1A). “It's All Over Now, Biden Blue: We Need an Actual Revolution”, March 2, 2024, Paul Street, The Paul Street Report, at < https://paulstreet.substack.com/p/its-all-over-now-biden-blue >.
1B). “High Fash Court Grants the Orange Hitler Fan Big Win: Like I've Been Saying ...”, Feb 29, 2024, Paul Street, The Paul Street Report, at < https://paulstreet.substack.
2). “The Supreme Court Just Gave Trump Exactly What He Wanted: In a stunning move, the justices all but guaranteed that the former president will evade trial before November”, Feb 28, 2024, Mark Joseph Stern, Slate, at < https://slate.com/news-and-
3). “Revealed: ‘extremist’ Trump economist plots rightwing overhaul of US treasury: Stephen Moore, who withdrew from Fed consideration after sexist remarks were uncovered, co-author of radical Project 2025 effort ”, Mar 1, 2024, Martin Pengelly, The Guardian, at < https://www.theguardian.com/
4). “A far-right US youth group is ramping up its movement to back election deniers: Turning Point USA and co-founder Charlie Kirk are raising $108m to mobilize Trump voters and ‘clean house’ of election officials”, Mar 2, 2024, Peter Stone, The Guardian, at < https://www.theguardian.com/
5). “Project 2025”, “About Monitoring Influence”, n.d., anon., Accountable.US, at < https://www.
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Project 2025 Links as listed at Accountable.US
Here are the 15 links to descriptions of the operations of a variety
of far-right organizations, that are actively working with Project 2025, some well-known others more obscure.
Project 2025 Links as listed at Accountable.US
Here are the 15 links to descriptions of the operations of a variety
of far-right organizations, that are actively working with Project 2025, some well-known others more obscure.
Introduction by dmorista: The thin veneer of democratic practices and norms in the U.S. has now worn even thinner now that the Supreme Court has weighed in and effectively made sure that Trump will not be prosecuted before the Presidential election this coming November.
Paul Street has published this excellent article in Item 1A)., “It's All Over Now ….”, in his most recent internet post (originally Posted at Counterpunch and was supposed to be in the members only section, but was mistakenly posted in the general articles there). In this article Street, as usual, lambasts what he calls the gullible and mistaken Trumpenleft, who are wasting a lot of time and energy denouncing Biden and trying to convince other leftists to vote for obscure, sure loser, 3rd party candidates. As Street says, and I concur it is clearly worth the two minutes needed to darken in a circle or pull a lever for the Democrats but not too much more. For many people who live in Rethug controlled areas there are several hour waits involved to even get to a voting booth (famously during cold November rain storms with long lines of working people waiting in various Northern places). But Street is far to sanguine an analyst to actually suggest that progressive people should not bother to vote to keep the dangerous Fascist Donald Trump from actually getting into the White House another time. He just points out that if all we do is go vote for the Democratic Party we will face a fate similar to liberal Germans in Weimar in the 1930s.
Paul Street in Item 1B)., “ High Fash Court Grants ….”, and Mark Joseph Stern in Item 2)., “The Supreme Court Just Gave Trump ….”, both write that the corrupted U.S. judiciary, as embodied by the particularly bad Supreme Court, have now done their best to help Trump win the upcoming Presidential election. Street notes that: “.... the already too-late Georgia case against Trump’s fascist election interference in that state is further hung up by an alleged sex and payment scandal inside the Fulton County prosecutor’s office and the federal classified documents case against Trump is being fatally delayed by a hack Trumpist federal judge in Florida. And yesterday, Trump was given a major victory by the Christian Fascist US Supreme Court he did so much to create.” (Emphasis added)
Meanwhile Item 3)., “Revealed: ‘extremist’ Trump economist plots ….” and Item 4). “A far-right US youth group ….”, point out that the always lavishly funded far-right political operations continue and have become even more draconian and oriented towards taking authoritarian power than ever before. It is telling that the article in Item 3). is about the once well-known and notorious right-wing extremist Stephen Moore. Moore is a life-long enemy poor, working class, and modest middle class people. He was a member of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board for year, always espousing the most damaging reactionary and libertarian drivel. His activities go back at least 50 years!!
Accountable.US, is a progressive operation that has taken on analyzing the Project 2025 and its component parts and allied organizations. In Item 5)., “Project 2025”, Accountable.US, has provided a significant amount of information about the actions of the far-right, including the actions taken to support a return of Trump to the Presidency.
The American Right-wing clearly thinks that it is worthwhile to elect Extremist Republicans as compared to Democrats or actual moderate Republicans. That shows that, whatever their many failings, it is somewhat less dangerous to us if the Democratic Party's candidates win. It does not solve our basic problems but can give us some breathing room to do so by ourselves. If we squander any slack we enjoy in the coming months and years we will seriously regret it.
It's All Over Now, Biden Blue
We Need an Actual Revolution (Originally published on CounterPunch*)
Want people to vote for Genocide Joe? Then get in the streets to stop it. Otherwise you are complicit in genocide and Trump fascism.
-Arun Gupta, February 26, 2024
Voting for Genocide Joe is not an effective strategy to stop the Wannabe Dictator.
-Ashley Smith, February 27, 2024
Joe Biden is a blood-soaked mass murderer who can never be redeemed. Trump is a fascist pig. We need an actual revolution.
