#Mandy Gunasekara

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Andra Watkins at How Project 2025 Will Ruin YOUR Life:

Here’s a list of every listed Project 2025 author who worked in 45’s administration. 26 of 36 total authors. (72%) Jonathan Berry - US Department of Justice Adam Candeub - Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Deputy Associate Attorney General Brendan Carr - Senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., MD - Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development Ken Cuccinelli - Acting Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services; Acting Deputy Secretary for the US Department of Homeland Security

Rick Dearborn - Deputy Chief of Staff Diana Furchtgott-Roth - Deputy Assistant Secretary at the US Department of Transportation Thomas F. Gilman - Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Chief Financial Officer at the US Department of Commerce Mandy M. Gunasekara - Chief of Staff at the Environmental Protection Agency Gene Hamilton - Counselor to the Attorney General at the US Department of Justice Jennifer Hazelton - senior strategic consultant for the Department of Defense Dennis Dean Kirk - senior positions at the Office of Personnel Management

Christopher Miller - several positions during the 45 administration in areas of defense Mora Namdar - Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Peter Navarro - Director of 45’s Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy; also went to jail William Perry Pendley - led the Bureau of Land Management for 45** Max Primorac - acting Chief Operating Officer and Assistant to the Administrator, Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance, US Agency for International Development Roger Severino - Director of Civil Rights at the US Department of Health and Human Services Kiron K. Skinner - Director of Policy Planning and Senior Advisor at the US Department of State

Brooks D Tucker - Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Legislative Affairs and Acting Chief of Staff Hans A von Spakovsky - former member of 45’s Advisory Committee on Election Integrity Russ Vought - Director of the Office of Management and Budget William L. Walton - member of 45’s transition team Paul Winfree - member of 45’s transition team Paul Dans - Chief of Staff at the US Office of Personnel Management and senior advisor at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development Steven Groves - Assistant Special Counsel, the Mueller investigation If 25 of the 36 listed authors of Project 2025 worked in my former administration, there’s NO WAY I wouldn’t know about it.

Andra Watkins has a list of the Project 2025 authors who worked for Donald Trump.

[meteorologistaustenlonek]

"Everything You Need to Know About Project 2025's Plan for the EPA"

"That woman watching James Inhofe hold a snowball on the floor of Congress to “disprove” global warming?

That’s the lead author of #Project2025’s section on destroying the EPA.

Great catch by @amywestervelt . Read more here"

--- Jamie Henn @jamieclimate Director, Fossil Free Media

[beardedmrbean]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) didn't report a staggering $7 billion in award-level obligations and outlays during fiscal year 2022, according to an inspector general audit released this week.

The EPA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) determined that the agency underreported its award-level outlays by $5.8 billion, or 99.9%, and its award-level obligations by $1.2 billion, or 12.9% during FY22, the period between October 2021 and September 2022. The agency further failed to report any of its Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act outlays and under-reported its coronavirus pandemic-related outlays.

"The lack of complete and accurate reporting also led to taxpayers being initially misinformed about the EPA’s spending, and policy-makers who relied on the data may not have been able to effectively track federal spending," the OIG report concluded.

In response to the audit, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., blasted the EPA and called for increased transparency into its activities. 

"It’s outrageous and unacceptable that the EPA cannot keep track of its spending or inform Congress — and the American people — of how it is using taxpayer dollars," McMorris Rodgers said in a statement Thursday. "This eye-opening report only further highlights the need for more transparency at the EPA."

"It also raises questions about whether the agency is incapable of managing its record-high budget or if the agency is attempting to hide the amount of taxpayer dollars it is spending to advance the administration’s radical rush-to-green agenda," she added. "The Energy and Commerce Committee will continue holding this administration accountable for its actions that are driving up costs across the board and hurting Americans."

MICHIGAN DEMOCRAT SIGNED NDA INVOLVING CCP-TIED COMPANY, DOCUMENTS SHOW, CONTRADICTING HER PAST CLAIMS

The EPA ultimately corrected its FY22 figures in May 2023 as a result of the OIG audit while making configuration changes a month later. Overall, the inspector general made five recommendations which it said the agency agreed to make.

