#kamala policy page

[kp777]

By Julia Conley

Common Dreams

July 23, 2024

The right-wing agenda gets less popular the more voters learn about it, a new poll shows.

New polling out on Tuesday suggests that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's best hope for Project 2025, the far-right policy agenda that at least 140 of his former administration officials helped craft, was that most Americans would remain unfamiliar with it.

Over the past month, though, a growing number of voters have learned more about the 900-page plan spearheaded by the right-wing Heritage Foundation—and public opinion of the agenda has plummeted as it's become more widely known.

Progressive polling firm Navigator Research found in a survey conducted between July 11-14 that 54% of Americans were familiar with Project 2025, which calls for the weakening and eradication of federal agencies and the consolidation of power with the president, the elimination of job protections of thousands of federal employees, and the withdrawal of mifepristone—a pill used in a majority of abortions in the U.S.—from the market.

That's an increase of 25 percentage points from Navigator's poll on Project 2025 just one month ago, said the firm.

Just 11% of people polled viewed the agenda favorably, while 43% had unfavorable views—a 24-point increase since June.

Project 2025 appears to especially be galvanizing Democratic voters, 71% of whom said they were aware of the document. Nearly two-thirds of Democrats said they had unfavorable views of Project 2025, and 62% said their opinion was "very unfavorable."

Nearly two-thirds of independent voters said they still didn't know enough about the project to have an opinion, but 28% of independent respondents said they had an unfavorable view of the agenda.

Overall, said Navigator, "the recent upsurge in conversations and news coverage about the plan" since June has resulted in a greater number of Americans having negative views of Project 2025.

Following President Joe Biden's announcement on Sunday that he was ending his campaign for reelection and instead endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, the vice president took direct aim at Project 2025 in her speech officially announcing her intention to seek the Democratic Party's nomination.

"I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda," said Harris.

The vice president linked Trump to Project 2025 despite his attempts to distance himself from the agenda. As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, another poll by Navigator Research showed that 63% of Americans believed Project 2025 described Trump's vision and plans even as he claimed he "knew nothing" about the agenda and didn't know who was behind it.

Former Trump administration officials Russ Vought, who led the Office of Management and Budget, and John McEntee, who served as the White House personnel director, are among the co-authors of Project 2025.

The poll released on Tuesday found that 45% of respondents said Project 2025 describes Trump's agenda, while only 16% said it does not describe his plans for the country.

Along with the focus Biden, Harris, and other Democratic politicians have increasingly placed on Project 2025 in recent weeks, the movement against the plan has gotten a boost from the BET Awards on June 30, when host Taraji P. Henson urged viewers to vote in the election and warned the audience about the Republican agenda.

"Pay attention, it's not a secret, look it up," the actress said. "They are attacking our most vulnerable citizens. The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look it up!"

Stephen Colbert also explained the agenda on "The Late Show" earlier this month.

Eric Michael Garcia of The Independent shared on social media Tuesday that Project 2025 has "genuinely permeated the culture," judging from people who have mentioned it to him, unprovoked, during his reporting.

Journalist David Roberts said Democratic politicians "have been discovering somewhat to their surprise that Project 2025 is 'sticky.'"

"Make this election about it. Make it famous," he advised. "One of the biggest and most persistent problems in recent U.S. politics is that the right's agenda is so malign that most disengaged voters just flat don't believe it. Describing it sounds like partisan attack. Well, they wrote it down. All of it. Make it famous!"

[simply-ivanka]

Who’s Afraid of Project 2025?

Democrats run against a think-tank paper that Trump disavows. Why?

Wall Street Journal

July 29, 2024

By The Editorial Board

Americans are learning more about Kamala Harris, as Democrats rush to anoint the Vice President’s candidacy after throwing President Biden overboard. Ms. Harris wasted no time saying she’s going to run hard against a policy paper that Donald Trump has disavowed—the supposedly nefarious agenda known as Project 2025. But who’s afraid of a think-tank white paper?

“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” Ms. Harris tweeted shortly after President Biden dropped out. She’s picking up this ball from Mr. Biden, and her campaign website claims that Project 2025 would “strip away our freedoms” and “abolish checks and balances.���

***

Sounds terrible, but is it? The 922-page document doesn’t lack for modesty, as a wish list of policy reforms that would touch every part of government from the Justice Department to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The project is led by the Heritage Foundation and melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups. The project is also assembling a Rolodex of those who might work in a Trump Administration.

Most of the Democratic panic-mongering has focused on the project’s aim to rein in the administrative state. That includes civil service reform that would make it easier to remove some government workers, and potentially revisiting the independent status of agencies like the Federal Trade Commission.

The latter isn’t going to happen, but getting firmer presidential control over the bureaucracy would improve accountability. The federal government has become so vast that Presidents have difficulty even knowing what is going on in the executive branch. Americans don’t want to be ruled by a permanent governing class that doesn’t answer to voters.

