocation of many Latino groups. That they also are now showing themselves to be anti-Ukranian is an absolutely frightening comparison. The Black Hundreds were so incredibly vicious that they even made it into popular literature. In Roots: The Next Generations, a Jewish friend of the series’ black protagonists jokes that the Ku Klux Klansmen who burn down his shop are mere pikers next to the “Czar’s Black One Hundred,” among numerous other references. As I consider the similarities, there is an inclination to wonder if those who are behind this contemporary Republican party are following the playbook for the Czar’s cronies.
Of course, we know how that movement turned out for the Czar and his entire family. We also know that in its place came an equally ruthless leader in Josef Stalin. As we look for ways to put down this current right-wing frenzy, we must be careful to avoid giving rise to one who is just as evil in a different direction. Contrary to the popular idiom, the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend; sometimes it’s just another enemy.
We are, today, faced with a growing threat of Yellow Shirts right here in a country we once thought was immune from such activities. Those who fought in one or both World Wars would have laughed had anyone suggested that such thugs as Stephen Miller, James M. Buchanan, Jim DeMint, and Kevin Roberts would ever dominate news headlines or shape the political future of the country. Just like the residents of the fictional Anatevka, they assumed that the balance between political left and right ideals was in a good place, safely away from radicals.
Even with the wake-up call of January 6, 2021, the majority of the people in the United States were willing to essentially hit the snooze button and assume that the country would once again achieve a sort of even keel under the Democratic leadership of Joe Biden. No one wants to believe that their country is in serious danger until the bombs start dropping, the riots start happening, or political enemies start being thrown in jail.
The rhetoric of a former president with multiple indictments and convictions should be disturbing. As of June 2023, here are some of the people the Orange Felon would put in jail [courtesy ABC News]:
In the year since that list was developed, several other names have been added to the list as judges, attorneys general, and even jury members have drawn the ire of the man who holds the Republican party by the throat in the same way a mafia don controls his family. Is it unreasonable that the people on this list might have cause to fear for their safety in the coming months? Unless met with a level of defiance I’ve not yet seen, there certainly seems to be a justifiable concern that returning a felon to the White House could endanger those who have made him angry.
If the problem were limited to one person, the solution would be simple: don’t re-elect him. Unfortunately for the US, the problem is much more widespread. In fact, one could even make the argument that the Orange Felon is the product of a right-wing movement that was already spreading well before he was elected in 2016.
I distinctly remember my late father, a Southern Baptist minister, talking about how Judge Paul Pressler of Houston was actively recruiting preachers, city council members, and mayors to adopt a hard-right theocentric platform for “bringing America back to God.” Interestingly enough, in 2017, eight men sued Judge Pressler accusing him of multiple years of rape and sexual abuse, bringing his foreground activities to a close. Unfortunately, he did not die until this past June and did so without admitting any wrongdoing. He was proud to have done his part to guide the nation in the horrid direction it is now going.
Over fifty years of effort have gone into this nightmare in which we now exist. Along the way, there were plenty of opportunities to stop it in its tracks. Pastors could have realized what was happening and said, “No, not from my pulpit.” Bribes could have been refused. Legislation might have been passed. There is no feigning ignorance on the part of anyone in a position of leadership from at least 1972 forward. But instead of doing anything demonstrative, they fell back on the worn premise that “everyone’s entitled to their opinion.”
We see what happens when opinions are allowed to grow into reality. Had we snuffed all this out when they were merely opinions, we would not be having this conversation today.
Many of the actors on the right-wing stage grew up with this extreme indoctrination, being taught that such strict adherence to a bastardized view of religious ideals is the only way the United States should be governed. They have, since childhood, believed the lie that the United States was formed as a Christian nation and that the Constitution was, somehow, blessed by God and pretty much the same as Holy Scripture. Armed with this misinformation, they now march forward convinced that everyone throughout time believed the same nonsense that they do, therefore justifying the call to “Make America Great Again.”