The report, meanwhile, comes as the EPA both manages a massive green energy fund and continues to request a larger budget. The Inflation Reduction, Democrats' massive climate and tax bill passed in 2022, created the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which in turn establishes a national green bank to fund green projects nationwide.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS OPEN PROBE INTO BIDEN ADMIN FOR OPENING PUBLIC LANDS TO FOREIGN OWNERSHIP

And the White House is requesting that Congress approve a FY24 EPA budget of more than $12 billion, a record level. Republicans have aimed to reduce the EPA budget to about $6 billion, which would be the agency's smallest budget since the early 1990s.

"The Biden administration is using EPA as a pass through for taxpayer dollars to fund left-wing groups that aim to get Democrats elected, not improve the environment," Mandy Gunasekara, a Heritage Foundation visiting fellow who served as the EPA's chief of staff during the Trump administration, told Fox News Digital.

"A failure to report $7 billion is absurd and unacceptable, but also symbolic of how Team Biden operates: prioritizing their political goals over the needs of the American people," she continued. "I’m glad Chair Rodgers is monitoring this and hope the committee brings forth the agency’s Chief Financial Officer to account for this serious oversight."

The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Okay things are going a little too fast right now with a response is about project 2025,

First about Biden I saw this post that was saying that project 2025 is already here and Biden is already moving those goals and you did criticized Biden for being an enemy to LGBT+ by radicalizing him and I kind of got the impression that he shouldn't explicitly support the movement.

https://www.tumblr.com/decolonize-the-left/745588100726734848/i-saw-your-post-about-the-leopards-eating-faces

Secondly I kind of felt the same way with it not being talked about anywhere. Not even like popular people that like covers politics at times don't even bring it up like not even as like an offhanded comment.

3rd verify this a little bit more there are people that kind of sounds like they support it and is that that people from Trump's administration like Jonathan Berry; Ben Carson; Ken Cuccinelli; Rick Dearborn; Thomas Gilman; Mandy Gunasekara; Gene Hamilton; Christopher Miller; Bernard McNamee; Stephen Moore; Mora Namdar; Peter Navarro; William Perry Pendley; Diana Furchtgott-Roth; Kiron Skinner; Roger Severino; Hans von Spakovsky; Brooks Tucker; Russell Vought; and Paul Winfree support it.

Yeaaaaah a racist they/them with a cashapp link in their bio is exactly the kind of outrage hustler I'd expect to be propping up something like Project 2025. That's exactly why it's bullshit. Nobody but these people are talking about it. They're the QAnon of the left.

So I'm going to roll your previous question about Biden (now that I know what you meant) in with your question about Trump, since my answer is the same in both cases. So here we go. Project 2025 is a very detailed proposal that touches on literally every single aspect of politics. Just by the law of averages, you're going to find politicians in every party doing something outlined on the Project 2025 website solely because there's so much there. And similarly, you're going to find a lot of good ideas and a lot of bad ideas solely because there are so many ideas and proposals presented. There are hundreds of pages of PDFs on that site. I have not read them all, not even close. But I did randomly skim to get an idea of what they're putting out there, and there's a lot of common sense stuff in there. Like shrinking the bureaucracy and dismantling Homeland Security entirely. There's stuff about eliminating security flaws in certain government offices and ending the department of education and putting the states back in charge of their own schools. Most of these things I'm reading with my random skim are pretty mainstream modern conservative/libertarian positions. Again, I'm not reading the whole thing, and I won't because I'm not insane, but I'm not seeing anything in what I'm reading, or in the headlines of each different chapter, that warrants the kind of pearl clutching panic the fringe left seems to have for this thing.

