Trump 2024 Bookmarks
Below are my list of bookmarks relating to Trump's second Presidential term, as I document what I can about the twists and turns of the new regime.
The following are just the stories I've heard about and added to my bookmarks. I am not a professional political news reporter, so there are tons of other stories not captured here, and with so many wild stories breaking every single day, my notes may be a little unorganized.
Project 2025
General/Most interesting links to start with:
- Project 2025 Official Website - The playbook designed by The Heritage Foundation to give Trump a day-by-day playbook of executive orders and steps to take in order to dismantle our democracy. You can read their entire (922 page) playbook free online here (PDF).
- Project 2025 Tracker - Track the progress of Project 2025 and see how many of their agenda items have already been fulfilled. It includes links to news articles, Executive Orders from the Whitehouse, and relevant documentation.
- As of Mar 6 2025, they are at 38% completion (91 out of 299 done, 43 in progress).
- 25 And Me - A great resource to learn about Project 2025. It lets you filter for just the issues you care about, and it gives bullet points of all the things Project 2025 plans to ruin in that area, and provides page number citations to where you can read the source of truth in the Project 2025 playbook.
It is confirmed that Project 2025 was indeed the playbook all along, as the many, many links below will support.
Before the election:
After the election, Trump has appointed several people involved in Project 2025 to join his cabinet:
- Newsweek (Nov 21 2024): Which Donald Trump Appointees Have Project 2025 Links?
- Russ Vought, the co-author and "architect" of Project 2025, as the director of Office of Management and Budget.
- Brendan Carr, to head the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
- Tom Homan, as the border czar.
- John Ratcliffe as the director for the CIA.
- Mashable (Jan 29, 2025): Metadata on U.S. government memos reveals authors linked to Project 2025
- Forbes (Feb 6 2025): Project 2025 Author Russel Vought Confirmed by Senate: Here are all the Trump officials with ties to policy agenda
- Peter Navarro, Trump's former trade advisor, who wrote the P2025 chapter on "the case for fair trade" and advocated for tarriffs, to serve as senior counselor for trade and manufacturing.
- Paul Atkins to lead the Securites and Exchange Commission, who contributed to Project 2025's section on Federal Regulatory Agencies, which calls to get rid of regulations that the authors believe are "impediments" to companies' success and opposing social justice, sustainability, diversity and other similar campaigns in the business world.
- Monica Crowley, who served as assistant secretary of the Treasury during Trump's first term, and contributed to the Project 2025 section on the Treasury Department, is now serving as assistant secretary of state.
- Michael Anton was picked to be director of policy planning at the State Department, and he was listed as a contributor to Project 2025's chapter on the Executive Office of the President.
- Brendan Carr, who authored the chapter on the FCC, is confirmed to head the FCC.
- John Ratcliffe was confirmed as the CIA director. He's credited as a contributor to Project 2025 on the chapter about the intelligence community.
- People.com (Mar 4 2025): Senate Votes on Trump's Cabinet Nominees: Tracking Everyone Who Has Been Confirmed So Far
- 23 people who contributed to Project 2025 are now appointed to Trump's cabinet:
- Marco Rubio as Secretary of State
- Scott Bessent as Secretary of the Treasury
- Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense
- Pam Bondi as Attorney General
- Doug Burgum as Secretary of the Interior
- Brooke Rollins as Secretary of Agriculture
- Howard Lutnick as Secretary of Commerce
- Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Secretary of Labor
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services
- Scott Turner as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
- Sean Duffy as Secretary of Transportation
- Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy
- Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education
- Doug Collins as Secretary of Veterans Affairs
- Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security
- Lee Zeldin as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
- Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence
- Jamieson Greer as US Trade Representative
- Elise Stefanik as US Ambassador to the United Nations
- Kelly Loeffler to head the Small Business Administration
- Kash Patel as FBI Director.
What does Project 2025 actually want to accomplish? See 25 And Me but for just a couple examples:
Put a bunch of career civil servants as employees under the President with the ability to fire them and replace them with loyalists. This includes things like NOAA (page 674) which track weather patterns and hurricanes, or the CDC weakening the nation's ability to respond to public health emergencies or address critical health issues (page 452). Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Forbes), who is unqualified in the realm of healthcare, is put in charge of it.
