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The Justice Department’s top watchdog and a successful FBI whistleblower took questions Wednesday from a House panel investigating the weaponization of government.
Key witnesses testified before the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government, noting how such weaponization applies to larger problems within the FBI.
The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General said in a May memo that the FBI failed to comply with whistleblower protections in suspending the security clearance of a bureau employee, Marcus Allen.
Allen, a former FBI staff operations specialist, raised questions about the official narrative regarding whether the bureau had confidential informants on the scene of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Allen also testified before the House’s government weaponization subcommittee in May 2023.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz told the House panel that his office is investigating the role of FBI informants at the Capital riot, but may not issue a report until after the next president is sworn in Jan. 20
The FBI suspended Allen’s security clearance in early 2022 and restored it this past June. At that point, he dropped his complaint to Horowitz’s Office of Inspector General.
Here are four takeaways from the hearing Wednesday.
Allen testified that he wasn’t able to work during his unpaid leave and had to dig into retirement savings.
“The battle for truth and justice will cost you, but the arduous good is worth it,” Allen said. “No [previous] FBI whistleblower has ever had his clearance restored as I did.”
He said he has never regretted his decision to be a whistleblower and is “grateful for the experience.”
“My family and I persevered due to our strengthened faith, God’s grace, and the sacraments,” Allen said.
Allen said he learned that Jeffrey Veltri, now the FBI’s special agent in charge in Miami, ridiculed Allen’s Christian faith as one of his supervisors.
Veltri recently made news for leading the FBI’s investigation in Florida into the second assassination attempt on Trump.
As Allen spoke, his voice cracked and he became visibly emotional.
“If you do not worship God, then you will worship something else. You can serve God or you can serve mammon, but you can’t serve both,” the former FBI employee testified, paraphrasing Scripture. “This has been a purification. When we lost material items, we gained important things. We have stored up for ourselves treasures in heaven. What we have gained spiritually far outweighs what we have lost materially.”
Allen cited two early presidents, John Adams and James Madison, during his testimony.
“This isn’t about me. It’s bigger,” he said. “I am hopeful that the truth of what happened will be fully revealed and deter the FBI from doing the same injustice to others.”
Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt, who heads the whistleblower advocacy group that represented Allen, called for legislative reforms to protect whistleblowers.
“The FBI smeared him with the lie that he was a threat to our national security,” Leavitt said of Allen. “That lie was repeated here in this hearing room. One year later, the FBI reinstated his security clearance and agreed to restore 27 months of back pay. This amounts to an official admission by the FBI that claims about his disloyalty to the U.S. were false.”
Leavitt said what happened to Allen is not an isolated case.
“This summer, we disclosed that the security division forced FBI employees to rat out their coworkers if they had ever heard them ‘vocalize support for President Trump’ or ‘vocalize opposition to the COVID-19 vaccination,’” Leavitt testified. “We now understand that was just one manifestation of the FBI’s politicized climate.”
Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, testified that the FBI’s conduct “creates a risk that the security process can be misused as part of an inappropriate effort to encourage an employee to resign.”
But, Horowitz said, the FBI’s problems don’t seem to affect only one side.
“These allegations raise serious issues and, I would note, do not apply to only a subset of employees with certain political views or ideologies,” Horowitz testified.
A forthcoming report from his Office of Inspector General will include how many confidential informants for the FBI were involved in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, Horowitz said.
However, the report is in draft form and will not be released before the election, he said.
It “is certainly my hope,” Horowitz testified, that the report will be ready before the inauguration of the next president on Jan. 20, 2025.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., asked: “So, three and a half years ago, you announced you would be doing this review, and we still don’t have the review, do we?”
The Inspector General’s Office announced it would start the investigation in 2021, but Horowitz said his office “paused” the probe pending the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal investigations. He said his office reinitiated its probe last year.
“Now that you’ve restarted the review, do you have evidence of the number of confidential human sources that were operating on the [Capitol] grounds on Jan. 6?” Massie asked.
Horowitz replied: “Our report will include the information in that regard.”
Massie asked: “Can you tell us today how many [FBI informants] there were? Were there more than 100?”
“I’m not in a position to say that, both because [the report] is in draft form and because we have not gone through the classification review. So, I need to be careful,” Horowitz replied.
