This is a companion page to:
How to prepare for the fire and the storm
"a systemic, ruthless plan to undermine the quality of life of millions of Americans, remove critical protections and dismantle programs for communities across the nation, and prioritize special interests and ideological extremism" (The People's Guide to Project 2025, see link below)
Project 2025 aims to deconstruct federal agencies and centralise power in the presidency, which could potentially isolate states with a focus on reducing federal oversight and control. It advocates for a "unitary executive theory," which posits that the entire executive branch should be under the direct control of the President. This would eliminate the independence of agencies such as the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Project 2025 proposes dismantling or significantly reducing the authority of several federal agencies, such as the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It also calls for abolishing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). By eliminating or weakening these agencies, the ability to regulate bad actors would be intentionally seriously curtailed.
The plan proposes cutting federal loan programs, such as those that help parents of college students, graduate students, and immigrants afford higher education. It also seeks to eliminate the Head Start program, which serves over one million children, and cut funding for public transportation projects. Additionally, the project advocates restricting safety nets for farmers. By reducing federal funding and support, Project 2025 would isolate states which lack the resources to make up for these cuts.
This Takeover has been a long time coming. The coup happened years ago - this is the mop-up operation and victory march.
The United States was added Sunday to the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, due to declining civil liberties.
An in-depth analysis of over 120 documents including thousands of sources provides the following summary:
"the sources provide substantial evidence that Donald Trump's administration, Project 2025, and the 180-day takeover plan exhibit a strong alignment with the characteristics and tactics of extreme authoritarian and fascist regimes. The focus on centralising executive power, dismantling checks and balances, weaponizing government agencies, suppressing dissent, undermining democratic norms, and embracing a specific ideological agenda raises serious concerns about the future of democratic governance in the United States"
The below articles and sources are arranged thematically - see table of contents drop-down below:
The long road to authoritarianism and capitalist fascism (inc. the attempted coup)
Project 2025
The Takeover (including the 180 Day Playbook)
Useful data tracking tools for the Takeover
Changing of the guard (military changes)
DANA - Democracy as an attitude not an act.
Election interference
Healthcare
Education
Chaos as a weapon
Resistance precedents
Judiciary & law
Cruelty is the point
Religious fundamentalism
Project Esther (weaponizing allegations of anti-semitism)
Disinfo and information/media attacks
Diversity
DOGE
The biosphere and climate crisis
Corruption, bribery and grift
Who funds these far right groups?
The Middle East
NATO and Allies
The Economy
Poems
Note: I call what we are seeing fascism. Yes, it is a new form which is internationalist, corporatist, nativist etc but it is still far-right. Fascism with less ideology and more grift (and makeup it seems). In any event 'fascism' will do until a better catch-all word comes along for what is, in essence, a coalition of criminal private capitalists seeking to control and destroy our societies.
It's time to admit that the fascism we feared is already here.
Two decades after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the arrival of the first terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay on January 11, 2002, many Americans may not recall details of the systematic abuses carried out by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and US military against hundreds if not thousands of Muslims detained as part of what President George W.
The modern Republican Party has always exploited and encouraged extremism.
October 16 marks the 20th anniversary of the vote to authorize the war on Iraq, which killed more than 800,000 people.
"The U.S. post-9/11 wars have forcibly displaced at least 38 million people in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria. This number exceeds the total displaced by every war since 1900, except World War II.”
The Costs of War Project is a team of 35 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners, and physicians, which began its work in 2011. We use research and a public website to facilitate debate about the costs of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Guantánamo Bay? Imperialism? Alliances with billionaires? Those shocked at the president's early moves have forgotten what came before, writes Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik
Criminals like Trump will keep criming
https://democracyforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2024-05_Peoples-Guide-Pro-2025.pdf
https://www.americanprogress.org/series/project-2025-exposing-the-far-right-assault-on-america/
Norm Eisen and Jonathan Katz provide actionable steps for democratic actors in the U.S. and globally to strengthen democratic institutions and resist illiberal forces.
