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Media Faces Reckoning After Helping Trump Downplay Project 2025 on Campaign Trail

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Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

The Democratic National Committee sponsors a billboard about then-Republican candidate Donald Trump and Project 2025 at 12th & Vine Streets on September 9, 2024, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Lisa Lake/Getty Images for the Democratic National Committee)

“A Trump denial is not a fact,” said one media critic.

As President Donald Trump openly embraces Project 2025, mainstream media outlets are facing criticism for their role in helping him downplay his ties to the wildly unpopular far-right governing playbook in the lead-up to his reelection last year.

After she became the Democratic nominee in July, former Vice President Kamala Harris made the Heritage Foundation’s over 900-page manifesto for “the next conservative president” central to her case against Trump during the 2024 election, often referring to it as “Trump’s Project 2025.”

She and other Democrats warned that if he retook power, he would swiftly enact many of its most extreme and unpopular proposals and dramatically expand executive power while doing it.

Among those proposals were steep cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the “mass deportations” of millions of immigrants, the elimination of the Department of Education, new restrictions on abortions, the gutting of climate protections, and the replacement of career civil servants with political appointees, among many others.

Democrats amplified the plan’s danger at the Democratic National Convention and in campaign ads, and Trump began to distance himself from the platform. Despite the fact that as many as 140 people who’d worked in his first administration—including Paul Dans, Heritage’s director of Project 2025—had a hand in its creation, Trump said: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.”

This was demonstrably untrue, even at the time. Media Matters for America dug up a clip from as far back as May 2023 of Dans stating that “President Trump’s very bought in with this,” speaking of the program.

Project 2025 was almost inconceivably unpopular. An NBC News poll from September 2024 showed that while 57% of registered voters viewed the plan negatively, just 4% viewed it positively.

But in the critical months leading up to the election, many media outlets took Trump’s denial at face value, publishing fact checks and other commentary that painted Democrats’ warnings about his connection to the plan as alarmist or misleading.

Responding to a social media post in July stating that “Trump has made his authoritarian intentions quite clear with his Project 2025 plan,” a fact check by USA Today rated the statement “false,” because, as the headline said, “Project 2025 is an effort by the Heritage Foundation, not Donald Trump.”

In September, after Harris confronted Trump about Project 2025 at the first and only debate between the two, the paper published another fact-check with the headline: “Harris repeats claim that Project 2025 is Trump’s plan. That’s still not right.”

In response to Harris’ claim during the debate that Project 2025 was “a detailed and dangerous plan… that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected,” Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, whose coverage received a fair bit of criticism during the 2024 cycle, reported in bold text that “Project 2025 is not an official campaign document.”

A CNN fact check of the Harris campaign’s social media in September remarked that one account “frequently invokes Project 2025,” before caveating that “Project 2025 is not Trump’s initiative, and he has said he disagrees with some of its proposals.”

In an October interview on CBS‘s“Face the Nation,”anchor Norah O’Donnell, Harris attempted to warn about Project 2025, before O’Donnell responded: “You know that Donald Trump has disavowed Project 2025. He says that is not his campaign plan.”

After nine months back in power, the website Project 2025 Tracker estimates that Trump has already implemented approximately 48% of the objectives outlined in the policy document.

In addition to his key campaign promises many of his second administration’s policies are highly specific to Project 2025, such as his pledge to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), his efforts to privatize the National Weather Service (NWS), his reconfiguration of Title X funding to promote pregnancy, and his elimination of the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Trump is no longer hiding his connection to Project 2025, having brought in many of its hiring picks and authors to staff his administration almost immediately after his victory last November.

This week, he began to boast about it openly. As his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director, Russ Vought, one of Project 2025’s architects, began using the current government shutdown to unilaterally cut off funding to infrastructure projects in blue states and cities, Trump lauded him as “he of PROJECT 2025 Fame.”

“This was always the plan,” Harris responded on social media.

While many commentators expressed outrage that Trump blatantly lied about his connections to Project 2025, others dredged up old clips of newspapers and anchors taking him at his word.

“All those 2024 media fact checks that said, ‘Donald Trump and the Trump campaign deny any connection to Project 2025’ look pretty ridiculous right now,” said MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski. “A Trump denial is not a fact. You just used his lies to ‘debunk’ a reality that was obvious to anyone paying attention.”

