Summary
Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and architect of Trump’s Project 2025, employs intense fire-related rhetoric in his upcoming book, Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, advocating for a “controlled burn” of institutions he deems corrupt or antithetical to conservative goals.
Roberts calls for dismantling entities like the FBI, Ivy League schools, and the New York Times, framing it as necessary to “renew” America.
His incendiary language has sparked controversy, with critics alarmed by the violent imagery and its implications for Trump’s second term.
We were close to holding right wing extremists accountable. We needed one more term at least. It was clear how suddenly Republicans try to denounce the FBI as a liberal institution after Wray said that white supremacists were the #1 domestic terrorist threat.
Now, we’re fucked.
“We” had four goddamn years and did absolutely fuck-all with it! Frankly, in retrospect, the fix was in when Biden appointed Merrick Garland instead of somebody who would actually care about the rule of law and do his goddamn job.
Four years to fix a global pandemic and undo some of the trump admin damage.
That was the bipartisan infrastructure act to shore up stuff like roads, bridges and more, the IRA to address inflation, climate goals (freed up a ton of money for green infrastructure, replacing outdated equipment at factories like gas smelters and furnaces) and more, the CHIPS and science act to counter china and restart manufacturing here in the US, as well as smaller stuff like debt relief for students, consumer protections against banks and airlines, and repealing DOMA via respect of marriage act for interracial and queer families.
In addition to conquering covid and rescuing a crashing economy in 2020. He realistically did most of this in two years because Republicans blocked them at the midterms.
Not to mention a lot of anti-competitve and merger blocks that would have fucked our country, like having one grocery store brand across the entire US. (These will probably go through in a trump admin)
He wasn’t able to get it all done, but he had one arm tied behind his back and still got a decent amount done before they got hamstrung.
I know this isn’t popular, but because I’ve literally never seen a substantive counter-argument for this, I have to say that I think Merrick Garland did all that he could given the stacked courts surrounding him. Nobody could’ve done better. He was clearly building a case from the bottom up that is a classic example of RICO prosecution style, hence the largest criminal investigation in the FBI’s history when going after those who committed January 6th. That was always going to lead to Trump. People, however are dreaming and romanticizing this belief that we could’ve “got” Trump within one year’s time and that was never possible.
The only thing that matters is that many Americans knew what Trump was, and a large swath opted to sit out and go, “Both sides!”
We couldn’t even convince the proverbial jury that was the American people of crimes in plain sight when they gave a verdict on November 5th.
I would disagree, I have only my own perception to go off of but from my observations:
There were 3 or 4 prosecutors chomping at the bit to go after Trump but Garland held them back.
It wasn’t until they found out about the missing documents that things changed. Even then Garland just wanted the documents returned, if Trump had complied that would have been the end of it.
It wasn’t until Trump refused to return specific documents that we knew he had - that crossed a red line for Garland.
Once you let one prosecutor go after Trump, what’s the excuse for holding back the others? So the flood gate was open, but only when every attempt was made to let Trump get away with it all.
For perspective, Hitler was arrested, tried, imprisoned, wrote Mein Kampf, and already released by when this much time had passed after the Beer Hall Putsch. I don’t really give a fuck what the excuses are; the fact that it was delayed this fucking long is absolutely wrong and, if not an indictment of Garland himself directly, then an indictment of the whole system of which he was the fucking head! Either way, Garland was incompetent at best and absolutely deserves all the blame he gets, and more.
Unfortunately Hitler’s Putsch was far more clear cut and our court systems already largely ruined by the time Garland assumed his office in 2021. Hitler never had the power to corrupt the courts preceding his failed coup. I also don’t know if we can compare 1:1 our criminal justice system to 1920s Germany.
I think they want the FBI gone because they go after child traffickers.
They want the FBI gone because the republican party is a criminal organization.
This is just a continuation of the wants of the Koch brothers libertarian party agenda from 1979/80.
But, yes, we are fucked.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operations
https://lpedia.org/wiki/Document:National_Platform_1980
It is not just a continuation of this. Maybe some of the economic things in P2025 come from there, but I don’t think the Koch’s were ever trying to ban pornography and track women’s menstrual cycles.
I know very little about the Chevron doctrine but I know that the overturning of that made it possible for corporations to essentially ignore any administrative oversight.
I often wondered what would happen if someone were to take the frequencies of the military or even airport flight control and just started broadcasting. Does the FCC have delegated authority? If they don’t, sounds like anyone can broadcast Rick Astley on any frequency.
The problem that these justices and elites seem to forget is that they are trusting on the very systems they dismantling working for them.
I do expect that our future includes a lot of stupid plane crashes because of lax regulation
But shareholders will get rich.
That’s all that matters.
I saw an interesting thing yesterday saying that legally this could backfire because federal agencies can now be sued for their interpretation of the law.