Hurricane Trump: the Project 2025 Script

But...NEW Polling Shows Americans STRONGLY Oppose Billionaire Ties

Day 55 — January 24, 2025

Active day.

Wholly unfit nominee Pete Hegseth needed Vice President JD Vance to cast the tie-breaking vote to secure his Defense Secretary confirmation, overcoming a 50-50- tie vote due to three “no” votes from Republicans, including former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Late in the evening, the Trump Administration terminated 17 inspectors general at agencies across the federal government, including the state department, defense department, etc. IGs are independent positions meant to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse within these agencies. As Anne Applebaum posted last night: “Firing independent watchdogs is straight out of the authoritarian playbook. Removes another obstacle to corruption and abuse of power.” The immediate firings also appear to be illegal, since Trump is supposed to provide Congress with 30-day notice of such actions

Finally, as he visited North Carolina and California, Trump not only conditioned relief to California on the state passing a voter ID law (no conditions attached in North Carolina), but he also said he wants to eliminate or dramatically overhaul FEMA.

Here’s what Trump said:

“You want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA. And then FEMA gets here and they don't know the area. They've never been to the area, and they want to give you rules that you've never heard about. They want to bring people that aren't as good as the people you already have. And FEMA has turned out to be a disaster.”

Ripped from Project 2025

If that language sounds familiar, it’s because it reflects the driving philosophy of Project 2025.

Trump is basically using these disasters to push the Project 2025 Agenda he has been spoonfed, and which is clearly driving most of the decisions of his first week.

As a reminder, here’s what Project 2025 proposed on FEMA and other aspects of emergency management.

FEMA

For the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Project 2025 proposes raising the threshold for emergencies before assistance can be granted to victims (page 153). “Alternatively, applying a deductible could accomplish a similar outcome while also incentivizing states to take a more proactive role in their own preparedness and response capabilities.”

As one analysis explained: “In other words, states and localities should bear the greatest financial burden for disaster preparation, response, recovery and resilience and that’s where Project 2025 would put it.

For Southwest Florida, this would be…well, in a word…a disaster.”

Trump is simply reading from the Project 2025 script when he says the burden should be pushed to the states.

But there will be more….

Gutting the NOAA and NWS

Remember, Project 2025 also wants to dismantle the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which “predicts changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coastlines and provides data that informs lifesaving forecasts such as tracking hurricanes tracking and…intense weather, such as hurricanes.” It includes the National Weather Service, National Ocean Service, The Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, and other agencies.

According to Project 2025, the NOAA "has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” (p. 675). Its focus, Project 2025 alleges, “seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”

That’s right, Project 2025 is against trying to plan for future weather events.

As a result of this hostility, NOAA “should be broken up and downsized.”

The plan goes on to propose:

• “fully commercializ[ing] [the National Weather Service’s] forecasting operations” (p. 675)

• reviewing the data of the National Hurricane Center and National Environmental Satellite Service to ensure it is “presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate” (p. 676)

• “disband[ing] the preponderance of the climate-change research” of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, because “it is the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism” (p. 676)

• ensuring politicized appointments to lead the NOAA — “Ensure Appointees Agree with Administration Aims. Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy. Particular attention must be paid to appointments in this area.” (p. 677)

These proposals greatly risk the nation’s ability to track and predict major weather events. As the LA Times sums up: Project 2025 “urges the demolition of some of the nation’s most dependable resources for tracking weather, combating climate change and protecting the public from environmental hazards.”

As a USA Today analysis stated: “NOAA’s satellites, aircraft, weather stations and meteorologists constantly collect weather data and expertly offer detailed weather forecasts and predictions to residents, researchers and nearly every third-party weather program, forecasting service or app. NWS weather alerts notify us of hurricanes, tornados and flooding. The NWS forecasts fire weather and issues watches, warnings and advisories for high winds, life-threatening rip currents and other hazards.”

More broadly, the proposals “block and make less available information about climate change in order to serve an agenda of climate change denial.”

SBA Loans

Finally, Project 2025 (page 750) proposes to “end to SBA direct lending” program, “the only instance of which” is the disaster loan program."

Currently, these loans are critical for businesses and families recovering from Helene and Milton: “90 percent of this disaster aid serves individuals such as homeowners, as opposed to small businesses. So, while the program is a crucial resource for helping local economies bounce back, the loans play an even more critical role in helping individuals and families begin the long road to recovery.”

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Bottom line: under Project 2025, the federal government’s capacity to predict, track and provide relief amid these extreme events will be gutted. All because of the far right’s hostility to responsible climate science—and, no doubt, because someone wants to profit off this work being privatized. At the same time, a warming climate and Gulf, along with other changes, make extreme weather events far more likely.

All this makes it even more maddeningly predictable what will happen to the nation’s response to these growing storms if and when Trump moves forward on these terrible ideas.

There’s no sugar coating any of this. It’s terrible.

But…

Opportunity: Americans Don’t Like Musk, Billionaires, or What They’re Seeing

There’s one bit of good news from yesterday: the American people don’t like the details of what Trump is doing, or who he’s associating with.

Here’s a summary of a recent poll done by APNORC:

• by 60%-12%, Americans oppose the president “relying on billionaires” for policy advice

  

• by 59%-12%, Americans oppose the president “relying on family members” for policy advice

• the creation of DOGE garners more opposition (39% oppose) than support (29%)

  

• 52% have an unfavorable view of Elon Musk, while 36% have a favorable view — that’s very bad

• The spirit of FDR is alive and well, as majorities would like to see more federal spending in the areas of: Social Security, Education, Medicare, Medicaid and assistance to the poor):

• A plurality oppose eliminating a large number of federal jobs, and close to a majority (49%) oppose eliminating entire federal agencies, while only 23% support it

The bottom line is that Trump has no mandate to do all that he’s doing. Not even close. And the American people will NOT like what he’s doing…if they know.

So as best you can, from the highest levels to the grassroots, keep communicating that all this is happening:

“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Off to coach second grade basketball! Have a good Saturday.