Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / “PROJECT 2025” with Skye Perryman

Transcript

“PROJECT 2025” with Skye Perryman · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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G'day, humans! Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, and here are a few dangerous
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ideas for you. Imagine a tax office employee who refuses to audit and investigate the
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president's political enemies on the spurious grounds. And imagine that person being legally
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fired and replaced with a party loyalist to do the president's bidding.
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Or imagine a civil engineer who blows the whistle on a dangerous, shoddy new bridge that's
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been commissioned, being fired by the governor who wanted to claim credit for the bridge,
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and that firing being legal. And the governor just installing a civil engineering hack
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or a political appointee to say the right thing about the dangerous bridge. Or imagine
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a fissioned game warden who enforces rules around fish catches, being fired by a politician
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who couldn't get the rules changed and just wants to punish whoever disagrees with
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him and install people who don't enforce the rules. These are the kinds of things that
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happen in authoritarian and corrupt countries, and critics of Project 2025 say these are
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the kinds of things that Project 2025 could allow a future Trump administration to do.
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I wanted to pick this, unpack this, understand what Project 2025 is. If you've never heard
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of it, this will be a good primer. If you have, I hope this will answer any questions
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that you might have about it. The conversations around the conversations that we have on this
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podcast are taking place on Substack. I'm really grateful to see people chiming in and
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giving me their thoughts. I really appreciate it. I'm going to start using Substack comments
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more. If you didn't hear the Tim mentioned episode, you absolutely must. It's one of my favorite
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episodes for two and a half hours. I speak with the Olivier Award-winning Tony Award-winning
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musician, lyricist, comedian about cancel culture and going out on a limb in the creative
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arts and echo chambers and empathy on the Substack comments Shannon left a message saying,
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I'm so glad to have had this podcast to my echo chamber defense strategy as a right-leaning
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centrist. That's a self-diagnosis, but I think it fits. I don't always agree with Josh,
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but he makes these conversations so eminently listenable and interesting, so far removed
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from my life, but absolutely brilliant. Thank you, Shannon. Another person says the line
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of thought that started with extending agency and empathy really needs to be heard more.
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This is one of the biggest pieces of feedback that we've gotten about the Tim mentioned
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episode. Is this distinction that Tim made between agency and empathy? Saying that oftentimes
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the people who we extend or the groups, the marginalized groups that we extend the greatest
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sympathy to are the ones that we expect the least of and actually give the least agency
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to. We can be condescending and patronizing to them because we treat them as being,
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I don't know, historically disadvantaged. We impose the soft bigotry of low expectations
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on them. And then there are other groups to whom we give tremendous agency groups like
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white males, for example, and we hold them accountable for everything that they do. We don't
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have a lot of sympathy for them when they do the wrong thing because we implicitly assume
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in a sort of quasi-racist way that white males are masters of their own destiny in a way
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that a poor black person isn't, for example. That resonated clearly with a lot of people
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who have left comments on Substack. If you don't subscribe to Substack, I'm not going
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to keep banging on about it right now, but you don't have to pay to be part of these comments.
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And you don't have to pay to be part of my notes. I'm about to send out a note about something
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that's going on in the UK that caught my eye, which is that there's a controversy over blackout
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nights in the theatre. These are nights where at the theatre, a couple of times during a show,
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they'll have performances only for black actors. At the moment, Kit Harrington, who plays John
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Snow in Game of Thrones, who's in this show, is doing the rounds talking about how incredibly
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constructive this is, how powerful it is, how incredible it is to perform before all black
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audiences. I have a few thoughts about this. I won't go into them now. I don't think there's
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anything necessarily wrong with segregating, but if you're going to segregate, then what's good
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for the goose? It has to be good for the gander, and you have to sort of use the same rationale.
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If white people wanted to have a white solely or a no-black's night in a majority-black area,
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like Detroit, maybe you could make an argument against that on the grounds of historical discrimination,
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but if you did make that argument, it would have to be so watertight that it landed with all white
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people as a brilliant slam dunk. Otherwise, all that nights like this are going to do is make it
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likelier that white people and probably the worst kinds of white people will also engage in
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self-identification with their race, and that has never worked terribly well in the past. Nonetheless,
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if you're interested in that kind of thing and my kind of take, subscribe to Substack, it's free,
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just go to uncomfortableconversations.substack.com, enter your email address, and you can sign up for
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the free tier, and then you can have arguments about things that I've said on this podcast,
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and you can receive notes from me directly. Notes are a little bit like a social media feed. You can
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download an app and it's kind of like Twitter, but without the noxiousness, and then your comments
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will appear on the posts underneath a particular episode that you want to comment on. So that's
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all a little digression to get to this point about agency, because someone contacted me about this
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and said the following. I'm officially hooked to your podcast now. Your interview with Tim
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mentioned was amazing. I'd never heard of him, but I really dug what he was saying, probably came
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closest to my critique of progressivism today. This person goes on to say, what do you say about
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double standards? Brought me back to an unpopular stance I had on the Justice Kavanaugh hearings.
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Remember that Justice Kavanaugh, when he was being appointed, there was a lot of controversy
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about the things that he did when he was a teenager who was apparently sexist. He would apparently
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get black out drunk and may have had appropriate relations with other girls in high school and
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college. He was really portrayed as being the embodiment of white male privileged evil essentially
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and cluelessness. This list says, what he said about double standards brought me back to an
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unpopular stance I had on the Justice Kavanaugh hearings. If progressives argue that young black
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teenagers from broken homes who commit heinous crimes should be given a chance for redemption,
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then why can't we look at the world that Bret and I came up when in the 1980s this person writes
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of the same generation and the same milieu as Justice Kavanaugh? Why can't we look at the world
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Bret and I came up in the 80s which glorified binge drinking and chasing or pressuring girls
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for sex and see he was a product of his environment as well and maybe shouldn't be jotted by something
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that allegedly happened when he was 16. It's an interesting point. It's a brave point.
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Another person on substack says, Tim's line about empathy versus agency is a fantastic way of
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describing a very common and frustrating phenomenon in these days. Another person Sean says,
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Tim showed a lot of courage to speak so openly against the mob. One thing Sean says, I wish he'd
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replace the use of the word empathy with compassion. Paul Bloom might have something to add here.