A perfect example of someone who grew up imbued with this God-first concept is Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry. The Governor’s official biography says that he grew up in St. Martinville, LA, where “his mother was a schoolteacher and his parents took him to church every day.” St. Martinville is the very heart of Cajun country. The Acadians, whose plight is recorded in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1847 epic poem Evangeline, settled here after removal from Nova Scotia in 1755, creating the French-influenced Cajun we know today, and helping imbed a strict, heavy-handed Catholicism that wasn’t tolerated in most other towns. For Governor Landry, the daily religious teaching most likely seemed like a normal thing until he got to the National Guard. He took in an education based more on tradition than fact and has spent the past 53 years assuming that it was all correct.
So, given the circumstances, perhaps we shouldn’t be too terribly surprised that this first-term Governor, desperate to turn around an education system that ranks 47th in the country and a state that comes in dead last overall, would turn to his religious upbringing when he signed a bill requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom. The Governor has to be grasping at any straw he can reach and this law is an example of extreme desperation. There is little chance that it will survive the legal challenges already filed to stop it. However, the fact that the law even exists shows how little the Governor and the state’s Legislature actually know about the Mosaic law.
Remember the story of Moses in Exodus chapters19-32? The people of Israel, still in flight mode after escaping Egypt, arrive at the foot of Mt. Sinai and Yahweh decides, “We need to set down some ground rules before we go any further.” So, Moses scrambles up the side of the mountain and he and Yahweh have a little chat during which the deity inscribed the commandments on pieces of stone (resulting in one of the funniest scenes in Mel Brook’s History of the World, Part II). Moses starts down the mountain and discovers that, in his absence, the people have formed a golden calf and are having one hell of a party worshipping that calf. The leader became so angry that he smashed the tablets and had to go back and ask Yahweh for another copy.
Why? The second commandment, which is usually shortened to “Thou shall have no other Gods before me,” reads a little differently in its entirety.
3 “You must not have any other gods except me.
4 “You must not make for yourselves an idol that looks like anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the water below the land. 5 You must not worship or serve any idol, because I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. If you hate me, I will punish your children, and even your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. 6 But I show kindness to thousands who love me and obey my commands.
The instructions are pretty clear and abundantly strict. NO idols.
Growing up in a minister’s home, my parents were quite careful in this regard. We didn’t have a lot of crosses on our walls. In fact, the only one I can ever remember being there for a short time was a craft project involving matches whose heads were burned and then glued to cardboard (rather creepy if you think about it). Poppa didn’t want one hanging on the wall behind his pulpit at church. Neither did we have any copies of the Ten Commandments posted anywhere, nor The Beatitudes (Matthew 5), nor any other symbology. Mother didn’t even wear the cross necklace that is so popular among Christian women.
Their reasoning was simple: Crosses, commandments, and any other symbol become a “graven image,” or idol. People too easily start worshipping the cross itself and not the one who died on it. People too quickly worship the Ten Commandments and not the one who gave them.
The example handed down through Judaism is that the words of God are not meant to be written on a wall but on one’s heart. In such a way, they are to instruct and guide our actions when we’re away from the synagogue or the church building.
Many Jews will also remind you that the Ten Commandments are just the first of the 613 laws God gave to them. Many Jews are less than thrilled by Louisiana’s new law. There are, in fact, multiple versions of the Ten Commandments. The Catholic version is different from the Protestant version (which is likely the version to be posted in Louisiana schools), and our Jewish friends will remind us that scripture itself contains three different versions (Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus). To say that posting the Ten Commandments anywhere is problematic for anyone who actually understands them. In fact, I’ll just go ahead and say it:
Posting the Ten Commandments is the height of religious ignorance, an insult to both Jews and Christians.
If the Ten Commandments are problematic, then what are we to think of Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and his edict that all Oklahoma schools must teach the Bible and have a copy in every classroom? Is this even remotely legal? Nope. In fact, just two days before handing down this order, the Oklahoma State Supreme Court had said that the concept of a religious, state-funded school is unconstitutional. Lawsuits will be filed and the order will likely be blocked by the courts, but the act itself raises some interesting questions. Such as: Are we sure we want teachers, who have no training in teaching the Bible, to handle that task on their own? Especially considering that Oklahoma schools are ranked as the worst in the nation!
