Thank you, Ten Bears! I keep pointing out that Project 2024, Agenda 47, and the Republican National Party Platform are all cut from the same whole cloth. It’s important to be aware, even though one need not read each document separately.
An initiative called Progress 2028 that purports to be Kamala Harris’ liberal counter to the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is actually run by a dark money network supporting former President Donald Trump.
Building America’s Future, the dark money group at the helm of the network, has steered money to a constellation of groups and initiatives boosting Trump’s agenda and spreading messaging aimed at chipping away voters from Harris. The dark money group reportedly received over $100 million in funding from billionaire Elon Musk, along with other donors, the New York Times recently reported.
The newest effort to benefit from their largesse is Progress 2028. Building America’s Future registered to use Progress 2028 as a fictitious name on Sept. 23 and the website was created three days later, OpenSecrets’ analysis of corporate filings and DNS records found.
The Progress 2028 site appears to be created by IMGE LLC, a firm run by Republican political operatives that the New York Times described as the “hidden hand” behind Building America’s Future, and a page on the Progress 2028 site includes the firm’s sizzle reel.
IMGE LLC has also done work for Elon Musk’s America PAC and several other Republican political committees, including a super PAC funded by America’s Future Fund named Future Coalition PAC, as first pointed out by Brendan Fischer, Deputy Executive Director of Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project.
The Progress 2028 manifesto draws clear parallels to Project 2025, a controversial blueprint for restructuring the executive branch under the next Republican administration. The Project 2025 blueprint was developed by the Heritage Foundation and written by many conservatives who worked in or with Trump’s administration. Project 2025 has drawn intensecriticism, and the former president has said it does not reflect his own priorities should he return to the White House.
Some of the policies listed in Progress 2028 highlight disproven and misleading claims about Harris’ positions. Policies listed include “Empowering Undocumented Immigrants, Building Our Future” and “Expanding Medicaid to Undocumented Immigrants.”
“Undocumented immigrants are the backbone of our country, and by removing barriers, we unlock incredible potential,” the document states. “Kamala Harris believes that every person, no matter their immigration status, deserves access to basic healthcare.”
Harris expressed support for allowing immigrants residing in the U.S. to obtain health insurance with her 2019 Medicare for All plan but did not indicate whether there would be a cost. Her 2024 running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, recently said that Harris does not currently support programs for undocumented immigrants to qualify for free government health care, free tuition at state universities or driver’s licenses.
The document claims Harris will “support policies that protect minors’ access to gender-affirming care and ensure that schools provide comprehensive LGBTQIA education.”
“She’s committed to banning fracking, phasing out internal combustion engines, and rolling out the most progressive Green New Deal yet,” another section of the Progress 2028 plan reads. Harris has explicitly stated that she won’t ban fracking natural gas but her campaign has sent mixed signals about her own position on regulation of gas-powered cars.
Some individuals have received text messages directing them to the Progress 2028 page.
“Kamala Harris will support a nationwide gun buy-back program that will take dangerous weapons off our streets,” one text message reads, noting, “A mandatory buy-back is the only way to keep our streets safe.” Harris expressed support for a mandatory buyback of military assault weapons in 2019 but has expressed a more lenient stance in 2024, highlighting her own gun ownership.
(snip-graphics on the page)
Digital advertisement featuring Kamala Harris paid for by Progress 2028 (Screenshot from Meta Ad Library)
Progress 2028 has also started pouring money into digital advertising. Since Oct. 11, several digital ads on Facebook and Instagram have included the disclaimer “paid for by Progress 2028” — totaling over $36,000 in ad buys over just five days.
While the ads appear to include pro-Harris messaging, they lean into contentious issues listed on the Progress 2028 site that have created friction among different divisions of the party.
“Let’s remove barriers for undocumented immigrants who are undocumented!” one ad states, adding, “Access to affordable housing, driver licenses, and fair wages creates a stronger America for everyone.”
Another ad reads, “A national, mandatory buy-back program means fewer guns & fewer tragedies. Kamala Harris gets it!”
Operating under a shroud of aliases, Building America’s Future has funneled tens of millions of dollars in dark money from anonymous sources into campaigns boosting Trump ahead of the 2024 election. The dark money network also has a history of fueling initiatives impersonating and parodying Democrats.
Building America’s Future is the top funder of Citizens for Sanity, a dark money group that bankrolled inflammatory ads mocking Democrats and progressive policies in battleground states ahead of 2022 midterms, tax returns show. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Elon Musk secretly steered tens of millions of dollars through Building America’s Future to help fund the effort.