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Paul Bloom's a philosopher who's written a book against the idea of empathy saying that we too often
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use our intuitions about sympathy and emotional empathy to guide our reason and that we should
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actually be more coldly calculating about it. So there may be some linguistic case to be made there.
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So onto project 2035, this is an opportune day to be talking about it by good fortune. Earlier today
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President Biden came out and proposed a bunch of reforms for the Supreme Court.
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Let me read directly from the New York Times because this news is just breaking as I'm recording.
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Earlier this month, the Supreme Court writes the New York Times issued a six to three ruling that
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grants broad immunity to presidents from prosecution for actions they take while in office.
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Mr. Biden called for a constitutional amendment that would limit such immunity.
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Quote, this is the president speaking at a speech earlier today.
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For all practical purposes, the court's decision almost certainly means that the president
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can violate the oath, flout our laws, and face no consequences. Mr. Biden said.
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Quote, folks, and when President Biden says folks, I feel forced to kind of like do it in his voice.
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Folks, just imagine what a president could do,
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traveling civil rights and liberties given such immunity.
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That's my best American corpse. You know, it may not be a great Biden,
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but the dead American, maybe vampire American. This quote struck out, it lipped out at me
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because when he says just imagine what a president could do,
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trampling civil rights and liberties given such immunity.
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This is why it's great that Joe Biden is not running for president.
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That sentence doesn't mean anything to me. It doesn't land with me in a visceral way.
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I mean, think of the way that Obama could connect with people.
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Think of the way that Clinton could connect with people.
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Think of the way that even George W. Bush was able to cut through in his rambling,
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bumbling way. And think of the way that Trump can command a crowd.
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Just imagine what a president could do, trampling civil rights and liberties given such immunity.
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I mean, I don't know what that means.
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I don't know what that means. The left talks a lot about civil rights in ways that seem so
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expansive that they could be meaning like it's a terrifying imposition on civil rights to require
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ID to vote the way everyone does in France. Or it's a terrifying, you know,
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constriction of civil rights to give teachers guidance about what they can say about the biological
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sexes to five year olds and six year olds. So it's hard to know. I just imagine what a
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president could do trampling civil rights. I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't know. You're the
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president. Tell me, you tell me you put flesh on the bones. Don't tell me to imagine something
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that you say is scary. Tell me why it's scary. So that's why I wanted to have this conversation
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today to like try to explain what does it actually mean? I don't really continue quoting for the
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New York Times. Mr. Biden warning that quote, extremism is undermining the public confidence in
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the court's decisions said conservative plans for sweeping policy changes if former president
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Donald J. Trump wins a second term known as project 2025. Talk about being ahead of the curve
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on this one would continue to push the courts to the right. Quote, you're serious, man. Mr. Biden
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apparently in a voice that sounded remarkably like George W. Bush. They're quote, they're
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planning another onslaught attacking civil rights in America. Okay. Again,
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don't know what he's talking about. We're going to find out as we discuss project 2025 and as we
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discuss what plans the president, president Biden has for reforming the court. One backdrop to this
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lastly. Don't worry. I'll get to the interview soon. David Plott said something really interesting.
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David's a brilliant guy. Co hosts the slate political gabfest. One of the best American political
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podcasts, which you must subscribe to if you haven't. He's been a guest on this show. In fact,
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David and I sat down and he was my first guest after president Trump won. That's interesting to
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go back into the archive and listen to. It was on my old show. I should probably, why don't I re-release
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that closer to the election because it's fascinating to go back and listen to what two intelligent
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lefties thought might happen before Donald, you know, immediately after Donald Trump was first elected.
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So anyway, David Plott says something interesting. He said, having worked as a CEO quite a lot of media
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companies, he finds that one big misunderstanding about leadership is that ideas are important.
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He says ideas aren't that important. What's important is execution. What's important is the ability
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to get ideas done. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Everyone's got great ideas. You know, where the
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rubber meets the road is in transforming an idea into the practical ability to in an ongoing basis
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change the world around you. And he makes the point that what saved us in the first Trump term was
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the fact that they had no bloody idea what they were doing. Like his people were not in place. He
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didn't really think that he was going to win. His transition team was lousy. Nobody knew what they
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were doing. And what I suppose differentiates the situation that we find ourselves in today is that
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they've had four years, not necessarily just him, but the people around him, people who realize
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the potential moment that this represents in seizing power for a generation or a century from
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the left. They understand the opportunity of the next four years if Donald Trump wins. And they
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have been carefully putting together the right people, the right strategies, the right policies
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to be able to exert maximum energy on the levers of power from the instant Donald Trump walks
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into the Oval Office. That's the context in which to understand Project 2025. That's the
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context in which to understand. Yeah, I suppose the left's concerns about the salvaging of democracy
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and what to make of the word salad that President Biden is ejaculating when he says things like
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just imagine what a president could do trampling civil rights and liberties. I'm sorry to put
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the idea of President Biden ejaculating in your mind, but yeah, I was talking about language.
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I would get your mind out of the gutter. I was talking about words, you know, the ejaculation
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of str- I'm going to leave it right there. The articulation of strange mumbo jumbo words that
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don't really mean anything until you hear a conversation like the one you're about to hear. Now
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there is a risk in the left's pushback against democracy. And you will hear me articulate this
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frustration with today's guest when I fear that she wanders into this into into participating in
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this, I suppose, rhetorical floor. A risk of conflating everything that the left cares about
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with the threat to democracy that's posed by Project 2025. In other words, a kind of
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hysterical arm-wavy conflation of everything we hold dear with the end of the world. And I think
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it's really, really important for us if we want to win over reasonable people in the middle.
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And if you want Republican leaning suburban soccer moms in the Midwest to vote for Kamala Harris
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instead of Donald Trump, you know, you can't say that the reason they should do so is because Project
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2025 and all of the other things that conservatives have done in the past 10 years are all equally
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bad. You have to kind of carve this out and say, no, no, no, this is actually unusual. What they're
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trying to do here is remarkable. It's different. It doesn't fall into the neat partisan binary that
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you can think of when we're talking about other culture war issues, for example. So I have been
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back and forth with Sky about this, which you will hear in the latter half of the conversation.