Massie appeared puzzled, noting that the fourth anniversary of the Capitol riot is approaching.
“We are just weeks away from an inauguration and we are almost four years into this report,” the Kentucky Republican said. “When is it going to be released?”
“Certainly in the next couple of months is my hope,” Horowitz said.
Massie later asked: “You’re saying it’s not going to be done in time for the election?”
“I doubt it would be done in time for the election,” Horowitz said.
“Is it going to be done in time for the inauguration?” Massie asked.
“That is certainly my hope,” DOJ’s inspector general replied.
“We are four years into it. What we do know is that you are going to expose there were confidential human sources at the Capitol,” Massie pressed. “Can you tell us today how many went into the Capitol?”
“I don’t know yet what’s classified and what’s not classified,” Horowitz replied.
Democrats on the subcommittee avoided talking about problems at the FBI or whistleblower retaliation, instead focusing on former President Donald Trump while frequently talking about Project 2025.
Project 2025 is a policy and personnel plan for the next presidential administration that has the backing of more than 100 conservative-leaning organizations and is led by The Heritage Foundation. The proposals in Project 2025 are based on traditional conservative principles and haven’t been embraced by Trump, but Democrats continue to misrepresent the plan and call it his.
Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-Virgin Islands, the nonvoting delegate who is the ranking member of the subcommittee, said concerns about weaponization are “projection.”
Plaskett said House Republicans are doing the bidding of their “would-be führer,” Trump.
“We are having this hearing so that you become immune to the notion of the removal of the FBI and DOJ so that those agencies are no longer there to serve as a check against white nationalism, great replacement theorists, Christian nationalists, white-fragility fascists, and the twice-impeached convicted felon, former president, and would-be dictator Donald Trump,” Plaskett said.
(So-called great replacement theory refers to the idea that some conservatives argue that the Left and allied politicians are allowing a surge of illegal immigration that will “replace” America’s white majority of European descent.)
The only witness called by Democrats was Glenn Kirschner, an MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, who warned that if Trump wins the Nov. 5 election it would be the end of the rule of law.
“I fear the horrific conduct of former President Trump and his corrupt DOJ officials in his first term will look like a government official fixing a parking ticket for a friend compared to what Project 2025 holds in store,” Kirschner said.
After every Democrat on the subcommittee talked about Trump and Project 2025, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, joked: “Pretty soon, they’re going to accuse Mr. Allen of writing Project 2025.”
Jordan, chairman of both the Judiciary Committee and its select subcommittee, then jokingly asked each of the other witnesses if he wrote Project 2025.
Horowitz also testified that the Inspector General’s Office is reviewing allegations of “inappropriate questions being asked during security clearance investigations, inconsistent outcomes on security clearance determinations, the suspension and revocation of the eligibility to hold a clearance based on race, and retaliation against employees for raising concerns to management about security clearance investigations and adjudications.”
Such problems should have consequences, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said, arguing that Congress should use the appropriations process to force reforms in the FBI and Justice Department, its parent agency, including whistleblower protections.
“The process was the punishment and it was the point,” Gaetz said to Allen, the former FBI whistleblower.
Allen responded: “Correct, the process in this instance felt like the punishment.”
Gaetz then asked: “Do you think Congress has appropriately protected whistleblowers?”
Allen answered: “I do not, Congressman.”
“I think the policy recommendations can be put forward so that there can be bipartisan support to protect whistleblowers going forward,” he added.
Gaetz said he wasn’t making a partisan critique.
“It’s a bipartisan critique that we all own,” Gaetz said. “We see the evidence that you get mistreated. We hear from experts like Mr. Horowitz that this is totally off-book. It’s obvious to anyone with a brain that they are doing this to hurt you and make an example out of you. What do we do? We just sign the check.”
The Florida Republican added, referring to a stopgap spending bill: “We should put in any continuing resolution that until you get paid, and until the rest of the whistleblowers get their back pay, maybe the FBI director doesn’t get his paycheck. Maybe the attorney general shouldn’t get his paycheck.”
The post Weaponization Probes Vindicated FBI Whistleblower, Stalled Jan. 6 Report appeared first on The Daily Signal.
House Democrats blamed abortion bans and Donald “Trump’s Project 2025” for pregnancy-related tragedies in an unofficial, Democrat-only “hearing” Tuesday, even though every state law limiting abortion includes an exception to protect the life of the mother.