Some items on this menu are also standard conservative fare. The document calls for an 18% corporate tax rate (now 21%), describing that levy as “the most damaging tax” in the U.S. system that falls heavily on workers. A mountain of economic literature backs that up. The blueprint suggests tying more welfare programs with work; de-regulating health insurance markets; expanding Medicare Advantage plans that seniors like; ending sugar subsidies; revving up U.S. energy production. That all sounds good to us.

Democrats are suggesting the project would gut Social Security, though in fact it bows to Mr. Trump’s preference not to touch the retirement program, which is headed for bankruptcy without reform. No project can profess to care about the rising national debt, as Heritage does, without fixing a program that was 22% of the federal budget in 2023.

At times the paper takes no position. For example: The blueprint features competing essays on trade policy. This is a tacit admission that for all the GOP’s ideological confusion on economics, many conservatives still understand that Mr. Trump’s 10% tariff is a terrible idea.

As for the politics, Mr. Trump recently said online that he knew “nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.” That may be true. The chance that Mr. Trump has read any of it is remote to nil, and he doesn’t want to be tied to anyone’s ideas since he prizes maximum ideological flexibility.

The document mentions abortion nearly 200 times, but Mr. Trump wants to neutralize that issue. The project’s chief sponsor, Heritage president Kevin Roberts, also gave opponents a sword when he boasted of “a second American revolution” that would be peaceful “if the left allows it to be.” This won’t help Mr. Trump with the swing voters he needs to win re-election.

By our lights the project’s cultural overtones are also too dark and the agenda gives too little spotlight to the economic freedom and strong national defense that defined the think tank’s influence on Ronald Reagan in 1980.

***

But the left’s campaign against Project 2025 is reaching absurd decibels. You’d think Mr. Trump is a political mastermind hiding the secret plans he’ll implement with an army of shock troops marching in lockstep. If his first term is any guide, and it is the best we have, Mr. Trump will govern as a make-it-up-as-he-goes tactician rather than a strategist with a coherent policy guide. He’ll dodge and weave based on the news cycle and often based on whoever talks to him last.

Not much of the Project 2025 agenda is likely to happen, even if Republicans take the House and Senate. Democrats will block legislation with a filibuster. The bureaucracy will leak with abandon and oppose even the most minor reforms to the civil service. The press will revert to full resistance mode, and Mr. Trump’s staff will trip over their own ambitions.

Democrats know this, which is why they fear Trump II less than they claim. They’re targeting Project 2025 to distract from their own failed and unpopular policies.

[reality-detective]

Bill Hemmer reacts to Kamala copying her policy page from Biden's website: "Nothing says her vision like copy and paste from the boss. I mean come on, what were they thinking?" 🤔

[themusesthrall]

I've created a one-page PDF full of QR codes with a couple tl;dr:s, which can be cut into sections for focus at need.

This one's optimized for printing:

This one's optimized for digital sharing:

Here are the links across the top.

A brief overview of Project 2025: http://risenow.us/everything-you-need-to-know-about-project-2025/

More details on Project 2025: https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/guide-project-2025-extreme-right-wing-agenda-next-republican-administration

Ending in a tl;dr:

Project 2025 is an extremist plan for next year that defies values across political lines, threatening jobs and personal freedoms, and destabilizing the American working class.

Here are the links across the middle.

Register to vote or check your registration: https://vote.gov/

Donate towards electing Kamala Harris and beating Project 2025: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/web-bfp-july-kamala-2024?refcode=lightbox_launch&opt_id=oeu1722118519355r0.08707782512318918

Find volunteer opportunities that work for your needs: KamalaHarris.com/Organize

Here are the links across the bottom.

Fact vs. Myth about Kamala Harris*: KamalaHarrisFacts.com

Kamala Harris policies and stances: https://www.axios.com/2024/07/22/kamala-harris-policy-stances

Ending in a tl;dr:

Contrary to unsubstantiated claims, Kamala Harris is a capable leader with a long record of pushing for compassionate practicality, including bail reform and tax credits for renters.

*I built this site because all the good compilations I was looking for were social media posts. Site edits will be ongoing but it is in a functional state.

These have been compiled for convenience, please use them wherever and however is most useful!

[loveofmylouis]

I keep seeing people saying Kamala has this negative view, she has that negative view, etc. Enough! Get off of tumblr for a second and realize that our rights are in jeopardy. No I don’t agree with all of Kamala’s stances, but no one is going to completely agree with you on everything, especially a politician. Now is not the time to be picking apart democratic candidates, not when trump can very easily win this election. Trump that wants to get rid of the FDA and Education departments, that wants to get rid of gay marriage, eliminate all forms of birth control and IVF, not allow workers to get paid for overtime even if they work overtime, quit funding for the climate crisis, get rid of FDIC insurance for banks, divert funding from public schools to private and religious schools, end no-fault divorces, eliminate social security, create a database that will only allow Trump loyalists to get hired for government positions, repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964, end protections and policies promoting gender equality, criminalize transgender people, end lgbtq+ workplace discrimination protection, end healthcare protections for transgender people **All of these are outlined in the 900 page “Project 2025”. Do not vote for a third party. They will not win. A vote for a third party is a vote for Trump. Not voting is a vote for Trump. This is not the time to try to be revolutionary. This is not the time for you to act like you’re morally and ethically superior for not voting. It is not a vote of the lesser of two evils. It is a vote between the democratic nominee and someone that wants to strip you of your rights and completely dismantle the government so that he has unchecked power. If you are a woman, if you are lgbtqia+, if you are poc, if you are any type of minority, you should be terrified.

