During the campaign, President-elect Donald J. Trump swore he had “nothing to do with” a right-wing policy blueprint known as Project 2025 that would overhaul the federal government, even though many of those involved in developing the plans were his allies.
Mr. Trump even described many of the policy goals as “absolutely ridiculous.” And during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he said he was “not going to read it.”
Now, as he plans his agenda for his return to the White House, Mr. Trump has recruited at least a half dozen architects and supporters of the plan to oversee key issues, including the federal budget, intelligence gathering and his promised plans for mass deportations.
The shift, his critics say, is not exactly a surprise. Mr. Trump disavowed the 900-page manifesto when polls showed it was extremely unpopular with voters. Now that he has won a second term, they say, he appears to be brushing those concerns aside.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


“President-elect Trump has dropped all pretense and is charging ahead hand in hand with the right-wing industry players shaping an agenda he denied for the whole campaign,” said Tony Carrk, the executive director of Accountable.US, a government watchdog agency that has been tracking Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks with ties to the project.
Image

Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks and other appointments have reaffirmed the fears of many Democrats and government watchdogs who say Mr. Trump will use Project 2025 as a road map to expand his executive power, replace civil servants with political loyalists and gut government agencies like the Department of Education.
Mr. Trump has picked Russell T. Vought, one of the authors of Project 2025, to lead the powerful Office of Management and Budget. In choosing Mr. Vought, Mr. Trump will have someone who views the position as far more expansive than just overseeing the budget.
Mr. Vought wrote in Project 2025 that the person picked for the job should view themselves as an “approximation of the president’s mind,” while establishing a reputation of the keeper of “commander’s intent.”
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


In the report, Mr. Vought wrote that the incoming administration should overhaul executive branch institutions, such as the National Security Council and National Economic Council to align with Mr. Trump’s agenda, while abolishing White House offices for domestic climate policy and gender policy.
Earlier this year, Mr. Trump tried to distance himself from his former staffers like Mr. Vought, who also served as budget chief during his first term. Democrats were ramping up attacks that tied Mr. Trump to Project 2025 as voters grew unsettled by its promises to amass power in the executive branch.
Image

“I have no idea who is behind it,” Mr. Trump said on social media in July, despite his ties to former staffers like Mr. Vought.
In a statement this week, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, argued Mr. Trump “never had anything to do” with Project 2025.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


“All of President Trump’s cabinet nominees and appointments are wholeheartedly committed to President Trump’s agenda, not the agenda of outside groups,” Ms. Leavitt said.
Mr. Trump has also tapped Stephen Miller to be his deputy chief of staff for policy and Thomas Homan to be a “border czar,” positions that do not require Senate confirmation. Mr. Homan is listed as a contributor to Project 2025. The legal organization Mr. Miller founded during Mr. Biden’s time out of office, America First Legal, was listed at one point as an adviser group to Project 2025.
Image

Both officials will be responsible for elements of Mr. Trump’s goals of establishing detention camps and carrying out mass deportations. The Project 2025 blueprint also recommends rescinding restrictions that prevented immigration agents from carrying out arrests in schools and churches.
Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, wrote a chapter in Project 2025 that called for reining in “Big Tech,” eliminating immunity protections for social media companies and imposing transparency rules on companies like Google, Facebook and YouTube.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


“It is hard to imagine another industry in which a greater gap exists between power and accountability,” he wrote.
Other contributors to Project 2025 include Pete Hoekstra, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to the Netherlands and his current pick to be ambassador to Canada, as well as John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the C.I.A.
A former director of national intelligence, Mr. Ratcliffe was cited repeatedly in the document, including in a chapter on the intelligence community written by Dustin Carmack. Mr. Carmack was Mr. Ratcliffe’s chief of staff when he served as Mr. Trump’s director of National Intelligence in his first administration.
Image

Mr. Carmack made the case in Project 2025 for empowering the director of national intelligence, as the leader of the intelligence community. He also said the leader needed to “address the widely promoted ‘woke’ culture that has spread throughout the federal government with identity politics and ‘social justice’ advocacy replacing such traditional American values as patriotism, colorblindness, and even workplace competence.”
Advertisement


Alex Floyd, the rapid response director of the Democratic National Committee said that “after months of lies to the American people, Donald Trump is taking off the mask.”
“He’s plotting a Project 2025 Cabinet to enact his dangerous vision starting on day one,” Mr. Floyd said.

A long-deceased boss I had about 25 years ago (a retired professor) was convinced the have-nots would be coming over the wall for the haves before too long. He also argued that we wouldn’t be able to build walls high enough.