Remember that time when Trump drew with a sharpie where he wished a hurricane path would go? Giving him the power to fire the NOAA and replace them with unqualified "yes men" will lead us to a dark future.
On climate change, it would expand the use of coal, oil and natural gas (page 365), reduce the role of the federal government in addressing climate change (page 61), eliminate government organizations that work on climate related issues such as the Clean Energy Corps, the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, and more (page 369). It will also reduce the size and scope of the EPA (page 420) which will allow companies to pollute more and make the air and water dirtier and could make people sick.
This is quite the exact opposite of what we as a species should be doing, and just serves to give more money to oil barons to continue skullfucking our natural environment.
Eliminate the Department of Education (page 319) and use public taxpayer money for private religious schools (page 351). Our wealthy elite do not benefit from having an educated populous, and they send their own kids to these private schools anyway.
It will limit online platforms' ability to moderate content, leading to a proliferation of hate speech and misinformation (page 849).
They also wish to ban pornography, and to "imprison the people who produce and distribute it, shut down the telecom and tech firms that facilitate its spread, and register as sex offenders any educators or public librarians who purvey it." (page 5).
Oh, and they wish to broaden the definition of "pornography" to include any LGBT+ and gender related ideology. Also from page 5, and I quote, "Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women."
On the topic of LGBT+ things are not great for any of us either. They wish to gut protections for the LGBT+ community (page 62), removing our protected class status and allowing for discrimination in housing and employment (by restricting the application of the Supreme Court's Bostok vs. Clayton County, page 584).
I could really go on and on; please check out 25and.me and peruse this information yourself.
Fascism
General/Most interesting links to start with:
Before the election:
- "Dictator for a Day"
- NPR (Nov 17, 2023): Why Trump's authoritarian language about 'vermin' matters
- "We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country," he told a New Hampshire crowd.
- The Atlantic (Oct 18 2024): Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini
- He has said of immigrants, “They’re poisoning the blood of our country” and “They’re destroying the blood of our country.”
- He has claimed that many have “bad genes.”
- He has also been more explicit: “They’re not humans; they’re animals”; they are “cold-blooded killers.”
- He refers more broadly to his opponents—American citizens, some of whom are elected officials—as “the enemy from within … sick people, radical-left lunatics.”
- Not only do they have no rights; they should be “handled by,” he has said, “if necessary, National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
- USA Today (Nov 6, 2024): Revenge tour? Trump campaign threats raise questions of retribution-focused presidency
- Vanity Fair (Nov 11, 2024): Donald Trump's Extremely Long List of Second-Term Revenge Targets. "Everyone from Democratic lawmakers to retired generals and major news networks appear to be in the crosshairs."
- Older stories:
Relating to Trump's second term:
Nazi salutes:
- Elon Musk (Jan 20, 2025)
- Steve Bannon (Feb 21, 2025)
- Other immitators who Fucked Around and Found Out
History lessons and general info:
The Billionaire Plan to End America
The richest men in the country are in the final stages of a 40-year plan to kill America and crown themselves kings. It’s not a conspiracy anymore: they’re bragging about it. And they’re convinced they’ve got you too distracted to care.
While Project 2025, headed by Russ Vought, wishes to install an Iranian style Christian fascist state, the tech bro billionaires have been working on their own agenda to dismantle the United States and replace it with a series of "network states" which are run like corporations and keep the population under control using AI and technology.
2024 Election
Weird things that Trump has said regarding the 2024 election (gathered by a Redditor in this Google doc):
- Trump on not needing your votes:
- Oct 23, 2023 at the Derry, NH rally: "You don't have to vote, don't worry about voting. The voting--we got plenty of votes."
- June 15, 2024 at Turning Point Action Convention in Detroit, MI: "Listen, we don't need votes. [...] We don't need votes. We have to stop -- focus, don't worry about votes."
- June 21, 2024 at Faith & Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington, DC: "I tell my people, I don't need any votes. We got all the votes we need. We don't need the votes."
- To do: transcribe the others, in the meantime see the linked Google doc above.