In 2022, one of Peter Thiel's favorite thinkers envisioned a second Trump Administration in which the federal government would be run by a "CEO"
Trump has long distanced himself from the controversial policy blueprint Project 2025, but is still taking steps that reflect its policy proposals.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought has taken on the role of acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to an OMB spokesperson and a source familiar with the situation.
The GOP leaders attacking inclusion programs want to go back to an era when White men ran everything
Key figures in the incoming administration follow Curtis Yarvin, who's pushing for an autocratic takeover of the US
America is on the cusp of competitive authoritarianism. The Trump administration has already begun to weaponize state institutions and deploy them against opponents.
Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution - and to burn down the system
As a 501(c)(3) organization, NWLC does not endorse or oppose any candidate for elected public office. Project 2025 is a 900-plus-page handbook assembled by the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, with at least 140 former Trump administration officials involved in its drafting.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-top-5-ways-project-2025-would-hurt-disabled-people/
President Donald Trump's actions over the past few weeks have drawn cheers from Russian President Vladimir Putin's government - and with good reason. Trump falsely blamed Ukraine for the war that began with Russia's 2022 invasion and described Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as a "dictator," then threw him out of the White House following a public confrontation.
Professor Christina Pagel has prepared and maintains a very detailed spreadsheet of the authoritarian takeover - available at her Substack.
Where I categorise 76 Trump administration actions from the last 3 weeks and show how they align with the authoritarian playbook
Plus, a new breed of journalists just might save America.
There is no other cavalry coming.
By the end of his first day in office, Donald Trump revived many of the same programs and policies he'd previously tried over four years during his first administration. And then some.
Today, the National Security Agency (NSA) is planning a "Big Delete" of websites and internal network content that contain any of 27 banned words, including "privilege," "bias," and "inclusion." The "Big Delete," according to an NSA source and internal correspondence reviewed by Popular Information, is creating unintended consequences.
Trump II, week 2
Until Further Notice, Comprehensive coverage of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025
The systems include a vast database of federal-employee data.
ProPublica's reporting provides new details about what legal risk officials were prepared to take and what laws they may have violated on their way to creating a "constitutional crisis."
How to keep Donald Trump's provocations sorted so we don't lose focus.
Documents obtained by WIRED show the US Department of Defense is considering cutting up to 75 percent of workers who stop the spread of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.
The Republican nominee's preoccupation with dictators, and his disdain for the American military, is deepening.
This comes as the Trump Administration seeks to rid the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.
Before we continue with more info on the Takeover, just a quick a reminder that our belief in democracy is a state of mind and a daily practice. It is belief in the value of all people, in diversity. The current system of representative democracy is largely symbolic, so this crisis also has within it the seeds of hope for a better society and system that distributes wealth and political power more fairly.
So what can we do?
We can focus on community coordination, meet with people (in real life) to share our concerns and more importantly work on ideas on how to be stronger together. They want each of us to be alone, doom-scrolling on our devices – atomised. Resist that, there is strength in numbers and in strengthening the bonds of care between us. Compassion must be at the heart of our practice.
"He knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers. Those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide,” (Donald Trump)
Nazi propaganda trick of Projection?:
"In his analysis of Nazi propaganda, Ellis Freeman identified an influence tactic based on projection: accusing another person of the negative traits and behaviors that one possesses and exhibits with the goal of deflecting blame away from one’s own misdeeds and toward the accused."
If we truly care about the future of free and fair elections, we must take the threat Trump poses to our elections literally and seriously.
The agency is a crucial resources for helping states administer safe and secure elections.
Project 2025 is a set of policy recommendations intended as guidance for the next administration. While it was developed as guidance for the 47th President, the ideas and policies are also being proposed by members of the U.S. House and Senate and state governments.