Leaving aside that we just elected a billionaire who seems intent on stocking his administration with fellow billionaires, thoughts on whether this is a realistic possibility?

Director of Cold War film ‘Red Dawn’ said movie’s success taught him lesson about liberal Hollywood​

Amanda Milius talked to Fox News Digital about the 40th anniversary of her dad's movie: 'I don't think Hollywood liked that too much'​

Asked to define why the film struck a chord and has resonated for more than a generation, the younger Milius referenced a line from the movie where Swayze’s character sums up why the young people are fighting so desperately to defend America against steep odds. "Because we live here," he simply explains.

"That [scene] means, ‘We have to do this. We have to take care of the country… This is our responsibility,'" she said. "It's like this very American idea of, I'm going to go and I just know in my bones that if somebody were to invade my land, I would go and protect it in whatever way I could with my high school friends in a truck."
...

John Milius is a former board member of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and "Red Dawn" featured a scene where the Soviets use gun registration lists to confiscate weapons. The younger Milius said of her dad and that scene: "I think ‘Red Dawn’ is the movie where he got to do the most of what he wanted without interference, because there's so many things that he gets away with in that movie that you could never do today. I mean, just never."

She called the gun confiscation moment her dad’s warning to "watch out for government overreach" and added, "I think most people love that scene. I love it. I think it was, you know, pretty on point."


Full article:

From UI:
8 Hawkeyes Named AP All-Big Ten

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- Eight University of Iowa football student-athletes – junior Kaleb Johnson, senior Jay Higgins, senior Connor Colby, senior Kaden Wetjen, junior Gennings Dunker, senior Logan Jones, senior Sebastian Castro and senior Jermari Harris and freshman Rhys Dakin -- have been named Associated Press All-Big Ten selections, it was announced Tuesday by the AP.

Iowa had five first-team selections -- Castro, Colby, Higgins, Johnson and Wetjen -- the most of any team in the expanded 18-team league. Johnson and Penn State tight end Tyler Warren were the only unanimous first-team selections by the voting panel of 21 media members who cover the conference.

It looks like the Swarm gameday tailgate will be held at Barstool Sports Nashville with Dallas Jacobus confirmed to be playing. Details will be forthcoming.

123 2nd Ave S, Nashville, TN 37201

Close to the stadium.

Getting ready

Trump’s threat is to “primary” her….If she dies oppose and Trump does… I think I will vote as a Republican in the ‘26 primary and vote for Joni.
Can some good Iowa Repubber explain to me how Trump “primarying” Ernst might damage her re-election chances?
Now I think Trump might “punish” Ernst more by asking her to head the DoD…Trump loves to put un and under qualified folds in charge of departments he wants exposed as inefficient and not necessary.

I believe both will show complete schedules tomorrow

Interesting real life Succession story going on in the courts right now as Rupert Murdoch seeks to change his irrevocable trust in order to give editorial sway at NewsCorp to his son Lachlan. Few details are leaking out at this time, so we'll have to wait until whichever kid loses to leak to the press.
https://apnews.com/article/rupert-m...family-trust-9a4b20037e43f46ad5934797579dcd8e

Hell of a year for Caitlin, man.

Login to view embedded media

Is laying the smack down on his republican colleagues.

The Archer Daniels Midland wet mill on the outskirts of Decatur, Ill., rises like an industrial behemoth from the frozen, harvested cornfields of Central Illinois. Steam billowed in the 20-degree cold last week, as workers turned raw corn into sweet, ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup. Three miles away, a Primient mill, which sprawls across 400 acres divided by North 22nd Street, was doing the same.
To Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, this bedraggled city — set deep in Trump country — is the belly of the agribusiness beast, churning out products that he says poison America, rendering its children obese and its citizens chronically ill.
To the workers here, those mills — the largest in the world — are their livelihoods.
“It’d have a huge impact,” a 37-year-old electrician who would identify himself by only his first name, Tyler, said of Mr. Kennedy’s declaration of war on corn syrup and corn oil. He was grabbing lunch at Debbie’s Diner in the shadow of the mills. “That shuts down Central Illinois, if A.D.M. shuts down.”
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


Mr. Trump’s alliance with Mr. Kennedy during the presidential campaign was the ultimate marriage of convenience, uniting a right-wing populist presidential candidate with a scion of the nation’s most famous Democratic family, whose appeal to would-be Trump voters rested mainly with his conspiracy theories on Covid-19 and vaccines. Mr. Kennedy said at the time that Mr. Trump had promised him control of the nation’s public health agencies.

