Happy Fourth of July, America!

If you ever want to celebrate another "Land of the Free" holiday, you may want to pay attention to Project 2025.

Howdy Horn Honkers.

I have gotten some flak lately for being pro-Biden as if I am deaf, dumb, blind, and stupid not to notice the potentially problematic issues in his campaign.

Yes, I know he’s old and slow. Still better than being a felon addicted to power and Adderall.

Look. I’d vote Democratic in this election if the nominee was a blind, heroin-addicted hedgehog.

I’m voting for the future. I’m voting to assure the safety of our LGBTQ+ folks and our communities of color. Their rights are up for dissolution in this election.

I’m voting for education, healthcare, and freedom to worship (or not) and publically protest (or not) as we please.

In other words, I’m voting against Project 2025.

With every breath I take, with every move I make, with every cake I bake…I’m voting against the most radically sweeping ultra-conservative, authoritarian, militarized plan to reshape America, one radicalized Republicans and their fearless Fuhrer, Donald Trump, desire to establish from sea to shining sea.

Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a right-wing wish list/road map if Trump wins the 2024 race.

It’s not a secret. Look it up.

This problematic Project sprang from the shiny white men in the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank and non-profit founded in the Reagan years, and from where he took his policies.

It’s been in the works since 2022.

Heritage president Kevin Roberts spoke glowingly on their Project this week, asserting that “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” (italics mine)

Roberts further interprets the “pursuit of happiness” in our Declaration of Independence as the “pursuit of blessedness,” promoting a country and laws based on “marriage and children” and “religious devotion and spirituality.”

Oh for fuck’s sake.

Project 2025 is Christian Nationalism writ furiously large and all 900 pages are steeped in the belief that religious freedom is probably okay as long as our government is populated with Christian people and principles.

I happen to be Christian + straight, and I think this idea is crazier than a soup sandwich.

Separation of church and state is nowhere on the Project 2025 menu.

Here’s a snapshot of Project 2025:

1.)   Proposes taking partisan control of the Department of Justice, the Department of Commerce, the FBI, the FCC, the FDA, and the Federal Trade Commission. Usurping independent agencies is the key to their plan to ban abortion nationwide. Remember that the DOJ is where the Reproductive Rights Task Force resides, and is the agency that monitors and protects state abortion laws. The FDA is where medication abortion and the morning-after pill will be “un-legalized” if Heritage has its way.

2.)   Proposes taking the Department of Homeland Security apart and reducing all environmental and climate change regulations. Favors fossil fuel production. Drill baby, drill.

3.)   Plans to abolish the Department of Education, Head Start, and block debt cancellation for student loan borrowers. Now, why would they want to do that? Would it have anything to do with Trump’s “love” for the poorly educated? And their love for him? It’s a valid question.

4.)   Eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s coverage of emergency contraception. Of course. A Christian nation cannot have women controlling their own bodies and lives.

5.)   Criminalize pornography. There’s a slippery slope. Who’s going to determine what’s pornographic? The government? This not-so-Supreme Court? Is this how they’re going to deport Stormy Daniels?

6.)   Infuse the government with Christian-based principles. Don’t get me started on this one.

7.)   Plans to remove legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This means legalized open season on non-hetero, non-binary, and trans folks. Drag Queens are gone (I don’t know if I can handle that.) If the Project People have their way, it means an eventual rolling back of marriage equality.

8.)   All DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs would be terminated, and any form of affirmative action, gone. Look, I’d love it if we didn’t need DEI education, protection, or a focus on leveling of the playing field for traditionally underserved and overlooked populations…but we do. I don’t have to tell you why. (Unless you’re a Trump voter. In which case, meet me at a gay bar and I’ll explain it to you.)

9.)  Promotes “speedy” capital punishment. Another slippery slope. I know it’s painful to see criminals on death row for a decade or more being cared for and fed by your tax dollars, but until we know we are not executing innocent people (which we have, 193 since 1973) let’s not rush to the gallows. We are a nation of laws and I don’t have to tell you who will suffer if we subvert those laws. Do I?

10.) A call to cut Social Security by 21% in nine years, assuring that no Gen X’er will ever receive a full retirement benefit. And forget the generations after.

11.)   It stresses the “need” for a future president to “regain control” of the government. That’s a dictatorship, not a democracy.

12.)  Want to be part of the fascist fun? Merit-based federal civil servants will be reclassified as “political appointees.” To be in the Presidential Personnel Database a gov recruit must answer detailed questions about policy preference and have their social media scrutinized. This new SS would be a product of millions of dollars invested to install as many as 50,000 Trump loyalists throughout the government.

15.) A lifetime cap on Medicaid, threatening health care coverage for almost 19 million Americans.

16.) Block protections on workers’ rights to organize. Allow military force against peaceful protests. Do you think it gets bad when the police get involved now? Wait until you live in Russian America.

The Washington Post called Project 2025 the most detailed plan of what Trump might do if he’s elected. Trump himself says it would “totally obliterate the deep state.”

Oh dear God (of your choice). Have these idiots not read “Animal Farm”?

If you have the stomach for it, look at the Project 2025 plan of action. If you don’t have the stomach for it, look at the Project 2025 plan of action.

The only failsafe against jack-booted thugs breaking down your door if you happen to enjoy pornography (for your sake, better hope it’s hetero hot stuff) or reading banned books, slashing your Social Security, or imprisoning you with your protest sign…or being a woman seeking healthcare…is they’d have to have control of both chambers of Congress.

Don’t allow it. They haven’t yet abolished your vote. Use it.

Some of their fascist fantasies would surely end up challenged in the courts and will likely go to the Supreme Court. Do you want to risk it?

Vote for democracy.

Sure, I understand where we are as a country and the challenges we face. It’s a difficult era, to put it mildly.

Yet fascism has never improved a single nation in the history of nations. Ever.

A lot of things in this country need to be changed.

But not with a holy hammer.