True to form, it didn’t take the Internet long to come up with some passages of scripture that I don’t think I’ve ever heard from a pulpit, let alone in a classroom. For example, Ezekiel 5:10: Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers, and I will execute judgments in thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter into all the winds.
Then, there’s that whole mess with Lot’s daughters and the people of Sodom wanting to gang-rape angels in Genesis 19. I do recall a Sunday School lesson on the passage, but it was dramatically watered down.
And we can’t forget everyone’s favorite Ezekiel 23. Here we find the never-preached-on story of Oholah and her sister, Oholibah. Verse 4 explains that they are metaphors for Samaria and Jerusalem, but that doesn’t make what comes next any easier to read. The entire chapter outlines in terrifying detail the promiscuity of the two “sisters,” and when we get to verse 19, we get this:
Yet she multiplied her promiscuity, remembering the days of her youth, when she had prostituted herself in the land of Egypt and lusted after their lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of stallions.
Those two verses have been all over the Internet since the edict was handed down. What are the chances some smart-mouthed kid is going to ask about that passage on the first day of class this fall? I’d say they’re pretty good.
What is more disturbing for some is the idea that some teachers may tell their students about the Woke Jesus. You know, the guy who went around offering free healthcare, and free food, and said things like “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” That certainly isn’t the vengence-based deity that far-right preachers like. They are systematically rejecting the teachings of Jesus because it disagrees with their plan for religious dominance. This raises a serious question: Are you still a Christian if you reject the Christ?
Walters’ obvious lack of thought and consideration as to the consequences of his actions is par for the course of how right-wing extremists are disrupting both society and the educational system. In fact, this new brand of Yellow Shirts seems as if they are bound and determined to sink education in the United States. Insisting on religious education is a distraction. What they want is to destroy American education altogether. In doing so, they hope to make the less-educated citizens easier to fool and more pliable to control.
This all dovetails nicely into the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. The “transition plan” makes the assumption that the Orange Felon is going to be re-elected this fall and that when that happens, right-wing conservatives will move into critical government positions and begin executing the plan. While there are multiple reports that the Felon is attempting to distance himself from the plan, the real danger lies in the fact that he’s really not needed for the plan to work. As long as there is a Republican in the White House with sufficient GOP backing in at least one house of Congress, they can control the inner workings of government to affect the outcomes they desire.
While objection to Project 2025 has grown over the past week, we have to understand that this is not something copied and pasted together at the last minute. Conservatives have been working toward this for over fifty years! The foundations have been laid while we were looking in the other direction. Even back during the two Bush administrations, the plans were underway and changes made to laws that bring us to the point where now, upsetting the whole US government is comparatively easy.
The entire manifesto is too large for me to go through line-by-line, which may be what it deserves. The whole thing reeks of authoritarian domination. Seriously. Tsar Nicholas II would have loved it. Instead, though, let me focus on some specific areas that should be of the highest concern.
Abolishing Diversity and Inclusion Programs
Already, several states including Texas, Florida, Utah, Tennessee, and North Dakota are either limiting or completely abolishing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. These efforts target women, people of color, Indigenous tribes, and anyone on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. The intention is to create a government not only dominated by white cis males but also a society that is designed to serve them as masters of the human race. The thought is that by attacking at the state level, opposition is spread out and weakened, making it easier to implement change at the federal level without any overwhelming response.
Limiting the activities of the FBI
Watch the language carefully. The script being used claims that the FBI is limiting free speech. What they’re actually opposing are the programs by which the agency combats the spread of misinformation. Yellow Shirts need these disinformation tools such as biased AI to spread their lies and hate so that undereducated people, those without access to a full range of information and ideas, are more likely to go along with the conservative con game. As it stands now, the FBI is especially watching for misinformation that might affect the outcome of the November election. The right-wing faction is fearful that their activities could be caught and shut down.