As for the endorsements, the site has a list of 100 organizations that they claim support the Project, but they link to no statements or even to the organizations themselves, so I have no idea how legit the endorsements are or where you're getting your info about the people you listed above. I'm going to guess it's from a left wing website unless you personally went out and found statements from these people supporting the Project, and I'm gonna tell you right now, if you did get it from a far left website I'm just going to assume they're lying, just like I'm going to assume they're lying about everything they're saying about Project 2025 since that's what sites like that tend to do. Lie to keep people scared, keep the clicks coming, and keep those cashapp transfers going strong.

[lboogie1906]

Project 2025 is a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican candidate win the 2024 presidential election. It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees to replace them with those who are willing to enact the wishes of the next Republican president. The president will have absolute power over the executive branch. Critics have characterized it as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to transform the US into an autocracy. It would undermine the rule of law, the separation of powers, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties.

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Paul Dans, the director, said the project is “systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state.” It proposes deploying the military for domestic law enforcement.

its partners employ over 200 former officials from the Trump administration. Notable authors of the project’s Mandate for Leadership include many officials and advisors from the Trump administration, including Jonathan Berry, Ben Carson, Ken Cuccinelli, Rick Dearborn, Thomas Gilman, Mandy Gunasekara, Gene Hamilton, Christopher Miller, Bernard McNamee, Stephen Moore, Mora Namdar, Peter Navarro, William Perry Pendley, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Kiron Skinner, Roger Severino, Hans von Spakovsky, Brooks Tucker, Russell Vought, and Paul Winfree.

Former president Trump has never publicly endorsed it, and his campaign downplayed it in November 2023 as mere “policy recommendations from external allies.” He disavowed it in July 2024, days after Kevin Roberts's remarks. Several critics expressed skepticism of his denial.

The leaders began recruiting people for future government posts in the event of a Republican victory. #knowledgeispower #votelikeyourlifedependsonit #trumpsproject2025

[arpov-blog-blog]

..."An alliance of rightwing groups has crafted an extensive presidential proposal to bolster the planet-heating oil and gas industry and hamstring the energy transition, it has emerged.

Against a backdrop of record-breaking heat and floods this year, the $22m endeavor, Project 2025, was convened by the notorious rightwing, climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, which has ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch.

Called the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, it is meant to guide the first 180 days of presidency for an incoming Republican president. Climate experts and advocates criticized planning that would dismantle US climate policy.

The nearly 1,000-page transition guide was written by more than 350 rightwingers and is full of sweeping recommendations to deconstruct all sectors of the federal government– – including environmental policy.

“Heritage is convening the conservative movement behind the policies to ensure that the next president has the right policy and personnel necessary to dismantle the administrative state and restore self-governance to the American people,” the foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, said in an April statement.

The guide’s chapter on the US Department of Energy proposes eliminating three agency offices that are crucial for the energy transition, and also calls to slash funding to the agency’s grid deployment office in an effort to stymie renewable energy deployment, E&E News reported this week.

The plan, which would hugely expand gas infrastructure, was authored by Bernard McNamee, a former official at the agency. McNamee was also a Trump appointee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He previously led the far-right Texas Public Policy Foundation, which fights environmental regulation, and served as a senior adviser to the Republican senator Ted Cruz.

Another chapter focuses on gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and moving it away from its focus on the climate crisis. It proposes cutting the agency’s environmental justice and public engagement functions, while shrinking it as a whole by terminating new hires in “low-value programs”, E&E News reported. The proposal was written Mandy Gunasekara, who was the former chief of staff at the EPA under Trump.

The guide also features a chapter on the Department of the Interior written by William Perry Pendley, who controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump and worked to eliminate drilling regulations.

Earlier this month, the Clean Budget Coalition– – composed of more than 250 advocacy groups – warned that Republican representatives were slipping restrictions on climate spending into the government’s annual spending bills, bills that must be passed before current funding expires on 30 September to avoid a government shutdown. This week, the coalition found that House Republicans had added additional “poison pills” to spending bills, including ones that target environmental funding."