“Every single woman who has died from Trump abortion bans should be alive today,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., a member of the far-left “Squad.” “What do we have instead? No compassion, no care, and no justice.”
More lies about the death of Amber Nicole Thurman after abortion pill complications from @AyannaPressley at House Dems Project 2025 conference.
— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) September 24, 2024
"In Amber's case, she developed an infection, one that could have easily been treated with a routine procedure called a D&C. But…
Led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee—which isn’t an official House committee—held a “hearing” Tuesday about Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation-led project that includes a book of conservative policy recommendations and a personnel database for use by the next conservative presidential administration.
“The Dems are focusing on Project 2025 because they need a made-up bogeyman to cover up their lack of an agenda and because they hate anyone proposing real reforms that would actually drain the swamp,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal.
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., agreed that Democrats are wasting time on Project 2025, which he said is a “menu of policy options available to any administration to come,” not “some evil hidden agenda.”
“It is absolutely beyond me that the Democrats are wasting time having a sham ‘hearing’ regarding Project 2025,” Norman told The Daily Signal. “Clearly, Democrats have never heard of presidential transition projects before … something that has been a part of our process for years.”
“Democrats ought to spend less time on their sham ‘hearing’ and more time actually reading Heritage’s ‘Mandate for Leadership,'” Norman continued. “Mandate for Leadership” is the name of the book of conservative policy recommendations, and Heritage has been producing “Mandate” since Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980.
House Democrats claimed that Project 2025 would take “Trump abortion bans nationwide,” though neither the former president nor Project 2025’s materials call for a nationwide ban on abortion or on contraception.
Launched by The Heritage Foundation more than two years ago, Project 2025 has grown to a coalition of more than 110 conservative organizations that developed a transition plan for the next presidential administration. Its work is nonpartisan and available to whomever occupies the White House next year.
Trump repeatedly has distanced himself from Project 2025, but this didn’t stop House Democrats from associating Trump with the plan countless times on Tuesday.
Project 2025 “would jail your ER doctor for saving the life of a pregnant woman,” Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., said, falsely. “It would use every tool at its disposal to enforce state-mandated pregnancy.”
Jeffries, the chairman of the unofficial committee, falsely said Project 2025 “would also mandate government surveillance of pregnancies and miscarriages.”
Project 2025 has two mentions of miscarriage care: one calling for the Department of Health and Human Services to keep statistics on the number of miscarriages, and the other clarifying that a miscarriage is not an abortion.
“Miscarriage management or standard ectopic pregnancy treatments should never be conflated with abortion,” the 2025 edition of “Mandate for Leadership” says.
Clark told an inaccurate version of the story of a South Carolina woman, Amari Marsh, who “was arrested and charged for the crime of having a miscarriage.”
But South Carolina Solicitor David Pascoe, the Democrat who handled Marsh’s prosecution, said abortion wasn’t a relevant issue in the case. “It had nothing to do with that,” Pascoe told KFF Health News.
Marsh’s arrest warrant alleged that not removing from the toilet the infant that she had just miscarried at the urging of the emergency dispatcher on the phone with her was ultimately “a proximate cause of her daughter’s death.”
Clark also referenced Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, two Georgia women who died from infections caused by complications after taking the abortion pill.
“In Georgia, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller needlessly lost their lives because their doctors feared going to prison if they administered the care their patients needed,” she said.
But Thurman and Miller did not die because of abortion bans.
Abortion in Georgia is banned after around six weeks of pregnancy with an exception if the life of the mother is at risk. Every state abortion ban in the United States includes a life-of-the-mother exception.
Thurman died because the hospital failed to treat her infection, and Miller died because she did not go to the hospital after getting an infection because of misguided fears that state law wouldn’t allow her to be treated, even though it does.
Pressley called abortion “routine medical care.”
“Abortion care is routine medical care, but then Donald J. Trump became president, campaigned on banning abortion care, and even called to punish women for having abortions,” she said.
No state laws make it a crime for a woman to get an abortion.
Pressley blamed Trump for appointing “three extreme right-wing justices in the Supreme Court.”
“In June 2022, just as Donald J. Trump promised they would, those three justices banded together with other Republican-appointed justices and overturned Roe [v. Wade],” Pressley said. “They gave a green light for Republicans to criminalize abortion; to criminalize doctors and nurses in states across the country today.”