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Sky is fantastic. She's brilliant. She's a lawyer. She was a lawyer at a couple of big global
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firms. Then she was the chief legal officer for America's obstetricians and gynecologists. And
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she helped push through a lot of human rights successes there. She helped extend postpartum
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Medicaid coverage for half a million people in America. She's now the president and CEO of Democracy
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Forward, which is a nonprofit. They promote democracy. As the name would suggest, they take
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fight court cases, they lobby, they run education, they do research into the promotion of democracy
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in America. Sky was named one of this year's most influential people shaping policy by Washingtonian
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magazine. Her legal work has been cited by the US Supreme Court. Please enjoy and find very
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informative. The one and only sky pyramid. So thanks for being here. What are you drinking? I just
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heard, I'll good diet coke. Excellent. I heard the, yeah, well, we're in different time zones.
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So I'll have my diet coke when I'm in your end of the day. What are you doing in Maine? Is this
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work or a play? It's a little bit of both, but I'm here doing some remote work, but also seeing
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some good friends. And there's news, which is about the court. So I want to talk about Project
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2025, but you were just mentioning to me off the air that we have some news about what Joe Biden
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wants to do in terms of reforming the Supreme Court. What's happening? Yes, I mean, today is a really
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historic day. The president has announced three bold reform measures. He is announcing support for
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a constitutional amendment that is clear that no one is above the law. He's actually calling it
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the no one is above the law amendment. There's no, I mean, a constitutional amendment is not
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going to pass, right? So that's he's signaling. This is a, that's a political motive. It's not
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going to happen. I think it's a, I think it's a great bold move to, you know, call the American people
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to attention on what the Supreme Court's done with the Trump community decision and to put the
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full force of support behind this. But yes, it would obviously require levels of approval that
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unfortunately with the situation we now have is unclear if that would happen. He's also called
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for term limits for Supreme Court justices, which is, you know, which he notes that Congress
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approved term limits for the presidency more than 75 years ago. And, but it's important that there
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be term limits for the Supreme Court. So he's actually calling. He, he produced an op bed this morning
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in the Washington Post and then spoke again earlier today in Austin. He's calling for 18 year
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term limits and in a process by which justices each president gets to appoint two justices
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during their tenure to ensure that the Supreme Court isn't keeping in step with our election
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results at the same time that there is opportunity for appointments. That's been something that we've
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heard from from both sides of politics for a long time, right? Like that it is a little bit weird
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that America has this arbitrary system where people just essentially die on the court and then
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randomly one president might get, you know, four appointments, another person might get zero.
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Is this, I assume this is being attacked as being a partisan move by Republicans who don't
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want anything to do with the Biden administration at the moment or is there some prospects?
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You know, it's just, it has just sort of been announced today and we'll have to see how the
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news cycles go. But, but I think this is a really a lot of experts have backed this type of reform
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for some time. The, the president, of course, when he first came into office did a, did a committee
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on Supreme Court reforms to studying of experts and these were some of the things that had been
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mentioned as part of that. And again, so just to clarify for people who aren't in America, the idea
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would be because there are nine justices on the Supreme Court every two years, one of them would
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be retiring. And so there'd be a regular date that is that right that every two years one of
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the, yeah, the way this proposal, the way this proposal would work and it appears that, of
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course, I think there'll be more conversations. This is kind of breaking news today. But is that
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a president would, would appoint a justice every two years. So in a four year term for a
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presidency in the United States, each president would get two of those appointments. And that
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there would be a period of active service that justices are on the court up to 18 years of active
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service. And then, and then the justice to sort of rotate in and out of the active service. So
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details to be worked out. But I think it's definitely a way of, you know, it's definitely a way
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of ensuring that there is, that there are term limits and also ensuring that presidents sort of
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get an equal, the American people get an equal chance through the president that they elect
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to benefit from their nominees. Got it. And this just requires Congress to pass it. There's no
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right. The Constitutional component here. This is just a, just to just be a bill. Yes, the US,
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the US Constitution is quite clear that Congress has, you know, a range of authorities over the
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court system in America and over the Supreme Court. And so this would be a congressional,
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this would be a congressional proposal. And then the other, the other reform, which is really
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important and seems very basic. And it's pretty, it's pretty unimaginable that we don't have it
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in the US, but we don't. It's a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court. And that would be
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another thing that Congress would, would need to pass. This is everything from being a gift
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to, to ensuring that justices are operating ethically. It's quite, it's sort of weird in a way that
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the justice system is supposed to be so independent from the executive and the, and the legislative
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branches. And yet the executive branch does have enormous power to constitute what it should
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look like, as long as it's not making, as long as it's not interfering in the justice system in a
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partisan way, you can add, you can change the number of people on the Supreme Court, right? I mean,
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sorry, the legislative system, yeah, it can just change it. I mean, they can just make the
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Supreme Court, they get, all right, now there are 100 justices on the Supreme Court, if they want
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to. They can't tell the justice is what to think, but they can mental around with the justice
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system in ways that I think a lot of people would assume would be embedded in the Constitution
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somewhere. So would you characterize these Biden proposals as basically the minimum possible
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amount that a Democratic president could plausibly do in light of the Supreme Court appointments that
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we've seen over the past five years or stretching from Merrick Garland to the latest decision about
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Trump's immunity? I think this is a pro-democracy reforms. I think the point that you're making
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about it is, it is a feature of our system in America, not a bug, that the legislative branch,
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the branch that is reserved for the people, has a real role in the way that our justice system
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is constituted, and it's good to see the president propose these. There are certainly a number of
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other reforms that experts have spoken about that could just as easily be pursued, but these are
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three very bold ones that I think both try to deal with the very devastating decision of the
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Supreme Court that even suggests that the president could potentially be about the law, which is
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what the constitutional amendment that he's proposing would do, and then of course, and then of course
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the long-term ethics reform that we needed with turn limits as well and limited service times
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as well as binding code of ethics, which is just basic and essential. On the immunity stuff,
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when you say that that was a devastating decision, can you just elaborate on why? Because
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obviously in this hyperpartisan atmosphere, it's easy to be offended by the fact that there was
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a criminal in the White House, and that he now seems to, if he wins again, be poised to get away
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with even more stuff, with even more impunity, and that is kind of galling to people who are fans
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of the rule of law. On the other hand, the Supreme Court's decision did try to carve out these
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different areas of immunity, and say you can't do absolutely anything, but if it can be construed
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reasonably as an official act, then you are immune. One of the portraits that they paint of a
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potential future in the United States is one where there's a retributive wave of prosecutions
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of prior administrations every time a president comes into power, and this idea that you know what,
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you get your four years, you go for it, you be a little mini-dictator for four years, the people
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then get to vote you out if they want to, but you don't want the next guy kind of picking through
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and rummaging through every single thing that you did, and then hauling you before the courts
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in like we're a tin pot South American dictatorship. What did you make of that case?