Mr. Kennedy’s other track record — on environmental protection and an abiding hatred of America’s unhealthy diet — may have been less of a draw to the fast-food-loving, regulation-hating Mr. Trump, but the former and future president said he would keep Mr. Kennedy’s environmentalism in check while letting him “go wild” on health.
Then Mr. Trump nominated him to head the sprawling Department of Health and Human Services, which has partial purview over America’s diet through a powerful subsidiary, the Food and Drug Administration, and enormous influence on health through its control of Medicare and Medicaid.
Now a brewing battle over corn syrup and vegetable oils is raising the prospect of a fight between Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Trump’s own voters in farm country.
“I may have to spend a lot of time educating him about agriculture,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the largest corn-growing state, just ahead of Illinois, said of Mr. Kennedy last month. “I’m willing to do that.”

​

Mr. Kennedy’s critique is broad and deep. Generous federal crop subsidies of soy, corn and wheat artificially lower their costs, making byproducts like corn syrup cheaper for manufacturers who put it into everything from soft drinks to hot dogs to heavily processed bread. Crop engineering has made American grains more resilient to drought and pests but rendered them “nutrient barren,” he says, and farming practices have loaded grains with pesticides.
High-fructose corn syrup “is just a formula for making you obese and diabetic,” he has said in promotional videos, often pinning blame for the state of American grain production on Democrats and promising to “immediately” take processed foods out of the school lunch program and ban food stamps from being used to buy processed foods and sweet drinks.
In fact, his most vocal allies on the issue come from the left. Michael R. Bloomberg, the former independent mayor of New York and Democratic donor, waged his own unsuccessful war on corn-syrup-laden soft drinks. On Thursday, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the Senate’s most left-wing member who leads the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, pressed the leaders of the F.D.A. at a hearing to label sugary processed food and drink as unhealthy and to restrict advertising of such products.
“For decades, Congress and the F.D.A. have allowed large corporations to make huge profits by enticing children and adults to consume ultra-processed food and beverages loaded up with sugar, salt and saturated fat,” he said, sounding very much like Mr. Kennedy. “None of this is happening by accident.”
But corn country is Trump country, and any concern about Mr. Kennedy is muted. Decatur’s mills operate around the clock and employ around 4,400 workers and contractors, but their economic power is much broader than that. At harvest season, farmers ship their corn from all over the Midwest, on trucks, rail cars and barges, lining up for miles. Electricians, pipe fitters and truck drivers service the mills year round.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


Image

The Biden administration’s economic support for the region may be obvious all over Central Illinois, from the spinning wind turbines underwritten by generous renewable energy tax credits to the Rivian auto plant in Normal, Ill., churning out electric pickup trucks and vans whose high price tags are offset by consumer tax breaks.
But Decatur’s Macon County gave Mr. Trump 59 percent of its votes in a state where 55 percent sided with Vice President Kamala Harris. Neighboring DeWitt County gave Mr. Trump 71 percent.
If anything, the economic concerns are being voiced mainly by the few Democrats in office in the area. Representative Nikki Budzinski, a Democrat whose district includes downtown Decatur and the A.D.M. wet mill, allowed that the interests of farmers and workers needed to be balanced with health concerns. But with Mr. Trump threatening tariffs on U.S. corn markets like China and Mexico, she worried that retaliatory tariffs by trading partners will do serious harm to the mills that are the “economic engine” of the region. An attack on corn syrup would only worsen a bad situation.
Mr. Kennedy “is going to go through the advice and consent process,” she said. “I would hope that the Senate will take that seriously.”
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


Rodney M. Weinzierl, the executive director of the Illinois Corn Growers Association in nearby Bloomington, Ill., said corn farmers were actually in a buoyant mood, more optimistic that the Trump administration will soften regulations on pesticides, herbicides and endangered species protection than concerned about Mr. Kennedy.
That doesn’t mean Mr. Weinzierl isn’t worried. Fights over high-fructose corn syrup have come and gone since the 1980s as agriculture lobbyists have fought bureaucrats in the F.D.A. and Agriculture Department. But no one has experienced doing battle with a cabinet secretary, let alone one with Mr. Kennedy’s zeal.
“We don’t know what it’s like to have a secretary that’s trying to drive the debate,” he said in a conference room nicknamed the corn crib. “Anything that causes uncertainty, you start paying more attention to it.”
An all-purpose refrain in the Midwest to parry critics of corn syrup is “sugar is sugar,” a dismissal of those like Mr. Kennedy who think sweeteners extracted from sugar cane would be healthier than sweeteners refined from corn. But there is an “America First” element to it: Much of America’s cane sugar is imported, from countries like Brazil, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, while American corn is a major export crop.
And the corn economy is in a precarious state. Corn harvests are setting records, but demand is not keeping up, especially as Brazilian farmers increase their competitiveness. That has sent corn prices plunging. Farmers are working harder, reaping more and earning less.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


