#Presidential Transitions

[deadpresidents]

"It hurt to lose to Ronald Reagan. But after the election, I tried to make the transition as smooth as possible. Later, from my experience in trying to brief him on matters of supreme importance, I was very disturbed at his lack of interest. The issues were the 15 or 20 most important subjects that I as President could possibly pass on to him. His only reaction of substance was to express admiration for the political circumstances in South Korea that let President Park close all the colleges and draft all the demonstrators. That was the only issue on which he came alive."

-- Former President Jimmy Carter, on losing the 1980 election and the transition leading to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, interview with TIME Magazine, October 11, 1982.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Eric Hananoki at MMFA:

Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official and the director of Project 2025, told a right-wing podcast last year that his group has a “great” relationship with former President Donald Trump, and “Trump's very bought in with this.” His comments fly in the face of Trump’s recent attempts to distance himself from Project 2025.  Project 2025, which is organized by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, states that “Dans directs Heritage’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project, organizing policy and personnel recommendations and training for appointees in the next presidential administration. Prior to joining Heritage, Dans served in the Trump Administration as Chief of Staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.”  Media Matters has heavily documented the extreme nature of Project 2025. Notably, Heritage Foundation president and key Project 2025 figure Kevin Roberts recently sparked heavy criticism when he said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” 

Following the controversy, Trump attempted to distance himself from the Heritage plan and has repeatedly claimed, “I know nothing about Project 2025.” But media outlets including Media Matters have documented the numerous connections between the project and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.  Dans himself appears to have contradicted Trump’s claim that he knows nothing about the project.

In an unearthed video by MMFA, Project 2025 Director Paul Dans has praised Donald Trump and said that he’s “very bought in with this.”

See Also:

MMFA: Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts on WMAL's The Vince Coglianese Show: “The overlap is tremendous” between Trump's campaign platform and Project 2025

[cvntyboylove-666]

If you believe at all in astrology or psychic abilities, please do not ignore this. Pluto is moving into Aquarius on the 19th of this month, aka the planet associated with innovation, equality, and REVOLUTION, after the shitshow that was the American presidential election. This is the first time in over 200 years this has happened, (the American Revolution started 248 years ago, which is also the last time Pluto was in Aquarius!!!) Aquarius is the sign driving us to consider collective ideals, humanitarian improvement, utopia vs dystopia in our society, I mean, helloooo!!! Pluto's strongest potential is in EMPOWERMENT. I just felt very drawn to look into this and share with ya'll. I know not everyone believes in astrology or witchcraft, but the spiritually tuned in knew when trump was elected, I myself had a dream that he was elected and woke up the next day and he had. Of course this is majorly scary, but many psychics have been feeling and receiving peaceful signs that it will be okay or that now is the time to be bold. This is kind of the biggest astrological deal of our era. For those who practice please do what you can to protect yourselves, spread news of this and manifest all good and positive things for our collective future. Pluto will remain in Aquarius until 2043, almost 20 years, so get ready for some big changes. Love ya'll, stay safe and don't give up <3

[exploding-asteroid]

remember that

to exist nonetheless

is the most profound form of spite

our existence is resistance

do not let them take that away

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Tim Campbell

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 7, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 08, 2025

Today, President Joe Biden signed proclamations that create the Chuckwalla National Monument and the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, protecting 848,000 acres (about 3,430 square kilometers) of land in southern California’s Eastern Coachella Valley. Under the 1906 Antiquities Act, the president can designate national monuments to protect areas of “scientific, cultural, ecological, and historic importance.”

Yesterday, Biden protected the East Coast, the West Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea—an area that makes up about 625 million acres or 2.5 million square kilometers—from oil and natural gas drilling. While there is currently little interest among oil companies in drilling in those areas, the new designation will protect them into the future. Noting that nearly 40% of Americans live in coastal communities, Biden said the minimal fossil fuel potential was not worth the risks that drilling would bring to the fishing and tourist industries and to environmental and public health.

The White House noted that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have “conserved more lands and waters”—more than 670 million acres of them—and have “deployed more clean energy, and made more progress in cutting climate pollution and advancing environmental justice than any previous administration.” At the same time, oil and gas production is at an all-time high, demonstrating that land protection and energy production can coexist.