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I think, I mean, I really think that the harms that Justice Sotomayor highlighted in her dissent
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for those of your listeners that either heard it, you know, have read it themselves,
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or seeing the coverage of it, where she really talks about with fear for our democracy,
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what this means. Of course, these are complicated issues when you start thinking about immunity
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and presidential immunity, but in the United States, we have always, always stood for the proposition
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that no one is above the law that high crimes and criminal activity is not something that
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people in the Oval Office should be engaged in, or is it something that citizens should be?
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And so I do believe that this decision, I think the reason you're seeing the response,
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you're seeing this response, frankly, from people who have traditionally seen themselves as more
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conservative, their former retired former Justice Judges, federal judges in the United States,
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who are reported by Republicans who have criticized the decision. So I do think that it's concerning
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from a democracy perspective, sort of, of our goals of what your political ideology is,
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and I think that's really what the president's proposal for an amendment gets to.
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This should be a problem that the American people together can solve. There are still some things
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that we all believe and stand for in this country, regardless of whatever your ideas are on
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particular policy issues. And one of those things is that no one is above the law. So
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and what do you make? And what's your response to the idea that, well, you know, there's a 50-50
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chance now that given how hot and divided American politics is that, you know, Trump gets
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in and prosecutes Biden and then, you know, someone gets in after Trump and prosecutes Trump.
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I think the dissenting justices were really clear about why those, those sort of kind of fact
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patterns were a bit hyperbole and how you really cannot compare a type of fact pattern that you
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might imagine that way to what we saw with the prior administration and the prior, you know,
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president who's really, who has been convicted of scores of criminal activity, including
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ones related to undermining our election system in the country.
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But I'm not sure that follows. Like, I can grant you that and still, and the concern can still
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stand, right? Like, we can say Donald Trump's behavior has been unusually criminal. And he's
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done things that are completely beyond the pale and deserve, and he probably should have been
27:16
prosecuted actually earlier, even before he was president for some of his New York real estate
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shenanigans. And it can also be true that, you know, failing to expand presidential immunity
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could lead to a cycle of retributive presidential houndings.
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Yeah, I mean, I certainly understand the appeal of the policy issue that the
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justices put in the opinion, understand why that is one of the rejoinders. But I do think that
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the dissenting justices deep like do outline why in this case and for how they have how this,
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the, this expansive potential, this expansive potential version of immunity there,
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that we have immunity in this country. That is one of the reasons we have immunity, but this
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was a real expansion that was to some degree monarch like, and it is what caused, I think,
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the concern that we're seeing in the United States. And I would continue to note is not just from
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people that are more progressive in their orientation, but we're seeing this from long-standing
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conservatives who, you know, have in prior times held positions appointed by Republican
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presidents. These things are really beyond partisan politics. And I think that's why you see the
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president taking such a, you know, a step of proposing this amendment. And I also think that's why
28:36
you see the continued concerns we've seen for some time around some of the structural issues
28:41
with our Supreme Court and the reason that we do need to make sure that our courts in this country
28:46
are working for the people and are reflective. But how do you think the sales pitch for like the
28:50
democracy mission of the Democratic Party is going? Like, is this, are these court reforms, for
28:56
example, let's take the, so I suppose in descending, in descending order of difficulty and ascending
29:03
order of popularity, you're probably going from the constitutional amendment to overturn immunity
29:11
to term limits to an ethics code, right? And I would imagine that an ethics code would be the,
29:20
would be as a standalone piece of legislation, probably the easiest one to pass and the most
29:26
popular one with the American people and the least consequential one, ultimately. If you were
29:33
Kamala Harris's advisor, would you have her make these significant platform if they don't get done
29:40
in the dying months of the Biden administration for the next term? Like, how well are the,
29:46
is kind of technocratic stuff like this, resonating with the American people?
29:50
Well, I'll just say this. I mean, I'm not going to offer political advice, but I will tell you
29:53
what we know about the American people. Right now, the American people are deeply concerned about
29:59
the Supreme Court. They have seen the impacts that this Supreme Court majority has had on their
30:04
everyday lives. This is not hypothetical or walky anymore when you start talking about massively
30:10
enhanced gun access. And this last term, there are millions of women who do not have reproductive
30:16
health care access in this country and including ones in states like my home state of Texas that
30:21
are continuing to be denied of emergency care. What we know is that the US Supreme Court, an institution
30:27
that is there to protect people's rights, not to roll them back, has a very, very low favorability
30:33
rating. And I think that that you find that there are people from various different political
30:38
persuasions that are having issues in this time with the extremism that we are seeing from this
30:45
court. You know, a few years ago, there were rollbacks and voting rights. We've continued to see
30:50
those issues on our docket. And so to me, these are really, these are reforms that are needed.
30:57
There are reforms at experts and academics have, have championed for some time. And I think that
31:03
these are things that our American population can really understand and appreciate. People
31:08
understand term limits. They understand meeting and binding code about this. These are very basic
31:14
reforms that are bold, that basic for our system and really needed. So let's talk about Project
31:20
2025. I think everyone's seen scary headlines about it about how it's this secret Trump plan
31:26
to revolutionize America. And it's a little bit hard to, especially in this hyper politicized
31:32
climate to pick the wheat from the chaff, but you understand this thing, you know, as well as
31:37
anybody. Tell us where it comes from. The Heritage Foundation, who are they? You know, Trump tweeted
31:43
that he didn't know anything about it. How plausible is that? Just lay the groundwork
31:47
for us. I mean, look, the product 2025 is really a proposal here in the United States. You can
31:55
go look at it online on his 900 pages. Yeah, I did try to look at it online, but you know, I
32:01
only have so much time, Sky. You know, it really puts in, it really puts in, it puts in writing.