-Radical musician Ted Sirota, February 27, 2024
A smart New York City lefty posted this on social media the other day: “Want people to vote for Genocide Joe? Then get in the streets to stop it. Otherwise you are complicit in genocide and Trump fascism.”
It’s an interesting bit of advice. For what it’s worth, the blood-soaked imperialist and self-declared “Zionist” Biden’s embrace of Judeo-fascist Israel’s genocidal war of ethnic cleansing in Gaza (made even more grotesque by transparently disingenuous and manipulative public relations efforts to make him sound concerned for ordinary Palestinians) was the quashing of the last glimmer of a flicker of a scent of a wisp of a chance that I could again recommend “tactical “ and “lesser evil” Dem voting in 2024. To paraphrase, Bob Dylan, it’s all over now, Biden (baby) blue.
But What About Trumpism-Fascism?
“But what about Trump?,” a liberal or progressive Democrats might well ask me, adding this:
“Come on, man! You have been exposing and denouncing Trump, his movement, and his party as ‘fascist’ for at least six years, Mr. Street. You don’t call the Democrats fascist, as well you shouldn’t. You say that ‘the dismal, demobilizing, dollar-drenched Dems remain committed to bourgeois democracy and rule of law, such as they are.’ Surely you don’t expect us not to take that to be a recommendation for what you call ‘lesser evil voting.’ And certainly you of all people must know that the racist and sadist Trump, his party, and base support Isael’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinians with no pretense of concern for Arab and Muslim lives. I think I saw you post a picture you took of ‘Christian fascists’ wearing and waving Israel flags at a Trump rally in Iowa. Come on, Street, you’ve got some ‘splain’n to do. I mean it!”
Let me try to explain.
Yes, Not “The Same”
It’s true that I consider the Republicans and do not consider the Democrats to be a fascist party now. While the Dems are complicit enablers and conciliators of the Republifascists and the broader fascsization of US politics and society, it is Trumpenleftish nonsense to call the two parties “the same,” both equally fascistic. That’s a dumb thing to say in the age of Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors Cuz the Guys with the AR-15s Want to Kill Nancy But Like Me” Trump, Greg “Come and Take It” Abbott, Ron “DeFascist,” House Speaker Mike “Re-Unite Church and State” Johnson, mainstreamed Great Replacement Theory, Marjorie “Q Curious” Taylor-Greene, the forced motherhood Dobbs decision, Moms for Liberty, red state book bans, Congresspersons who reasonably fear that voting to impeach a putschist would place their lives and loved ones at risk, and civil trial juries that are told to stay anonymous unless they want Trumpists to kill them and their families. No serious observer can honestly think the Dems would try to overthrow the 2024 election with a many-sided coup campaign including a mass physical assault on the US Capitol and waged on multiply disproven false claims of a stolen election if Trump wins. (Recall Al Gore’s pathetic Weimar-like surrender when a presidential election was actually stolen from him in 2000-01.)
Look at any of my recent reports on Donald “Retribution” Trump’s open embrace of Hitlerian rhetoric and tell me that you could see Biden, Chuck Schumer or any other leading Dem employing such flatly fascist language (seriously?) Examine the giant Project 2025 blueprint for the Christian white nationalist takeover of the US government and society that the fascised Republican policy establishment has worked up in anticipation of Herr Trump’s return to power.
Look at my review of The Atlantic’s recent special December-January issued dedicated to the lethal menace posed by a second Trump term. Review The Paul Street Report since its beginning in mid-2022. I have been breaking down and warning about the dangerous creep of Amerikaner Republi-fascism in one essay after another. It’s not for nothing that I’ve been identifying the Republican Party as the “Republi-fascist party” and that I now call it “the Reichmost,” not merely the “rightmost” of the United States’ two reigning political organizations.
So no, the two dominant US capitalist-imperialist parties – one rooted in the nation’s more culturally, intellectually and racially diverse metropolitan areas and two coasts and the other one rooted in the nation’s most rural, revanchist, “Christian” and white “heartland” (fatherland) regions (where a Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Corey Bush, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could never be elected but an MTG or a Mike Johnson, etc. can be) – are not “the same.”
A Key Distinction
And – this is a key point – anyone who cites Biden’s embrace of Israel as supposed “proof” of a shared fascism between the two parties (this is a big Trumpenleft narrative these days) is missing a key distinction between foreign policy and domestic politics. Support for repressive right-wing, arch-authoritarian and fascist forces and states abroad is longstanding and bipartisan US policy. Ending previously normative bourgeois electoral, parliamentary, and rule of law democracy, such as it is, in the imperial homeland itself is NOT.
Yes, I do think a second Trump term would be a disaster on numerous levels. And yes, the Republi-fascists are imperialist and war-mongering (don’t take seriously low-brow Trumpenleft claims to the contrary!) and in fact more extreme than the Dems in their ugly embrace of Israel’s Zio-fascist crimes. People wear Israel flags at Trump rallies, which are attended by droves of fundamentalist Christians who take delight in the US-Israel Crucifixion of Gaza.
Voting Won’t Fix the Problem
Judas Goaters Don’t Need My Help
Still, I’m staying off the Lesser Evil Voting (LEV) bandwagon for four overlapping reasons. First, even if I’m wrong about this – unlikely! – the bandwagon doesn’t need me. Most of what passes for a “left” in the US will engage in its usual “sheepdog” and Judas Goat conduct (ala Michael Moore and Bernie Sanders), working to herd progressives and radicals up the Democratic Party gangplanks to the killing floors of the US electoral slaughterhouse.