In truth, Project 2025 calls for the government to comply with laws that prevent federal funding of abortions. It also calls for federal support for alternatives to abortion, like adoption.
Rep. Barbara Lee of California, chair of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, added to the false narrative that Project 2025 would criminalize abortion nationwide.
Republicans “are actually now talking about also how they want to punish people who get abortions,” Lee said.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts responded to the “unserious and illegitimate spectacle masquerading as an official proceeding.”
“The members of this orchestrated campaign to distort and mislead the American people about the policy recommendations in Heritage’s long-standing manual, ‘Mandate for Leadership,’ represent a liberal movement that would rather lie than engage in honest policy debate,” he said in a statement.
Rob Bluey contributed to this report.
The post ‘Bogeyman’: Democrats Use Project 2025 Hearing to ‘Cover Up Their Lack of an Agenda,’ Lawmakers Say appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Those attacking me for my participation in Project 2025, for which I wrote the chapter on how the Federal Election Commission should be run, reveal their dangerous views approving of government overreach and abusive conduct by government law enforcement agencies.
There’s no other way to interpret their criticism of me other than their disagreeing with all of the recommendations I make in Chapter 29 of The Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership 2025.”
For those who don’t keep up with the multitude of alphabet-soup federal agencies, the FEC is an independent federal agency run by six commissioners (three Republicans and three Democrats) nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The FEC has civil enforcement authority over the federal campaign-finance laws that govern the raising and spending of money in federal campaigns for Congress and the presidency.
The Justice Department has criminal enforcement authority, which comes into play for knowing and willful violations of the law.
The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) is byzantine in its complexity, and many of its provisions are confusing, contradictory, or ambiguous. But it’s the FEC’s job to civilly enforce that law and to issue regulations implementing it.
It’s important to understand what the FEC is regulating in what I pointed out in my chapter is “one of the most sensitive areas of the Bill of Rights: political speech and political activity by citizens, candidates, political parties, and the voluntary membership organizations that represent Americans who share common views on a huge range of important and vital public policy issues.”
So, what are the reforms my critics are disparaging and denigrating?
As a former FEC commissioner myself, I recommend that the president only nominate commissioners for the FEC who demonstrate a commitment to ensuring that the FEC: 1) does not act beyond its statutory mandate; 2) construes confusing and ambiguous provisions against the government, not candidates and the public; and 3) does not infringe on protected First Amendment activity.
So, my detractors clearly want a federal agency, one with law enforcement authority that can sanction you with civil penalties, which won’t pay any attention to the statutory limits on its law enforcement power. They want an agency that will go after you for supposedly violating the law when the law is unclear and it’s not possible for a reasonable person to know that their behavior may violate the law.
And they have contempt for the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment and think the FEC should not worry about the constitutional protections afforded to every American.
What else did I say that was so objectionable to the detractors of Project 2025 that they label it an “anti-democracy agenda?” I pointed out that while a president does not control the FEC, he does control the Justice Department. It’s fundamentally unfair for “overzealous government prosecutors” to “prosecute individuals who are unable to determine if they are violating the law” because the federal law is confusing, contradictory, or ambiguous. The Justice Department should “only prosecute clear violations of FECA.”
What is so radical and antidemocratic about that? In fact, it’s the contrary view that’s radical and antidemocratic and leads to the weaponization of the justice system.
Oh, and here is another recommendation I made that irresponsible critics call a “troubling suggestion.”
Imagine the situation you could find yourself in if you have two different federal agencies disagreeing completely on what the law allows. One agency tells you that what you are doing is perfectly legal, but another tells you that what you are doing is illegal. That second agency then criminally prosecutes you for taking an action that the other agency advised you was legitimate and not a violation of the law.
Sound like a nightmare? It’s a nightmare that can happen, since enforcement of federal campaign finance law, as I noted earlier, is divided between the FEC and the Justice Department.
My “troubling suggestion” is that the president should direct the Justice Department “not to prosecute individuals under an interpretation of the law with which the FEC—the expert agency designated by Congress to enforce the law civilly and issue regulations establishing the standards under which the law is applied—does not agree.”