32:09
It says the quiet part out loud. It puts in writing these extreme proposals that we've been seeing
32:15
for a number of years in states across the country, sometimes in our, in our U.S. Congress,
32:23
through litigating positions that far-right organizations have taken in litigation such as
32:27
overturning constitutional rights to reproductive health care and other things. And you see that,
32:32
that flavor of extremism really throughout this document. And so it is a document that the Heritage
32:40
Foundation and more than 100 right-leaning groups put together, it seeks to radically remake
32:47
our government and our system of operating in the United States. It seeks to take things away
32:53
from the American people that they are used to, whether that is access to health care,
32:59
whether that is access to the, to a weather service, that is, that is cataloging accurate
33:06
information about our climate and our weather patterns, or whether it's things like overtime pay.
33:11
There's a number of policy proposals that would actually take things away from the American people.
33:17
And it really is a, it really is a catalog of extremism. You don't have to read the 900 pages
33:25
yourself. You mentioned you don't have time. I doubt your listeners do either. If you go to
33:30
democracyforward.org, www.democracyforward.org. We have a people's guide that breaks things down into
33:39
the subject matters that you might be interested in. So you can kind of pick and choose what you
33:42
want to read about. And it will at least summarize some of the highlights and what's at stake here.
33:48
And then of course tell you where you can go in in the own source document to see it. So that's
33:52
the People's Guide to Project 2025. And what we're really focused on a democracy forward is helping
33:58
people understand what these extreme policies would do. So let's just break them down into some
34:05
categories, I think. Let's, for the purposes of this conversation, let's leave women's reproductive
34:10
rights and like poll and specific policy issues in terms of laws that they want to pass.
34:15
Because I think they're the easiest ones to understand and they've been rehashed the most in
34:19
other media. Can we talk, you mentioned like things like the weather service. So let's just talk
34:24
at a sort of departmental bureaucratic like hacking away at the government kind of thing. So they
34:30
have this idea that the US government is big and fat and bloated and expensive and irrelevant
34:36
and waste all of this money doing all of these silly things like sending up weather balloons
34:40
or whatever. And presumably that would be better done by the private sector or something.
34:46
So can you just put some flesh on the bones of the sort of, you know, the structures of government
34:51
that they would want to eliminate the Department of Education, you know, whether...
34:55
Yeah, well let's zoom out. Let's zoom out. I mean first it calls for a remaking of our federal
35:01
civil service in the US, which if you said you want to talk about the bureaucratic things. These are
35:06
men and women and people in the US who work on behalf of the American people. So they are everybody
35:12
from folks that deliver your mail to people that are working at the Environmental Protection Agency
35:18
to people that are administering federal benefit programs that are health and human services.
35:23
People in the United States that work for our government, the vast majority of them are
35:28
career civil servants. They don't serve a particular political ideology. They serve
35:34
regardless of who the president is. They serve to serve regardless of who Congress,
35:39
what party is controlling, which house of Congress. And Project 2025 seeks to dismantle that model
35:46
and seeks to reclassify a number of our career civil servants into political appointees so that
35:55
and really has an idea that these people should be more serving the president and the president's
35:59
ideology as opposed to our constitution into the American people. So when you take a zoom out,
36:03
you wanted to talk about what the remaking of government looks like. Threats to the civil
36:08
service is one of the main areas that we want people to understand and focus and pay attention to.
36:13
There are 2.2 million civil servants in the United States. They operate in every state
36:18
and they serve a range of functions. And there are a number of threats to them that are outlined
36:22
in Project 2025 that we also saw the prior administration. But you can go to Parliament by the
36:28
we can talk about the weather service. Yeah, so I'm glad that you did the 30,000-foot thing.
36:36
Let's just pause at 30,000 feet for a moment before we get to that because yeah, I think
36:42
this is the crucial and probably scariest thing that I want people to get. It also differs in
36:48
different countries, right? So, you know, people in parliamentary democracies in my experience and
36:55
correct me if I'm wrong, is there more democratic churn in the leadership of the civil service
37:00
in the United States? Do you know than there are in parliamentary democracies? Because I've always...
37:05
Why do you... Yeah. So, in Australia and the UK, you'll have like a head of the public,
37:14
there'll be public health, for example, right? And you'll have tons of public servants who
37:20
are scientists and data-wanks and epidemiologists who work in public health and they work
37:27
their entire lives and they work for the government and they are a validly apolitical and they don't
37:33
change regardless of when the government changes. And a new government comes in and some politician
37:38
gets appointed to be the health minister, you know, which the US would be called the secretary of
37:44
whatever secretary of health I suppose. But and that person can set broad policy agendas,
37:51
but those policies will be implemented by the same public service with the same leadership
37:57
that will endure between administrations. And I always found it weird when I read, for example,
38:03
about, you know, President-elect Trump and his staff being, you know, invited to have meetings
38:10
at the Department of Agriculture or something and like, you know, some 22-year-old Trump
38:16
acolyte would show up who had no idea about anything. And like the Obama people would be like,
38:21
holy shit, they don't have anyone, they don't have anyone, they don't have a transition team,
38:26
they don't have anyone who knows what they're talking about. And my sense was that more of the
38:32
change over in US administrations, like that there's less of an embedded public
38:39
service that has a continuation between administrations in the US anyway. And that this would further
38:45
undermine. Right. So that's a great place to start in terms of a broader view. I mean, for my
38:51
understanding of many parliamentary democracy countries or other frameworks, there's actually
38:59
less political appointees, which is, and so we in the United States have a number of the agency
39:07
heads as well as individuals that work directly for them. Those are politically appointed positions.