There Must Be Red Lines: How about Open Genocide?
Second, at the risk of sounding didactic, there have to be moral limits to the support supposedly decent people are willing to grant the Democrats. There must be ethical red lines the dollar-drenched capitalist-imperialist Dems can’t cross, no? How about funding, equipping genocide, and politically/diplomatically protecting genocide, as Biden and his party are doing in Gaza? Does that pass red line muster? If it doesn’t then what on Earth does? It’s a slippery slope when “the left” helps Dems tell voters in essence to “shut up and vote blue not matter who”— and NO MATTER WHAT — since “we and our presidential candidate aren’t as awful as the only other viable major party and presidential candidate.”
Dismal Dems Open the Door
Third, Backing the Dems won’t stop the Amerikaner Trumpist menace. The Democrats are beholden to and part of a capitalist-imperialist system that opens the door to fascism by demoralizing the masses.(This is a critical lesson of the Obama years, something I warned about in my early book on the dangers of the Obama phenomenon and an Obama presidency.) That system has no real answers to the pleas and demands of the oppressed US working- and lower-class majority – affordable housing, economic security, good jobs, decent schools, affordable health care, etc. Thanks to its cringing allegiance and captivity to capital, the Democratic Party demobilizes and depresses millions while creating space for the Republi-fascists’ “reactionary political answers to real issues…Even worse,” Ashley Smith points out, “the capitalist establishment in the form of Genocide Joe is throwing migrants – the main target of the far right – under the bus, promising massive crackdowns on the border. Thus, not only does the establishment not stop the far right, it actually adopts the far right’s policies. Just look at Macron in France.”
Fascism (and Capitalism, Imperialism, and Ecocide) Won’t Be Overcome in the US Electoral Arena
Fourth, no matter how we understand and characterize the Democrats, the Amerikaner fascism problem will NOT be overcome through the US electoral system, a plutocratic, Minority Rule set-up that lethally overrepresents the most revanchist sections and people of the nation. Neither will the US imperialism problem, which has pushed the world closer to nuclear war than any time in recent memory as it stubbornly funds, equips, justifies, and protects genocide Gaza over. Neither will the capitalogenic ecocide problem, arguably the biggest issue of our or any time, absurdly begging for proper attention with ever more ominous outbreaks of extreme and weird weather. And neither will the problem of capitalism, which generates authoritarianism and fascism like white on rice by (among other ways) rendering the democratic pledges of politicians transparently inauthentic even as it creates multiple crises that require big government “solutions.”
The Whole Damn System
It’s the whole damn capitalist-imperialist system – the whole stinking base-to-superstructure mess that gives us the “democratic” choice between a decrepit imperialist warmonger (Genocide Joe) and a deranged, Hitler-channeling wannabe fascist strongman for life (Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump)! – that’s got to go, and soon. The mutually reinforcing doomsday clocks of military, environmental, epidemiological, and political catastrophe that this system has set ticking are leaving ever less time for viable postponement of the revolutionary reckoning required for human survival. A Biden re-election that takes places in the absence of a new revolutionary movement in the United States will do nothing really to slay the four apocalyptic, overlapping, and mutually amplifying horsemen that capitalism-imperialism has let loose upon the world: ecocide, potentially nuclear war, pandemicide, and fascism (perhaps I need to add Artificial Intelligence to the apocalyptic stable). We are out of time for postponement. Radical resolutions are already baked into the historical-material cake. The only question is this: radically liberating and revolutionary socialist or radically terrible and fascist, eco-cidal capitalism-imperialism with a boot on our necks?
It’s like the radical Chicago musician Ted Sirota said the other day on so-called social media: “We need an actual revolution.”
How to LEV If You Must
I expect liberal and progressive folks (especially those living in the six or seven “swing” states that absurdly determine US presidential election outcomes under the archaic and preposterous US Electoral College) to take my differentiation between the two parties – one neoliberal late bourgeois-democratic and the other neoliberal neofascist – to mean that they should vote Dem in November. And I begrudge nobody’s obvious right to “lesser evil” vote. Knock yourself out, I say with irony since it takes a grand total of two minutes once every four years to make marks next to the names of presidential candidates in the general election.
But if you feel compelled to LEV, don’t pretend to jump on the “Genociden with Biden” train. Don’t think you have to roll around in the muck of what Revcom leader Bob Avakian righty calls “the BEB- the bourgeois electoral bullshit.” Don’t fantasize for one second that the people of America and the world are going to get anything of what they really need from the Weimar Democrats and the American System that party upholds – a system big capital will continue to comfortably profit from after if its US political superstructure makes a qualitative shift from bourgeois electoral and rule of law democracy to neofascist rule. Vote with open contempt for the blood-drenched capitalist warmonger Biden and with the explicit understanding that it is just a “tactical move of harm reduction” (or whatever you want to call it) that took two minutes before you returned to the 365-day a year task of working for revolution and nothing less.”
I’m not an electoralist but I’m also not a vote-shamer: Give me somebody who takes the two minutes to “lesser evil vote” and then gets back to the business of building a revolutionary movement beneath and beyond the quadrennial electoral spectacle every day over the ridiculous ballot-fetishizing electoralist lefty who thinks politics is all about whether or not you voted for their third-, fourth-, or fifth-party candidate.
“Shake” the Ruling Class and its System or Overthrow and Replace Them?
