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2024

📚 Project 2025: Wut?

"Absolutely ridiculous." "Abysmal." No, this isn't a review of the night one guys from the Bachelorette. It's Donald Trump describing Project 2025… which is sort of his own plan.

Project 2025 is the weapon of choice for Democrats this election season. John Oliver semi-informed people about it. The Biden camp is pushing it. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called it “dangerous, diabolical, and dastardly” (big alliteration guy, it seems).

But what is it? Its official title is “The 2025 Presidential Transition Project.” The part that’s drawn so much attention is a 900-page book written by the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank). It bills itself as “the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for the next conservative Administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025” (aka inauguration time).

• The book, released in 2023, is called “Mandate for Leadership.” They’ve written this thing for almost every election since 1980.

• The rest of the project builds a personnel database, training plan, and more.

Transition planning is a big part of presidential campaigns. You’ve gotta be ready to take over on day one. There are thousands of jobs to fill, executive orders to write (and sign), and more. Obama did it. Romney did it (you can buy the book on his). Hillary did it.

What’s different about Project 2025? It wasn’t written by the campaign. They have their own set of policy plans with Agenda 47. It was instead written by a horde of Trump-adjacent people: allies, friends, former advisors, and hopeful future advisors.

• Trump disavowed Project 2025 last week amid the controversy.

• Many Democrats say that’s not enough. He’s too personally tied to this thing because of who wrote it.

Why the controversy? Many people don’t like the content of this thing. After all, it’s very conservative. If that’s not you? You probably won’t like it.

• Some ideas are relatively bland, like emphasizing that “Legislatures make the laws in a republic, not executives.”

Others are a bit spicier, such as:

• It targets abortion pills like mifepristone via a still-on-the-books 1873 law and wants to remove terms like “sexual orientation” from federal law

• It wants to downsize climate-related agencies like NOAA, slash climate initiatives, and increase oil production.

• It recommends mass deportation of undocumented or illegal immigrants, finishing The Wall™, and using the military to tackle drug cartels

Conservative wish list? World-ending evil? Who knows.

The Republican National Convention kicks off on Monday. Do you like mini American flags and political speeches given by very specific, demographically-tested people? This is just the event for you.

• Melania Trump will appear after being mostly absent from Trump's 2024 campaign.

• The party’s official 2024 platform is causing some hot drama among the surely super fun people who care about that sort of thing. More on that on Monday.

2024

🏛️ It’s not Joever til it’s Joever

It’s like a slow-motion train wreck that you can’t look away from. Sure, it’s about the future of our country. But it’s doing numbers.

One day President Biden gets support from the likes of AOC, Chuck Schumer, and the Congressional Black Caucus. It seems like he’s strong. The next day, George Clooney basically calls him senile and a Democratic member of the House calls on him to full-on resign the presidency. The hits just keep coming.

• Some people directly involved with the Biden campaign say he's toast and needs to quit.

• Asian American Democrats in the House say he's not taking them seriously and has thus far refused to meet with them.

• The list of Democratic lawmakers who want him gone keeps growing. It started in the House, but he’s losing senators now, too.

Meanwhile, a whopping 85% (!) of Americans worry he’ll take off for the great Oval Office in the sky before the next term is out. And 54% of actual Biden supporters want the guy to move to the Villages yesterday.

But his campaign team is doubling down. They found some success in assuaging the fears of Democratic senators. And they say they still have multiple paths to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win a second term.

• The Obama-Biden bromance might finally be dead (excuse the term). George Clooney warned his pal Barack Obama about his anti-Biden op-ed and Obama… didn’t try to stop him.

The calendar may be his saving grace. The Republican Convention next week should help soak up most political attention. And Congress is out of session until July 22nd, so Democratic lawmakers won’t be wandering the halls waiting to get ambushed by reporters asking about Biden. After that, the Olympics run until August 11. The Democratic Convention is the following week.

• So far, the convention delegates he theoretically controls are sticking with their man. And they officially choose the nominee.

Biden is actively trying to get ahead of this. NBC News anchor Lester Holt will interview Biden on Monday. And he held a big press conference at the close of the NATO summit in D.C. last night.

• He took shots from reporters for almost an hour. Despite accidentally calling Ukraine's President Zelenskyy "President Putin" to his face (that’s a doozy), he performed well enough to solidify some House Democratic support.