Mehdi Hasan, the founder of the independent media company Zeteo, highlighted the CBS interview, saying Trump’s embrace of Project 2025 was “embarrassing not just for Norah O’Donnell but a whole host of leading American anchors and reporters who echoed Trump’s false denials.”

“Nothing showed the difference between mainstream and independent media better than the response to Trump’s obvious lie about not knowing anything about Project 2025,” said David Pepper, author of the book Saving Democracy: A User’s Manual. “Most mainstream media started fact-checking those who claimed a connection to be somehow false. Others ‘both sides’ed’ it. Far more in independent media called it out as a whopping lie.”

Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.

Continue ReadingMedia Faces Reckoning After Helping Trump Downplay Project 2025 on Campaign Trail

Trump’s New Restrictions on Pentagon Reporters ‘Should Alarm Every American’

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Original article by Jon Queally republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks to reporters as he leaves the Russell Senate Office Building on November 21, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

“If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting,” warned the National Press Club after journalists told of rule changes.

Journalists and defenders of press freedom are expressing alarm and condemnation after the Pentagon, under the command of President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, announced new restrictions on reporters that include pre-approval of stories that include even unclassified material and a new pledge to not publish any material without permissions from government officials.

The New York Times, among the first to report on a 17-page memo detailing the new rules, noted how the “move could drastically restrict the flow of information about the U.S. military to the public.” The National Press Club (NPC) was quick to rebuke the restrictions as an assault on the public’s right to know and fundamental journalistic freedoms.

“The Pentagon is now demanding that journalists sign a pledge not to obtain or report any information—even if unclassified—unless it has been expressly authorized by the government,” said Mike Balsamo, president of the NPC, in a statement. “This is a direct assault on independent journalism at the very place where independent scrutiny matters most: the U.S. military.”

Balsamo continued:

For generations, Pentagon reporters have provided the public with vital information about how wars are fought, how defense dollars are spent, and how decisions are made that put American lives at risk. That work has only been possible because reporters could seek out facts without needing government permission.

If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting. It is getting only what officials want them to see. That should alarm every American.

Independent reporting on the military is essential to democracy. It is what allows citizens to hold leaders accountable and ensures that decisions of war and peace are made in the light of day. This pledge undermines that principle, and the National Press Club calls on the Pentagon to rescind it immediately.

Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, explained to the Times that the government is prohibited by law from demanding journalists surrender their right to investigate the government in exchange for access or credentials.

“This policy operates as a prior restraint on publication which is considered the most serious of First Amendment violations,” Stern said. “The government cannot prohibit journalists from public information merely by claiming it’s a secret or even a national security threat.”

In comments to the Washington Post, Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, called the new policy part of “the Trump administration’s broader assault on free speech and press freedom.”

Any journalist, she added, “who publishes only what the government ‘authorizes’ is doing something other than reporting.”

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor at Princeton University, put it this way: “In Trump’s Pentagon, journalists who venture beyond reporting official propaganda now risk having their credentials revoked.”

Individual journalists, including veteran reporters who have covered the Pentagon for years or decades, also chimed in.

Konstantin Toropin, the Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press, expressed alarm and dismay at the new restrictions.

“The Pentagon, which has claimed to [have] aspirations of being the most transparent in history, is once again cracking down on basic press access,” Toropin said in a social media post. “Denying access to the Pentagon makes covering our military, our troops, and our actions abroad harder. Full stop.”

Toropin said the rule forbidding the unapproved release of unclassified material, sometimes marked with the acronym “CUI,” is “an incredibly broad and ill-defined rule that could be easily abused.”

As his colleague Brian Everstine, the Pentagon editor at Aviation Week, noted:

At a time when Trump is being accused of severe abuses of power, including a series of attacks on alleged illegal drug runners in the Caribbean Sea, which international law experts have condemned as ”extrajudicial executions,” further restrictions on the ability of journalists to report on the internal workings of the president’s military operations are seen as particularly dangerous.

Barbara Starr, who worked as CNN’s chief Pentagon correspondent for many years who is now a senior fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Communication, Leadership and Policy, told ABC News that the entire effort “is extremely troubling because it’s being done in an era of unprecedented public hostility from the secretary of defense to the news media.”

Original article by Jon Queally republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
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Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.