Vote for Kamala.

[sher-ee]

Kamala Harris released a detailed, 82-page policy paper yesterday (link below) that outlines exactly how she plans to lower costs and create an opportunity economy.

Worth sharing! Especially to those crying

“Kamala doesn’t have a plan”.

Here ⬆️

[dirtyriver]

Arnold Schwarzenegger:

I don’t really do endorsements. I’m not shy about sharing my views, but I hate politics and don’t trust most politicians.

I also understand that people want to hear from me because I am not just a celebrity, I am a former Republican Governor.

My time as Governor taught me to love policy and ignore politics. I’m proud of the work I did to help clean up our air, create jobs, balance the budget, make the biggest infrastructure investment in state history, and take power from the politicians and give it back to the people when it comes to our redistricting process and our primaries in California.

That’s policy. It requires working with the other side, not insulting them to win your next election, and I know it isn’t sexy to most people, but I love it when I can help make people’s lives better with policies, like I still do through my institute at USC, where we fight for clean air and stripping the power from the politicians who rig the system against the people.

Let me be honest with you: I don’t like either party right now. My Republicans have forgotten the beauty of the free market, driven up deficits, and rejected election results. Democrats aren’t any better at dealing with deficits, and I worry about their local policies hurting our cities with increased crime.

It is probably not a surprise that I hate politics more than ever, which, if you are a normal person who isn’t addicted to this crap, you probably understand.

I want to tune out.

But I can’t. Because rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets. To someone like me who talks to people all over the world and still knows America is the shining city on a hill, calling America is a trash can for the world is so unpatriotic, it makes me furious.

And I will always be an American before I am a Republican.

That’s why, this week, I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

I’m sharing it with all of you because I think there are a lot of you who feel like I do. You don’t recognize our country. And you are right to be furious.

For decades, we’ve talked about the national debt. For decades, we’ve talked about comprehensive immigration reform that secures the border while fixing our broken immigration system. And Washington does nothing.

The problems just keep rolling, and we all keep getting angrier, because the only people that benefit from problems aren’t you, the people. The only people that benefit from this crap are the politicians who prefer having talking points to win elections to the public service that will make Americans’ lives better.

It is a just game to them. But it is life for my fellow Americans. We should be pissed!

But a candidate who won’t respect your vote unless it is for him, a candidate who will send his followers to storm the Capitol while he watches with a Diet Coke, a candidate who has shown no ability to work to pass any policy besides a tax cut that helped his donors and other rich people like me but helped no one else else, a candidate who thinks Americans who disagree with him are the bigger enemies than China, Russia, or North Korea - that won’t solve our problems.

It will just be four more years of bullshit with no results that makes us angrier and angrier, more divided, and more hateful.

We need to close the door on this chapter of American history, and I know that former President Trump won’t do that. He will divide, he will insult, he will find new ways to be more un-American than he already has been, and we, the people, will get nothing but more anger.

That’s enough reason for me to share my vote with all of you. I want to move forward as a country, and even though I have plenty of disagreements with their platform, I think the only way to do that is with Harris and Walz.

Vote this week. Turn the page and put this junk behind us.

And even if you disagree with me, vote, because that’s what we do as Americans. http://vote.org

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

“By simply existing as women in public life, we have all become targets, stripped of our accomplishments, our intellect, and our activism and reduced to sex objects for the pleasure of millions of anonymous eyes.

Men, of course, are subject to this abuse far less frequently. In reporting this article, I searched the name Donald Trump on one prominent deepfake-porn website and turned up one video of the former president—and three entire pages of videos depicting his wife, Melania, and daughter Ivanka. A 2019 study from Sensity, a company that monitors synthetic media, estimated that more than 96 percent of deepfakes then in existence were nonconsensual pornography of women.”

Recently, a Google Alert informed me that I am the subject of deepfake pornography. I wasn’t shocked. For more than a year, I have been the target of a widespread online harassment campaign, and deepfake porn—whose creators, using artificial intelligence, generate explicit video clips that seem to show real people in sexual situations that never actually occurred—has become a prized weapon in the arsenal misogynists use to try to drive women out of public life. The only emotion I felt as I informed my lawyers about the latest violation of my privacy was a profound disappointment in the technology—and in the lawmakers and regulators who have offered no justice to people who appear in porn clips without their consent. Many commentators have been tying themselves in knots over the potential threats posed by artificial intelligence—deepfake videos that tip elections or start wars, job-destroying deployments of ChatGPT and other generative technologies. Yet policy makers have all but ignored an urgent AI problem that is already affecting many lives, including mine.