Mail-in ballot news reports (collected from a Reddit comment):
- Nov 6: 'Human error' forces recount of 30,000 absentee ballots in Milwaukee as Trump accuses Pennsylvania of 'disinformation'
- Nov 11: Uncounted tray of ballots, bad flash drive will tweak Kalamazoo County election results
Nov 13: Minnesota county vote reporting errors ‘unfortunate’ but happen
It was the process of uploading these tabulations to the state where problems occurred, the county stated. It cited an “improperly cleared or partially damaged memory card that did not fully collect and transmit results from some of the processed mail-in ballots. The same memory card transmitted “test” data meant to test the reporting system prior to the election.
Nov 15: Uncounted ballots found in Clark County; no race outcomes impacted
Nov 16: Clark County certifies 2024 election results after tabulating 1,608 mail ballots
Nov 17: In Pennsylvania, the Election Litigation Continues, With a Twist
Nov 18: Recovery of uncounted MI ballots leads many voters to question election integrity
Nov 18:Pennsylvania's high court sides with Republicans on misdated mail ballots
Nov 20: Multiple election offices report receiving mailed ballots misdirected from other states
Nov 21: 500K ballots still to be counted in California: 'What are they doing?
Nov 22: Some Cascade County ballots recounted after tabulation error
“There were seven precincts that they found ballots in the secrecy envelope still. So one batch had been taken to the cutter and the outside of the secrecy was open, but the ballot was still in it, and the others are still sealed. They were never taken to the cutting machine,” says Cascade County Elections Administrator, Terry Thompson. “For whatever reason, somebody dropped those secrecies instead of taking them to the cutting machine, they dropped them in the box for the empty secrecy envelopes.”
Slightly older:
Other bookmarks concerning election interference, vote supression, and strange data anomalies in the voting results:
Some video clip compilations from Reddit:
Trump's weird comments about "they rigged the election." Note: on 1/20 and 3/7 2025 he is talking about the World Cup and Olympics so for devil's advocate, he could be referring to the 2020 election (if they didn't "rig" it so Biden won, Trump wouldn't be president during the World Cup and Olympics between 2024-28). There is ambiguity with how he phrased it and with all the surrounding context (above) it's worth at least raising an eyebrow about.
LGBT Rights
As a member of the LGBT community I am tracking these stories as they unfold. Project 2025 has many terrible plans for us, and Trump's war against DEI targets the trans and LGBT community.
DEI stories:
- Federal agency DEI purges
- Their "Ctrl+F search and delete" blunt force weapon in purging federal websites resulting in stupid mistakes.
Knock-on effects from corporations (especially Big Tech) who are obeying in advance and following Trump's DEI purge voluntarily even though not required to by federal law (since the DEI purges officially only apply to government institutions):
- Meta's policy changes in January 2025 which expressly codifies that it is OKAY to call trans and gay people "mentally ill"
- Other corporations:
- Mother Jones (Mar 4, 2025): I Think We're Being Lied to About DEI - "Corporate giants like McDonald’s, Meta, and Amazon aren’t dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives outright. They’re doing something more disingenuous."
- At least some corporations are not going along with this:
Trans Community
Trans people are having their passport applications blocked or their gender forced to be set to their assigned-at-birth gender, restricting trans peoples' ability to travel or opening them to harassment when traveling.
Gay Marriage
DOGE
Elon Musk has been put in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and his first order is to do to our government what he did to Twitter: fire everybody indiscriminately, dismantle various government agencies, and freeze federal funding that had already been voted on and approved by Congress in violation of the law.
News Articles (Chronologically)
- NBC (Jan 24): Trump floats overhauling or eliminating FEMA while touring hurricane damage in North Carolina.
- AP (Jan 25, 2025): Trump uses mass firing to remove independent inspectors general at a series of agencies.
- The Guardian (Jan 27): Navajo alarmed by reports of Indigenous people caught up in Trump immigration raids
- AP (Jan 28): Trump offering federal workers buyouts with about 8 months' pay in effort to shrink government. And replace them with loyalists?
- NPR (Jan 28): Justice Department moves to fire at least 12 officials who investigated Trump, as part of his revenge campaign that he promised to his voters.
