Trump’s likely FCC chair wrote Project 2025 chapter on how he’d run the agency

thelee

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As of this moment, CNN counts 68,181,919 Harris votes and 72,852,072 Trump votes. These numbers may grow slightly (esp with California only at ~60% reporting) but probably not by more than another million or two.

In 2020, Biden won 81,282,916 votes versus Trump's 74,223,369. In other words, Trump turnout was roughly flat while Dem turnout dropped 15%.
politely again - the US race for president is not determined on a national level.

it's basically irrelevant for dems if CA had dropping turnout, or NY. It's more improtant in places like WI, which didn't have a turnout issue (record turnout in the state's history).

you have a much better case to be made if you want to argue that turnout in certain pivotal areas (maybe Philly) was depressed. but that has to be counterbalanced again by historic turnout in other places (Atlanta)

edit: this is part and parcel the flaw with the "bernie woulda done it" argument. i'm sure you would get probably get hecka more votes in safe blue states or cities, but that's not where the election is won. and i reiterate my "i don't think any democrat would've done 2024" argument. biden delivered major union victories and harris ran with it and national union orgs refused to endorse and the ancestrally-union-heavy rust belt states swept in favor of "i would fire them all" Trump. and for what reason? culture war? inflation? how on earth would bernie have solved that? i'm not even sure if anything on the left would've have won the rust belt right now.
 
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Sasparilla

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There were many countries in the world that decided to ditch the democracy and voted for people who promised a dictatorship. The US is not the first one. What is funny/scarry here is that the US decided this in a moment of unprecedented historical wealth. Other countries were at least in some kind of trouble.
Actually the income inequality in the U.S. is now higher that before the great depression (believe it is highest ever for the U.S.). It's a huge red flag as a warning sign for countries to be vulnerable to authoritarian takeovers.

Short version, invention of paid lobbying (legal corruption by business interests mostly) in 70's eventually led both parties to sell out the non college educated middle class (mostly manufacturing) and think deregulation & trickle down economics works, gets you here - with both parties ignoring that huge left behind group as a base...and Donald was there.
 
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RunUpHill

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Does Carr drink his rumplicious elixir from an even more massive coffee mug than Pai?

Screen Shot 2024-11-07 at 4.16.15 PM.png
 
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ArcaneTourist

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[...] In other words, Trump turnout was roughly flat while Dem turnout dropped 15%.

A couple of questions a lot of us have is how could people vote for Trump with all the evidence on how bad he is. The other question is how can you vote in the last election and not bother to vote this time.

The most plausible explanation I've seen is that a very large percentage of voters think that the country isn't really going in a good direction ... and that the solution is to change which party has the presidency.

I can't really wrap my head around how so many people have such a simplistic view! Then again, I'm aghast at how many people are completely willing to ignore facts/truth/reality.

My dentist saw my "I voted" sticker from early voting. He commented, "good - we need change". Seems people don't think about the obvious fact that some changes are for the better and some changes are for worse.
 
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donfelipe

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No, you couldn't. Because the majority of Democrats did not want Bernie. I don't get how that's so hard to comprehend.
It isn't. It's just a fantasy that people tell themselves which proves they had the magic answer to fear mongering and willful ignorance. They keep saying Bernie could have stopped this because the actual truth is too hard to bear: Americans caused this depravity.
 
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RZetopan

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Sorry to tell you, but this article is demonstrably and utterly incorrect. I have it on good authority that Trump has absolutely zero affiliation with Project 2025, knows nothing about it, and in fact thinks that some of it is "absolutely ridiculous and abysmal".

I earnestly await the retraction of this article and public apology for its publication. /s
It is true that Felon45's name just accidentally fell into that document, over 300 times. And his former cabinet members wrote chapters in it that he doesn't even want to know about.
 
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thelee

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Moving to the right won't fix this. There is not some untapped base of centrist or center-right never-Trumpers who will save the Dems in 2028, and they will never appeal more to people further right than that more than Trump and co. already do. All moving right will do is alienate the Dem base even more.
i didn't say moving to the right would fix it. because harris ran hard to the center where she could (pissing off all the folks on the left about Gaza in the process) and palled around with all the ol' GOP former elites, and got rewarded with... suburban populations swinging heavily to Trump instead.

i said national leftism is dead and i have no idea what to fix it. it will remain alive in states like CA, WA, NY, but i don't know what it takes to make it a viable national electoral coalition again.

edit: and even then, harris only went to the right in terms of... Gaza and went silent on fracking, and everything else was firmly in the Biden core ancestral union-left camp. she went to the center in vibes (talking a big game on obama-style "no blue no red only one america" rhetoric) and GOP elites hung around with her not for reasons of policy (except maybe some types hated the idea of tariffs, too) but for reasons of, you know, Trump being accused by his chief of staff of being a fascist and doing a jan 6th. her actual substantive move to the right you can credibly accuse her of costing a win in like Dearborn, MI (i think it was a +90 point swing to trump), but the trump landslide is so large and so broad that i don't think this stands up as any kind of deciding factor.
 