Last year, I resigned as head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, a policy-coordination body that the Biden administration let founder amid criticism mostly from the right. In subsequent months, at least three artificially generated videos that appear to show me engaging in sex acts were uploaded to websites specializing in deepfake porn. The images don’t look much like me; the generative-AI models that spat them out seem to have been trained on my official U.S. government portrait, taken when I was six months pregnant. Whoever created the videos likely used a free “face swap” tool, essentially pasting my photo onto an existing porn video. In some moments, the original performer’s mouth is visible while the deepfake Frankenstein moves and my face flickers. But these videos aren’t meant to be convincing—all of the websites and the individual videos they host are clearly labeled as fakes. Although they may provide cheap thrills for the viewer, their deeper purpose is to humiliate, shame, and objectify women, especially women who have the temerity to speak out. I am somewhat inured to this abuse, after researching and writing about it for years. But for other women, especially those in more conservative or patriarchal environments, appearing in a deepfake-porn video could be profoundly stigmatizing, even career- or life-threatening.

As if to underscore video makers’ compulsion to punish women who speak out, one of the videos to which Google alerted me depicts me with Hillary Clinton and Greta Thunberg. Because of their global celebrity, deepfakes of the former presidential candidate and the climate-change activist are far more numerous and more graphic than those of me. Users can also easily find deepfake-porn videos of the singer Taylor Swift, the actress Emma Watson, and the former Fox News host Megyn Kelly; Democratic officials such as Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; the Republicans Nikki Haley and Elise Stefanik; and countless other prominent women. By simply existing as women in public life, we have all become targets, stripped of our accomplishments, our intellect, and our activism and reduced to sex objects for the pleasure of millions of anonymous eyes.

Men, of course, are subject to this abuse far less frequently. In reporting this article, I searched the name Donald Trump on one prominent deepfake-porn website and turned up one video of the former president—and three entire pages of videos depicting his wife, Melania, and daughter Ivanka. A 2019 study from Sensity, a company that monitors synthetic media, estimated that more than 96 percent of deepfakes then in existence were nonconsensual pornography of women. The reasons for this disproportion are interconnected, and are both technical and motivational: The people making these videos are presumably heterosexual men who value their own gratification more than they value women’s personhood. And because AI systems are trained on an internet that abounds with images of women’s bodies, much of the nonconsensual porn that those systems generate is more believable than, say, computer-generated clips of cute animals playing would be.

As I looked into the provenance of the videos in which I appear—I’m a disinformation researcher, after all—I stumbled upon deepfake-porn forums where users are remarkably nonchalant about the invasion of privacy they are perpetrating. Some seem to believe that they have a right to distribute these images—that because they fed a publicly available photo of a woman into an application engineered to make pornography, they have created art or a legitimate work of parody. Others apparently think that simply by labeling their videos and images as fake, they can avoid any legal consequences for their actions. These purveyors assert that their videos are for entertainment and educational purposes only. But by using that description for videos of well-known women being “humiliated” or “pounded”—as the titles of some clips put it—these men reveal a lot about what they find pleasurable and informative.

Ironically, some creators who post in deepfake forums show great concern for their own safety and privacy—in one forum thread that I found, a man is ridiculed for having signed up with a face-swapping app that does not protect user data—but insist that the women they depict do not have those same rights, because they have chosen public career paths. The most chilling page I found lists women who are turning 18 this year; they are removed on their birthdays from “blacklists” that deepfake-forum hosts maintain so they don’t run afoul of laws against child pornography.

Effective laws are exactly what the victims of deepfake porn need. Several states—including Virginia and California—have outlawed the distribution of deepfake porn. But for victims living outside these jurisdictions or seeking justice against perpetrators based elsewhere, these laws have little effect. In my own case, finding out who created these videos is probably not worth the time and money. I could attempt to subpoena platforms for information about the users who uploaded the videos, but even if the sites had those details and shared them with me, if my abusers live out of state—or in a different country—there is little I could do to bring them to justice.

Representative Joseph Morelle of New York is attempting to reduce this jurisdictional loophole by reintroducing the Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act, a proposed amendment to the 2022 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Morelle’s bill would impose a nationwide ban on the distribution of deepfakes without the explicit consent of the people depicted in the image or video. The measure would also provide victims with somewhat easier recourse when they find themselves unwittingly starring in nonconsensual porn.

In the absence of strong federal legislation, the avenues available to me to mitigate the harm caused by the deepfakes of me are not all that encouraging. I can request that Google delist the web addresses of the videos in its search results and—though the legal basis for any demand would be shaky—have my attorneys ask online platforms to take down the videos altogether. But even if those websites comply, the likelihood that the videos will crop up somewhere else is extremely high. Women targeted by deepfake porn are caught in an exhausting, expensive, endless game of whack-a-troll.

The Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act won’t solve the deepfake problem; the internet is forever, and deepfake technology is only becoming more ubiquitous and its output more convincing. Yet especially because AI grows more powerful by the month, adapting the law to an emergent category of misogynistic abuse is all the more essential to protect women’s privacy and safety. As policy makers worry whether AI will destroy the world, I beg them: Let’s first stop the men who are using it to discredit and humiliate women.

Nina Jankowicz is a disinformation expert and the author of How to Be a Woman Online and How to Lose the Information War.

[mariacallous]

Three days after Kamala Harris was sworn into the Senate in early January 2017, the U.S. intelligence community released a stunning declassified report that concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an influence campaign meant to sway the previous year’s presidential election in favor of Donald Trump and undermine faith in U.S. democracy.

The revelations spurred three high-profile investigations into Russian election interference by lawmakers and special counsel Robert Mueller and would come to dominate headlines for much of the Trump presidency.

As a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which conducted a wide-ranging three-year investigation of Moscow’s interference efforts, Harris had a front-row seat to reams of highly classified material about Russian intelligence operations targeting the United States. The experience left a long-standing impression on the vice president, according to current and former aides who characterize it as a highly formative experience that left her with few illusions about Moscow’s intentions.

“I see those first few weeks as pivotal, because those were both her and Donald Trump’s first few weeks in Washington,” said Halie Soifer, who served as national security advisor to Harris in the Senate.

A Republican source familiar with Harris’s time on the committee said that during the Russia investigation, members were exposed to “borderline raw intelligence” on Moscow’s interference efforts, which they described as an eye-opening experience, even for long-standing members of the committee. “I think it was sobering for everyone,” said the source, who requested anonymity to share their insights.

The Senate’s final report, which spanned over 1,000 pages across five volumes, is generally regarded to be the most detailed look at aggressive Russian intelligence efforts to make inroads with the Trump campaign and to sway the election in favor of the former president.

The report did not reach a conclusion as to whether the Trump team had actively sought to collude with Moscow for its own advantage.

As part of its investigation, the committee reviewed over 1 million pages of documents and interviewed more than 200 witnesses.

While much of the day-to-day work of the probe was carried out by committee staffers, senators from both sides of the aisle have described Harris as a quick study whose advice on questioning witnesses was sought by seasoned committee staff, according to a 2019 BuzzFeed article.

In public hearings on both the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, on which she also sat, Harris developed a reputation for her prosecutorial style as she interrogated senior members of the Trump administration.

“Members get out of it what they put into it, and she put a lot of time and energy and effort into it,” said the Republican source.

Former aides to the vice president have spoken of how her background as a lawyer also informs her view on foreign policy, placing particular emphasis on the importance of international laws and norms. In a 2019 interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, Harris described the U.S. role in building a “community of international institutions, laws, and democratic nations” as America’s biggest foreign-policy achievement since World War II.

While the House Intelligence Committee Russia investigation was beset by political infighting, the Senate investigation remained bipartisan and largely free of public drama—something Harris has spoken fondly of.

“Every week, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee would walk into that wood-paneled room—no cameras, no public, no devices,” said Harris during a memorial service last year for the late California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who had been a long-standing member of the committee.

“Senators of both parties who would take off their jackets and literally roll up their sleeves, putting aside partisanship to discuss what was in the best interests of our national security,” she said.

Harris served on the Intelligence Committee, which, alongside the House panel, provides oversight of the sprawling U.S. intelligence community, throughout her four years in the Senate.

In 2018, Harris backed an amendment that would compel law enforcement to obtain a warrant before accessing the communications of American citizens inadvertently gathered under a controversial program that enabled intelligence agencies to conduct wide-ranging foreign electronic surveillance.

She also used the perch to stress the need for greater investments in election security in light of Russia’s attempt to sway the vote, co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation on election cybersecurity.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Michael Goodwin

As the nominee, a nervous Biden reacted by turning the screws on Israel, and later had Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who has zero military experience, dictate which targets in Gaza Israel could strike. 

Now, as the election draws close and Harris is the nervous nominee, the White House is tightening the screws again.

This time, it’s taking a multifront approach, with Washington simultaneously demanding our ally show restraint in Lebanon and Iran, and allow increased amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. 

In other words, Israel should raise the white flag until the American election is over. 

If it doesn’t, the US threatens to join France and others in imposing an arms embargo on the beleaguered Jewish state. 

The urge to protect Israel’s enemies is doubly bizarre when they also happen to be America’s enemies. 

Yet that is the impact of the positions America is taking and the demands it’s making.

Notice that Biden and Harris are not making a single demand of any other party, and no one else faces ultimatums. 

Israel alone is being held responsible for the care and feeding of Gaza’s civilians even though Hamas uses them as human shields. 

Why aren’t Jordan and Egypt pushed to help care for their fellow Arabs?

And in what previous war was the country that had been attacked required to risk the lives of its military to care for the enemy’s civilians? 

Hamas could end the war in Gaza immediately.

Yet there are no White House demands for the terror group’s leaders to come out of their tunnels, surrender and release all the hostages, including the Americans still being held. 