In his March 2008 essay on and against “Election Madness,” penned at the peak of Obamania, Howard Zinn wrote this:
“Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes—the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth…But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.”
The good part of that passage is Zinn’s challenge to understand voting as merely a brief and small part of a much bigger movement politics focused not on candidate qualities but on deeper systemic change. The shitty part is the stated milquetoast goal of “shaking” the powers that be in the direction of peace and justice – essentially scaring the powerful into being more progressive. Sorry, but that’s a stupid goal. Big marches and rallies don’t really bother the ruling class that much. We need to set our sights much, much higher. We don’t need to rattle them; we need to replace them and above all their system. We need to take state power away from them and their bourgeois-imperial order, which is destroying life on Earth.
I’m not here to tell people how or (for that matter) not to vote in the quadrennial electoral extravaganzas. I’m here instead:
* to recommend, no insist, that people build a revolutionary movement beneath and beyond the frankly failing institutions, practices, and ideology of late bourgeois electoral, parliamentary, and rule of law “democracy.”
* to tell folks to dig seriously into and confront the underlying social and political conditions that give rise to fascism in the first place.
* to call for the formation of a mass social and political movement that takes on the whole damn system and calls and plans for what Karl Marx and Frederick Engels rightly called the only alternative to the “common ruin” of all – the “revolutionary reconstitution of society itself.”
Yes, we should all be in the streets alright: to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza but beyond that and above all the system behind Joe “Nothing Will Fundamentally Change” Biden and the US-American ruling class’s funding, equipping and political and diplomatic protection of that genocide and behind many other and interrelated horrors at home and abroad: capitalism-imperialism.
Dear readers: I mistakenly thought this essay was going to go up at CounterPunch+, CounterPunch’s subscriber-only publication. If that had been the case, I would have needed to hold off on posting this essay here for one month. In fact, it went up on the regular weekend CounterPunch site so here it is today with a small number of minor changes - a new sub-title, some new subheadings, and a unch of photos.
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High Fash Court Grants the Orange Hitler Fan Big Win
Like I've Been Saying...
I hate to say I told you so, but, well, I told you so. Please see these two recent
say I told you so, but, well, I told you so. Please see these two recent The Paul Street Reports (TPSRs):
“The US Bourgeois Democracy Farewell Tour,” The Paul Street Report, February 1, 2024, https://paulstreet.substack.com/p/the-us-bourgeois-democracy-farewell;
“Courts and Constitution Won’t Save Us From an Orange Menace 47 Presidency,” The Paul Street Report, February 9, 2024, https://paulstreet.substack.com/p/courts-and-constitution-wont-save.
Consistent with the warnings in both (and other TPSR) reports, the already too-late Georgia case against Trump’s fascist election interference in that state is further hung up by an alleged sex and payment scandal inside the Fulton County prosecutor’s office and the federal classified documents case against Trump is being fatally delayed by a hack Trumpist federal judge in Florida. And yesterday, Trump was given a major victory by the Christian Fascist US Supreme Court he did so much to create. Here is some of the establishment New York Times’ reporting on the monumentally corrupt and illegitimate high court’s ruling yesterday:
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“The Supreme Court that former President Donald J. Trump helped to shape tossed him a legal lifeline on Wednesday night, making a choice that substantially aided his efforts to delay his federal trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. By deciding to take up Mr. Trump’s claim that presidents enjoy almost total immunity from prosecution for any official action while in office — a legal theory rejected by two lower courts and one that few experts think has any basis in the Constitution — the justices bought the former president at least several months before a trial on the election interference charges can start. It is not out of the question that Mr. Trump could still face a jury in the case, in Federal District Court in Washington, before Election Day. At this point, the legal calendar suggests that if the justices issue a ruling by the end of the Supreme Court’s term in June and find that Mr. Trump is not immune from prosecution, the trial could still start by late September or October…But with each delay, the odds increase that voters will not get a chance to hear the evidence that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the last election before they decide whether to back him in the current one. If Mr. Trump is successful in delaying the trial until after Election Day and he wins, he could use the powers of his office to seek to dismiss the election interference indictment altogether. Moreover, Justice Department policy precludes prosecuting a sitting president, meaning that, once sworn in, he could likely have any federal trial he is facing postponed until after he left office.”
How polite. Here’s my translation:
‘The monumentally corrupt and illegitimate, racist, sexist, and Christian Fascist high court that Donald “Poisoning Our Blood” Trump and his fellow Republi-fascist Malevolent Mitch McConnell brought to life just gave a supreme judicial green light to a second fascist Trump administration. Liberal, progressive, moderate, and centrist hopes that the US judicial and broader criminal justice system (and/or other establishment bourgeois democratic/capitalist institutions, forces, and actors) will save us from the Amerikaner fascist reconquest of the world’s most dangerous office by the man Noam Chomsky once rightly called (in January 2020, before anyone could guess that Trump was going to help spread a deadly pandemic across the United States), “the most dangerous criminal in human history” are in this and other ways being exposed as naïve “hopey-changey” dreaming.’