House Republicans have to get their spending bill passed by Friday to avoid a government shutdown. They can likely afford to lose just one vote. And that's the easy part. Then they'll have to get working on their plan to extend 4.5 trillion dollars in tax cuts passed under the Trump administration - a plan that will require huge cuts in government spending.
"Restricting Public Health Programs: Project 2025 would scale back the use of public health programs like Medicaid and make it harder for people to access them, including through huge funding cuts to Medicaid. Instead, it calls for pushing families towards private plans with worse coverage.
Rolling Back Affordable Care: Project 2025 would make it more costly and difficult for people to access affordable health coverage generally, including by weakening key reforms under the Affordable Care Act, a law that has that helped millions of people gain health care coverage.
Attacking Reproductive Rights: Project 2025 would ban or severely restrict access to mifepristone, the safe and effective drug used in more than half of all abortions today, including by criminalizing the distribution of medication abortion drugs by mail. States that vowed to protect reproductive rights would be forced to report data to the federal government on pregnant people traveling from other states to seek care. And Project 2025 calls for rolling back HIPAA guidance put in place to protect the privacy of people who receive reproductive health care.
Rolling Back Antidiscrimination Protections in Health Care: Project 2025 would weaken important regulations implementing protections known as “Section 1557,” particularly as they relate to addressing sex discrimination in health care settings.
Shrinking Safety Nets: Project 2025 would make it more onerous or impossible for people with low incomes to access public benefit programs — for example, it would reduce food assistance benefits by imposing additional work reporting requirements and limiting what people can use their benefits for.
Overhauling the Tax System: Project 2025 proposes ending most deductions, credits, and exclusions. While not mentioned by name, this could include the Child Tax Credit. Under those changes, families with low incomes will likely pay more while wealthier families will see cuts.
Politicizing the Government at Every Level: Project 2025 supports drastic changes, known as “Schedule F” reforms, that would force tens of thousands of civil servants — including in agencies that protect civil rights — to serve the president’s political aims instead of serving the public interest. This would include agencies that shape policies related to health care and economic security."
https://civilrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Project-2025-Health-Care.pdf
The 900-page blueprint for a second Trump presidency would gut federal education funding, sanction discrimination against LGBTQ+ students, divert taxpayer funds to private schools, and codify book bans and classroom censorship on a national level. That's just the beginning.
Firings announced Tuesday as administration decried as 'detached from how Americans live'
Friends,
"I haven't been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm."
The University of Chicago, despite its free speech reputation, has laid the groundwork for the president's threats against students who protest for Palestine.
The president's aim to remove power from universities and punish so-called "woke" ideology has chilling implications for free speech globally
American Historical Association convention-goers overwhelmingly passed the statement on Jan. 5, but the group's top elected body has vetoed it without letting all AHA members vote. The American Historical Association's top elected body has shot down a resolution opposing scholasticide in Gaza, after members who attended its annual convention approved the statement early this month by a 428-to-88 margin.
It's not enough to be afraid of the laws and rules we don't want to see in schools. We have to clarify our visions of what we are fighting for.
Arrest of Mahmoud Khalil a 'targeted, retaliatory' attack on his first amendment rights, say civil rights groups
"You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you’ll have a [chuckles], you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.” (Trump, 2014 when defending Russia on Fox News).
Michiko Kakutani explores how chaos is used by leaders as a potent tool of disruption and to garner loyalty.
Sources tell WIRED that Elon Musk has wanted a government shutdown in part because it would potentially make it easier to eliminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.
Hungarians who lived through Viktor Orbán's 2010 attack on democracy warn Americans: Act now, before it's too late.
The vital lesson of how Adolf Hitler took advantage of democracy to become a dictator.
They helped him in pursuit of profit. Many ended up in concentration camps.
If you look, there are people resisting at every level. Blockades of freeways. American Bar Association urging an end to...
The Trump administration is waging a war against the legal community in the United States with a target list growing by the day.