[garyrevel]

Lesbian Congresswoman, Becca Balint, tries to educate ignorant Mandy Gunasekara on transgender facts

From LGBTQNation linked at Lesbian Congresswoman slams ex-Trump official for saying investment strategies turn kids transgender (msn.com) Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) slammed a former Trump administration official yesterday at a House Oversight Committee hearing after she claimed that certain investment strategies can turn kids transgender. The hearing is one of many that the GOP-controlled House…

[rpnewspaperblog]

MANDY GUNASEKARA: Conservatives Should Speak Up On The Environment | Newstalk Florida

Mandy Gunasekara  From clean air to climate change to emergency response, conservative leaders can and should lead the environmental policy space. We’ve got to get fear and politics out and focus on what will make a tangible difference in improving the lives and health of all Americans. The original environmental movement in the U.S. started this way, but for a variety of reasons, it has lost…

[notwiselybuttoowell]

[dailyvideovault]

New video posted on: https://dailyvideovault.com/democratic-candidates-criticize-trump-at-climate-change-forum/

Democratic candidates criticize Trump at climate change forum

[feelingbluepolitics]

*** Highest recommendation. ***

"The agency will change the way it calculates the benefits of mercury controls, a move that would effectively loosen the rules on other toxic pollutants."

"The [t]rump administration on Thursday will weaken regulations on the release of mercury and other toxic metals from oil and coal-fired power plants, another step toward rolling back health protections in the middle of a pandemic.

"The final Environmental Protection Agency rule does not eliminate restrictions on the release of mercury, a heavy metal linked to brain damage. Instead, it creates a new method of calculating the costs and benefits of curbing mercury pollution that environmental lawyers said would fundamentally undermine the legal underpinnings of controls on mercury and many other pollutants.

"By reducing the positive health effects of regulations on paper and raising their economic costs, the new method could be used to justify loosening restrictions on any pollutant that the fossil fuel industry has deemed too costly to control.

"'That is the big unstated goal,' said David Konisky, a professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University. 'This is less about mercury than about potentially constraining or handcuffing future efforts by the E.P.A. to regulate air pollution.'

..."The proposed change is the latest in the [t]rump administration’s long-running effort to roll back environmental regulations and reduce regulatory burdens, particularly on the coal, oil and gas industries. Over the past three years the administration has weakened rules to cut planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, restrict coal companies from dumping debris in streams and claimed falsely that [t]rump has revived the dying coal industry.

"Over the past few weeks as the nation struggled with the coronavirus, the administration has also rushed to loosen curbs on automobile tailpipe emissions, opted not to strengthen a regulation on industrial soot emissions and moved to drop the threat of punishment to companies that kill birds 'incidentally.'

"The deregulatory push appears designed to secure less restrictive rules quickly, in case Republicans lose control of Congress and the White House in November. A new government could move quickly under the Congressional Review Act to overturn any regulation or federal rule within 60 days of it being finalized — making any rule completed after late May or early June vulnerable.

..."The mercury rollback is a particular victory for Robert E. Murray, the former chief executive of Murray Energy Corporation and a top fund-raiser for [t]rump. Mr. Murray personally requested the rollback in a written 'wish list' to top officials shortly after [trump] took office. The company has since declared bankruptcy and is undergoing a reorganization.

"Mandy Gunasekara, a Republican strategist, testified in February to a House committee that the changes to the mercury rule, then in the planning stages, would 'fix a dishonest accounting mechanism that the last administration used to justify any regulatory action regardless of costs.' Ms. Gunasekara has since become chief of staff to Andrew R. Wheeler, the E.P.A. administrator.

"Environmental lawyers and public health leaders called the timing of the final mercury rule, as well as its substance, an attack on air quality.

"'What is most disconcerting to me is this administration’s lack of interest in science and, frankly, their lack of concern for our nation’s children,' said Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 'Mercury pollution in the United States damages our children’s brains before they even come into the world, and estimates are that that cost is in the billions of dollars.'

"Patrick Parenteau, a professor at the Vermont Law School, noted that in virtually every environmental rollback, [t]rump’s E.P.A. has acknowledged in the fine print that enormous increases in health problems and deaths will occur because of increased pollution.