39:13
They do change with the elections here in the US. And then we have, you know, a number of the
39:20
rank and file that, and including some of our best experts that are career that are there to serve
39:26
the American people regardless of what the political limbs are of the country. And so in the US,
39:31
we do view this as so fundamental and important. And for the reasons that you mentioned,
39:36
you know, there already is a significant, a significant, you know, there's a significant change over
39:42
often between if one political party, you know, is coming into the presidency versus another one.
39:49
And so this is really quite a devastating proposal. It's one that we saw in the prior administration.
39:55
It was called Schedule F. That may be what you were sort of your listeners. We'll see in the media
40:01
that, which was a proposal to reclassify workers earlier this year, the federal...
40:07
And it just pulls on that word, reclassify, right? So the basic just here is that you would
40:14
reclassify a career public servant. Let's just say that there's someone who works in,
40:21
you know, I have a friend who works in the Australian government who is an expert in water
40:26
and helps the Department of Agriculture know where farms can go and stuff like that. This is a
40:31
person who has a PhD who is extremely learned. But your idea about reclassification here,
40:38
or not your idea, the Heritage Foundation or Schedule F idea would be that a new government could come
40:43
in, notice that this person has been tweeting in ways that they don't like or has been expressing
40:49
public opinions that they don't like or has written. I don't know. You know, he's obviously someone
40:54
who's not on the side of politics. Reclassify him and all of his peers, not as public servants,
41:02
whose jobs are protected from political firing and reclassify them basically as part of the executive
41:10
under the authority of direct authority of the president. And everyone can just be summarily
41:16
fired and all that expertise can be wiped away and a political appointee can be installed
41:23
in his position to start making decisions about. There's details of this schedule. So when we
41:27
talk about reclassify, yes, they would be talking about reclassifying jobs at some of the more
41:32
senior levels of our civil service that were primarily career jobs to political ones. And in fact,
41:38
your hypothetical while maybe some might take issue with certain certain elements of it,
41:44
we've already seen reports that there are heritage-associated heritage-funded organizations
41:48
that are seeking this even as early as the summer. They're saying that they may put list of
41:54
individual people that work, let's say, in the Department of Homeland Security or in other
41:59
departments of their names on the internet where they're starting these lists of civil servants
42:05
that they would seek to purge. And that was reported by the Associated Press a few weeks ago.
42:10
So I think that we are very concerned from a democracy perspective with the work we do
42:16
about the threats we see in Project 2025 to the civil service. And that is when we zoom out,
42:21
that is one of the real major threats. And sorry, just tell me where I just just make any
42:26
valid objection that you can imagine to the scenario that I articulated because you understand
42:30
this better than I do. And you said some people might object to elements of my example. What would
42:35
be a Jackson Bay? The talking points that they're using is two, is the ones you started with,
42:40
is to say that the federal government is somehow not doing the work of people, that there are too
42:47
many people resisting what needs to happen. There's no basis for that. We actually submitted
42:53
comments on behalf of experts that have looked at this for many years as well as there was a lot
42:58
of other comments submitted recently in relation to proposals to actually strengthen protections
43:04
for civil service that really debunks a lot of those assumptions, but that is the talking points
43:12
they use. And the talking points are that the civil service is being recalcitrant and
43:17
is not following somehow right is somehow sort of a deep state you might hear that word.
43:21
But I mean the problem would be that I'm not even sure that it would be a bad thing for an expert
43:27
civil service to push back against and the desires of an administration if those desires were
43:34
unscientific. I mean imagine a pandemic breaks out and you have a bombastic anti-scientific
43:40
president who wants to do something silly like letting it rip and you have career public health
43:46
officials saying the epidemiology doesn't support this and that president or that government
43:52
getting angry at the recalcitrant career civil servants who are just part of the deep state
43:57
who want to subvert the will of the people as it's expressed in democratic elections.
44:02
It would be you know this is a fundamental difference about what you think the job of government
44:06
should be is that is the job of government just to enact the will of the population as they express
44:14
it through at the ballot box regardless of how stupid that will is or is the government also a
44:19
team of really smart people trying to figure out how to make the levers of institutions work
44:25
and sometimes that will be at odds with you know the the wins of elected officials and that's
44:32
fine certainly speaking truth to power is a foundational value you know of many positions in our
44:40
government and that doesn't mean you know but I will also say we have not seen there is no evidence
44:46
of some and this is a really important because we hear this you know information over and over but
44:51
there is no evidence of some deep state that was preventing you know valid proposals and policies
44:59
I think what you do have is law abiding civil servants that aren't going to break the law
45:04
and that definitely care about facts and science and evidence but there hasn't been we you know
45:09
these are civil servants that served under the Reagan administration under the Bush administration
45:13
their Clinton administration I mean many administrations that don't see eye to eye on a number of
45:18
things but yet we've never had this sort of targeting of our civil service as we appear to be
45:24
having at this moment and that might lead you as you're you know it might lead you to ask why so
45:29
that is a major area where we're highly concerned about what will happen to the American people this
45:35
isn't just about how we look at our government or what it looks like on a chart about you know how
45:41
we organize our executive departments these are people that go to work every day to do the work of
45:46
the American people to implement policies that need to be implemented to make sure that we have
45:51
clean water to make sure that our air you know they're setting air particulates I mean medication
45:57
safety I mean this is this is the functions of the federal government and we certainly don't want
46:01
though the expertise of our civil servants and the commitment of them to be targeted and undermined
46:07
so that's a major feature in product 2025 for your listeners that may want to learn more
46:12
in addition to the people's guide that we have on our website at democracy forward we also
46:16
produced a report that you can find on our website on the impending danger to the civil service in
46:21
the United States that goes through a number of these threats that that that we've seen extreme
46:27
organizations propose and that we've seen extreme politicians propose and sorry sky just to
46:32
clarify how does how does this schedule FID actually get enacted is the idea that the president
46:37
just signs an executive order that that reclassifies all the civil service does need an act of the
46:42
legislative branch will it go to the Supreme Court that is certainly what this idea was I will
46:49
tell you of some good news we get good news these days too this year the federal government the
46:55
Biden administration proposed and finalized a regulation that enhances protections for civil