While oil executives blasted Biden’s proclamation protecting the coastal waters, Democratic lawmakers on the newly protected coasts cheered his action, recognizing that oil spills devastate the tourism and fishing on which their constituents depend: the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, for example, killed 11 people, closed 32,000 square miles (82,880 square kilometers) of the Gulf of Mexico to fishing, and has cost more than $65 billion in compensation alone.

Biden protected the oceans under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which enables presidents to withdraw federal waters from future oil and gas leasing and development but does not say that future presidents can revoke that protection to put those waters back into development, meaning that Trump—who similarly protected coastal waters when he was president—will have a hard time overturning Biden’s action.

Nonetheless, Trump’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt called Biden’s decision “disgraceful” and claimed it was “designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices. Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill.”

Journalist Wes Siler, who writes about the outdoors, environment, and the law, notes that there is a major effort underway among Republicans to privatize public lands to benefit oil and gas industries, as well as other extractive industries, just as Project 2025 outlined. Melinda Taylor, senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin Law School, told Bloomberg Law in November: “Project 2025 is a ‘wish list’ for the oil and gas and mining industries and private developers. It promotes opening up more of our federal land to energy development, rolling back protections on federal lands, and selling off more land to private developers.”

In September, Siler wrote in Outside that politicians in Utah have designed a lawsuit to put in front of the Supreme Court. It argues that all the land in Utah currently in the hands of the Bureau of Land Management—18.5 million acres—should be transferred to the control of the state of Utah.

Those eager to get their hands on the land use the words “unappropriated lands” from the 1862 Homestead Act to claim that the federal government is holding the land “without any designated purpose.”

But, as Siler notes, in 2023, BLM-managed land supported 783,000 jobs and produced $201 billion in economic output, and in Utah alone the use of BLM land created more than 36,000 jobs and $6.7 billion in economic output as more than 15 million people visited the state’s public lands. Utah realized hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes on that activity, and while it’s true that states cannot tax federal government lands—as lawmakers say—the government pays the state in lieu of taxes: $128.7 million in 2021.

Transferring that land to the state would sacrifice these funds, and because the state constitution requires the state both to balance its budget and to realize profits from state land, that transfer would facilitate the land’s sale to private interests.

Twelve states have now joined Utah’s lawsuit, arguing that federal control of “unappropriated” land within states impinges on state sovereignty, and they are asking the Supreme Court to take up the case as part of its original jurisdiction. As Siler noted in a May article in Outside, Chief Justice John Roberts has expressed an eagerness to revisit the legality of the Antiquities Act the presidents use to protect land—as Biden did today—suggesting he would be willing to side with the states against the federal government. Project 2025 also calls for Congress to repeal the Antiquities Act.

In Wes Siler’s Newsletter yesterday, Siler noted that the new rules package adopted for the 119th Congress makes it easier to transfer public lands to state control. The rules strip away the need to justify the cost of such a transfer and to offset it with budget cuts or increased revenue elsewhere.

In a press conference today, Trump said he would rescind Biden’s policies and “put it back on day one,” and complained that the 625 million acres Biden protected feels “like the whole ocean,” although the Pacific Ocean alone is almost 38 billion acres more than Biden protected.

Also today, Trump announced that a developer from Dubai, DAMAC Properties, will invest at least $20 billion in the U.S. to create new data centers that support artificial intelligence and cloud services. Trump claimed that the company’s chief executive officer, Hussain Sajwani, is investing in the U.S. “because of the fact that he was very inspired by the election,” but DAMAC has been connected to Trump for a while.

Sajwani attended Trump’s first inauguration, and a company tied to chair and current board member of DAMAC Farooq Arjomand paid $600,000 to the key witness for the House Republicans seeking to dig up dirt on President Biden. That man was Alexander Smirnov, who in December 2024 pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI when he claimed Biden had taken bribes from the Ukrainian company Burisma.

Data centers are notoriously high users of energy. They consume 10 to 50 times as much energy per floor space as does a typical commercial office building, which might have something to do with why Trump’s team is so eager to increase American energy production even as it is already at an all-time high. Trump has promised companies that invest a billion or more dollars in the U.S. that they will get expedited approvals and permits, including those covering environmental concerns.

But if the larger story of this moment is the plunder of our public resources for private interests, Trump’s press conference in general seemed to have a different theme. It was what CNN perhaps euphemistically called “wide ranging,” as he abandoned his “America First” isolationism to suggest using force against China as well as U.S. allies Denmark, Panama, Mexico, and Canada, which would destabilize the globe by rejecting the central principle of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that countries must respect each other’s sovereignty. He wildly suggested that the Iran-backed Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah was part of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and that his people were part of the negotiations for the return of the Israeli hostages.