And here’s a quick look at what else the government’s up to:

• 🚜 The Senate will take up a bipartisan bill later this month to ban stock trading by members of Congress

• 🍅 The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines said Iran has funded recent Gaza protests in the U.S. “to stoke discord”

• 📒 The House's vote to hit Attorney General Merrick Garland with a $10,000 per day fine for ignoring a congressional subpoena failed narrowly

POLITICS

🔴 Donald Trump took a few shots at Batman George Clooney for calling on Joe Biden to drop out. Trump called Clooney a "fake movie actor" “who never came close to making a great movie.” On the flip side, he also posted a stupid video on the matter (can’t lose ‘em all).

• Trump's lawyers want his felony conviction dropped in light of the Supreme Court's immunity ruling. His team says evidence in the case is related to his "official acts" and needs to be tossed.

⚪ Little flags are so out. Louisiana’s secretary of State dropped a new “I Voted” sticker featuring a crawfish wearing a tuxedo. His name? Mark de Ballot.

⚪ Arkansans will not vote on legalizing abortion this year. Activists collected 100,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot. But the state says they goofed on the paperwork and didn’t confirm some details about the canvassers they paid to collect those signatures.

🔵 Sen. Sherrod Brown, the last Democrat left standing in Ohio, is fighting for his political life this year. And he's doing a pretty good job of it. Brown leads the polls by ~5% and just raised a cool $13 million. Every penny counts, too. He’ll need to outrun Biden by ~10% to win.

TRIVIA

Despite what you might think looking at, oh, just about anyone in politics, you only need to be 30 years old to run for U.S. Senate. The youngest senator isn’t quite there, but he’s close. Who is the youngest current U.S. senator and how old is he?

Hint: He’s still in his 30s.

WORLD

🌐 NATO: The three-day event in D.C. went off without a hitch. The North Atlantic allies debated raising their defense spending target (that many don't hit) above its current 2% of GDP, agreed to fund Ukraine next year, condemned Russia for putting nukes in Belarus, and agreed to enhance NATO’s missile defenses. All this despite weird faces from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

🇵🇸 Palestine: RIP the $230 million pier the U.S. built in Gaza. The temporary pier was quickly built in May for humanitarian aid delivery. Turns out it was about as sturdy as that deck your cousin Kevin built after two too many Monsters.

🇵🇦 Panama: The Darién Gap is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. No roads traverse the forested, mountainous bit of southern Panama connecting North and South America. But 520,000 migrants crossed by foot last year. Now Panama is trying to shut that down via heavy barbed wire fencing.

🇷🇺 Russia: Russia's Russia-ing again. First, they tried to assassinate the CEO of a German weapons company that’s supplying Ukraine. Now they're mad that the U.S. will soon plop down some long-range missiles in Germany (for the first time since the Cold War).

BRIEFS

• Delta Air Lines says it will lose $100 million this summer as people avoid flying to Paris due to the Olympics

• A shocking poll of Europe found 76% of European Jews sometimes hide their Jewish identity to avoid anti-Semitism

• The NFL plans to allow private equity firms to own up to 10% of a team — the NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS all allow up to 30% ownership

• Smartly targeting a group known for its low income, Michael Bloomberg's charity donated $1 billion to cover med school tuition for students at Johns Hopkins University

• The first week of Alec Baldwin's involuntary manslaughter trial is well underway — the film's (already convicted) armorer will testify today

QUOTE

SNACKS

🍿 Barbenheimer 2024: The movie industry is trying to make fetch happen. Gladiator II and Wicked come out on the same day this November and they want us all to see them both. But it gets worse: They’re trying to call it “Glicked.”

🐨 Koalas: Shout out to the koalas of French Island, Australia for avoiding the rampant chlamydia outbreak that’s taking out their mainland brethren left and right. The remote island has more koalas than people and this article has a few good pics. PS: Did you know there’s a koala emoji?

👸 Miss AI: Congratulations to Kenza Layli for winning the first-ever “Miss AI” pageant for fake, AI-generated influencers. The newly crowned pageant queen narrowly beat out the also-fake Lalina to take the crown. Suddenly “Toddlers & Tiaras” seems quaint, eh?

ANSWER

Joe Biden had been in the Senate for 15 years when Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) was born. Ossoff is 45% as old as Biden and 47% as old as Donald Trump… otherwise known as 37. He was elected in 2020 at just 33. Guy lost a race for House in 2018 and failed upward straight into the Senate. Shooters gonna shoot.

On the news front, our man Ossoff just broke ranks with his party and tanked a judicial confirmation vote.