The Court’s decision to hear Trump’s absurd and dangerous appeal means that it is assisting Trump’s effort to run out the clock and dodge trial for Jan.6. As Mark Joseph Stern writes on Slate:
“In a stunning move…the Supreme Court has all but guaranteed that Donald Trump will not face trial for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election before this November’s presidential election. On Wednesday, after more than two weeks’ delay, the court issued an order refusing to lift the stay that’s preventing the Jan. 6 trial, prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith, from moving forward. Instead, the court took up the case, scheduling oral arguments for the week of April 22—nearly two months from now. On this timeline, the justices will probably issue a decision near the end of June. That punt gives Trump exactly what he wanted: an extended pause that will make it impossible for Judge Tanya Chutkan to hold a trial in time for the upcoming election…If Trump wins that election, of course, he will ensure that his Justice Department halts the prosecution and dissolves the charges against him. Which means that SCOTUS has awarded him a powerful incentive to beat Joe Biden by any means necessary, and a good reason to hope that he can evade accountability for Jan. 6.”
The crassness and idiocy of Trump’s “legal argument in this case” is difficult to exaggerate. The aspiring fascist strongman’s lawyers pretend to believe that he enjoys absolute constitutional immunity from prosecution for any crimes committed while in the White House. Those crimes include a conspiracy to cancel the 2020 election’s outcome in numerous contested states and participation in an election-nullifying campaign against the US Congress and the US Vice President — an ugly pressure campaign that led to a mass putschist assault on US Capitol (the infamous January 6 Capitol Riot). As Stern elaborates:
“A cross-ideological panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected this theory of total immunity because it is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, or the nation’s historical traditions. You can search the Constitution high and low for Trump’s theory of immunity without finding even a hint that it exists, because it does not exist. It has never existed. The former president’s lawyers know that. They made it up out of whole cloth for one purpose: They realized that, by raising a claim of immunity, Trump could halt all proceedings at the trial court until he exhausted his appeals, at which point he would be far closer to winning back the presidency.”
It seems unlikely that even the present Supreme Court will accept Trump’s bullshit argument but the court gives that argument undeserved legitimacy simply by agreeing to hear it in the first place and they don’t have to accept the argument in order to grant him the great win of delay.
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The Supreme Court Just Gave Trump Exactly What He Wanted
The Supreme Court has all but guaranteed that Donald Trump will not face trial for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election before this November’s presidential election. On Wednesday, after more than two weeks’ delay, the court issued an order refusing to lift the stay that’s preventing the Jan. 6 trial, prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith, from moving forward. Instead, the court took up the case, scheduling oral arguments for the week of April 22—nearly two months from now. On this timeline, the justices will probably issue a decision near the end of June. That punt gives Trump exactly what he wanted: an extended pause that will make it impossible for Judge Tanya Chutkan to hold a trial in time for the upcoming election.
If Trump wins that election, of course, he will ensure that his Justice Department halts the prosecution and dissolves the charges against him. Which means that SCOTUS has awarded him a powerful incentive to beat Joe Biden by any means necessary, and a good reason to hope that he can evade accountability for Jan. 6.
It is hard to overstate the frivolousness of Trump’s legal argument in this case. The former president claims that he has absolute immunity from prosecution for acts he took while in office, including his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Those efforts included an alleged criminal conspiracy to nullify the outcome in multiple swing states, as well as personal participation in the pressure campaign against Congress that culminated in the violent attack on the Capitol. A cross-ideological panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected this theory of total immunity because it is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, or the nation’s historical traditions. You can search the Constitution high and low for Trump’s theory of immunity without finding even a hint that it exists, because it does not exist. It has never existed. The former president’s lawyers know that. They made it up out of whole cloth for one purpose: They realized that, by raising a claim of immunity, Trump could halt all proceedings at the trial court until he exhausted his appeals, at which point he would be far closer to winning back the presidency.
After the D.C. Circuit’s ruling, then, the biggest question was whether SCOTUS would even entertain this obvious delay tactic. Trump sought a stay from the high court on Feb. 12. The government, through special counsel Jack Smith, urged the justices to simply deny the stay—or, in the alternative, to take up the case on a superexpedited schedule, with oral arguments on March 4. The Supreme Court responded to these requests by doing … nothing. For more than two weeks. It just sat on the case. This extended silence raised speculation that a majority had voted to deny the stay and a few conservatives, like Justice Samuel Alito, were writing angry dissents. But now it seems the court really was just doing nothing, because SCOTUS could have issued Wednesday’s (short!) order at any point since Feb. 12. There is no reason it should have taken so long. It’s hard not to speculate that a majority was seeking to abet Trump’s plot to run out the clock.
If so, they’re succeeding. Rather than hold arguments in March, the court will hear the case toward the end of April. Some context: When the Colorado Supreme Court blocked Trump from the ballot, the court scheduled arguments much sooner, giving the parties a bit more than a month. And when, as president, Trump himself saw his agenda stymied in the lower courts, SCOTUS stepped in again and again with emergency orders in his favor. It seems that an emergency is only an emergency in need of speedy resolution when it requires Supreme Court intervention to help Donald Trump.
Playing out the next few months paints a bleak picture. By tradition, the court waits until the dissenters are finished with their opinions before handing down a decision. So even if a majority rules against Trump, and finishes its work quickly, a single dissenter like Alito can hold up the opinion until the end of June. It will take several more months to prepare for trial, and the Justice Department has a policy of avoiding any action that could affect the outcome of a race within 60 days of Election Day. So here’s how that all boils down: In the absolute best-case scenario, both parties might be ready for trial by the fall. At that point, though, Jack Smith will bump straight into the Justice Department’s 60-day rule, and presumably postpone the trial until after November. Moreover, the trial itself will likely take a few months. It is now basically impossible to conceive of the trial concluding, and the jury rendering a verdict, before the election.