Citizens for Sanity spent over $90 million on messaging pitting minority communities against each other and chipping away at traditionally Democratic voting blocs.
Similar to Progress 2028, the ads hit on contentious issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, immigration and criminal justice reform. The ads have been accused of trying to suppress voting among minority communities.
(snip-embed video on the page)
Citizens for Sanity does not disclose its donors but other groups were legally required to report money they gave to it. That includes $43 million from Building AmerIca’s Future as well as $28.7 million from Freedom’s Future Fund, a sister group of Building America’s Future, and $13.4 million from American Commitment.
The super PAC that has run ads targeting Harris in Michigan by highlighting her positions that are pro-Israel and the Jewish faith of her spouse, Doug Emhoff. The ads are reported to be pro-Harris but have been criticized as featuring antisemitic dog whistles. The PAC has been accused of attempting to use the conflict in the Middle East as a wedge issue to depress turnout for Harris in Michigan, a state with a significant Muslim and Arab American population.
Future Coalition PAC reported receiving $3 million from Building America’s Future through the end of September.
Another $16 million was steered through Building America’s Future to Duty to America PAC, according to new FEC disclosures filed Oct. 15. The super PAC has targeted young male voters and Black voters trying to persuade them to vote for Trump.
Building America’s Future was also the top funder of Stand For Us PAC, OpenSecrets’ analysis of FEC reports filed Oct. 15 found. The super PAC received at least $3.8 million from the dark money group and has spent over $15 million on ads attacking Republican primary candidates in Ohio with divisive messaging tying a prescription drug program to immigration and transgender rights.
In addition to funding a cluster of political groups, Building America’s Future operates under several fictitious names such as Americans for Consumer Protection.
In August, Americans for Consumer Protection launched an ad campaign criticizing the White House’s proposal to ban menthol cigarettes. CNBC reported that the effort was intended to chip away at Harris’ key base of Black voter support in swing states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Building America’s Future reportedly raised and spent more than $100 million over the last four years, the New York Times reported.
Building America’s Future is not legally required to report its finances, vendor payments or outgoing grants for 2023 until after Election Day and, even then, will not be required to disclose its donors.
OpenSecrets’ requests for comment to Building America’s Future and Progress 2028 were not returned prior to publication.
Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit OpenSecrets. For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact OpenSecrets: info@opensecrets.org
or wherever mentions of prices, and whatever else has improved since Pres. Biden took office. I post this because my own US Rep is campaigning about how bad everything is, with facts from the Don’s admin when they’re facts at all. I’m certain he’s not the only “safe” (I voted for the Dem-we actually have a Dem running!) Republican running for the US House, as they’re all up for election every two years. Anyway, he makes the claims that things are bad under Biden-Harris, and how he’s just focusing on improving those very things that have improved thanks to Biden-Harris and the legislators who managed to get things passed (most Republicans are not among those legislators, btw.) Anyway, here’s Heather Cox Richardson:
In a new rule released yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission requires sellers to make it as easy to cancel a subscription to a gym or a service as it is to sign up for one. In a statement, FTC chair Lina Khan explained the reasoning behind the “click-to-cancel” rule: “Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription,” she said. “Nobody should be stuck paying for a service they no longer want.” Although most of the new requirements won’t take effect for about six months, David Dayen of The American Prospect noted that the stock price of Planet Fitness fell 8% after the announcement.
When he took office in January 2021, with democracy under siege from autocratic governments abroad and an authoritarian movement at home, President Joe Biden set out to prove that democracy could deliver for the ordinary people who had lost faith in it. The click-to-cancel rule is an illustration of an obvious and long-overdue protection, but it is only one of many ways—$35 insulin, new bridges, loan forgiveness, higher wages, good jobs—in which policies designed to benefit ordinary people have demonstrated that a democratic government can improve lives.
When Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday, she noted that the administration “has driven a historic economic recovery” with strong growth, very low unemployment rates, and inflation returning to normal. Now it is focused on lowering costs for families and expanding the economy while reducing inequality. That strong economy at home is helping to power the global economy, Yellen noted, and the U.S. has been working to strengthen that economy by reinforcing global policies, investments, and institutions that reinforce economic stability.