Invoking the Insurrection Act
In the days following the unrest around the murder of George Floyd, the Orange Felon mused publicly that he wished he’d called in the military. Project 2025 would permanently invoke the Insurrection Act, allowing the President to send military troops anywhere at any time to be used against the American people. The law itself stems from Article 1, Section 8, clause 15, of the U.S. Constitution, but is vague and open-ended so that, in reality, there’s not much anyone outside of Congress can do to prevent a President from using it for retribution or political gain. For that reason, previous presidents have been hesitant to invoke the act outside of extreme emergencies. The proposal moves to make the law status quo.
Abolishing the Department of Education
The Department of Education was created by President Carter in 1979 and has been under fire from Conservatives ever since. With its demise would go funding for things such as Title I, the $18 billion federal fund that supports low-income students, Title IX funding preventing sexual discrimination, including LGBTQIA+ students, and Title VI, which states that “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” Project 2025 calls for all these programs to be gutted and unfunded, putting everyone who’s not rich and white and male at risk.
Destruction of LGBTQIA+ Protections
Project 2025 really does not like anything that is not white, straight, and male. It would remove protections from every form of law and federal programs, reinstate the ban on trans people in the military, and remove workplace protections. Every effort would be made to completely and totally erase LGBTQIA+ people from the visible portion of American society. This could easily lead to people being sent to indoctrination camps, the removal of children from gay couples, and even a ban on LGBTQIA+ people running for office. It is difficult to adequately describe just how dangerous Project 2025 is for this group.
Dismantling Homeland Security
While much of the text of Project 2025 focuses on the relationship between Homeland Security and Immigration law, the fact is that the plan wants the entire agency gone. That would mean the destruction of:
Do I really need to explain how incredibly vulnerable this would leave the country? Presumably, some agencies such as the Secret Service and the Coast Guard would continue in some other form, but their powers would most likely be limited and their focus narrowed considerably from their current responsibilities. This portion alone is treasonous for the danger it creates for all Americans.
I could go on at great length, but by now your eyes are likely starting to droop. Know that Project 2025 also attacks family planning, including access to various methods of birth control, environmental protections, climate change, social security and retirement programs, and funding for veterans programs. The only group in the US not adversely affected by this plan are rich, straight, white men. That’s it. Everyone else is a target.
As frightening as Project 2025 is, what may be more scary is the lengths to which they are willing to go in carrying out this disastrous plan. Earlier this week, the president of the Heritage Foundation said, “In spite of all this nonsense from the left, we are going to win. We’re in the process of taking this country back. We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Notice the deflection thereof “if the left allows it to be.” He’s already planning on blaming “the left” if things should turn violent. In fact, there’s every reason to believe that the right is planning on their being violent protests so that they can justify the use of the Insurrection Act. They are fully expecting riots and marches and are already working to undermine those legitimate efforts to maintain our democracy.
Should we be alarmed? Absolutely! Should we start taking action? Without question!
What can we do beyond voting? Make noise. The right-wing Yellow Shirted devils think their winning. Just as they never saw Lenin coming in Russia, they don’t expect anyone to rise up and destroy their plans. We need to do just that. We need to demand action from our Congressional leaders and remove anyone who aligns themselves with Project 2025 and/or the Heritage Foundation. We need to be in the streets in numbers that Washington politicians have never seen. In fact, politicians need to be afraid of what the US population is capable of doing at the ballot box. We have been needing to flex that power for a long time.
There are also some things that we can’t do. We can’t let ourselves be distracted by anything. Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee and while he’s old and reminds me in too many ways of Ronald Reagan going into his second term, he’s closer to being honest than the Orange Felon and his cohorts will ever be. We have to focus on electing the Biden/Harris team and trust that the Vice President is more than capable of standing up and taking charge should the need ever arise.
This is not a moment in history where we can let everyone have their opinion. Learn from the lesson of Fiddler on the Roof and the destruction of Jewish homesteads in Tzarist Russia. Don’t focus on WWII. Hitler learned about the power of forced relocation from Russia. We are much closer to repeating those horrible incidents than the atrocities of Germany.
We can stop all of this. We can stop Project 2025. We can stop jack-booted right-wing Yellow Shirts from taking over. We just have to get up off our complacent asses and do so.
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