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donfelipe

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You want another example of hellscape, look at Prop 6 in California.



California voters rejected this. About 55% voted No. They voted for slavery.

And that's California. Imagine what the results would look like in any red state.

This country is deeply, deeply diseased.
Prop 36 also passed with %70 of the vote. Spending hundreds of millions to lock up people for literal petty crimes.
 
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Bondles_9

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Kamala was percieved as overwhelming "too liberal" by polled voters and the entire country underwent an unprecedent shift rightward in the votes of 2024 (including in places like NYC or northern VA) and you think having an even more leftist candidate would have worked?

Also this is profoundly ahistorical because Biden--"not actually good candidate"--did win in 2020.

The bottom line is that the entirety of the american left--from moderate to tankie--needs to understand that leftism as a national movement is currently dead in the water. The whole leftist theory of voters and change is dead. There is no coalition. We got racial depolarization only in terms of minorities shifting rightward, and we didn't get any countervailing educational polarization that people were banking on (and was the case in 2020/2022). The election was so definitively a Trump victory--despite voters being clearly aware of Trump having gone through a presidency before--that everyone needs to go back to the drawing board. There are no incremental theories that work here--nothing about Harris's VP pick, nor Gaza, nor Ukraine--the shift right is just so huge. I don't think there's a single democrat who could have won in 2024. I hope someone much smarter than me with greater reach than me can help figure it out because we only have a couple years to figure it out (until the midterms) and that's probably the maximum amount of time that ppl can logjam Trump even with him having a trifecta.
"Perceived as" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Harris is not leftist by any sane measure. Can you name a single policy position of hers that was remotely leftist? A bunch of right-wing lunatics calling her Stalin because she thinks it's better to invest in renewables than coal* does not a leftist make.

*I had to think hard and google Harris's platform to even come up with an example here. She is just so thoroughly not a leftist. You're right that there are no incremental theories that fix this, but to suggest that she was too far to the left is demented.
 
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ArcaneTourist

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It is true that Felon45's name just accidentally fell into that document, over 300 times. And his former cabinet members wrote chapters in it that he doesn't even want to know about.

Well, to be fair, Trump doesn't like to read.

(Just is case it's not obvious - yes, that's a criticism. And no, his aversion to the written word is not an exaggeration.)
 
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thelee

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"Perceived as" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Harris is not leftist by any sane measure. Can you name a single policy position of hers that was remotely leftist? A bunch of right-wing lunatics calling her Stalin because she thinks it's better to invest in renewables than coal* does not a leftist make.
are you saying this as a counterattack against me? because i'm not disagreeing. but ultimately a majority of americans did.

whose to blame? i don't know! media? i don't know! harris not talking about policies enough? (she did! and they are very normal center-left policies! but i don't know) is it because she's a woman and women are percieved to be more liberal? i don't know!

kamala and biden deliverered some world-beating legislation, inflation got tamped down to historical norms by election day, US is the only developing economy in the world growing at a decent clip, kamala proposes normal democrat stuff (tax redistribution) with an edge of left-populism (anti-price gouging) and then the guy who did a Jan 6th (everyone saw it live!), convicted felon, is going to put RFK in charge of national health, institute consumer-price-hiking tariffs, try again to repeal ACA, supports a national abortion ban isn't considered "too extreme", and ends up winning.

i have no idea! like i said, the entire leftist theory of change and voters is wrong and i don't know what it takes to get one that works.
 
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Prop 36 also passed with %70 of the vote. Spending hundreds of millions to lock up people for literal petty crimes.
Well, no. What it did was reverse the previous law, passed just a few years ago, that said any loss due to theft under $950 was not a felony, but a misdemeanor.

And the result of that previous law was, I absolutely sh*t you not, gangs going around doing smash-and-grabs where each person in the group takes less than $950 in value. They got organized around it. It got to the point that companies were closing up locations and just leaving. Major companies, and the layoffs were causing more economic strife than the crimes. Smash-and-grabs out of cars have become really bad, especially up north in SFO and Sacramento.