High-fructose corn syrup might absorb only about 4 percent of the nation’s corn crop, but any decline in demand — or even a threat of decline — when yields rise each year will depress prices further, hollow out rural America and force the consolidation of farms into ever bigger behemoths, Mr. Weinzierl said.
“A little change in supply or demand has a larger impact than you think it would,” he cautioned. “Abrupt change is a huge issue in the rural economy. We need demand.”

How refreshing to see a leader not call the opposition "GARBAGE"

President-elect Donald Trump told NBC News' "Meet the Press" on Sunday that his inaugural address would focus on unity, and revealed his message to the Americans who did not support him on Election Day.

"I’m going to treat you every bit as well as I have treated the greatest MAGA supporters," Trump said, responding to a question about what he wanted to tell the people who didn't vote for him.

Trump joined NBC News' Kristen Welker on Sunday for his first major interview since winning the presidential election. Trump previously joined Welker for an interview in September 2023 and was the NBC host's inaugural guest after she took over for longtime host Chuck Todd.

"These people are so dedicated to making America great again, it’s very simple. And I’m going to treat them just the same as I treat MAGA. We’ll treat everybody good. We want success for our country, we want safety for our country," the president-elect added.

Trump emphasized bringing down crime and said that the U.S. was "under threat." The president-elect also said he wanted to improve the country's reputation.

"But we have to get the criminals of our country. We have to bring down crime. People have to be able to walk across the street and buy a loaf a bread without being shot. And that’s going to happen. But what I say to them is, I love you, and we’re going to all work together. And we’re going to bring it together. And you know what’s going to bring it together? Success," he said.

Trump also told Welker his inaugural address would focus on a message of unity.

"It’s going to be a message of unity, and I think success brings unity. And I’ve experienced that. I’ve experienced it in my first term, as I’ve said. We’re going to be talking about unity, and we’re going to be talking about success. Making our country safe. Keeping people that shouldn’t be in our country out, we have to do that. I know it doesn’t sound nice, but we have to do that. Basically, it’s going to be about bringing our country together," Trump said, previewing his address.

Trump met with MSNBC hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, some of his biggest critics in the media, following his victory. He recently spoke to Fox News Digital about his second term.

"In order to Make America Great Again, it is very important, if not vital, to have a free, fair and open media or press," Trump said.

"I received a call from Joe Scarborough requesting a meeting for him and Mika, and I agreed that it would be a good thing if such meeting took place," Trump said. "We met at Mar-a-Lago on Friday morning at 8:00."

Trump said the meeting was "extremely cordial."

"Many things were discussed, and I very much appreciated the fact that they wanted to have open communication," he said. "In many ways, it’s too bad that it wasn’t done long ago."

Good to see her back in action tonight

Insane.

Bro lmao I love college football

Login to view embedded media

Who are you cheering for this Saturday?

Killed us vs Utah St and nearly did tonight. Everyone stay in Carver all night and work on them. Crazy how bad we are at them but thanks to the man with a large Dix we are 7-1 still!

Hi all,

I just received an email from Journeyman Wrestling. Seems like there are a ton of available seats for the duals taking place in St Charles, MO on December 6th. Hope to see some of you fellas there!

We currently have 500 paid spectators for the Iowa vs. Army and Princeton double dual, which falls well short of our goal of 2,500 attendees. Securing top-tier programs to wrestle off-campus is no easy feat, and for it to continue being an option, it needs to be a viable opportunity for the teams. Filling the seats is the minimum expectation they look at when deciding to participate.

We’d greatly appreciate your support in helping us build momentum for December 6! Group sales are available for teams bringing 15 or more people. Let’s showcase the strength of our wrestling community and make this an unforgettable event!