“Over the past four years, the world has been through a lot,” Yellen said, “from a once-in-a-century pandemic, to the largest land war in Europe since World War II, to increasingly frequent and severe climate disasters. This has only underlined that we are all in it together. America’s economic well-being depends on the world’s, and America’s economic leadership is key to global prosperity and security.” She warned against isolationism that would undermine such prosperity both at home and abroad.
The numbers behind the proven experience that government protection of ordinary people is good for economic growth got the blessing of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday, when it awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, both of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and to James Robinson of the University of Chicago. Their research explains why “[s]ocieties with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better,” while democracies do.
Although democracy has been delivering for Americans, Donald Trump and MAGAs rose to power by convincing those left behind by 40 years of supply-side economics that their problem was not the people in charge of the government, but rather the government itself.
Trump wants to get rid of the current government so that he can enrich himself, do whatever he wants to his enemies, and avoid answering to the law. The Christian nationalists who wrote Project 2025 want to destroy the federal government so they can put in place an authoritarian who will force Americans to live under religious rule. Tech elites like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel want to get rid of the federal government so they can control the future without having to worry about regulations.
In place of what they insist is a democratic system that has failed, they are offering a strongman who, they claim, will take care of people more efficiently than a democratic government can. The focus on masculinity and portrayals of Trump as a muscled hero‚ much as Russian president Vladimir Putin portrays himself, fit the mold of an authoritarian leader.
But the argument that Americans need a strongman depends on the argument that democracy does not work. In the last three-and-a-half years, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Democrats have proved that it can, so long as it operates with the best interests of ordinary people in mind. Trump and Vance’s outlandish lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene are designed to override the reality of a competent administration addressing a crisis with all the tools it has. In its place, the lies provide a false narrative of federal officials ignoring people and trying to steal their property.
Their attack on democracy has another problem, as well. In addition to the reality that democracy has been delivering for Americans for more than three years now—and pretty dramatically—Trump is no longer a strongman. Vice President Kamala Harris is outperforming him in the theater of political dominance. And as she does so, his image is crumbling.
In an article in US News and World Report yesterday, NBC’s former chief marketer John D. Miller apologized to America for helping to “create a monster.” Miller led the team that marketed The Apprentice, the reality TV show that made Trump a household name. “To sell the show,” Miller wrote, “we created the narrative that Trump was a super-successful businessman who lived like royalty.” But the truth was that he declared bankruptcy six times, and “[t]he imposing board room where he famously fired contestants was a set, because his real boardroom was too old and shabby for TV,” Miller wrote. While Trump loved the attention the show provided, “more successful CEOs were too busy to get involved in reality TV.”
Miller says they “promoted the show relentlessly,” blanketing the country with a “highly exaggerated” image of Trump as a successful businessman “like a heavy snowstorm.” “[W]e…did irreparable harm by creating the false image of Trump as a successful leader,” Miller wrote. “I deeply regret that. And I regret that it has taken me so long to go public.”
Speaking as a “born-and-bred Republican,” Miller warned: “If you believe that Trump will be better for you or better for the country, that is an illusion, much like The Apprentice was.” He strongly urged people to vote for Kamala Harris. “The country will be better off and so will you.”
A new video shown last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live even more powerfully illustrated the collapse of Trump’s tough guy image. Written by Jesse Joyce of Comedy Central, the two-minute video featured actor and retired professional wrestler Dave Bautista dominating his sparring partner in a boxing ring and then telling those who think Trump is “some sort of tough guy” that “he’s not.”
Working out in a gym, Bautista insults Trump’s heavy makeup, out-of-shape body, draft dodging, and physical weakness, and notes that “he sells imaginary baseball cards pretending to be a cowboy fireman” when “he’s barely strong enough to hold an umbrella.” Bautista says Trump’s two-handed method of drinking water looks “like a little pink chickadee,” and goes on to make a raunchy observation about Trump’s stage dancing. “He’s moody, he pouts, he throws tantrums,” Bautista goes on. “He’s cattier on social media than a middle-school mean girl.”
Bautista ends by listing Trump’s fears of rain, dogs, windmills…and being laughed at.” “And mostly,” Bautista concludes, “he’s terrified that real, red-blooded American men will find out that he’s a weak, tubby toddler.” Calling Trump a “whiny b*tch,” Bautista walks away from the camera.
The sketch was billed as comedy, but it was deadly serious in its takedown of the key element of Trump’s political power.
