Democrats are busy forming a circular firing squad. I hope they know what they are doing, but I'm not convinced they do.

The Lincoln Project
@ProjectLincoln

There is also this:

Harris Meyer
@Meyer_HM

Trump wants and assumes Biden is his opponent. He tells friends Biden's debate performance and age are gifts from the political gods. No longer is he seen as the old, selfish guy in it for his own vainglory and personal power, friends joke.

Dems Want Biden to Make a Decision. Biden Says He Has. Dems Say Not That One.

Jacqueline Sweet
@JSweetLI
NEW: Internal Democrat polling post-debate has Biden down DOUBLE digits in swing districts NY-17 (R-Lawler) and NY-19 (R-Molinaro), and down a point in NY-22 (R-Williams)-- all districts Biden carried in 2020, per party source.

The three competitive upstate/suburban districts are considered part of the suburban NY "bellwether" districts.

Here's what I think is going on:

Donations from big donors have dried up:

Symone D. Sanders Townsend
@SymoneDSanders
Idk if the dam is breaking just yet, but it sure is full of cracks.

Max Cohen
@maxpcohen
Sen. Peter Welch is calling on Biden to withdraw from the presidential race in a new WaPo op-ed.

"We cannot unsee President Biden's disastrous debate performance. We cannot ignore or dismiss the valid questions raised since that night."

Edward-Isaac Dovere
@IsaacDovere
To more than a few leading Dems, it's become CW the floodgates will open against Biden when the NATO summit is done Thurs. Some are all but rooting for a big mess up at the press conference to make it easier to ditch him.

It looks like a coordinated effort to get him to drop out is underway and will intensive after the NATO summit is over.

For those of you who can't read Twitter:

To be clear, Michigan wouldn't even be the worst of the problems. Our statute requires that a major party's Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates be certified to the State within one business day of that party's national or state convention, whichever is later.

The Democrats are holding their National Convention from August 19-22 and their Michigan State Convention on August 24th. The deadline is therefore August 26th.

Ballots to Military and Overseas voters must go out by September 21st, 2024 and AV Ballots must be available to Michigan Voters by September 26th, 2024 by law.

However, as I stated, this is for Michigan only. Every state has different statutory deadlines for ballot access and for Absentee Ballots to go out, and it is therefore dependent on identifying those dates and requirements 50 times.

My cursory understanding of other states is that that deadline may already have passed for some states, or may be in the VERY near future.

It is worth pointing out that even if Democrats follow the strictures of the law state-by-state, you would almost assuredly see lawsuits flying fast and often in any number of states, if they attempt to make a change.

Such lawsuits threaten to delay and derail County and Local Clerks' efforts to program the election and prepare ballots, respectively. Essentially, efforts to prepare for the election would have to be put on hold.

That's not a good thing in Election world.

After the ballot is created, the election equipment must be tested. This is often a lengthy process that includes testing at the County prior to election materials being distributed to local Clerks, then the local clerks do internal testing and finally Public Accuracy Testing.

Delays at any point in the process may impact local clerks' ability to meet their statutory deadlines.

So Democrats need to understand the ramifications of the actions that some are talking about. This may extend far beyond the choice for President and put a cloud over the election.

It would also give ammunition to a candidate who hasn't been shy about spreading disinformation about the validity of election results and give the opportunity to further erode the public's trust in our elections process. And I will not stand for that.

Yes, I'm afraid the full destructive power of activist courts across the country has been unleashed, which the Supreme Court will then rubber stamp. The second revolution ushered in by the Federalist Society's remaking of the courts in it's own image is well underway.

It is important to note that the Chevron ruling has already been used to curtail transgender treatment and equality:

Bigotry from the bench

Unsurprisingly, much of the assault on administration rules relates to any regulation that would protect transgender people.

Four days after Loper Bright was handed down, another Trump appointee, Judge John W. Broomes in Kansas, enjoined the Department of Education from enforcing its Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs rule in Kansas, Alaska, Utah, and Wyoming. The Department of Education spent two years finalizing the rule, which would have prohibited discrimination based on gender identity under Title IX.

The unofficial text of the rule, which runs 1,577 pages with supporting material, is jam-packed with legal analysis. Hundreds of pages are spent explaining how the DOE considered and addressed public comments and the document details the mental health impact of discrimination against LGBTQ students.

Broomes's expertise is in natural resource law, a background that does not lend itself to a detailed understanding of Title IX, sex discrimination, or gender identity. But none of that matters.

FTA:

Right-wingers have been in the habit of running to their preferred courts to get regulations overturned, but the decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which officially destroyed agency deference, will make it easier-- even routine--to block every Biden administration rule they don't like.