Continue ReadingTrump’s New Restrictions on Pentagon Reporters ‘Should Alarm Every American’

Trump Threatens to Strip Broadcast Licenses for Networks Giving Him ‘Bad Press,’ Ramping Up His ‘Campaign of Censorship and Control’

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Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

US President Donald Trump speaks to the press in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on August 25, 2025.
 (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez says the commission “doesn’t have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to revoke a license because of content.”

President Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to silence his critics Thursday, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that outlets that give him “bad press” may have their broadcast licenses taken away.

The threat came just one day after his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) director, Brendan Carr, successfully pressured ABC into pulling Jimmy Kimmel’s show from the air by threatening the broadcast licenses of its affiliates over a comment the comedian made about the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

“I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me,” Trump told the press gaggle. “I get 97% negative, and yet I won it easily. I won all seven swing states, popular vote, I won everything. And they’re 97% against, they give me wholly bad publicity… I mean, they’re getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”

“When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do,” the president continued. “If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said, but when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”

He said that the decision would be left up to Carr, who has threatened to take away licenses from networks that air what he called “distorted” content.

It is unclear where Trump’s statistic that networks have been “97% against” him originates, nor the claim that mainstream news networks “haven’t had a conservative on in years.”

But even if it were true, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez says “the FCC doesn’t have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to revoke a license because of content.”

In comments made to Axios Thursday, Gomez—the lone Democrat on the five-member panel—said that the Trump administration was “weaponizing its licensing authority in order to bring broadcasters to heel,” as part of a “campaign of censorship and control.”

National news networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC do not have broadcasting licenses approved by the FCC, nor do cable networks like CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. The licenses threatened by Carr are for local affiliates, which—despite having the branding of the big networks—are owned by less well-known companies like Nexstar Media Group and the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, both of which pushed in favor of ABC’s decision to ax Kimmel.

Gomez said that with Trump’s intimidation of broadcasters, the “threat is the point.”

“It is a very hard standard to meet to revoke a license, which is why it’s so rarely done, but broadcast license to the broadcasters are extremely valuable,” she said. “And so they don’t want to be dragged before the FCC either in order to answer to an enforcement complaint of some kind or under the threat of possible revocation.”

Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Continue ReadingTrump Threatens to Strip Broadcast Licenses for Networks Giving Him ‘Bad Press,’ Ramping Up His ‘Campaign of Censorship and Control’

“Fascist tactics will never deter me”: Mahmoud Khalil remains defiant in the face deportation order

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Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Mahmoud Khalil speaks at Palestine march following release (Photo: Wyatt Souers)

A US immigration judge has ordered the deportation of pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil to Algeria or Syria. In an order dated September 12, Louisiana Judge Jamee Comans leaned into Trump administration allegations that in his permanent residency application, Khalil failed to disclose his work with UNRWA and the Syria Office at the British Embassy in Beirut, along with his ties to a pro-Palestine student group at Columbia University. Comans thus denied Khalil’s application for a waiver of removability, a legal order that waives a particular ground for deportation, permitting an individual to stay in the United States, and ordered his deportation – in what her ruling states as “the interests of this country.”

“It is no surprise that the Trump administration continues to retaliate against me for my exercise of free speech. Their latest attempt, through a kangaroo immigration court, exposes their true colors once again,” said Mahmoud Khalil in response to the ruling. “When their first effort to deport me was set to fail, they resorted to fabricating baseless and ridiculous allegations in a bid to silence me for speaking out and standing firmly with Palestine, demanding an end to the ongoing genocide. Such fascist tactics will never deter me from continuing to advocate for my people’s liberation.”

Khalil’s team has already moved to challenge Comans’ order. On September 17, Khalil’s lawyers submitted a letter to the federal court in New Jersey which is overseeing Khalil’s civil rights case, explaining that Khalil will challenge Comans’s order.

“When the immigration prosecutor, judge, and jailor all answer to Donald Trump, and that one man is eager to weaponize the system in a desperate bid to silence Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident whose only supposed sin is that he stands against an ongoing genocide in Palestine, this is the result,” said Ramzi Kassem, co-director of CUNY CLEAR (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility), one of the organizations part of his legal team, which includes the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Dratel & Lewis, Van Der Hout LLP, and Washington Square Legal Services. “A plain-as-day First Amendment violation that also puts on sharp display the rapidly freefalling credibility of the entire US immigration system.”