Event Details
December 6, 2024
Francis Howell High School
7001 Highway 94 South
St. Charles, MO 63304

Login to view embedded media
I chuckled

Unbelievable >

Login to view embedded media

Javier Milei, the wild-haired Argentine president known by his supporters as “the madman,” has lately edged out Hungary’s Viktor Orban as the MAGA movement’s chief international inspiration.
Donald Trump has called Milei his “favorite president,” and Milei was the first foreign leader to visit him at Mar-a-Lago after his victory. Last week, the Conservative Political Action Conference, which has increasingly sought to build a global network of right-wing activists and politicians, held its first-ever conference in Buenos Aires. Lara Trump, the president-elect’s daughter-in-law, gave a speech lauding Milei’s relentless budget-slashing, and vowed that, with help from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency, “we’re going to do the same thing in the United States.”
The ascendence of Milei in Trumpworld is a sign of an important ideological shift on the right. Trump first ran for office railing against corporate America and rejecting the sort of entitlement cuts long dreamed of by Republican wonks like Paul Ryan, the former House speaker. “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican, and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump said in 2015. After Trump won, Orban became an icon to a group of rising right-wing intellectuals less interested in fiscal discipline than in using the power of the state to remake culture, reward friends and punish enemies. Conservatives like JD Vance often speak admiringly of the subsidies Orban’s government gives families to encourage them to have more children; such spending is more than 5 percent of Hungary’s G.D.P.
Milei is a very different kind of right-winger. He’s an arch-libertarian — except when it comes to abortion — who has four cloned mastiffs named after conservative economists. He believes that drugs should be legal, as should the sale of organs, and sees marriage as a contract that should exist outside of state regulation.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


Since taking office a year ago amid devastating hyperinflation, he’s undertaken a campaign of economic shock therapy, slashing government spending by around 30 percent. In doing so, as Jon Lee Anderson wrote in a recent New Yorker profile, he’s changed “the compact between the Argentinian state and its citizens — cutting cost-of-living increases to pensioners, funding for education, and supplies for soup kitchens in poor neighborhoods.” In some ways, Milei is succeeding; inflation has plummeted. But the poverty rate rose by around 11 points during his first six months in office, to almost 53 percent, and the country has fallen into a recession.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
In the American right’s admiration for Milei, you can see the rebirth of old-fashioned small-government conservatism in feral tech-bro form. Campaigning for Trump in October, Musk argued that Americans need to accept “temporary hardship” to reduce spending, and Ramaswamy recently called for “Milei-style cuts on steroids.” It’s far from clear how much policy influence Musk and Ramaswamy will actually have; the Department of Government Efficiency is just an advisory board, not a real department. But while Paul Ryan may be banished from Trump’s Republican Party, some of the most unattractive elements of his politics have come roaring back.
Mike Lee, a Republican senator from Utah, has long dreamed of pulling up Social Security “by the roots.” In social media posts last week, he compared it to a “Ponzi scheme” and called for “real reform.” “Interesting thread,” wrote Musk, boosting it. On Fox Business Network, Representative Rich McCormick, a Republican from Georgia, said legislators need to have the “stomach” to make “hard decisions” about entitlements, while his fellow congressional Republican, Mark Alford, called for raising the Social Security retirement age.
At least in the immediate term, both Social Security and Medicare are probably safe, given the minuscule size of the House Republican majority. Plenty of other programs could, however, be on the chopping block.
A Republican Congress may cut federal matching funds that helped states expand access to Medicaid, which covers low-income people and people with disabilities. Republicans are talking about imposing national Medicaid work requirements and checking recipient eligibility more than once a year, potentially burdening people with more paperwork than they can keep up with. The G.O.P. is also looking at ways to cut food stamps and to make it harder to qualify for them. Affordable housing programs could be gutted, and Trump will probably roll back what he can of Biden’s student debt relief programs. New hardships, for many, may well be on the way. It remains to be seen how temporary they will be.

Editors’ Picks​

36 Hours in Dubai​

The Only Holiday Cookie Recipes You’ll Need This Year​

S.N.L. Resurrects Church Lady: Isn’t That Special!​

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT


For years, observers, including me, have attributed at least part of Trump’s success to his rhetorical break with the unpopular elements of conservative economic orthodoxy. His choice of Vance as vice president suggested he might be open to an expansion of the social safety net aimed at shoring up blue-collar families. But the American right’s lionization of Milei indicates a different Republican path, one more congenial to the party’s biggest donors.
Milei, with his defiantly vulgar, anarchically anti-establishment style, has managed to build a working-class constituency for economic austerity, and to maintain it even as his policies start to bite. (His approval rating is currently a relatively robust 55 percent.) He’s figured out a way to harness the insurrectionary energy of populism to the most elite economic program imaginable. This feat, such as it is, may not be replicable outside of Argentina, but it’s understandable that our plutocrats would want to try.

It's official. And Michigan draws Alabama. That could be interesting. But not an interesting matchup for the Hawkeyes.

First (public) portal offer post of portal season.

This is premium content. Please subscribe to view.