People were fed up with it.

This is from the CA voter guide summary for Prop 36:

Allows felony charges for possessing certain drugs and for thefts under $950, if defendant has two prior drug or theft convictions.

It even qualified which crimes applied. And you had to have two prior convictions for your crime to qualify as a felony.

This was not "locking up people for literal petty crimes."
 
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Kazper

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F you. I certainly did NOT. Neither did many other people. I still don't believe this could be true. It's like every Kamala & Democratic candidate's votes were flipped for Trump & Republicans, & vice versa. This is a hideous sh1t show.
This is a pointless argument. You personally may not, but it's time to face the fact that a very large (in fact a clear majority) of American voters are either actively seeking, or willing to accept a authoritarian strongman. Trump didn't win despite his authoritarian ideas - he won because of them.

There is a strong global movement towards the right and authoritanism, that I feel deeply uncomfortable with because I know my history, but in the US at least the cause is not hard to see - even if a solution seems potentially impossible.

The economic inequality combined with an education inequality that almost matches it, means that the US is not a fully functioning democracy anymore - since that relies on a well-informed populace. This is not about calling Trump voters stupid, but it's just a fact that when you are barely subsisting you don't have the ability to lift your head and look at larger issues, or try to stay informed about complex political arguments. All you care about is that inflation made your wallet lighter, and who can convince you they can fix it. And populists and strongmen excel at convincing their voters of that.

And it's even worse being a two-party system, because once one side goes authoritarian, it's very hard to counter for the other party. And when the fundamentals fanning that authoritanism are so hard to change it's even worse. I do not have a solution, but I dearly hope someone has.
 
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RZetopan

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True, they should. But I come here for stories on tech, and science, spaceflight, and EVs. Putting them in their own section would mean that those of us that don’t come here for that could avoid them.

The next four years will be a horror, we haven’t recovered from Trump’s first term yet. But it would be nice if there was a place to go without the daily body count.
Here you go, and there are many others:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otBCJVtbw8o
 
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Unclebugs

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"Crack down in Big Tech" is a talking point. They have ZERO intentions of regulating anything any large company does. Big Tech & Google included. Trump's whining about Google is just a performance art for the rubes.

And deregulating the ISPs? They're barely regulated now. One more train wreck waiting to happen.
The fun part for me will be how fast this gets to SCOTUS. I'm certain that FB will fight this because we all know what Free Speech defenders FB are. Gov. DeSantis tried to squash pro-abortion ads in Florida and was told to take a hike. I'm pretty sure SCOTUS will tell the FCC the same thing since FB is a private organizaiton.
 
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are you saying this as a counterattack against me? because i'm not disagreeing. but ultimately a majority of americans did.

whose to blame? i don't know! media? i don't know! harris not talking about policies enough? (she did! and they are very normal center-left policies! but i don't know) is it because she's a woman and women are percieved to be more liberal? i don't know!

kamala and biden deliverered some world-beating legislation, inflation got tamped down to historical norms by election day, US is the only developing economy in the world growing at a decent clip, kamala proposes normal democrat stuff (tax redistribution) with an edge of left-populism (anti-price gouging) and then the guy who is going to put RFK in charge of national health isn't considered "too extreme" and ends up winning.

i have no idea! like i said, the entire leftist theory of change and voters is wrong and i don't know what it takes to get one that works.
The democrats, especially the liberal portion of the party, have an authenticity problem. They don't feel authentic to people outside of liberal and more intellectual focused circles. So much of what they say feels like sterilized language lest anyone be offended, and comes off as infantilizing or pretentious or condescending/patronizing/hollow, things like the attempted forced adoption of the "latinX" label that not only doesn't work in Spanish/Portuguese but actively offends for trying to steal an identity the community is proud in with latino/latina effectively saying that "your culture doesn't meet our definition of inclusive so we're changing it for you"

Conversely the shit shouted out by the right, however vile, feels genuine and authentic because it feels raw and unfiltered. They're "telling it like it is" even if in reality they aren't. People don't want a lecture on vaules and equity, they want someone who is mad about the things that make them mad and is going to fix them
 
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thelee

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The democrats, especially the liberal portion of the party, have an authenticity problem. They don't feel authentic to people outside of liberal and more intellectual focused circles. So much of what they say feels like sterilized language lest anyone be offended, and comes off as infantilizing or pretentious or condescending/patronizing/hollow, things like the attempted forced adoption of the "latinX" label that not only doesn't work in Spanish/Portuguese but actively offends for trying to steal an identity the community is proud in with latino/latina effectively saying that "your culture doesn't meet our definition of inclusive so we're changing it for you"

Conversely the shit shouted out by the right, however vile, feels genuine and authentic because it feels raw and unfiltered. They're "telling it like it is" even if in reality they aren't. People don't want a lecture on vaules and equity, they want someone who is mad about the things that make them mad and is going to fix them
If that’s the solution find me a way that translates into electoral gains in 2026, and I’ll follow it. Hell I’ll suggest you become party leader.