- CNBC (Jan 29): White House says Trump funding freeze remains in effect despite rescinding OMB memo
- PBS (Jan 30, 2025): Trump signs aviation order to assess 'damage' done to air safety by diversity policies: Trump started out strong in attacking DEI initiatives as soon as he took office. In the wake of a helicopter collision with an airplane, he blamed DEI as the root cause of the failure.
- The Guardian (Jan 31): Trump's revenge agenda has shocked officials who 'didn't think it was going to be this bad'
- Snopes (Jan 31): Yes, Tennessee Bill Criminalizes Voting Against Trump Immigration Policy. Senate Bill 6002 makes it a felony for local government officials to support "sanctuary" policies protecting immigrants in the country illegally.
- Democracy Docket (Feb 3): DOJ Says Trump Administration Doesn't Have to Follow Court Order Halting Funding Freeze
- In defiance of our checks and balances. If the executive branch is ignoring orders from the judicial, it puts us in a constitutional crisis.
- Feb 6: Trump's Anti-Constitutional Actions Since Coming to Power, a blog post that sums up other Executive Orders that Trump has tried to pass which are unconstitutional:
- Limit Birthright Citizenship, in violation of the 14th Amendment.
- Undermine Checks & Balances to erode our constitutional framework.
- Executive Overreach through Schedule F Implementation: putting career civil servants as employees under the executive branch so he can fire them and replace them with loyalists, exactly as per the Project 2025 agenda.
- Controversial Pardons and the January 6 Connection
- Constitutional Crisis in Federal Spending Authority (the federal funding freeze in violation of court orders)
- Dismantling Government Agencies (DOGE)
- The Constitutional Challenge to DEI Programs
- Expansion of the Unitary Executive Theory
- NY Times (Feb 9): Vance says 'judges aren't allowed to control' Trump's 'legitimate power' - again in violation of our checks and balances.
- NBC News (Feb 9): Legal experts warn of 'constitutional crisis' as JD Vance and Elon Musk question judges' authority over Trump)
- Feb 9: A Neoreactionary Coup?
- A blog post that explores the relationship between Yarvin, Thiel, Vance, and Musk.
- NBC News (Feb 10): Judge finds Trump administration violated court order halting federal funding freeze.
- NBC News (Feb 18): Trump says Ukraine 'never should have started' war in Russia
- CNN (Feb 19): Appeals court leaves block on Trump's birthright citizenship order in place, setting up Supreme Court showdown.
- We may soon see if our 'constitutional crisis' is in full swing when the Supreme Court, packed with Trump picks from his first term, weighs in.
- Feb 22: Town Hall Erupts At Blistering Anti-Trump Rant Torching 'Tyrannny' - Gets Standing Ovation in Trump District
- Many town halls, even in red counties, are seeing unrest from their constituents.
- NBC News (Feb 22): In reversal, Trump says Russia attacked Ukraine.
- Feb 23: Trump is planning to use the military to carry out personal and political vendettas
- NBC News (Feb 25): Lawmakers in 9 states propose measures to undermine same-sex marriage rights.
- Ground News (Feb 26): Supreme Court briefly pauses order for Trump admin to imminentlly release foreign aid. "Chief Justice John Roberts paused a federal judge's order that required President Donald Trump's administration to release foreign aid funds to contractors and grant recipients."
- CBS News (Feb 28): Watch video of Trump and Zelenskyy's meeting to discuss Ukraine minerals deal
- Trump and Vance bully Zelenskyy in frankly a very cringe way that was so hard to watch.
- EFF (Mar 5): Trump Calls on Congress to Pass the "Take It Down" Act -- So He Can Censor His Critics
- NY Times (Mar 6) - Gifted article link - ‘People Are Going Silent’: Fearing Retribution, Trump Critics Muzzle Themselves - “When you see important societal actors — be it university presidents, media outlets, C.E.O.s, mayors, governors — changing their behavior in order to avoid the wrath of the government, that’s a sign that we’ve crossed the line into some form of authoritarianism,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard and the co-author of the influential 2018 book “How Democracies Die.”
YouTube Bookmarks
From our representatives and politicians:
From political news channels:
Other commentary:
Older but very topical:
Reddit Discussions
Comments that include many citations and sum up what has been happening:
Video clips of folks like Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) speaking out about what's been happening:
Miscellaneous Links of Interest
Dated news articles and blogs:
Kirsle.net