How is that antidemocratic? Why is that troubling? Why would anyone believe, as the critics of Project 2025 apparently do, that putting a candidate, a member of the public, or anyone else who participates in the political arena into such a quagmire is a sound way of running the government or a fair way of exercising its law enforcement powers?
Only those who believe in giving federal law enforcement agencies unlimited power to control the political playing field that’s an essential element of the democratic process would take that view.
Their real fear is that if Project 2025 is implemented by a new president, it will restrict the overreach of powerful government agencies and bureaucrats, making them accountable to voters and the leadership they elect to run the executive branch, and pulling them back from interfering in the everyday lives of Americans. That is what permeates all of the unjustified, hysterical broadsides launched at the project.
Everything I wrote in my chapter on the FEC is common sense to anyone except the jaded power-hungry elites in Washington and their political comrades in the national media.
The post Criticism of Project 2025’s Reforms of Federal Election Commission Is Ill-Informed, Dangerous appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Why are Democrats wasting time plotting against a policy agenda called Project 2025 when Donald Trump has his own initiative, dubbed Agenda 47?
A woman raised this question in an online webinar hosted Friday by Georgia Democrats, shedding light on the problem with the Left’s obsession with Project 2025.
Project 2025 is the latest version of The Heritage Foundation’s presidential transition project, a guide to conservative policy solutions compiled and published by the think tank since before the 1980 election. More than 100 other conservative organizations participated this time.
“President Trump says he hasn’t read it,” Peggy Fenton, the Georgia woman, said of Project 2025 during the webinar. “So why are we spending time talking about things that are not on Agenda 47?”
Former President Donald Trump repeatedly has distanced himself from Project 2025.
“They’ve been told officially, legally, in every way, that we have nothing to do with Project 25,” Trump said of Democrats who use the Heritage-led initiative to attack him. “They know it, but they bring it up anyway. They bring up every single thing that you can bring up. Every one of them was false.”
Still, Democrats are holding webinars, lectures, and even a hearing on Project 2025.
In Georgia on Friday, Maya Carter and David Samuel led an information session on Project 2025, describing it in a slideshow as “the 922 Page Conservative Plan to Give Trump More Power Over Your Daily Life, Gut Democratic Checks and Balances, and Consolidate Power in the Oval Office.”
“It is taking control of our lives, our decisions, the way we associate,” Samuel said during the webinar.
When asked by Fenton why Democrats spend so much time criticizing Project 2025, Carter argued that Project 2025 and Agenda 47 are virtually the same.
“Agenda 47 is a dumbed-down version of Project 2025,” she said. “It’s got the same foundational blocks as Project 2025 has. It calls for an abortion ban, just like Project 2025 does.”
Fenton, however, interrupted Carter to point out an error in her claim.
“It doesn’t!” Fenton yelled, prompting Carter to walk back her claim that Project 2025 embraces a national abortion ban, albeit with another error.
“It [Project 2025] takes it back to the states, which in turn is an abortion ban by the federal government,” Carter said.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and returned decisions on abortion to the states, some states have decided to enact no restrictions on abortion while others passed laws limiting abortion or banning the procedure altogether.
Carter said Project 2025 marks a “radical change” in the conservative agenda, moving away from the principles on The Heritage Foundation’s website—including “individual liberty” and “free-market economics”—and toward “controlling the government in order to own everything, to decide everything, and to push forward the agenda of family first.”
“However, we’ve seen that the Republican Party isn’t necessarily the family-first party,” she said. “So their new agenda is just, it’s about greed.”
The Daily Signal sought comment from the organizers of the webinar and the Georgia Democratic Party, but received no reply by publication time.
“The Left is obsessed with Project 2025 because they know its ideas, which are open to any candidate, would provide for effective conservative policy changes and help to reform an unaccountable Washington, D.C., bureaucracy,” a spokesman for Project 2025 told The Daily Signal.
The post EXCLUSIVE: Democrats Struggle to Defend Obsession With Project 2025 appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign publicly admitted two months ago that it was deliberately misleading voters about Project 2025. Now, House Democrats will join the chorus in feigning outrage.
Led by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the party’s Steering and Policy Committee—which isn’t an official House committee—plans to hold a fake “hearing” Tuesday about Project 2025.