Similarly, there is no demand that Hezbollah stop firing into Israel.

Instead, Lebanon’s prime minister said he has “received American guarantees” that Israeli strikes in Beirut, Hezbollah’s stronghold, will be reduced, according to Al Jazeera. 

Neither the Arab outlet nor Israeli media say who made the guarantee, but suspicion falls on Blinken, the errand boy who has led the charge against Israel all along. 

Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin even wrote a Sunday letter threatening to withhold arms shipments if Israel doesn’t increase the humanitarian aid to Gaza within 30 days. 

Dictating aid to Gaza 

The micromanaging jumps off the page, with the letter insisting that Israel allow at least 350 aid trucks a day to enter Gaza through four crossings and open a fifth. 

It also says Israel must implement “humanitarian pauses” throughout Gaza as necessary to enable vaccinations and aid distribution for at least four months. 

Harris echoed the letter from the campaign trail, writing on X that “Civilians must be protected and must have access to food, water, and medicine. International humanitarian law must be respected.” 

She said that while planning to spend several days in Michigan, a battleground state which is home to an estimated 200,000 registered Muslim-American voters. 

Most reflexively vote Democrat, but anger over the war has led many to say they will stay home or vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who is Jewish and yet a harsh critic of Israel.

[misfitwashere]

September 9, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

SEP 10

Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launched a new section of its website detailing her policy positions. Titling her plans “A New Way Forward,” Harris vows to build the American middle class through an “opportunity economy.” Her vision for the future, she says, “protects our fundamental freedoms, strengthens our democracy, and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead.” 

Harris’s economic plan builds on that of the Biden-Harris administration. This makes sense, since their focus on investing in the middle class has created the strongest economy in the world. Harris is emphasizing the need to bring down household costs of food, medicine, housing, healthcare, and childcare, all issues important to Americans.  

The website provides concrete economic actions she plans to take with a willing Congress. They include expanding the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, investing in more housing, and supporting the PRO Act, which protects the rights of workers to unionize, while continuing the crackdown on business consolidation that kills competition and rolling back the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

The biggest economic shift from the current administration is pegging a new capital gains tax for those earning more than a million dollars a year at 28%, significantly lower than the 39.6% President Joe Biden proposed in his 2025 budget. The plans also call for the first-ever national ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries (37 states already have such laws). 

Aside from strictly economic plans, the policy pages say Harris backs passing the bipartisan immigration bill that Republicans killed on Trump’s orders, protecting reproductive healthcare and restoring Roe v. Wade, and protecting the right to vote and ending partisan gerrymandering through the John Lewis Voting Rights and the Freedom to Vote Acts.

Republicans have charged that Harris has not offered specifics for her policies, but much of what is now clearly laid out is already in the public record. By the standards of American history, it is a strikingly moderate agenda that reflects the belief that the best way for the government to protect opportunity and nurture the economy is to make sure that the system is fair and that ordinary people have access to opportunity.

The “New Way Forward” in Harris’s plan seems to be less a new set of policies than a rejection of the politics of the past several decades. She and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz appear to be attempting to reshape the political landscape to bring Americans of all parties together to stand against Trump’s MAGA Republicans. The campaign has actively reached out to Republicans, several of whom spoke at the Democratic National Convention. On Saturday, Harris said she was “honored” to have the endorsement of former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) and former vice president Dick Cheney, both staunch Republicans. “People are exhausted about the division and the attempt to divide us as Americans,” she said. “We love our country and we have more in common than what separates us.” 

Trump’s website offers slogans rather than policies, so Harris’s website compares her policies to the comparable sections of Project 2025, the playbook for a second Trump term laid out by a number of right-wing institutions led by the Heritage Foundation. Trump and his campaign have tried to distance themselves from Project 2025, but at his rallies, he has offered the policies in it—like firing nonpartisan civil servants and replacing them with loyalists, and abolishing the Department of Education—as his top priorities. 

While Harris focused on policy, as critics have demanded, MAGA Republicans today spread slurs about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, claiming they are eating other people’s pets and local wildlife. Right-wing media figure Benny Johnson, who was one of the six commenters whose paychecks at now-disbanded Tenet Media were paid by Russia, was one of those pushing the false stories. So was X owner Elon Musk. 

The story was debunked almost immediately by the Springfield police, but Republican politicians ran with it. The X account for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee ran it; so did Texas senator Ted Cruz, who shared an image with two kittens saying: “PLEASE VOTE FOR TRUMP SO IMMIGRANTS DON’T EAT US.” And the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, posted: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.” (The Haitians in Springfield are in the U.S. legally.)

Perhaps most significantly, Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who is challenging Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, pushed the story. That Senate seat is crucial to the Republican attempt to take control of the Senate, and Moreno has just launched a $25 million ad campaign against Brown, accusing him of giving undocumented immigrants taxpayer-funded benefits. Today’s disinformation was well timed for that ad campaign. 

