In a post to his social media site, Trump claimed, “I know nothing about Project 2025,” the name given to a playbook crafted by the Heritage Foundation to fill the executive branch with thousands of Trump loyalists and reorient its many agencies’ missions around conservative ideals.

“I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump continued on Truth Social. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

A center-left group in the U.S. sees a valuable lesson in the landslide victory of Britain’s Labour Party after nearly 15 years in the political wilderness.

The centrist Democrat think tank Third Way argues in a memo obtained Friday by POLITICO that Labour’s sweeping win shows that “centrism wins elections” and can undercut right-wing populism by appealing to the broadest segment of the population with a credible platform.

The 22-minute prime-time special with ABC was aired in full — "no cuts, no edits, we have not touched it," interviewer George Stephanopoulos said.

The Presbyterian Church (USA), the largest Presbyterian denomination in America, has voted to divest its funds from Israel bonds and begin a process to encourage companies contributing to human rights abuses against Palestinians to change their practices. Alongside the financial decision, the church also passed a resolution condemning Christian Zionism, and thus rejecting the messianic ideology that views the takeover of Palestine to be part of a Biblical promise.

Votes were cast during the church’s General Assembly in Salt Lake City, Utah. The assembly, comprising 422 delegate commissioners and 82 advisory delegates, passed the resolutions as part of a broader package of legislation governing church activities.

The resolution to divest from Israel calls on the Presbyterian Foundation and Board of Pensions to divest from governmental debt held by countries maintaining prolonged military occupations and subject to UN resolutions. While this includes Turkey and Morocco, the focus has primarily been on Israel. The church, which has approximately 8,800 churches and 1 million members, has been sharply critical of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians for decades.

In addition to divestment, the church voted to begin a dialogue with General Electric and Palantir Technologies, encouraging them to end practices that harm Palestinians. The church contends that General Electric sells fighter jet engines used by Israel’s air force, while Palantir Technologies provides Israel with artificial intelligence technology for surveillance of Palestinians.

Lite version (text only)

The president said in an interview on ABC that he was “sick” and “feeling terrible” before the debate. Asked whether it was a bad episode or a sign of a more serious condition, Biden dismissed those concerns.

“It was a bad episode. No indication of any serious condition. I didn’t listen to my instincts in terms of preparing, and I had a bad night,” he said.

In the interview, Biden also gave more details about how he was feeling at the time of the debate, saying he was fatigued from illness and had even been tested for Covid-19.

He said, “Because I was sick – I was feeling terrible. As a matter of fact, the docs with me I asked if they did a Covid test, they were trying to figure out what’s wrong. They did a test to see whether or not I had some infection, you know, a virus. I didn’t. I just had a really bad cold.”

. . . Biden came face-to-face with voter concerns just before the ABC interview, as he was taking the stage at a campaign rally in Wisconsin. A rally attendee unfurled a sign reading, “Pass the torch, Joe.” The sign was visible for a few moments before someone else tried to cover part of it with a Biden-Harris sign.

Biden’s speech during that rally was animated and energetic – though he seemed to realize that each of his words would be parsed and carefully scrutinized in this politically crucial period. He vowed to “beat Trump again in 2020” before quickly realizing his mistake and correcting himself: “By the way, we’re gonna do it again in 2024.”

. . . Biden said unnamed forces are “trying to push him out of the race.”

“Well, let me say this as quick as I can,” he added. “I’m staying in the race.”

That point was punctuated by the song that played as Biden’s speech concluded: Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”

Can't afford him going off script again

The over 900-page document, commissioned by the people expected to run another Trump White House, is a laundry list of the far-right's most politically toxic ideas, from banning abortion nationwide to mass firing federal officials who believe in protecting public health and safety. One would think that Trump and his allies would try to keep their sinister plans out of public view. Instead, Team Trump published their fascistic blueprint on a website for anyone to read,. They even proudly display the menacing "Project 2025" label on the front page.

...

On Sunday, actress Taraji P. Henson took a break during the BET Awards, which she was hosting, to speak out about Project 2025. "The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look it up!" she told viewers. "I’m talking to all the mad people that don’t want to vote. You’re going to be mad about a lot of things if you don’t vote."

The clip went viral, amplified by other celebrities like Mark Ruffalo. So the MAGA forces swung into action on social media, accusing Henson and Ruffalo and other progressives of making it all up. "Is Project 2025 in the room with you?" a blue-checked user sneered under Ruffalo's tweet. These efforts at gaslighting people run against a real problem, however: The drafters of Project 2025 seek to promote their authoritarian playbook. Thus, a simple Google search generates a slew of explainers from various news organizations, with even more coming out rapidly, as a response to the rising number of people asking, "What's Project 2025?"

"We received a flood of reader inquiries asking if Project 2025 was a real effort," the fact-checking team at Snopes wrote in their lengthy explainer published Tuesday. Google Trends confirms that the number of searches for "project 2025" has grown dramatically in recent days.

What might the current president do with monarchical immunity to act? Sorry, that’s not admissible.

By Sidney Blumenthal (New Republic, July 4, 2024)