Unfounded in both history and legal precedent, the decision poses a risk to our system of governance.
Billionaire Elon Musk in recent weeks has raged in a blizzard of social media posts at federal judges who have ruled against his efforts to disembowel the government and executive orders issued by President Donald Trump.
When a president uses executive power to not just blacklist but effectively destroy a major law firm, solely for representing political opponents, it means he's given up any pretense that he's not an authoritarian hellbent on destroying anyone who opposes him through any means necessary. Donald Trump's executive order targeting Perkins Coie isn't just an...
The cuts detailed by the administration would leave few surviving USAID projects for advocates to try to save in ongoing court battles.
Washington, DC - The Trump administration continues to intensify its attacks on immigrants and refugees, aiming to stoke fears and make the lives of immigrant families so unbearable that they "self deport;" purging long-settled immigrants through unsparing detentions and deportations and laying groundwork for broader random mass deportations; and turning America's back on our proud...
Federal immigration authorities will be permitted to target schools and churches after President Donald Trump revoked a directive barring arrests in "sensitive" areas.
On the Intercept Briefing podcast, journalist Talia Lavin, author of "Wild Faith," discusses the right-wing Christian ideology and characters guiding Trump.
The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 is a "presidential transition project" created as a blueprint for recruitment and indoctrination should Donald J. Trump become the next president. The plan calls for establishing a government that would be imbued with "biblical principles" and run by a president who holds sweeping executive powers.
"The number one enemy to the people in Israel are American Jews that do not support Israel'
Many elements are at play in keeping Israel in America's good graces. However, I believe there is another factor at play. While less discussed, it is no less important, and particularly relevant for the Trump administration: evangelical Christians.
Kahane was a Jewish supremacist who espoused violence and wanted to establish a theocratic Jewish state encompassing not just all of current Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza), but large parts of neighboring Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.
How fundamentalist Christians who believe in the apocalyptic myth of "the rapture" could be shaping Trump's agenda - and American life.
It's the Trump administration, not Columbia, that has done nothing to confront anti-Semitism in its own ranks.
New fact sheet bears similarity to Heritage Foundation's Project Esther, which aims to quash US support of Palestine
His promise to us is a threat.
"Trump and the Israeli government share the same right-wing agenda, and despite what they may claim, it has nothing to do with keeping Jews safe."
(Jewish Voice for Peace)
Israel launches a major military operation in the West Bank as Trump enters office.
"Money and information are the twin tactical nukes of modern politics" according to Steve Bannon. But the the seeds for this tech dystopia were sown more than a decade ago
NSF fired 168 employees, leaving the agency less equipped to fund a wide range of scientific research.
Trump 2.0 skates by with the same conduct that got Trump 1.0 impeached
What happens when Great Replacement Theory wins an election
Trump signed an Executive Order, titled "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing" on Jan. 20.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes about what people get right and wrong when they criticize D.E.I., or diversity, equity, and inclusion, initiatives in the workplace.
Donald Trump has positioned his administration to launch one of the most abusive and aggressive assaults on human rights in U.S. presidential history.
President Donald Trump has targeted transgender and nonbinary people with a series of executive orders since he returned to office. Here's what to know about Trump's actions and who they affect.
At least three individuals associated with Palantir or its cofounder Peter Thiel were involved in an online recruiting effort for DOGE late last year, WIRED has learned.
A shadowy group of unelected figures reshaping the federal government to their own benefit from the inside? Sounds familiar!
A group of labor unions are asking a federal court for an emergency order to stop Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the sensitive Social Security data of millions of Americans.
A federal judge Friday declined to block Elon Musk's Department of Governmental Efficiency from accessing data at the Department of the Treasury and the government's payment systems as part of a lawsuit filed by advocacy and union groups.