Even in light of this Supreme Court’s hard-right lean, Wednesday’s order is stunning: a massive gift to Trump that can only be seen as a partisan bid to help him avoid a conviction for his attempt to subvert American democracy. There is no other plausible reason for the justices to sit on his petition for so long, or to schedule arguments so far in the future. Maybe the court could have justified hearing the case very quickly, not because it presents a difficult legal issue (it does not) but because it has clear national importance (and therefore should be ruled on by the highest court). But the court didn’t take that route. Rather, it played this exactly how Trump wanted. Its chosen course of action should set off very loud alarm bells. The court is evidently willing to run interference for Trump—who, after all, appointed three members of the conservative majority that is surely behind this delay tactic.
The justices could have used this moment to prove their independence, which might have had the salutary side effect of shoring up their rock-bottom approval ratings. They decided instead to let Trump wield the Supreme Court as a weapon against Jack Smith’s prosecution. In a choice between integrity and cynical partisan loyalty, a majority picked the latter. Wednesday’s move is a harrowing indication that the court will gladly twist the rules to help Trump win reelection and evade accountability. It is a harrowing omen that the Supreme Court cannot be trusted to protect our democracy from Trump’s malignant assault.
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Revealed: ‘extremist’ Trump economist plots rightwing overhaul of US treasury
Stephen Moore, who withdrew from Fed consideration after sexist remarks were uncovered, co-author of radical Project 2025 effort
Stephen Moore, a conservative economist whose controversial remarks about women cost him a seat on the Federal Reserve board in 2019, is now co-author of a plan to radically reform the US treasury as part of Project 2025, a vast rightwing effort to advance radical policy proposals for Donald Trump’s possible White House return.
“Project 2025 is all about forcing a far-right agenda on to everyday Americans,” said Tony Carrk, the executive director of the progressive watchdog Accountable.US, which produced an extensive report on Moore’s views and positions.
“So it’s no wonder they tapped a notorious social security opponent like Stephen Moore to help write their policy schemes.”
Moore, Carrk said, had “dedicated his career to slashing social security benefits and taxes for billionaires”.
Like other welfare programmes such as Medicare, social security is a longstanding target of the US right but also something of a third rail for politicians of either party, given public support. Recognising such support, Trump has pledged to “always protect social security” should he return to power. His last opponent for the Republican presidential nomination, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, says she wants to reform it.
Joe Biden has said he “will not cut a single social security or Medicare benefit”.
Moore remains loyal to Trump but in the past has advocated for privatising social security, which he has called a “Ponzi scheme”, and told students they should march on the Capitol and burn their social security cards.
Responding to Carrk, Moore said by email: “Actually I favor higher social security benefits with personal accounts. That would give seniors benefits that would net three to five times higher.”
Moore advocates mandatory 401k accounts, in place of social security.
He added: “Yes, I am strongly in favor of cutting tax rates to make [the] American economy No 1.”
By its own description, Project 2025 is the work of “a broad coalition of over 70 conservative organisations”, brought together by the Heritage Foundation and aiming to shape the presidential transition should a Republican win election this year.
In the words of Paul Dans, its director, Project 2025 aims to prepare “a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponised conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state”.
According to a conspiracy theory championed by Trump’s ally and adviser Steve Bannon – though Bannon reportedly said the “deep-state conspiracy theory is for nutcases” – the deep state consists of bureaucrats, government functionaries and intelligence operatives, all working to thwart Trump’s agenda.
Legal sources and sources close to the presidential transition have said extreme actions proposed under Project 2025 are unlikely to happen swiftly, should Trump or another Republican take office, given existing guardrails in and around the federal bureaucracy.
Nonetheless, as other chapters recommend rolling back LGBTQ+ rights or dismantling climate policy, so the chapter co-authored by Moore says a Trump treasury should eliminate policies attributed to Biden including the “racist ‘equity’ agenda” and the “economically destructive and ineffective climate-related financial-risk agenda”.
Moore’s co-authors are William L Walton, a private equity investor, and David R Burton, an economic policy expert. The three authors identify social security as a program relevant to treasury reform, including it in “issues of concern” that “cut across multiple parts of treasury or other governmental agencies”.
Elsewhere, Jonathan Berry, who was chief counsel to the Trump transition in 2016-17 and led the regulatory section of the Department of Labor in the Trump administration, notes the potential for privatisation of social security, writing: “Existing statutory language in the Social Security Act does not prohibit non-public organisations from administering the programme.”
In his statement, Carrk also accused Moore of “belittling women and people of color”.
In May 2019, Moore withdrew from consideration for a seat at the Fed. Amid intense media scrutiny, the Guardian reported tax and legal issues affecting Moore including underpaying alimony to his ex-wife. Columns written by Moore also came under scrutiny, unearthed sexist remarks including complaints about women in sports and asking whether there was anywhere in life “men can take a vacation from women”. Moore also wrote that Black families were replacing men with “a welfare check” and that increased earnings for Black women would make Black men “financially expendable”.
Withdrawing from consideration for the Fed, Moore said that the “unrelenting attacks on my character have become untenable for me and my family” but told Trump he would “continue to be a loud economic voice advocating your policies” and would “always [be] at your disposal”.
Moore went on to advise Trump during the Covid pandemic. Now, as well as writing books and providing analysis for Fox News, he is attached to a range of rightwing groups – he is a Heritage Foundation fellow; the senior economist at FreedomWorks; and chair of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CUP).