You can expect Democrats to invoke Donald Trump’s name repeatedly and associate it with Project 2025—even though the former president isn’t involved with the effort and has called it “merely disinformation put out by the Radical Left Democrat Thugs.”
“Do not believe them!” Trump added.
That won’t stop the Democrats who show up for Tuesday’s stunt, starting with their ringleader, Jeffries.
“It’s Project 2025 week because at the end of the day, my extreme MAGA Republican colleagues are determined to jam Trump’s Project 2025 down the throats of the American people,” Jeffries said—incorrectly—from the House floor last week.
Launched by The Heritage Foundation more than two years ago, Project 2025 has grown to a coalition of more than 110 conservative organizations that developed a transition plan for the next presidential administration. Its work is nonpartisan and available to whomever occupies the White House next year.
MYTHS VS. FACTS ABOUT PROJECT 2025
— Project 2025 (@Prjct2025) July 9, 2024
We are not affiliated with former President Trump. We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy and personnel recommendations.
1. End no fault divorce: FALSE
Divorce is not mentioned in our policy handbook,… https://t.co/syj1HnCxhP
Many of its policy recommendations—such as securing the U.S.-Mexico border and unleashing American energy production—are overwhelmingly popular. But its recommendations for reining in the administrative state have triggered the Left to a near meltdown.
For months, The Daily Signal has documented the Left’s lies about Project 2025 and will continue to do so, including for today’s hearing. (You can prepare by reading Evan Maguire’s excellent commentary on the top five falsehoods about the initiative.)
But we are hardly alone. In total, news organizations spanning the globe have done more than 60 stories documenting the Democrats’ deceit.
Did you know, CNN fact checked Kamala Harris on this lie months ago, and her campaign ADMITTED to deliberately lying about Project 2025 to manipulate voters?
— Project 2025 (@Prjct2025) September 21, 2024
“A Harris campaign official said the campaign has “made a deliberate decision to brand all of Trump’s policies” as… https://t.co/jNx9Qgnob9 pic.twitter.com/Db9JHHAeNE
Since replacing Joe Biden by entering the presidential race in July, Harris and her campaign have falsely attacked Project 2025 and the policies outlined in Heritage’s latest “Mandate for Leadership” effort on nearly a daily basis. Project 2025 featured prominently at the Democratic National Convention last month in Chicago and was a talking point for Harris at the Sept. 10 presidential debate with Trump.
Next up, House Democrats will take their turn to mislead and distort.
They have offered few details about Tuesday’s event, other than promoting it to The Washington Post as a multimedia extravaganza that will feature some of the same elements as the bogus committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol.
Some of the same staff and outside consultants from the J6 committee—including a filmmaker—are working with Democrats on the fake Project 2025 “hearing,” according to the Post.
The event will take place at 2:15 p.m. in the Capitol. Jeffries plans to stream it live.
.@HouseDemocrats and I have been working on something critical: showing people what's actually in Trump’s Project 2025, helping them understand it, and bringing it out of the shadows.
— Rep. Jared Huffman (@RepHuffman) September 23, 2024
Tune in tomorrow @ 2:15pmET for our event to expose #Project2025 ?? https://t.co/bIJVjXMzo8
Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., co-founder of the partisan Stop Project 2025 Task Force, touted the event as “showing people what’s actually in Trump’s Project 2025”—falsely repeating one of the Democrats’ favorite lines about Trump.
As for showing what’s in it, Americans don’t need Huffman’s help. They can already do that by visiting Project2025.org. The complete volume of “Mandate for Leadership” is available for anyone to read for free.
With more than 4 million downloads since its April 2023 release, the book easily surpasses some of the other titles released last year. By comparison, “It Ends With Us” by Colleen Hoover was the top-selling novel at 1.2 million copies.
Whether any Democrat has bothered to read Project 2025 is another question entirely.
And based on Democrats’ latest line of attack this week—that Project 2025 “could effectively ban IVF”—it appears the answer is a definitive “no.”
There’s not a single mention of IVF—an abbreviation for in vitro fertilization—on any of the 922 pages.
Yet that didn’t stop Harris from releasing an ad suggesting otherwise.
Lies like this will continue unabated until Election Day.