Activists horrified as EPA reverses pollution laws and reviews landmark finding that gases harm public health
He is surrounded by people who have plans and dreams beyond our planet. Vengeful nihilism is a big part of the Maga project, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
With a history of unfriendly environmental policies in his first term, what are we likely to see during Donald Trump's second term?
Exposing the secret history of the making of the climate crisis should change everything about how we act to stop it. This has been covered and evidenced over and over, so I will just restate the...
The pattern is inescapable - with just one caveat: organised crime bosses occasionally display more honour, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Snyder v. United States has the potential to impact other statutes dealing with bribes and payments to government officials, such as the FCPA.
President directs DoJ to pause prosecutions under Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and issues pardon to Rod Blagojevich
"I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.” (Resignation letter of Hagan Scotten, Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, when asked by Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to dismiss federal corruption charges against NYC mayor Eric Adams.)
Hundreds of federal prosecutors signed a letter to salute the bravery of those standing up to the recent corruption of the DOJ
The Orange King (I am the State) - Le Roi Orange (L'État, c'est moi)
“I’m here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being the primary guarantor of security in Europe.”
US Secretary of Defence, February 12, 2025.
"We have to get something. We can't continue to pay this money," U.S. president says.
A century ago, a German sociologist explained precisely how the president thinks about the world.
Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, seized control of the Ukraine portfolio to help Trump.
A comprehensive account of Jared Kushner, 666 Fifth Avenue, and White House support for the blockade of Qatar after the Qataris rejected Kushner Companies.
The Atlas Network's dark-money junktanks are behind neoliberal policies around the world, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
Jeff Yass GOP Backer & Tik Tok Owner
The Adelson family:
President Donald Trump met at the White House Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where Trump again suggested ethnically cleansing Gaza of its Palestinian population. Trump has already mused about moving Gaza's population to Jordan and Egypt, which those countries have flatly rejected, but on Tuesday he went even further and said the United States should "own" Gaza and develop it into a seaside tourist destination.
From sabotaging Oslo to funneling Qatari cash into Gaza, Bibi has spent his career bolstering Hamas to help perpetuate the conflict. Even after Oct. 7, argues historian Adam Raz, he's still advancing the same strategy.
The War That Is Supposed to End Sunday Will Go Down in History as the First Kahane War. It Is Fundamentally Different From All of Israel's Previous Wars.
After Israel Expelled 40,000 Inhabitants From West Bank Refugee Camps, a New Flood of Displaced People Has Started. In the City of Anabta, Makeshift Shelters Are Full of Families Who've Lost Everything, Fearful of What's Next
On elections without choice and genocide without consequence
Finance editor Ed Ongweso on Israel's strategy to weaken Palestinians' ability to resist through the use of technology and water deprivation.
"The president’s latest positions on the war reveal that he is indifferent to ongoing slaughter—indeed, he is willing to increase it—and that his opposition to Ukraine’s independence has nothing to do with saving US tax dollars. Trump simply wants Russia to win."
(Jonathan Chait, the Atlantic)
The president's latest positions on the Russia-Ukraine war reveal that he is indifferent to ongoing slaughter-indeed, he is willing to increase it.
The Trump administration's most influential think tank, The Heritage Foundation, is receiving proposals from illiberal forces in Poland and Hungary on how to shape the future of the European Union. The proposals, obtained by VSquare, include dismantling key EU institutions and renaming the entire bloc.
America's greedy gangster president is forcing European elites to finally reckon with the high price of protection.
Prime minister says country not for sale after laughter in Congress at US president's assertion 'we're going to get it'
Report published before international summit suggests US is moving away from a global leadership role
A survey gauging the emotional temperature of Canadians confirms what most already know: U.S. President Donald Trump is making people on this side of the border mad.
Donald Trump won't deal with the EU. The EU can't deal with Trump.
How Europe can survive the new Russian-American-Israeli Axis powers
See:
How to prepare for the fire and the storm
And we Who never Lit the fires or Wielded the knife Can never be cleansed
We are the flames We carry the fire
Peter Howitt