47:02
servants this is an important step many pro democracy groups in the United States supported this
47:09
effort and it will make it harder for a future administration to seek to target and undermine
47:16
our civil service but we have understood that some of these organizations and groups really
47:23
the rule of law is not their primary is not their primary motivator and so we we definitely take
47:28
these threats very seriously but we have seen enhanced protections as how did president Biden
47:33
pass the enhanced protections is that with an executive order or is that a law he did he finalized
47:38
a regulation so it went through a full notice and comment process became a final regulation that
47:42
is not something that can be undone by executive order okay so it can be undone how you'd have to
47:48
pass a law there's a variety I mean sort of how you how you can rescind regulations I think a
47:55
future administration could seek to try to rescind it it would take some process to do that as
48:00
opposed to being able to do it day one of course we saw in the prior administration they try to
48:04
rescind a number of things that they should have gone through process for but there's definitely
48:08
and then of course there there would be some legislative mechanisms as well and just to clarify
48:14
the president and president Biden was doing this essentially in response to all of the rumors about
48:20
the possibility of what Trump might do like it can I feel somewhat reassured that the Biden
48:24
administration is putting in place as many roadblocks as they can as many impediments in advance
48:30
yeah so the office of personal management which is an executive office of the United States
48:36
and under being led by appointees by the Biden administration as well as career civil
48:41
service staff proposed sought comment on got feedback on modified and then finalized a regulation
48:49
to try to um help protect our civil service in the country it's a very strong step we were
48:55
pleased to support it as we're a lot of other pro-democracy and what does it do exactly does it
49:00
does it say that you're not allowed to be fired for xyz reason it's right it seeks to enhance
49:05
protections for for for civil servants and why you can be dismissed specifically to enhance
49:11
protections to prevent um the sort of an expedited reclassification through scatula okay but the idea
49:19
prior to that regulation that the the idea was that the president should be able to unilaterally
49:25
enact this reclassification assert that he has the right to do so constitutionally that would
49:31
presumably get challenged and what you'd fight it out in the Supreme Court that's what we saw in
49:35
the final days of the prior administration i mean schedule f is not something that was just made up
49:40
and is just now coming to be known that is actually something that was enacted in the final days
49:46
of the prior administration that the Biden administration um you know immediately was able to
49:51
reverse through executive order and then has now taken the extra step of passing or of promulgating
49:58
you know important final regulations to protect the civil service that said um we view the threats
50:05
to the civil service the misinformation about the civil service and um the sort of range of
50:12
threats that we're already seeing targeting of certain employees as as deeply problematic and
50:17
they're embodied in project 2025 and it's one reason we're continuing to do work to oppose those
50:22
policies okay so let's suppose that the you know that the civil service ends up being under attack
50:29
under a Trump administration and the person who is monitoring the rehabilitation of the wolf
50:34
population in yellowstone or something like that is all of a sudden you know Alan is here because he
50:39
is not a sufficiently sufficient Trump loyalist what are these specific areas that they're most um
50:47
anxious to do away with you you mentioned weather and which would be deeply worrying in terms of the
50:54
climate climate crisis yeah so i'll just say like what we know about anti-democratic actors
51:00
they're not a fan of the rule law because like laws and regulations mean that you can't just
51:06
exist with your power and do whatever you want they also don't like facts and evidence and science
51:11
because those things also check um maybe an alternative version of reality that they're seeking to
51:17
that they're seeking to pedal and so throughout project 2025 whether it's with respect to
51:23
whether patterns whether it's with respect to climate data we see a number of proposals to
51:30
undermine either the correct reporting of information the um the um or even undermine the very
51:36
offices um like our oceanic office um Noah it's what it's called which which maintains our weather
51:43
service like that um like even to maintain it so that's one piece is in climate we see massive
51:50
attacks on public education um including um efforts to privatize public education in the country
51:57
efforts to undermine or eradicate the department of education i mean these things are in the
52:02
document um there are a number of highly concerning labor policies that would prevent people
52:09
from obtaining overtime pay to which they are entitled um that would seek to relax worker
52:14
protection standards these are really kitchen table issues um the civil service i'm so glad
52:20
that you're interested in it and that your listeners are interested in it because we think that
52:24
of course a tax on the civil service will affect our everyday um lives but these other issues
52:30
are really truly you don't go through your day without collecting a paycheck hopefully or
52:35
without trying to send your kit to a good school um these are really kitchen table issues where
52:41
project 2025 takes a number of extreme um you know just a number of extreme positions the the
52:47
attacks in the department of justice are also something to really understand it fits with some of
52:52
the concerns that you've been raising with the civil service but there is an attempt to politicize
52:57
our department of justice to make it an enforcer of an anti-voting agenda of a agenda that's not
53:03
promoting civil rights but is instead seeking to restrain civil rights and so there's you know
53:08
we have a lot of concerns about that as well okay i just want to go through those somewhat one by one um
53:14
the the Michael Lewis i think it's my in Michael Lewis's book about the transition to it's about
53:18
the fifth uh the fifth threat or the accountable was going anyway he wrote to be short a bunch of other
53:24
great uh you kind of exciting political analyses uh and he he has an anecdote about talking to a
53:31
republican lawmaker about abolishing the weather service and the republican says like why do we
53:35
need a government funded weather service when we've got weather dot com and Michael Lewis informs the
53:40
guy that uh actually weather dot com is gets all of its data from the national weather service so
53:45
without the public funded weather service you don't have a private weather dot com um the department
53:50
of education when a foreigner hears that the u s department of education might be on the chopping
53:56
block that sounds like obviously that's not going to happen because the because america is still
54:01
going to need an education department and there will still be schools and there will still be
54:05
universities but because america is a is a federation of states of course the federal department
54:11
of education is not the main player in um in public schooling what does it mean to get rid of the
54:16
federal department of education what does it actually do well it i mean an implements a variety of
54:23
funding proposals that it does enhance civil rights for people educational opportunity there are
54:29
a number of programs around loan forgiveness student loan forgiveness for higher ed that are run
54:35
out of the department of education as well as other departments so um it's an it this is um you
54:41
know it is an extreme proposal but one thing i just will say to push back a little bit i mean we