Lawsuits to invalidate specific rules had been proceeding through the federal courts before Loper Bright, generally arguing that agencies exceeded their authority in promulgating a rule. These lawsuits exist in no small part because the Supreme Court made it clear they would destroy Chevron deference for years now, with Justice Neil Gorsuch having led the way well before his appointment to the Court.

Trump appointee Sean Jordan, who sits in the reliably hard-right Eastern District of Texas, was so eager to block a Biden administration's overtime rule that he dropped his decision the same day Loper Bright came out. It runs 36 pages and mentions Loper Bright multiple times, which means either Jordan was so confident of the Supreme Court decision that he either wrote it in advance or he hurried to stuff Loper Bright into his already-written opinion.

Jordan's opinion also rests heavily on dictionary definitions rather than expertise from the Department of Labor, which issued the rule. So now, the rule that would have made 4 million more Texas workers eligible for overtime, and thus more pay, is blocked thanks to a hurried read of a SCOTUS opinion and Webster's Dictionary.

Any questions? (emphasis mine):

The co-editors of Project 2025, Paul Dans and Steven Groves, both held high-ranking positions in the Trump administration. Under Trump, Dans served as Chief of Staff at the Office of Personnel Management, the agency responsible for staffing the federal government, and was a senior advisor at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Groves served Trump in the White House as Deputy Press Secretary and Assistant Special Counsel.

Project 2025's two associate directors, Spencer Chretien and Troup Hemenway, are also tightly connected with Trump. Chretien was Special Assistant to President Donald J. Trump and Associate Director of Presidential Personnel, "helping to identify, recruit, and place hundreds of political appointees at all levels of government." Previously, Trump appointed Chretien to a position at HUD. Hemenway also served as an Associate Director of Presidential Personnel and previously worked on Trump's 2016 campaign and Trump's 2016 transition team.

Project 2025's 922-page policy agenda has 30 chapters and 34 authors. Twenty-five of Project 2025's authors served as members of the Trump administration. Another Project 2025 author, Stephen Moore, was nominated by Trump to the Federal Reserve but forced to withdraw "over his past inflammatory writings about women." Further, William Walton, the co-author of the chapter on the Department of the Treasury, was a key member of Trump's transition team.

All told, of the 38 people responsible for writing and editing Project 2025, 31 were appointed or nominated to positions in the Trump administration and transition. In other words, while Trump claims he has "nothing to do" with the people who created Project 2025, over 81% had formal roles in his first administration.

Here are some connections between Trump's proposed policies and the policies proposed by Project 2025 along with detailed plans on how to execute them:

(I)n reality, Trump and Project 2025 share the same vision for where the US should go in a conservative presidency. His platform, dubbed Agenda 47, overlaps with Project 2025 on most major policy issues. Project 2025 often includes more details on how some key conservative goals could be carried out, offering the meat for Trumpian policy ideas often delivered as soundbites.

As the Guardian has reported, Project 2025 wants to gut civil service, putting far more roles in federal government in the hands of a president as political appointees, which would erode checks and balances. Trump, for his part, tried to do the same in 2020 shortly before losing the election, an idea known as "Schedule F".

Project 2025 proposes mass deportations of more than 11 million undocumented immigrants and stringent rules on migrants. So does Trump, and so does the Republican National Committee's platform.

Trump wants to get rid of the federal education department, as does Project 2025, echoing a long-held policy wish on the right. The project details how this could happen and other ways to give states more control over education, at the potential expense of students. Both Trump and the project share goals of limiting LGBTQ+ rights and diversity initiatives in schools.

Trump often rails against cities run by Democrats, especially Washington DC, and talks about ways to crack down on them, renewing the idea he attempted in his first term to withhold federal funds as a way to enforce immigration policies. Project 2025 has some ideas on how he could do that more forcefully next time.

FTA:

The truth is Project 2025 was enabled by a raft of former Trump administration officials, including Paul Dans, former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management; John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office; Rick Dearborn, former White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, intergovernmental affairs and implementation; Ben Carson, former Housing and Urban Development secretary; Ken Cuccinelli, former deputy secretary of homeland security; Peter Navarro, former director of the White House National Trade Council and director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy; Christopher Miller, former acting secretary of defense; Stephen Moore, an adviser to Trump's 2016 campaign; Russell Vought, former director of the Office of Management and Budget; William Pendley, former acting director of the Bureau of Land Management; Paul Winfree, former director of budget policy; Brooks Tucker, former chief of staff for the Department of Veterans Affairs; Roger Severino, former director of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services; Kiron Skinner, former director of policy planning at the State Department; and Bernard McNamee, former commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

In fact, Project 2025 is staffed by more than 200 former officials of the Trump administration.