The Justice Department today announced  charges against two leaders of the white supremacist Terrorgram Collective, an international terrorist group that operates on the platform Telegram. Dallas Humber of California and Matthew Allison of Idaho have been charged with “soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.” They “solicited murders and hate crimes based on the race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and gender identity of others,” U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert said. They had a hit list of federal, state, and local officials, as well as corporate leaders, and they encouraged attacks on government infrastructure, including energy facilities. Their plan was to create a race war. 

“Hate crimes fueled by bigotry and white supremacy, and amplified by the weaponization of digital messaging platforms, are on the rise and have no place in our society,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said.

Congress is back in session today and must fund the government before October 1 or face a government shutdown. Although Congress negotiated spending levels for 2024 and 2025 back in June 2023, the House has been unable to pass appropriations bills because MAGA extremists either refuse to accept those levels or insist on inserting culture war poison pills into the bills. 

Now, Trump has demanded that a continuing resolution to fund the government must include a measure requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Since it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections for president or members of Congress and there is no evidence it is anything but vanishingly rare, the measure actually seems designed to suppress voting. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) went along and put the measure in the bill. He also designed for the measure to last until next March, making the budget so late a new president could write it, but also blowing through a January 1 deadline set in the June 2023 bill to require automatic cuts to spending.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote to his colleagues: “House Democrats have made it clear that we will find bipartisan common ground on any issue with our Republican colleagues wherever possible, while pushing back against MAGA extremism.” Jeffries called the Republican bill “unserious and unacceptable.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told House and Senate leaders that the cuts required by law if Congress pushes the budget into March would drastically affect the military. “The repercussions of Congress failing to pass regular appropriations legislation for the first half of [fiscal] 2025 would be devastating to our readiness and ability to execute the National Defense Strategy,” Austin wrote.

Meanwhile, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is back to his old trick of blocking a military promotion, this time of Lieutenant General Ronald Clark, one of Austin’s top aides. Tuberville says he placed the hold because he has concerns that Clark did not alert Biden when Austin had surgery. Biden has nominated Clark to become the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Pacific, a position currently held by General Charles A. Flynn, younger brother of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump’s first National Security Advisor who resigned after news broke that he had hidden conversations with Russian operatives. 

Today, ten retired senior military officials endorsed Harris, saying she “is the best—and only—presidential candidate in this race who is fit to serve as our commander-in-chief…. Frankly stated, Donald Trump is a danger to our national security and our democracy. His own former National Security Advisors, Defense Secretaries, and Chiefs of Staff have said so.”

—

[grimforks]

while i understand why people dont want to or wont vote for Kamala, i cant help but feel those people are being extremely fucking ignorant and stupid. what do you think will happen if she loses? do you think trump will handle the genocide any better? he wont. and you have to know he will be worse. you have to know that he will do everything he can to directly support israel. and he will do it *loudly*. dont let trump's relative silence on the genocide during the campaign cycle trick you into thinking not voting for Kamala will be better for the people of Gaza

then, consider the impact on your community (which really should be first priority but whatever). do you understand the attack the republicans have planned against every minority in america? the impact that will have on women? gay people? trans people? non-white people? they are fighting to erase is from society. to send us back to the 1950s. so many of *your* community, those directly around you, will die if the republicans get office again. and it wont just be during the next four year term. republicans stack courts, put policy into place, completely overhaul our societal structure, and they ensure the damage will be felt for *decades*.

it is a noble cause to fight for the survival of the palestinians, to want so badly for them to live and flourish as they deserve to! i am really truly disgusted and depressed with how our political parties have chosen to turn their backs to it, but fuck *me* it feels you all have lost sight of your own lives! the lives of your family and friends and neighbors! please for just a moment think of those directly around you, and of yourself too.

it sucks having to vote for someone who is not on the same page as you, but the other option is a man who thinks Hitler was a great guy. and really unfortunately if you dont vote for Kamala, you are in essence voting for the fascist Hitler fan.

[emptymanuscript]

Comment on Fark that is better journalism than I’ve seen in the actual news so far.

Text:

Harris policies last night:

50k Small Business deduction

6k Child Tax Credits

Work with builders to get 3M new homes in the market over 4 years.

Stop price fixing by grocery stores

Support Ukraine and other democracies defending themselves against invasion by dictators.

Restore the standard set by Roe v. Wade.

Strengthen the ACA and increase the percentage of Americans with health insurance by increasing subsidies for people at the bottom end.

Trump Policies last night:

20% Tariffs on all imported goods

Deport millions of people.