Moore co-founded CUP in 2015 with the billionaire Steve Forbes, the economist Larry Kudlow (later Trump’s chief economic adviser) and Arthur Laffer, an economist and pundit who advised Ronald Reagan and Trump and to whom Trump gave the presidential medal of freedom.
The Accountable.US report details donations of at least $1.77m to CUP from DonorsTrust, a rightwing group not required to reveal the names of its donors.
“A principled philanthropic partner for conservative and libertarian donors” in its own words, but “the right’s dark-money ATM” in the words of Mother Jones magazine, DonorsTrust has links to the Koch network and Leonard Leo, two dominant figures in rightwing political funding.
Carrk said: “With extremists like Moore calling the shots, Project 2025 may not have any credibility, but unfortunately they have limitless resources from the dark-money Leonard Leo network to undermine the health and retirement security of millions of Americans.”
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A far-right US youth group is ramping up its movement to back election deniers
Turning Point USA and co-founder Charlie Kirk are raising $108m to mobilize Trump voters and ‘clean house’ of election officials
Turning Point USA, a far-right youth group known for its fundraising prowess and for promoting election-conspiracy theories, is mounting a multimillion-dollar mobilization drive via its advocacy arm in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.
Arizona-based TPUSA, a non-profit co-founded in 2012 by then 18-year-old Charlie Kirk that’s become a key ally in Donald Trump’s Maga ecosystem, has launched the drive through Turning Point Action, which has raised tens of millions of dollars and is hiring hundreds of full-time employees in the three states, according to its spokesperson, Andrew Kolvet.
While its current fundraising drive is to support the voter-outreach efforts, TP Action is likely to help finance other political advocacy initiatives, including ousting some key Arizona election officials who disputed claims of election fraud in 2020.
Dubbed “chase the vote”, the drive is being supplemented by another get-out-the-vote campaign that TP Action is starting with the Christian nationalist and televangelist Lance Wallnau.
Together with Wallnau and some other Maga allies like Moms for America, TP Action is planning a “courage tour” in the same three swing states to enlist pastors and their churches in the voter-mobilization drive, which will include booths in churches to register voters.
TP Action’s fledgling campaign is aimed at identifying and registering “patriotic” voters, encouraging early voting and getting voters to the polls in November, according to its website. Billed as the “first and most robust conservative ballot-chasing operation”, TP Action’s drive could benefit Trump and Maga-allied candidates in the three states.
The new political advocacy drives come after TPUSA and TP Action sparked strong criticism from veteran Republicans, watchdog groups and analysts for backing several hard-right candidates in Arizona who were defeated in 2022, and pushing conspiracies about election fraud, Covid-19 and other issues.
“TPUSA has a radicalized worldview that they use as a litmus test” in backing candidates, said Kathy Petsas, a GOP district leader in Phoenix. “When it comes to the general elections that matter, their ROI is lousy.”
Notably, four top Arizona candidates in 2022 who were backed by TP Action lost to Democrats, including ex-Fox News anchor Kari Lake in her race for governor, and Mark Finchem in his bid to become secretary of state.
“Virtually every major race they touched they lost in the general election in Arizona,” the former Arizona congressman Matt Salmon said. “Everyone Trump endorses they get behind. It’s not clear if it’s the tail wagging the dog, or vice versa.”
Kolvet pushed back on criticism of the group’s 2022 results, noting that TP Action only spent $500,000 in total in several states in 2022, but that this year it intends to mount a much better-financed and robust effort, hiring hundreds of full-time employees for its “chase the vote” drive and seeking to raise an eye-popping $108m dollars.
TP Action’s aggressive fundraising could prove useful in other election-related projects this year that the group is likely to get involved with.
Austin Smith, a state legislator and TP Action’s enterprise director, in a tweet this week signaled an effort to oust several key election officials in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, in primaries this July.
Smith said “[we] need to clean house in Maricopa county” and cited, among other officers, the county recorder, the Republican lawyer Stephen Richer, who rejected unsubstantiated claims of voting fraud in 2020 and 2022.
Kolvet said TP Action to date hasn’t joined the effort, but added that “it’s more likely than not we’ll get involved in some of these races. We’re going to get behind conservative candidates.”
One key example: TP Action in February endorsed Trump loyalist Kari Lake’s 2024 Arizona senate campaign.
Kirk and TPUSA’s strong fundraising talents could prove helpful to TP Action’s current drive. TPUSA’s annual revenues have soared in recent years with help from leading rightwing donors including the Bradley Impact Fund, which chipped in $7.8m in 2022, the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation and dark-money behemoth Donors Trust.
TPUSA has also benefited mightily from hosting several gaudy gatherings at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and in tony Arizona venues that have drawn some big donors and conservative stars like the representatives Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz, and Don Trump Jr.
These events and mega-donor checks have helped make TPUSA a fundraising goliath: the group’s revenues soared from $39.8m dollars in 2020 to $55.8m in 2021 and $80.6m in 2022, according to public records.
TPUSA now employs 450 people and has broadened its focus from fighting left and “woke” influence on campuses to other culture war fronts by setting up a Turning Point Faith unit that’s hosted large gatherings at churches featuring Wallnau and other Christian nationalist figures.
Notwithstanding TPUSA’s fundraising successes, the organization and Kirk have been buffeted by criticism on multiple fronts. Late last year, Kirk ignited a political firestorm in mainstream GOP circles by using his eponymous radio show and an Arizona bash to make incendiary attacks on the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, which recycled old and unverified slurs about King, and disparaged Black airline pilots.