Discussion continues here:

#83 & 84 I agree with both of you. I wish Carville had come up with this plan a week earlier. It seems like it is probably too late now:

Rep. @AOC: President Biden has made clear that he is in this race. The matter is closed. Biden is our nominee. He is in this race and I support him. He is running against Donald Trump, who is a man with 34 felony convictions. Not a single Republican has asked for Donald Trump to not be the nominee. I'm here to win in November.

FTA:

Trump made the extraordinary announcement on the policy section of his presidential campaign website, Agenda47. In a video, Trump says that the president has "the Constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending through what is known as Impoundment." According to Trump, if Congress appropriates money that he decides is unnecessary, he has the authority to "refuse to waste the extra funds."

Trump . . . has decided that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional and has pledged to challenge it in court. Trump says he will use his self-proclaimed impoundment authority on "Day One" and order "federal agencies to identify portions of their budgets where massive savings are possible through the Impoundment Power." Trump says he will use impoundment to "crush the Deep State."

In his statement, Trump claims that "[l]eading constitutional scholars agree that impoundment is an inherent power of the president." None of those scholars are named.

#80 That actually is a plan, and the best (only?) one I've seen. With the convention a little over a month away, people would have to act now and move quickly.

Breaking up the dept of education (or eliminating it), overhauling DOJ, cracking down on illegal immigration, replacing civil servants with Trump loyalists and are all things Trump has says he plans to do. He's hedged recently on some social issues like abortion, for example, because he knows a strong anti-abortion stance does not poll well, but he has previously taken full credit for overturn Roe:

Last year, the Heritage Foundation released Project 2025's mandate for leadership, a roughly 900-page policy book for the next administration to follow. Dozens of conservative policy experts contributed to the book.

The book's policy proposals include plans to break up the Department of Education, overhaul the Justice Department, strongly crack down on illegal immigration, replace longtime federal employees with pro-Trump personnel, and pass a slate of socially conservative legislation.

Trump and his supporters often criticize the perceived disloyalty of Trump's political appointments throughout his first term. The former president's personnel issues last time around formed the basis for Project 2025 to begin preparing ahead of time for another Trump term.

Gal Tuesday,
National Review is arguably the most mainstream conservative outlet in existence. When I went to their site and searched "Project 2025" this is what I found:
www.nationalreview.com
#49 | POSTED BY BELLRINGER

They may not be writing about Project 2025 per se, but if you search for topics within the Project 2025 Handbook and then look for them at the National Review you may find the information that way. For example:

Trump and his allies plan on restoring Schedule F if he is elected to a second term and using it to remove lifetime bureaucrats opposed to Trump's presidency. The Heritage Foundation is leading a coalition of conservative organizations involved in building "Project 2025," a personnel development effort intended to staff the next Trump administration. These efforts are being conducted with the purpose of removing the anti-Trump "deep state" that plagued the former president throughout his first term.

#55 Like I said, you are fooling yourself but not the rest of us.

Look, I get it. After PNAC....but that was written and signed by the biggest power players on the right.
If you can show me where Project 2025 is getting even remotely the same kind of traction, I'll pay attention.
#50 | POSTED BY BELLRINGER

Here is some of Axios original reporting from April 2022 on the topic:

A radical plan for Trump's second term

No operation of this scale is possible without the machinery to implement it. To that end, Trump has blessed a string of conservative organizations linked to advisers he currently trusts and calls on. Most of these conservative groups host senior figures from the Trump administration on their payroll, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows.

The names are a mix of familiar and new. They include Jeffrey Clark, the controversial lawyer Trump had wanted to install as attorney general in the end days of his presidency. Clark, who advocated a plan to contest the 2020 election results, is now in the crosshairs of the Jan. 6 committee and the FBI. Clark is working at the Center for Renewing America (CRA), the group founded by Russ Vought, the former head of Trump's Office of Management and Budget.

Former Trump administration and transition officials working on personnel, legal or policy projects for a potential 2025 government include names like Vought, Meadows, Stephen Miller, Ed Corrigan, Wesley Denton, Brooke Rollins, James Sherk, Andrew Kloster and Troup Hemenway.

Others, who remain close to Trump and would be in contention for the most senior roles in a second-term administration, include Dan Scavino, John McEntee, Richard Grenell, Kash Patel, Robert O'Brien, David Bernhardt, John Ratcliffe, Peter Navarro and Pam Bondi.

The advocacy groups who have effectively become extensions of the Trump infrastructure include the CRA, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), and the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI).

Other groups--while not formally connected to Trump's operation--have hired key lieutenants and are effectively serving his ends. The Heritage Foundation, the legacy conservative group, has moved closer to Trump under its new president, Kevin Roberts, and is building links to other parts of the "America First" movement.

but what kind of backing is it getting?
#38 | POSTED BY BELLRINGER

You can go here for a list of groups who have contributed to the project:

The Project 2025 Advisory Board (page xi)