And he seems vulnerable. Forbes and Newsweek have recently questioned his mental health; yesterday the Boston Globe ran an op-ed saying, “Trump’s decline is too dangerous to ignore. We can see the decline in the former president’s ability to hold a train of thought, speak coherently, or demonstrate a command of the English language, to say nothing of policy.”
Trump’s Fox News Channel town hall yesterday got 2.9 million viewers; Harris’s interview got 7.1 million. Today, Trump canceled yet another appearance, this one with the National Rifle Association in Savannah, Georgia, scheduled for October 22, where he was supposed to be the keynote speaker.
Meanwhile, Vice President Harris today held rallies in Milwaukee, Green Bay, and La Crosse, Wisconsin. In La Crosse, MAGA hecklers tried to interrupt her while she was speaking about the centrality of the three Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices to the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the constitutional right to abortion.
“Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally,” Harris called to them with a smile and a wave. As the crowd roared with approval, she added: “No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.”
The outer envelope containing official absentee balloting material for the Wisconsin November 2024 General Election ballot is photographed in Madison, September 21, 2024.
Jon Elswick/AP
A text message last week to young voters in Wisconsin is stirring new concerns in the battleground state about a messaging campaign that could intimidate college students from casting ballots this election, according to a letter from voter protection groups released Tuesday.
The unsolicited text, sent from at least one 262- number to cell phones of people in their early 20s on University of Wisconsin campuses and elsewhere, says: “WARNING: Violating WI Statutes 12.13 & 6.18 may result in fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison. Don’t vote in a state where you’re not eligible.”
The two state codes that the text message cites refer to laws that govern former Wisconsin residents who vote absentee and the consequences of committing election fraud in the state.
A text message sent last week to young voters across Wisconsin.
Free Speech for People
But it’s the text message’s warning and wording of “don’t vote” that are causing much of the alarm among the voter protection groups who call the message “threatening” and warn the message could “frighten eligible young voters into not voting.”
“It’s trying to convince students living in Wisconsin they don’t have a right to vote there,” Courtney Hostetler, the legal director of the non-profit group Free Speech for People, said on Tuesday.
Hostetler’s group and the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin alerted investigators and the public of the text message and their concerns about it on Tuesday, in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul that the groups released publicly online. The letter urges Garland and Kaul to investigate.
The League said it had learned about the text message from some of its own staff members who are in their 20s and from a community outreach center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Mark Pitsch, the university system’s spokesman, said the Universities of Wisconsin “have no indication how many students may have received such texts, which also may have been received by members of the general public.” Pitsch added that his office hadn’t received specific reports about the text message as of Tuesday.
Hostetler said her group fears voter intimidation campaigns could be effective if they go undetected.
“If it’s successful, people won’t report it. They’ll just believe it,” she said. “It’s scary, and it makes people really think [that] the safest thing may be for me to not vote.”
College students may be susceptible to the text messages, Hostetler added, given that students may not know where they are eligible to vote and if they can vote while living on their college campus away from home.
In Wisconsin, students who have lived in one voting area for 28 consecutive days and plan to continue staying there can vote in those places, according to the state’s election commission. Even if a college student returns to his or her parent’s house on weekends temporarily, they can still vote where they primarily live, such as on a college campus, the Wisconsin Election Commission’s guide for students says.
“Once a student has established residency at a campus address, the student may vote using the student’s campus address until the student establishes a new voting residence,” the WEC guide says. “This is the case even if the student is temporarily away from campus and does not know their campus address for the following school year.”
Meagan Wolfe, the administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said Wednesday that “a couple of voters” had contacted the commission with concerns about the text.
“Our best guidance to folks is, again, if you’re getting these concerning or questionable contacts from third-party groups, I wouldn’t trust that information, I would go right to the official source – I’d call your election official,” Wolfe said. “And of course, if a voter feels like something that they’ve received constitutes as voter intimidation, they should also report it to their law enforcement as well, so that they can look into it.”
Free Speech for the People and the League’s letter on Tuesday specifically asks for law enforcement authorities to identify who sent the text and investigate it further.
The organizations said they haven’t heard back yet from the authorities they wrote to seeking help, and the Wisconsin attorney general’s office didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry from CNN.
“We want a larger investigative engine than any of our little nonprofits to figure out who is behind this text message,” Debra Cronmiller, president of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, told CNN on Tuesday.
She said the text message is the type of intimidation tactic her organization had envisioned could happen this election cycle — though significant situations of widespread voter intimidation in the past have been spread more often via robocall or AI-generated voice recordings.