I highly doubt it’s that simple. Nothing about “woke” culture or authenticity changed between now and 2020 and Trump—then an incumbent president with its advantages —lost then.
 
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thelee

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It's going to be so much worse than we ever feared. They're already so comfortable telling us what's coming.
Of course, they ran a quasi Nazi rally in MSG and they won a legitimate electoral and popular mandate. Why would they feel the need to moderate at all?
 
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Unclebugs

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I am old enough to have lived before LBJ's War on Poverty, the Civil Rights Movement, and just barely remember the Red Scare. Since LBJ and Apollo, this country has been through the social revolution wrought by those changes leading up to Roe v. Wade. After FDR passed the basic social safety net, won WWII, and propelled this country into the giant it has become there was a backlash, the Red Scare and the Cold War. The Kennedy Assassination changed a lot of that. Watergate and Nixon's resignation joined the GOP with the Christian Right and its traditional patriarchal mentality. Big Science was throttled. The USA should have been spending big bucks on Fusion and the Fermilab successor should have been built here, but it would challenge Christian beliefs. The entire Project 2025 is an attempt to undo the entire Great Society program and gut all the gains that women have made. They want to put the genie back in the bottle. Not happening. Like inflation with prices going up either faster or slower, the rate of change will slow down during the next four years, but it will pick up again.
 
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If that’s the solution find me a way that translates into electoral gains in 2026, and I’ll follow it. Hell I’ll suggest you become party leader.

I highly doubt it’s that simple. Nothing about “woke” culture or authenticity changed between now and 2020 and Trump—then an incumbent president with its advantages —lost then.
You're right, nothing changed, which is why at best the democrats can only play the margins game in so many precincts across the country, hoping that they can run up the score in their diminishing strongholds to offset areas they've given up on rather than try to connect with people there in a way that meets those people and their needs. The same places that have turned to the grievance politics of the republicans because it makes them feel heard and seen even and validated by the "raw" sewage the party spews, not at them, but on their behalf. The democrats all too often talk down to them, the republicans rage for them. Even if it's true they don't want to hear about "privilege" and fighting for "equity", they want to hear how you're going to HELP THEM. Equity and diversity et all can be in the platform and need to be there, but they can't be the only things there because they're meat for a different group, you need something for everyone if you truly want to grow the tent.

I say this as a moderate who agrees with the principles of these things in the democratic party but winces at the sanctimonious vapid virtue signaling spewed out nonstop from the liberal camp of the party. Not everything has to be a DEI topic/lens/battlefield, it's exhausting and patronizing even where I stand let alone for those who don't support the party

Nothing changed because the democrats ran the exact same failing playbook yet again, hoping that this time people would just see the light about how unfair they're being judge and listen to "reason." It's not fair and it's not going to happen, they need to wake up, accept that, and then plan based on reality and not what is fair in principle
 
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Carr was wrong about the Equal Time rule, media advocacy group Free Press said on November 3. The group pointed to an FCC fact sheet

Which they can change. They can do anything. Stop pretending like congress or anybody is going to get in the way of this rolling clusterfuck. These people both make the rules and don't care about them. Law and order is about to turn upside down and inside out.
 
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thelee

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You're right, nothing changed, which is why at best the democrats can only play the margins game in so many precincts across the country, hoping that they can run up the score in their diminishing strongholds to offset areas they've given up on rather than try to connect with people there in a way that meets those people and their needs. The same places that have turned to the grievance politics of the republicans because it makes them feel heard and seen even and validated by the "raw" sewage the party spews, not at them, but on their behalf. The democrats all too often talk down to them, the republicans rage for them. Even if it's true they don't want to hear about "privilege" and fighting for "equity", they want to hear how you're going to HELP THEM. Equity and diversity et all can be in the platform and need to be there, but they can't be the only things there because they're meat for a different group, you need something for everyone if you truly want to grow the tent.