"A plan to weaken carbon dioxide emissions at power plants, for example, predicted as many as 1,400 additional premature deaths a year. A draft analysis of the soot policy put forward this week showed that tightening the existing standard by 25 percent could save as many as 12,150 lives a year.

"Two people close to the administration said the White House was concerned enough about the public perception of loosening environmental rules during the outbreak that it held the mercury plan for several weeks after it passed a review from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. E.P.A. officials assured the White House that the agency was merely responding as required to a 2015 Supreme Court ruling that found it must justify the economic impact of the mercury standards.

"The weakening of the mercury rule would be one of the most significant regulatory rollbacks engineered by the [t]rump administration."

[blue-politics-reblogs]

"When the chemical company Brenntag received a fine in 2017, the National Association of Chemical Distributors asked for help from two new [t]rump administration appointees who previously worked in chemical lobbying, according to emails obtained by The Hill through a Freedom of Information Act request.

"The two appointees were Mandy Gunasekara, a former NACD lobbyist who is now chief of staff at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Nancy Beck, former president of the American Chemistry Council. Beck, now detailed at the White House, has been nominated by [t]rump to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission."

Beck has been in the news as the person who buried CDC's pandemic guidances, withholding public release.

..."Brenntag was ultimately fined, although the penalty it received was roughly 20 percent lower than the one initially proposed by the EPA." 

[updexnews]

Democratic candidates criticize Trump at climate change forum

Democratic candidates criticize Trump at climate change forum

[ad_1]

Ten Democratic presidential candidates blasted the Trump administration’s environmental policies at a forum dedicated to the topic of climate change Wednesday night. Mandy Gunasekara, a former senior Trump EPA official, joined “Red and Blue” to defend the president’s approach, while Axios energy and climate change reporter Amy Harder provided a fact check for Democrats and Republicans.

[tomorrowusa]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in response to public demand after the first Earth Day in 1970. Almost half a century later,  Donald Trump has turned the EPA into a corrupt cesspool run by polluters, climate deniers, and energy industry flunkies.

Bill Wehrum is an assistant administrator at the EPA. What apparently got him that appointment was that he was previously a major lobbyist for polluting utility companies. 

Wehrum is certainly not the first dodgy official Trump placed in the EPA. Trump’s first EPA head was the farcically corrupt Scott Pruitt. VICE reminds us how Pruitt was sleazy and incompetent even my the low standards of this administration.

Scott Pruitt Was Somehow Too Dumb and Corrupt Even for Trump

[alterannews]

American farmers should be on edge about this: Mandy Gunasekara

American farmers should be on edge about this: Mandy Gunasekara

(more…)

[lboogie1906]

Project 2025 is a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican candidate win the 2024 presidential election. It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees to replace them with those who are willing to enact the wishes of the next Republican president. The president will have absolute power over the executive branch. Critics have characterized it as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to transform the US into an autocracy. It would undermine the rule of law, the separation of powers, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties.

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Paul Dans, the director, said the project is “systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state.” It proposes deploying the military for domestic law enforcement.

its partners employ over 200 former officials from the Trump administration. Notable authors of the project’s Mandate for Leadership include many officials and advisors from the Trump administration, including Jonathan Berry, Ben Carson, Ken Cuccinelli, Rick Dearborn, Thomas Gilman, Mandy Gunasekara, Gene Hamilton, Christopher Miller, Bernard McNamee, Stephen Moore, Mora Namdar, Peter Navarro, William Perry Pendley, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Kiron Skinner, Roger Severino, Hans von Spakovsky, Brooks Tucker, Russell Vought, and Paul Winfree.

Former president Trump has never publicly endorsed it, and his campaign downplayed it in November 2023 as mere “policy recommendations from external allies.” He disavowed it in July 2024, days after Kevin Roberts's remarks. Several critics expressed skepticism of his denial.

The leaders began recruiting people for future government posts in the event of a Republican victory. #knowledgeispower #votelikeyourlifedependsonit