“We will win”: Khalil continues activism for Palestine

Since his release in June, Khalil has not once shied away from continuing his advocacy for Palestine. Only days after leaving an ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, Khalil appeared on the steps of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Harlem, only blocks away from his alma mater of Columbia University. Khalil answered questions from the press while surrounded by hundreds of his fellow Columbia student activists and supporters from the pro-Palestine movement. When a journalist asked him what his message was to students who might be afraid to speak out based on what happened to him, Khalil firmly said “We will win.”

Khalil also attended and spoke at the Peoples Conference for Palestine in August, where he said again, “the Palestinian liberation movement is winning.”

“The fact that I was targeted by the highest officials and levels of this country means that we are winning.”

Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.

Continue Reading“Fascist tactics will never deter me”: Mahmoud Khalil remains defiant in the face deportation order

‘There Is No Antifa Organization,’ But Trump Still Wants to Designate It a ‘Major Terrorist’ Group

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Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Victoria Bay of Los Angeles protests against fascism while attending a “Good Trouble Lives On” demonstration in front of City Hall on July 17, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“I hope he can first define what antifa is, because there is no antifa organization,” said one congressman.

After US President Donald Trump absurdly announced late Wednesday night that he planned to designate the amorphous “antifa” movement as a “major terrorist organization,” a Democratic congressman had one request.

“I hope he can first define what antifa is, because there is no antifa organization,” said Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) on CNN.

Goldman added that Trump is using the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last week “as a pretext to go after people he disagrees with.”

“He on the very night of Kirk’s murder, you will remember, accused the left of committing the murder when the murderer had not even been caught or identified,” he said.

“Antifa” is a portmanteau meaning “anti-fascist,” and the term encompasses autonomous individuals and loosely-affiliated groups of people who say they oppose fascism—but with no organizational structure or leaders, it was not clear on Wednesday how the White House would seek to designate the idea of anti-fascist protest “a major terrorist organization.”

As The Guardian noted, since antifa is a US-based movement, it cannot be included on the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations as ISIS and al-Qaeda are, allowing the Department of Justice to prosecute those who give material support to those organizations.

“There is no domestic equivalent to that list in part because of broad First Amendment protections enjoyed by organizations operating within the United States,” the outlet added.

Trump’s former FBI director, Christopher Wray, also testified in 2020—during nationwide racial justice protests that Trump also linked to antifa—that there is no organization to designate as a terrorist group.

Mark Bray, a historian and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, suggested Trump’s threat was akin to a statement claiming that the White House could designate other social justice movements as terrorist groups.

“Antifa is a kind of politics, not a specific group,” Bray told Al Jazeera. “In the same way that there are feminist groups but feminism is not, itself, a group. Any group that calls itself antifa and promotes the basic principles of militant anti-fascism is an antifa group. There is no general headquarters or leader to get official recognition from.”

The number of members of the anti-fascist movement and their identities are not public, and though Trump called for the “funders” of antifa to be investigated, Al Jazeera noted that there is “no way of identifying and collating a list of financiers of the movement”—which mainly raises small amounts of money “for bail,” according to Bray.

“He is trying to promote the common right-wing conspiracy theory that there are shadowy financiers like George Soros playing puppet master behind everything the left does,” Bray told Al Jazeera.

With its stated plan to designate antifa a terrorist group, said left-wing commentator Hasan Piker, “they’re openly admitting they’re fascist.”

Veteran union organizer Charles Idelson added that “surely what Trump and his puppets repeating the lie really want is to ban is anti-fascist thought and speech, and imprison individuals who express it.”

Since Kirk’s killing last week, Trump and others on the right have asserted that left-wing groups and commentators were responsible for the assassination because some had tied Kirk to fascism and racism.

Trump’s claim that he will designate antifa as a terrorist group came soon after ABC, under explicit pressure from the Federal Communications Commission, announced it was taking “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air indefinitely after he remarked on the far-right MAGA movement’s reaction to the killing—a clear-cut violation of the First Amendment, said rights advocates.

Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, told The Washington Post that Trump’s plan for antifa’s designation would “raise significant First Amendment, due process, and equal protection concerns.”

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.

Continue Reading‘There Is No Antifa Organization,’ But Trump Still Wants to Designate It a ‘Major Terrorist’ Group