While I am fairly sure that there are many nearly equally troubling ideas within the 900 pages of the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap to American Fascism entitled Project 2025, in the below clip taken from Katie Phang’s MSNBC Show with fascism expert and Mussolini biographer Ruth Ben-Ghiat and MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson, and in this Huffington Post article, Ben-Ghiat focuses on two aspects of the plan that she finds most disturbing: the repeated stress on the phrase “Day One” – meaning how fast they will attempt to implement the destruction of Democracy – and the additional uses that will be made of the massive infrastructures of repression that will be required to detain, transport and deport millions upon millions of as yet undocumented migrants…
“Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Wednesday warned that “one of the most alarming things” in the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” handbook is the admission that Donald Trump didn’t accomplish all he wanted to in his first administration.
“They got a slow start […] so their codeword is ‘day one,’” Ben-Ghiat told MSNBC’s Katie Phang of the think-tank’s proposal document that is widely expected to form the basis of a potential second Trump term’s policies.”
I am sure that most readers will remember the Trump administration’s attempt to get off to a speedy start in the very first couple of weeks of January 2017, when it implemented what has come to be known as “The Muslim Ban” and how that attempt was thwarted by activists, lawyers and the courts:
“On 28 January (2017) President Trump issued an executive order blocking refugees and travelers with passports from seven Muslim-majority countries.
The ban was cruel, inhumane, and violated international law.
With the stroke of a pen, the President banned Syrian refugees from the USA indefinitely and prevented anyone (including refugees) from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the USA for 90 days.”
But starting in the Northeast and soon spreading across the country, volunteer lawyers descended on airports across the nation to offer legal services to folks affected by the ban. As their cases made their way into the courts it quickly became apparent that the ban would be reversed:
On 9 February, a US appeals court rejected President Trump’s attempt to reinstate his ban after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that temporarily halted the ban.
And it was all over but the cryin’…for the time being:
“Soon after the appeal ruling, senior White House adviser Stephen Miller denounced the federal judges who stopped President Trump’s controversial travel ban, warning that the world will soon see that the president’s executive powers ‘will not be questioned’.”
I am sure that it has taken much longer than Miller had hoped but the recent SCOTUS ruling bestowing on President(s) near dictatorial powers will make, if Trump is elected, a repeat of that happy outcome of 2017 problematic… if he and Miller team up again to try to reinstate the ban.
If that comes to pass I am sure that cops will be empowered to prevent detainees from meeting withlegal representation – because the Constitution will then be obsolete.
And before announcing a new ban, Trump will likely have his Justice Department move his favored prosecutors into affected districts and judges will be pressured to retire so that his appointees will be able to preside over cases.
Hopefully Trump will not be elected to test this plan.
Ben-Ghiat’s other main concern is the infrastructure that would be needed to enable the Project’s vast deportation scheme and what further uses will be made of it:
“Ben-Ghiat cited the handbook’s proposal — which has been echoed by Trump himself — to mass deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
“One thing that’s very important for people to realize,” she said, is that undocumented immigrants won’t be the only ones who end up being targeted.
“It’s always more people,” said Ben-Ghiat.
“They use one group to have the justification to build the repressive infrastructure like the camps, the transit camps, whatever they’re going to do,” she added. “But be assured, and this is the history of authoritarianism, many groups of people will be targeted to be in that.”
I am sure Miller and Trump will come up with many creative uses for the camps…
You can watch the segment of Katie Phang’s show below on YouTube:
Of course we have one recourse to stave off Trump and his minions from putting Project Fascism into motion – turning out to vote in numbers that will finally punch these Nazis back into their place.
That is my preferred plan of action.
VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE these nazi bastards back into their spider holes! They shouldn’t be able to show their face ON THIS DAY OF ALL DAYS!!!!
Bi a first politices lider
I guess corporate media/billionaire owned media/MSM has their marching orders… on the down low and invisible to most of public while some “journalists “ 401k is looking good!!!!🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️ffs
A nation of terrified serfs has a certain appeal to the wealthy.
At 75, I have neither the resources or ability to.relocate. I am pretty sure that after they het rid of journalists and illegals and believers innon-Christians religions and women whose lives are saved by a medically necessary abortions, the will go after women who.had elective abortions in the past by demanding access to medical records, legal immigrants, scholars and critics, and eventually work their way down to LGBTQ people, teachers and librarians who.espoused liberal.views or didn’t remove books, ordinary people who publicly denounced him.
See you in the camps, guys.
Sorry, not going to no camps. Not now, not ever.
Either be a victim or a resistor.
At 75 with some serious health issues, I am.useless. Right at this moment, I blew my knee out two weeks ago, which threw me into.back spasm. Tomorrow I go the HMO’s walking to see if I can get something to.deal.with the pain if I stand or wakj.
All I can do.is,write and pass on messages.
As long as your grey matter between your ears is still functioning, and it certainly looks like it is Gillian, you are NOT useless. Ideas, plans, etc. are usually more important than cannon fodder. Why do you think some of the people hitler eliminated quickly after getting into power were the intellectuals? Why do you think red states are doing everything in their power to make good and damned sure children grow up to be ignoramuses?
Thinking people are extremely important, vital in fact, if we want to take our country back from these dangerous fools.
See below my reply
I don’t know what their hurry is. When Trump** took office, we still had a Constitution. Now, thanks to the Supremes, we don’t
Strike fast. Media easily co-opted and tamed. Mass media won’t be of help. Anybody trust musk (x/twitter) or Zuckerberg (facebook/instagrsm) or tik tok (Chinese… ergo Chinese communist party)?
M. Atwood saw things very clearing in the eighties and it would not surprise me in the least to wake up shortly after Von Shitzinpants was squatting in the w.h. to read/hear everyone in congress was gunned down and maybe even everyone in the judiciary and executive branches as well. The creators of that soiled piece of toilet paper will not need any of the actors who made it possible for that abomination to be ushered in especially if that little shit flynn is not an outlier in our military. The U.S. would cease to exist and would become separate regions/provinces fighting each other since I do not see the east coast, west coast, and places like IL, CO, perhaps MI, going quietly into whatever prison cell they have planned for blue states. States like mt will wake up too late to realize the freedom they used to have written into their constitutions was illusory.