Trump’s performance was reminiscent of his off-the-wall press conferences during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, which tanked his popularity enough to get his team to stop him from doing them. Trump might have chosen to speak today to keep attention away from the arrival of the casket carrying former president Jimmy Carter to Washington, D.C., where it was transported by horse-drawn caisson to the Capitol, where Carter will lie in state in the Rotunda until his Thursday funeral at Washington National Cathedral. The snow and frigid weather were not enough to keep mourners away, and Trump has already expressed frustration that Carter’s death will mean that flags will be at half-staff for his own inauguration.

But he also might have been trying to demonstrate that the transition from Biden’s administration to his own is taking his time and energy in order to add heft to the argument his lawyers made yesterday. They demanded that Attorney General Merrick Garland prevent the public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report about his investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election because making Trump respond to the media frenzy the report will stir up would take his attention away from the presidential transition.

Trump managed to defang most of the legal cases against him by being elected president, but he apparently still fears the release of Smith’s report. Today, Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed to the bench and who dismissed the charges against Trump in his retention of classified documents, issued an order preventing the Department of Justice from releasing the report. Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe noted that the order “has no legal basis and ought to be reversed quickly—but these days nobody can be confident that law will matter.”

The presidential immunity on which Trump apparently is relying has also failed to protect him from being sentenced in the election interference case in which a Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 felonies. In Civil Discourse, legal analyst Joyce White Vance explained that Trump wants to stop the sentencing process because it triggers a thirty-day period for Trump to appeal. “Once the appeal is concluded,” she explains, “the conviction is final.” Trump was apparently hoping to hold off that process and buy four years to come up with a way out of a permanent designation as a felon.

It didn’t work. Today, appeals court judge Ellen Gesmer rejected his attempt to stop the sentencing. It will go forward on Friday as planned.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[hale-nathan]

Trump Weird News - Project 2025 - Really, Still in Denial?

[astrosouldivinity]

2024 Election Analysis

Saturn and Mercury are in retrograde and Saturn is currently squaring the planet Mars, which moved into Leo just a day before the election. This energy is both aggressive and destructive, and it brings forth a sense of karmic influence.

Transiting Kamala’s 10th house, Saturn symbolizes karma, while the 10th house is associated with public image and career. Meanwhile, Neptune, also transiting her 10th house, represents illusions and deception. I would think that these astrological influences created barriers for her public image and career trajectory. While there are many other factors in both Kamala and Trump’s charts that explain his victory, it appears that, at an energetic level, this outcome was supposed to unfold.

Energy is always shifting, and nothing is set in stone within this matrix. There can still be various external influences at play. However, it’s been quite interesting analyzing the patterns.

-Kiki

[guiltyidealist]

In case you haven't had the chance to go through the specifics of Project 25, here's the Wikipedia blurb with some key highlights.

( Please be very alarmed by the statement "we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be" )

[tomorrowusa]

One bit of good news which may have been overlooked in some quarters.

Changes in the way Electoral Votes are counted will make it impossible for Trumpsters to change the results the way they tried in January 2021.

In 2020, election disruptors first tried to get state legislatures to overthrow votes by fiat, then to get Congress to throw out electoral votes on January 6.  In 2024, it will be impossible to pursue either.  The dream of election deniers has been to have persons with power block election certification. Since 2020, all those people have lost at state level. This legislation  closed the gaps and vulnerabilities. 

Read the article for more details.

Curiously, Trump and Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson have a "little secret" regarding the House.

Personally, I think it's probably bullshit. Trump is not the greatest person at keeping secrets though he does excel at bullshit.

Of course if Democrats have a net gain of just six seats in the House, MAGA Mike will not be Speaker on 06 January 2025.

So do not neglect House races. It's interesting that the best chances for Democratic gains are in two blue states (New York, California) and one purple state (Arizona).

I'll try to get more specific in a day or two. But a couple of favorite Dem House candidates of mine are Derek Tran who is trying to unseat Michelle Steel in CA-45 and Josh Riley who is challenging Marc Molinaro in NY-19. Both races are rated as tossups by The Center for Politics at U. of Virginia.