I say this as a moderate who agrees with the principles of these things in the democratic party but winces at the sanctimonious vapid virtue signaling spewed out nonstop from the liberal camp of the party. Not everything has to be a DEI topic/lens/battlefield, it's exhausting and patronizing even where I stand let alone for those who don't support the party

Nothing changed because the democrats ran the exact same failing playbook yet again, hoping that this time people would just see the light about how unfair they're being judge and listen to "reason." It's not fair and it's not going to happen, they need to wake up, accept that, and then plan based on reality and not what is fair in principle
Huh?

I said “nothing changed” wrt to your woke/authenticity stuff bc stuff like Latinx precedes Harris, it precedes Biden. Nothing changed and despite that Biden won in a historic turnout 2020, and Harris lost in an unprecedented Trump return. How is all what you’re saying at all relevant to 2016/2020/2024 outcomes, and to a Trump trifecta?
 
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Huh?

I said “nothing changed” bc stuff like Latinx precedes Harris, it precedes Biden. Nothing changed and despite that Biden won in a historic turnout 2020, and Harris lost in an unprecedented Trump return. How is all what you’re saying at all relevant to 2016/2020/2024 outcomes, and to a Trump trifecta?
LatinX was driving away latinos in 2020 and that only continued in 2024. It's not the only thing but it's an example of the being "talked at" and not "listened to" or "talked to" that is pushing them out in the cold and right into the waiting warm arms of the right wings grievance politics telling them to "be prideful in their culture don't listen to those whiny academic naysayers who are pushing their own opinions on you"

The TLDR crux is that the democrats need to do something different that gets more people in their tent or stops them from leaving. What they're doing isn't working across the electorate and as their former strongholds shrink they don't have enough new reliable votes from their liberal urban areas to offset it
 
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thelee

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They want to put the genie back in the bottle. Not happening. Like inflation with prices going up either faster or slower, the rate of change will slow down during the next four years, but it will pick up again.
I’m sorry to tell you that you have only lived in an ascendant, liberalizing era and country, but you can absolutely ruin progress, possibly for the foreseeable future. See: Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Hong Kong, etc which have all backslid to varying degrees with no clear story back forward. Can you imagine the difference of being a woman under the US-led Afghani government and that same woman after the withdrawal, just a couple years later?

More rhetoric than fact, but: when the Roman Empire fell people called it the dark ages and it lasted for a thousand years.
 
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Tubamajuba

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People don't want a lecture on vaules and equity, they want someone who is mad about the things that make them mad and is going to fix them
The "people" you describe here should be more specifically referred to as "toddlers". You can't have a constitutional republic in a country full of toddlers, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised we elected the guy that's taking notes from Putin.
 
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password123

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Perhaps you are thinking, "Don't worry, retribution efforts like that will be stopped by the courts." And then you remember who is going to be appointing judges to the federal courts.
Yeah with the first Trump-a-round, he managed to weaken the checks and balances by appointing corrupt judges, now this time, there is Project 2025, which I'm guessing is the speed run to totally dissolve the remaining checks and balances and remove any govt official who stands in the way, thus paving the way for the prez for life.

In the ensuing chaos, our kindly corporate overlords will swoop down and restore order, led by Oligarch Musk, and the New world order will then have arrived. We are so fucked.
 
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Bondles_9

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are you saying this as a counterattack against me? because i'm not disagreeing. but ultimately a majority of americans did.

whose to blame? i don't know! media? i don't know! harris not talking about policies enough? (she did! and they are very normal center-left policies! but i don't know) is it because she's a woman and women are percieved to be more liberal? i don't know!

kamala and biden deliverered some world-beating legislation, inflation got tamped down to historical norms by election day, US is the only developing economy in the world growing at a decent clip, kamala proposes normal democrat stuff (tax redistribution) with an edge of left-populism (anti-price gouging) and then the guy who did a Jan 6th (everyone saw it live!), convicted felon, is going to put RFK in charge of national health, institute consumer-price-hiking tariffs, try again to repeal ACA, supports a national abortion ban isn't considered "too extreme", and ends up winning.

i have no idea! like i said, the entire leftist theory of change and voters is wrong and i don't know what it takes to get one that works.
I think what we disagree on is what constitutes a "leftist theory of change." Because I know a bit about leftist theories of change, and "keep promising more of the same centre-right policy (while assisting at least one genocide)" isn't one of them.
 
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8 (12 / -4)
The "people" you describe here should be more specifically referred to as "toddlers". You can't have a constitutional republic in a country full of toddlers, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised we elected the guy that's taking notes from Putin.
The democrats and you can complain about how things "should be" all they want, but at some point you have to work with what you have and not what you think should be
 
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