There is literally no mention of in vitro fertilization or IVF in the entire 922 page book. @Prjct2025 pic.twitter.com/rPXHOjHzZt
— Brian Phillips (@RealBPhil) September 23, 2024
Without a policy agenda of her own, Harris has resorted to running against Project 2025. When pressed to take a position, she’s offered ideas that are radical departures from her past positions—from aiding illegal aliens to banning fracking.
The theatrics of Tuesday’s mock “hearing” might be entertaining to those who traffic in lies. For the rest of us, we’ll help make sure Americans understand fact from fiction.
The post Democrats’ Sham ‘Hearing’ Aims to Smear Project 2025 appeared first on The Daily Signal.
DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Wednesday that ABC’s license should be revoked over its alleged bias in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris during Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
Trump told the co-hosts of “Fox & Friends” that ABC News debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis were “dishonest” for not correcting Harris’ false statements about the Charlottesville riot in 2017, his support for in vitro fertilization, and The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
The former president said the two ABC debate moderators unfairly fact-checked him while allowing Harris to state false and misleading claims.
“They’re dishonest and … I think ABC took a big hit last night,” Trump said. “I mean, to be honest, as a news organization, they have to be licensed to do it. They ought to take away their license for the way they did that.”
[He explained his recent use of the word “bloodbath” to describe the eventual result of the Biden-Harris administration’s electric vehicle mandate on the auto industry.]
“Everybody loved that term because as soon as they heard that word—it is kind of a vicious word,” Trump said. “But, referring to the economy … ‘bloodbath’ is the word I used, and it was fine in that context. They were trying to make it sound like it was a riot or something.”
“IVF, I was a leader on IVF,” the former president said, referring to the debate topic of in vitro fertilization. “The IVF, which is in vitro fertilization, I was a leader on that. When I first heard about it, from the very beginning, I was one of the leaders on it and the Republican Party has been a leader on it.”
Harris “was trying to say it was the opposite,” Trump said. “The whole thing about abortion, [Muir] said, it was incredible. I think he corrected me about six times, and each time I was right.”
Trump Says ABC's License Should Be Yanked Over Debate Moderators' Performance pic.twitter.com/GRjWskZ7I3
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 11, 2024
ABC News’ two debate moderators appeared to repeatedly fact-check Trump while allowing Harris to get away with false claims. Davis, for example, immediately pushed back against the former president as he said some Democratic states allow for late-term abortions and for babies to be killed after a botched abortion.
Harris also falsely said that Trump plans to sign a national abortion ban if it reached his desk, though the former president has repeatedly spoken in opposition to such legislation. Muir and Davis did not correct the vice president.
The moderators allowed Harris to falsely claim that Trump stated there were “very fine people” on both sides of the riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. The liberal site Snopes rated the claim that the former president called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people” false in June, noting that he said those groups should be “condemned totally.”
“[Harris] was using Charlottesville, and everybody, you take a look at [Fox News host] Laura Ingraham, she did it incredibly. [Ingraham] had it totally debunked; in fact, she gets angry when people hear about Charlottesville, when they use that,” Trump told “Fox & Friends.”
“Because what they did is they stopped and they didn’t put the following sentence in. And when they put the last sentence in, when it’s all put together, what I said was absolutely perfect,” he said. “And ABC knew that, everybody knew that, frankly. I think they lost a lot of credibility.”
The moderators did not fact-check Harris when she alleged that Trump “intends on implementing” The Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025, a conservative policy outline and personnel list to help serve the next Republican president. The Trump campaign has publicly disassociated itself from the initiative.
Muir and Davis also fact-checked Trump when he claimed that Haitian migrants are eating pet cats and ducks in Springfield, Ohio, by stating that local police said they have not received any credible reports on the matter.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
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Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats’ nominee for president, finally released her policy platform Monday, a day before her first debate with former President Donald Trump.
The Harris platform makes various claims about the root causes of issues faced by America and the way Harris plans to address those issues. The claims underlying her policy promises are false, however.
Here is a look at what the Harris campaign released under the title “A New Way Forward.”
Harris’ policy platform says that, if elected, she will “secure our border and fix our broken immigration system.” The Biden-Harris administration, however, abruptly shifted the nation’s border policies on Day One, enabling a massive influx of illegal immigrants since 2021.
The platform focuses on “the bipartisan border bill” that failed to pass the House of Representatives in 2023 and suggests the legislation would solve illegal immigration.