54:47
already are seeing some of the most extreme proposals that you see with education for instance there
54:53
are proposals around really kind of censorship proposals trying to seek to impose um you know
54:59
curricula standards or other types of standards that don't um provide sort of uh you that don't
55:06
provide accurate views of history there's efforts to eradicate diversity equity and inclusion
55:11
from our education system all of those things we're already seeing those um types of trends in
55:16
states like florida in states like texas in states where democracy forward is working on behalf of
55:22
people and communities there and so um as extreme as these things sound and it's unimaginable as
55:28
they sound they're really not like we've already seen these same organizations that are behind
55:34
project 2025 seek to prevent the president from being able in the aftermath of the pandemic to
55:40
forgive basics you know amounts of student loan debt for people that were in economic crisis um
55:45
these are things that are already happening in the united states today and that's one of the things
55:49
that we're seeking to make sure people understand a democracy forward is this extremism is here
55:55
and um there's a lot of work we all have to do to combat um and i mean one person's extremism is
56:01
is another person's pushing back against what they regard as having been a very rapid pace of
56:06
cultural change i mean we don't have to get into the ins and outs of you know what rights conservative
56:10
communities and conservative states should should have to determine what they teach and whether or
56:15
not they sign up to DEI and stuff like that but i don't think that the average american regards that
56:19
as being um you know a terrifying example of extremism in the way that they should probably
56:24
think that project 2025 is just here that do you hear that i don't know in Florida you know
56:31
they don't want eight-year-olds learning about the trans people or something like that some of the
56:34
cultural worries well actually what we know as a censorship is broadly unpopular it's unpopular
56:40
in geographically diverse communities in the country it's unpopular well people say that of
56:44
course you're asking if they like censorship and they say no but then you say do you want five
56:48
-year-olds being taught you know i don't know the gender the biological gender sex does exist
56:53
these are deeply harmful and unpopular agendas we work on behalf of people in communities in
56:57
these very states on behalf of parents and teachers students and librarians who are actually
57:03
facing in places like Arkansas or facing the prospect of criminal penalties because of this i
57:09
don't think this is a debatable i think that the american people know these things are extreme and
57:14
i think that's why you see a number of politicians trying to distance themselves from project 2025
57:20
if this was something that was broadly you know broadly held view by people in the country if it
57:26
was even something held by half the people in the country you would probably have people trying
57:30
to take up the banner of it but what you actually have is a number of political actors now trying
57:35
to distance themselves from project 2025 because there is no mandate for this there is big harm it's
57:42
terribly harmful but also terribly unpopular and so i would just push back there maybe some policy
57:47
disputes that was sort of a time in american politics where people would have disputes over tax
57:53
policy or sort of various you know pieces of education policy but we're unfortunately in this
57:58
country right now beyond that where we are at a place where there is an extreme effort by very far
58:04
institutions that don't represent the majority of people and that's what project 2025 is that is
58:10
why it's important the people inform themselves and and sort of understand we're trying to provide
58:14
tools for people to do that including tools for people to don't all agree on everything but they can
58:19
say you know we maybe we do want to make sure that the federal government is keeping track of of our
58:25
weather patterns yeah yeah no i agree with you but i think i think that's i think that is why it's
58:30
so important to for the for the message to remain fairly clean and pure about the about what we
58:37
mean when we're talking about protecting democracy from something like project 2025 because if it
58:43
gets modeled up or conflated with other things where the which are where the left can sometimes
58:49
look a bit hysterical then i think middle america is less likely to come along for the ride like if
58:54
you know yes if you ask people do they believe in censorship of course they say no but if you ask
58:59
people do you think we should go back to the way to the way that we were teaching children about
59:03
gender five years ago and throughout all of history up until five years ago they might say yes or
59:10
if you say do you think that academics should be forced to sign uh Stalinist DI pledges before
59:17
they're allowed to be employed like as a mathematical professor people might be like no they don't
59:22
don't think they should I think they should be allowed to have whatever attitude they want towards
59:25
diversity you know there are lots of these issues where you can find reasonable people on both
59:30
sides and to win over the maximum number of people to be worried about project 2025 and like the
59:37
politicization of the civil service we have to make it clear that that's discrete from the rest
59:42
of the things that people could disagree about otherwise so you what are in public research shows
59:48
as you can't actually separate these things is there an attack on expertise well then we're just
59:52
gonna lose aren't we because I mean the majority of Americans are not not as on board with DI
59:58
and the culture what the left wing culture war stuff as you are we encourage you to look at some
1:00:03
of the most recent information people know in the United States people know extremism when they see
1:00:08
it and what they see with project 2025 is extremism that does not represent the majority of people
1:00:14
in this country people make yeah but you're dodging my point by just talking about project 2025
1:00:18
instead of like my point is that we need to be clear about what the threat of project 2025 is
1:00:25
because if we can flate it with a lot of arm waving about you know protecting democracy from
1:00:31
I don't know state laws that tell elementary schools what they can teach about gender or something
1:00:35
like that then we drag it down into the miasma where it's a much easier battle for the opposition to win
1:00:43
I will just say you know as a person that has teams working in these communities every day
1:00:48
in the very communities that you're talking about these agendas are deeply unpopular when you
1:00:53
start with they wouldn't be a threat of complaining jail when you start talking about sending a
1:00:58
librarian to jail in Arkansas which is what when we talk about some of the the anti-education
1:01:05
equity policies that is what that is what is embedded in some of this extremism it is what certain
1:01:09
states are already doing in the United States are seeking to do they're not doing it because we've
1:01:14
sued and been able to stop them on behalf of on behalf of community members so I will say
1:01:19
I think that there's a lot more in this country that unites the American people and that is why you
1:01:24
see uniformly people are rejecting the extremism embedded in project 2025 whether that is a civil
1:01:30
well then what why do you think there's no risk that Trump wins I felt like if we can be as cavalier
1:01:35
as you seem to be about how unpopular it is then we don't have to really worry because
1:01:40
there would be no I mean the far right would be wildly unpopular and Trump would be I think
1:01:46
would have no chance I think would you send the United States and this is why as you know to hear
1:01:51
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