"I have a concept of a plan"

When the media comes out and says Trump lost and was super unhinged, but we didn't get enough specific policies out of Kamala last night, I just don't know wtf they're talking about. Like, debates aren't a great place to do a 50 page deep dive into tax policy as a vehicle for social mobility, and what Kamala did was lay out her broad vision for how to create more opportunities for lower and middle class families to be successful.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse:

Tonight, Donald Trump will become the presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Joe Biden, a kind, decent man, is at home doing the right thing, quarantining to avoid infecting others with Covid. He tested positive yesterday. The likely narrative we will continue to see is that of the strong Republican nominee who emerged from an assassination attempt with nothing more than a (large, weird) bandaid on his ear versus the man who is hiding in his basement. Almost everyone I know is questioning how we got here. There are people who believe that the proof of Biden’s competence lies in the results he has delivered during his first three years in office. There are others who believe Joe Biden must be replaced. I’m a Biden supporter. I haven’t made any bones about that. I believe he and Kamala Harris have done a spectacular, if underappreciated, job in difficult times and should be permitted to continue; they should be celebrated, not merely tolerated. But it seems increasingly likely matters are coming to a head and the question of whether Joe Biden will remain on the ticket will be decided soon. [...]

Public education is important. Well-educated citizens are more employable and prepared to compete in the 21st Century economy. Education reduces crime. It improves public health and health equity. Education produces a more informed population, people able to think for themselves and their communities. As the saying goes, if you’re burning books because they contain some ideas you don’t like, you’re not afraid of books or courses—you’re afraid of ideas. That perfectly encapsulates the Project 2025 approach to education. The most important takeaway from the education chapter of Project 2025 is that the plan is to shut down the U.S. Department of Education. Donald Trump has been saying at recent rallies that it should be disbanded to “move everything back to the states where it belongs.” You’ll recall Trump has claimed he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, but there are linkages that suggest he isn’t being truthful about that, as we discussed last week. Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation has confirmed it. Audio was released of him privately acknowledging Trump knows about Project 2025. Roberts says in the recording that he doesn’t grudge Trump for trying to separate himself from it because Project 2025 "has become a liability." Apparently, it’s just fine with the folks who wrote Project 2025 for Trump to lie to voters if it helps him get elected.

This isn’t about Trump backing off of supporting Project 2025 because Americans don’t want it. It’s being deceitful about what a Trump win would bring with it. That makes it even more important for us to understand the details of Project 2025. The Education Chapter is 44 pages long. They are counting on the fact that no one will read it. So we will. It would take an act of Congress to abolish the Department of Education, but Project 2025 has a workaround for that. The plan involves dismantling the Department so that all that is left is a hollow shell that can only gather statistics to disseminate. That’s the goal for an agency whose current mission is to “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” That seems like a good thing, something to improve upon. Not something to eliminate.

Lindsey Burke, the author of this chapter, is the author of a piece advocating against government funding for early childhood education, in other words, most of the funding for it that isn’t tied to religious entities. She writes, “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated. When power is exercised, it should empower students and families, not government. In our pluralistic society, families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments that best fit their needs. Our postsecondary institutions should also reflect such diversity, with room for not only ‘traditional’ liberal arts colleges and research universities but also faith-based institutions, career schools, military academies, and lifelong learning programs.”

[...] Project 2025 put states in charge of programs that are currently funded and managed by the federal government. It would send money to the states without connecting it to established priorities and programs. This no strings money could be spent on “any lawful education purpose under state law”—we’re already seeing how that plays out in states that are spending money on religiously-oriented education. It would expand so-called school choice, for instance, the voucher programs that let students leave public schools for private ones that in some cases imposes restrictive limits on what they can learn. All of this goes hand in glove with the priorities in state legislatures that are gerrymandered to be and remain Republican. The Heritage Foundation also wants to eliminate Head Start, a program that funds early childhood education for low-income families, because it is “fraught with scandal and abuse”, according to a chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services. The Center for American Progress says in a new report that eliminating Head Start would reduce access and increase costs for childcare, hurting economic stability. Just as women are being forced to carry pregnancies that they don’t want and sometimes can’t afford to term.

Project 2025, if enacted, would be a disaster for education, especially early childhood and special education. #StopProject2025

[follow-up-news]

Donald Trump shared a private flight with the head of the rightwing thinktank behind Project 2025, the Washington Post reported, publishing evidence including a picture of the two men in airplane seats, grinning. The flight was on its way to a conference organized by the thinktank, at which Trump told group members they would “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do”. Orchestrated by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a 900-page plan initially presented for a second Trump administration that posits aggressive rightwing reform to every corner of the federal government. Democratic attacks have particularly focused on its threats to reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights and other progressive concerns. Appearing to fear that Kamala Harris was making Project 2025 an effective campaign issue, Trump and allies have since tried to disavow the effort, with Trump claiming last month he had “no idea who is in charge of” Project 2025. On Thursday, a spokesperson for Trump told the Post that Project 2025 “has never and will never be an accurate reflection of President Trump’s policies”. But the Post published plane-tracking data and the picture of Trump with Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, in April 2022. The two men were flying from Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, to Amelia Island in the same state for the annual Heritage conference. At the conference, the Post said, Trump told attendees: “With Kevin and the staff, and I met so many of them now, I took pictures with among the most handsome, beautiful people I’ve ever seen.” The Post also pointed out that in April of this year Roberts told the paper: “I personally have talked to President Trump about Project 2025 because my role in the project has been to make sure that all of the candidates who have responded to our offer for a briefing on Project 2025 get one from me.”