The platform blames Trump for “killing the bipartisan border bill” although out of office and thereby failing to solve the border crisis. The platform states that Harris would sign the legislation, suggesting that nothing more is needed to solve the underlying issues.
Congressional Republicans, however, said the border bill was political posturing and not a true effort to secure the border.
The bill “spends $20 billion to not secure the border, but to more efficiently encounter, process, and disperse illegal migrants,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told reporters.
Harris arguably shares responsibility for the border crisis with President Joe Biden, who tasked her in March 2021 with solving the “root causes” of illegal immigration from three Central American nations. That’s when both supporters and critics began referring to Harris as Biden’s “border czar.”
Harris now promises to “protect civil rights and freedoms” by passing the Equality Act to “enshrine anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQI+ Americans in health care, housing, education, and more into law.”
But critics say the Equality Act would undermine women’s civil rights in order to help a minority of men who claim to be women.
The bill would add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
It would force schools and other programs to allow biological males who “identify” as females to compete against girls and women in sports and use private female facilities such as bathrooms and locker rooms.
Harris’ policy statement on inflation suggests again that price gouging, not government spending, is the central driver of rising prices.
“As president, she will direct her administration to crack down on anti-competitive practices that let big corporations jack up prices and undermine the competition that allows all businesses to thrive while keeping prices low for consumers,” the campaign website states.
However, as Heritage Foundation budget expert EJ Antoni pointed out, there is a far more obvious culprit: government spending.
Antoni, an economist, noted: “One of the functions of money is that of a measuring tool. If a yardstick were to shrink from 36 inches down to just 30, it would take 120 of these shortened yardsticks to cover the distance of a football field, instead of 100. As the dollar has lost value, it takes more dollars to measure the value of the things we buy.”
If price gouging caused 40-year record-high inflation, Antoni asked, did businessmen “magically” become greedy when Biden and Harris took office?
“Were corporations never greedy in the 40 years leading up to Biden’s inflationary expansion of government?” he asked. “Businesses haven’t even passed all their higher costs on to consumers; if they’re trying to be greedy, they’re doing it all wrong.”
Harris’ policy platform also tacitly admits that it is implausible that price gouging is responsible for increases in prices. The platform notes that her “first-ever federal ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries” would “build on the anti-price gouging statutes already in place in 37 states.”
If bans on price gouging were the solution to inflation, wouldn’t these bans have prevented the problem in those 37 states?
Harris’ platform talks a tough game on Iran, the world’s top sponsor of radical Islamist terrorism.
A section on keeping America safe proclaims: “Vice President Harris will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to protect U.S. forces and interests from Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups.”
Tehran is the top financial sponsor of the terrorist group Hamas, which infamously slaughtered 1,139 Israelis—including women and children—on Oct. 7 in southern Israel.
Harris’ new policy pronouncements overlook the fact that the Biden-Harris administration loosened U.S. economic sanctions on Iran, netting the Islamist regime $71 billion more before Oct. 7 than under Trump-Pence administration policies.
If Harris would “never hesitate” to protect U.S. interests from Iran, did she object to the administration’s move to loosen sanctions?
The Harris policy platform includes several tabs contrasting the vice president’s positions with what it calls “Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda,” although Trump repeatedly has distanced himself from The Heritage Foundation-led Presidential Transition Project.
In fact, a campaign official for Harris already has acknowledged that the vice president has deliberately misled voters about Project 2025.
Harris and her campaign repeatedly have tried to link Project 2025 to Trump, despite the former president’s pushback.
In a particularly ironic claim, Harris said Trump would implement his Project 2025 agenda to consolidate power, bring the Department of Justice and the FBI under his direct control so he can give himself unchecked legal power, go after opponents, and “rule as a dictator on ‘Day One.’”
However, the Biden-Harris Justice Department targeted pro-lifers and other Americans with dissenting political and religious views, particularly after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and abortion on demand in June 2022.
For instance, a Michigan jury recently found seven pro-life activists guilty of engaging in a conspiracy against rights and violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, for peacefully protesting outside an abortion clinic.
The charges against the pro-life activists were brought by DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.
Launched two years ago by The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 has grown to a coalition of 110 conservative organizations that developed a transition plan for the next presidential administration. The Heritage-led coalition considers its work to be nonpartisan and offers it to whoever occupies the White House in January 2025.
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