A way to broadly help Dem House candidates is through the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

Join Our Campaign to Defeat Trump's Republican Agenda

Think back to 06 January 2021. Now imagine how things might have gone if the Speaker had been some Trump lickspittle instead of Nancy Pelosi. That's why Dem House candidates need your help.

[boypopmusic]

this planet is a prison

[tacticalthaumaturge]

I'm starting to see seemingly unironic posts to the tune of "Biden's useless because he's not taking advantage of the 7/1/24 presidential immunity decision to persecute his political enemies" and

Is that *really* the hill the tumblr left wants to die on? Is it really? That authoritarianism is good, actually, as long as its one of "our guys" doing it?

All I'm saying is that if we're gonna clown (because we gotta process somehow), just be mindful of Poe's Law. And if you're being serious here... the idea that unchecked power is a good thing, actually, is one I don't see compatible with a pluralistic society, and I'm curious why you think it is.

[deadpresidents]

"I had learned this morning that Mr. Buchanan had taken exception to my remark on Saturday last that I should feel that I was deserted by my political family if the members of my Cabinet should call on the President-elect before he called on me. The remark was made because it might have happened that if my Cabinet called on General Taylor he might not afterwards have chosen to call on me at all. As General Taylor belongs to a different political party from myself, and as it was his duty to call on me, if he desired to exchange civilities, I thought it was due to their own self-respect as well as to me that my Cabinet should wait until General Taylor paid his respects to me before they paid their respects to him. In this view all the members of the Cabinet expressed their concurrence on Saturday, except Mr. Buchanan. I learned this morning that Mr. Buchanan had said to a member of the Cabinet that notwithstanding my remark on Saturday he had left the Cabinet-room resolved to call on General Taylor on that day, as General Shields by appointment had called at the State Department to accompany him. He did not, however, do so; but called on General Taylor yesterday, immediately after General Taylor had called on me. Mr. Buchanan is an able man, but is in small matters without judgment and sometimes acts like an old maid."

-- President James K. Polk, on his Secretary of State James Buchanan, shortly before the inauguration of Polk's successor, President-elect Zachary Taylor, in an entry in Polk's remarkable and often immensely petty personal diary (which he religiously updated throughout his Presidency), February 27, 1849.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Hugo Lowell at The Guardian:

Donald Trump’s transition team is planning for all cabinet picks to receive sweeping security clearances from the president-elect and only face FBI background checks after the incoming administration takes over the bureau and its own officials are installed in key positions, according to people familiar with the matter.

The move appears to mean that Trump’s team will continue to skirt FBI vetting and may not receive classified briefings until Trump is sworn in on 20 January and unilaterally grant sweeping security clearances across the administration. Trump’s team has regarded the FBI background check process with contempt for months, a product of their deep distrust of the bureau ever since officials turned over transition records to the Russia investigation during the first Trump presidency, the people said. But delaying FBI vetting could also bring ancillary PR benefits for the Trump team if some political appointees run into problems during a background check, which could upend their Senate confirmation process, or if they struggle to obtain security clearances once in the White House. The putative process for obtaining a clearance in the first Trump administration involved the White House’s personnel security office relying on an FBI background check to decide whether to grant one. The background check initially looked for untrustworthiness or red flags that could be exploited by adversaries.

If the initial checks against law enforcement databases uncovered no issues, applicants were granted an interim clearance while deeper investigations continued until it was advanced to a permanent clearance. The current Trump plan appears set to bypass that initial stage.

[...] Trump’s team have long viewed the process with suspicion, arguing that it was pointless to have government employees have the ability to recommend against granting a security clearance given Trump has the power, as president, to ultimately give clearances to whomever he likes. Trump himself has repeatedly railed against the FBI of being part of the “deep state” conspiracy to undermine his agenda.

Trump Transition Team endangers national security by delaying FBI background checks until after he takes over the remaking of the FBI in his image.

[cvntyboylove-666]

what about the psychics who thought kamala would win, but felt something was really wrong the day before and after the election? do u think there’s something there?

I heard of a few psychics who thought Kamala would win, and couldn't help getting a weird feeling about it. I have a couple of theories about that. One is that they were also getting signs that everything would be okay and took it as meaning Kamala would win, or they simply may have gotten it wrong. Another theory is that there might be a vote recount (because something was definitely fishy about trump's win) and they were right all along. We won't know until we know, I guess. Using psychic abilities is like doing anything else, you might not get it right all the time.

[ladyluscinia]

If the Democrats fuck this up so help me...