During a major TPUSA event in Arizona in December, Kirk opined that “MLK was awful. He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”
“Kirk’s cheapening of Martin Luther King’s legacy and disparaging remarks about Black pilots hurt our cause, and don’t help it,” Salmon of Arizona said, adding that Kirk is “one of the strongest voices for factionalism in the party”.
Other GOP veterans also voiced harsh critiques.
“Kirk chases conspiracies that animate his followers and generate funds,” the long-time GOP consultant Tyler Montague said. “Kirk has used this method to push conspiracies about election fraud, Christian nationalism, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and now he’s opened a new front in racism with his Martin Luther King attacks.”
Montague’s comments are in keeping with earlier criticism of Kirk for promoting Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud in 2020.
Kirk and TP Action collaborated with about a dozen other groups to bring busloads of Trump allies to DC to attend Trump’s 6 January March to Save America rally that preceded the mob attack on the Capitol.
Prior to the rally, Kirk predicted in a tweet it “would likely be one of the largest and most consequential in American history”, but he quickly deleted the tweet after the day’s violence.
Independent analysts who study misinformation criticize Kirk’s penchant for pushing conspiracies and false narratives on the Charlie Kirk Show, which runs daily on the evangelical Salem Radio Network.
“The Charlie Kirk Show consistently ranks high in the top 100 shows on Apple podcasts, and has been a leader in spreading false and unverified claims,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings Institution fellow in AI and emerging technologies.
Kirk’s dubious claims range “from the idea that the Covid-19 vaccine was poison, to the belief that the election was stolen in 2020 with fraudulent ballots, to claims that purported Ukrainian bioweapons facilities are somehow linked to Anthony Fauci,” she added.
Kirk had company in backing Trump’s election fraud claims, which could pose legal risks to a top TP Action official: Tyler Bowyer, the COO, who also had that title with TPUSA, and who was one of Arizona’s 11 fake electors for Trump in 2020. He and the other fake electors are facing a state attorney general probe.
The 11 fake electors filmed themselves signing documents stating they were legitimate electors, even though the then GOP governor, Doug Ducey, had certified Biden’s win by more than 10,000 votes.
Bowyer, an Arizona GOP national committeeman who signed paperwork falsely claiming that Trump had won, introduced a resolution at a Republican National Committee meeting that began in late January seeking to get the RNC to indemnify RNC members in multiple states who had been fake electors and who face legal bills due to state probes.
Bowyer justified his resolution by writing on X that “we need to send a clear signal that the RNC will defend those who serve as electors against Democratic radicals trying to criminalize civic engagement and process”.
The resolution didn’t pass, but to appease Trump backers the RNC pledged to “vocally” back individuals who “lawfully” served as Trump electors in states that Biden actually won.
Prosecutors in three states have brought charges against fake electors for sending certificates to Congress falsely stating Trump had won their states, and the justice department has probed fake elector schemes in multiple states in its wide-ranging inquiry into efforts by Trump and his allies to thwart Biden’s election.
Serendipitously, right before the RNC meeting, TP Action hosted a two-day summit dubbed Restoring National Confidence, which drew several big-name election deniers including My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, ex-Trump senior White House strategist Steve Bannon and Don Jr.
In a tweet, Don Jr wrote: “It was great speaking to all my friends at the Turning Point Restoring National Confidence Summit earlier this week.”
The tight ties between TPUSA and Don Jr were underscored in 2020 when TPUSA paid a company owned by Don Jr $333,000 to buy copies of one of his books, which TPUSA gave away as part of a fundraising drive, according to the Associated Press.
But watchdog groups are alarmed by TPUSA and TP Action’s record of promoting the ex-president’s bogus claims of election fraud, and candidates in Arizona in 2022 who espoused similar election falsehoods. They’re bracing for more in another heated election year.
“They’ve backed conspiracy theorists for high office, mobilized activists around the ‘big lie’ and hired one of Arizona’s fake electors to help run their campaign arm,” said Heather Sawyer, the president of the watchdog group American Oversight.
“Since January 6, TPUSA has become an animating force behind the election-denial movement.”
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Project 2025 - Monitoring Influence
The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank funded by shady dark money interests, has been plotting Project 2025, an unprecedented scheme to help the next conservative president quickly enact the most radical agenda in the history of the country. The plan is laying the groundwork for a new president to seize power and enact broad changes that are deeply unpopular with the American people. This includes vastly expanding the ability of the president to purge civil servants who are not sufficiently loyal to this extreme right-wing agenda.
Within the first 180 days of taking office, the plan calls for attacks on reproductive rights, the rule of law, and the expansion of the cruel and inhumane immigration policies from the Trump administration. Project 2025 is a comprehensive plan that would touch every department of the federal government and fundamentally reshape the lives of the American people. The Project’s four-pronged strategy that includes:
- A laundry list of extreme policies to be enacted across the federal government;
- A blueprint for how to use existing authority – or expand the power of the presidency – to implement right-wing policy proposals;
- A database of right-wing ideologues who wholeheartedly endorse this power grab and far-right policies;
- Training for staff so they can more efficiently enact this extreme agenda.
While Project 2025 is being run out of the Heritage Foundation, its advisors include former Trump White House aides like Stephen Miller, and more than half the groups supporting the effort have received $21.5 million in funding from Leonard Leo’s dark money network.
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