A compendium of the best reporting and commentary surrounding the pivotal 2024 elections in the United States. You won't find horse race coverage here, or the standard "both sides" BS that passes so often for political journalism. What you will find are links, with brief commentary, to work that I believe advances the conversation we should be having about America's – and the world's – future. Remember: Everything is at stake this year. (Unfortunately, some of the work I point to is behind paywalls.)
A review of the training videos shows that 29 of the 36 speakers have worked for Trump in some capacity — on his 2016-17 transition team, in the administration or on his 2024 reelection campaign. The videos appear to have been recorded before the resignation two weeks ago of Paul Dans, the leader of the 2025 project, and they are referenced on the project’s website. The Heritage Foundation said in a statement at the time of Dans’ resignation that it would end Project 2025’s policy-related work, but that its “collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and local — will continue.”
ProPublica and Documented – and especially whoever leaked this material to the publications – have done us a huge service by bringing this material to wider attention. (Whether other journalism outlets will pick up the story remains to be seen.) Project 2025 is a nothing less than a plan to create dictatorship. The Orwellian nature of the planning is most clear in an element of these indoctrination videos, where an instructor says, “If the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.” This is yet another reminder that, while Democrats haven't been nearly strong enough in combatting climate change, a Trump presidency means accelerating the process that makes the planet unsuitable for human civilization. Meanwhile, Trump's attempt to distance himself from this roadmap for dictatorship isn't going as well as he'd hoped, even though a lot of journalism outlets are doing stenography for that blatantly bogus claim.
“The right-wing populism that’s gotten such a strong foothold in Trump’s Republican Party has a long lineage,” said David Greenberg, a professor of history at Rutgers University. “In the early 20th century, there was a similar rural backlash against the changes in society that were making America more centralized, urban, cosmopolitan and interconnected with the world.” That backlash reared up against the New Deal and again during the Red Scare of the 1950s. It fueled the Buchananite revolt of the early 1990s. In fact, rather than representing anything fundamentally different, the New Right is better understood as a persistent, if not always powerful, tendency within the Republican Party, pushing back repeatedly against liberals and establishment conservatives. Dormant for decades, it has returned in the form of JD Vance — along with a circle of like-minded figures who are poised to join him in a second Trump administration.
There's a lot of useful context in this NY Times magazine article. While the piece makes the common error of using the label "conservative" to describe right-wing extremism, it does a good job in showing that the people who want to take America back more than a century in social and economic policy are a persistent – and persistently dangerous – crowd. If they take over America's government, they will take the nation back at least a century.
The evidence of Trump’s racism is so overwhelming that the press and many voters now seem to consider it old news, shrugging at his constant stream of bigoted comments. That is exactly what Trump is counting on; it’s difficult to remember that his racism was still considered shocking as recently as 2016 when he ran for president.
I don't completely buy Risen's argument, because he mostly dismisses economic issues as reasons for Trump's support. But he is plainly right about the the extent to which racism is a pillar of his candidacy, and popularity among his voting base. One of the most pernicious things Trump has done to America is to bring racism totally out of the closet. It never went away, but for a time it was understood to be something to hide; now, in the Republican cult, it's something to flaunt. Unleashing racism has also unleashed the violent tendencies of its adherents.
There has never been a threat to democracy quite like Elon Musk. Now is a great time to stop helping him.
A year and a half ago, I called on journalists and other Twitter users to leave a platform that was visibly being ruined by Elon Musk. It was a matter of principle first, I said, but a practical matter as well. Tying one's brand to his, I argued, was a toxic approach. Sorry to say, journalists mostly stuck around. Maybe, if they read this FrameLab piece, they'll think again. It's not too late to stop offering direct support to an ultra-rich extremist who's doing what he can to bring down democracy (and, by extension, freedom of expression).
Voting is just part of democracy, but it's the essential place to start. Make sure you're registered. Doublecheck in the fall, well before Election Day, because in some states Republican officials are removing people, mostly those who tend to vote for Democrats, from voting rolls.
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I spend a lot of time looking for essential coverage, and hope you'll help me by letting me know about the good stuff you find. Let me know.
Andy Kroll, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented
James Risen
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