This story has been updated with additional reaction.
Republicans know their idea are unpopular and people don’t want their polices. So instead of changing to do the will of the people are they are hired / elected to do, they simply remove voters who won’t vote for them. Very democratic. They demand to rule over the people not represent the people’s will. Hugs.
Across the country, conservatives have challenged the legitimacy of large numbers of voter registrations ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during a news conference at the state Capitol in Richmond, Va., on Jan. 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Virginia election officials Friday that accuses the state of striking names from voter rolls in violation of federal election law.
The lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria says that an executive order issued in August by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin requiring daily updates to voter lists to remove ineligible voters violates federal law. The National Voter Registration Act requires a 90-day “quiet period” ahead of elections for the maintenance of voter rolls.
“Congress adopted the National Voter Registration Act’s quiet period restriction to prevent error-prone, eleventh hour efforts that all too often disenfranchise qualified voters,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement. “The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy and the Justice Department will continue to ensure that the rights of qualified voters are protected.”
A similar lawsuit was filed earlier this week by a coalition of immigrant-rights groups and the League of Women Voters.
In its lawsuit, the Justice Department said the quiet-period provision reduces the risk that errors in maintaining registration lists will disenfranchise eligible voters by ensuring they have enough time to address errors before the election.
On Aug. 7 — 90 days before the Nov. 5 federal election — Youngkin’s order formalized a systemic process to remove people who are “unable to verify that they are citizens” to the state Department of Motor Vehicles from the statewide voter registration list.
Virginia election officials are using data from the Department of Motor Vehicles to determine a voter’s citizenship and eligibility, according to the filing. The lawsuit alleges the DMV data can be inaccurate or outdated, but officials have not been taking additional steps to verify a person’s purported noncitizen status before mailing them a notice of canceling their voter eligibility.
In a statement on Friday, Youngkin said that state officials were properly enforcing state law requiring the removal of noncitizens from voter rolls.
“Virginians — and Americans — will see this for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections in the Commonwealth, the very crucible of American Democracy,” Youngkin said of the Justice Department’s lawsuit.
“With the support of our Attorney General, we will defend these commonsense steps, that we are legally required to take, with every resource available to us. Virginia’s election will be secure and fair, and I will not stand idly by as this politically motivated action tries to interfere in our elections, period,” Youngkin said.
Former president often mocks Kamala Harris for using a teleprompter
Video at link above.
After mocking Vice President Kamala Harris over her teleprompter, Donald Trump’s rally in Reno, Nevada, ground to a halt as he was was forced to fix his on-stage after a campaign sign fell on it.
“Thank god I don’t use teleprompters too much,” Trump told rally goers after the sign fell on the teleprompter, causing the script to stop being projected. “I look at the teleprompter, it’s totally gone. I say ‘What the hell happened.’ The sign fell on top of it.”
Former president Donald Trump removed signage that fell on top of his teleprompter at a rally in Reno, Nevada (AP)
The irony of the incident comes to light when reflecting on the number of times the former president has accused Harris of relying on a teleprompter and mocking her for it.
Trump told supporters on Friday he would “level” with them, and admitted to his teleprompter usage, yet still asserted Harris uses one more.
“Isn’t it nice to have a guy that doesn’t need a teleprompter, a president, a potential president that doesn’t need a teleprompter?” Trump asked supporters moments after fixing his teleprompter.
He went on to, again, falsely accuse Harris of using one during her town hall with Univision on Thursday.
Both the Harris campaign and Univision have confirmed to CNN that the vice president did not use a teleprompter during her town hall. A teleprompter that was seen in a photo from the event was in Spanish and meant for the moderator, not Harris.
Trump and his allies have previously accused Harris of using a teleprompter in interviews when she did not. In instances where the vice president has used a teleprompter, they have mocked her and insinuated she needs one because she is not intelligent.
Similarly, Trump told supporters on Friday night that “there’s something wrong with [Harris]” for using teleprompters.
He added: “I don’t use them that much. The concept I use but I don’t like it.”
He then embarked on a hard-to-follow rant about making speeches.
“When you can’t get up and make a speech, like, normally, like – when all the work we do, you’d think you could for 40 minutes – well she makes very short speeches too. Have you ever noticed they’re like 10 minutes,” he told the crowd at Reno.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during a news conference at the state Capitol in Richmond, Va., on Jan. 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
Scottie's Playtime 