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Mahmoud Khalil Sues Trump Officials for Conspiracy Against Pro-Palestinian Organizers
"This case will expose the scheme that sought to criminalize the Palestine solidarity movement in the US."
Jul 14, 2026
A lawsuit filed by former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil wasn't his first legal challenge stemming from his arrest last year for his Palestinian rights advocacy, but he emphasized that his decision to take members of the Trump administration and private pro-Israel organizations to court was "about far more than what was done to" him when he was detained for 104 days.
"This case will expose the scheme that sought to criminalize the Palestine solidarity movement in the US," said Khalil in a statement. "It is about a coordinated, ongoing plot to punish, silence, and intimidate everyone who dares to dissent and speak out for Palestinian liberation. We will hold them accountable.”
Represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the law firm Beldock Levine & Hoffman, Khalil sued the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, Betar, Trump administration adviser Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, his predecessor Kristi Noem, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and John Armstrong, an official at the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs.
The lawsuit was filed under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was passed to stop efforts by vigilante groups like the KKK to coordinate with the government to strip individuals of their constitutional rights.
"Mahmoud is now using this statute to affirmatively challenge the illegal, anti-Palestinian, and anti-democratic public-private conspiracy to harass, intimidate, and punish Palestinians and their allies," said CCR.
Khalil: “I will not stop fighting until everyone who willingly contributed to my missing the birth of my son and to taking 104 days of my life from me answers for what they’ve done.” pic.twitter.com/x6iTgoxsXa
— Erik Uebelacker (@Uebey) July 14, 2026
As the Trump administration continues its efforts to deport Khalil, the lawsuit traces the alleged public-private conspiracy against pro-Palestinian organizers to October 2023, when Miller "vowed to punish Palestinians and their supporters through arrest and deportation."
A year later, the Heritage Foundation published Project Esther, which conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism, claimed all pro-Palestinian organizers were Hamas supporters, and pledged to execute a plan to deport foreign protesters “when a willing administration occupies the White House.”
The Heritage Foundation said a “public-private partnership" would be required to carry out Project Esther. The lawsuit alleges that Canary Mission, an anonymously run Israeli surveillance and doxing organization, and Betar, a self-described vigilante group with a history of surveilling and harassing supporters of Palestinian rights, provided that partnership.
"Between March and May 2025, Miller, Rubio, Noem, and Armstrong used ICE to arrest or to try to arrest at least nine students or scholars pre-selected by the private groups," said CCR. "The federal defendants continue to seek Mr. Khalil’s deportation and pursue the conspiracy through sham, corrupted immigration proceedings under their control. Working together, the government and private co-conspirators sought to deny Palestinians and their supporters their constitutional rights: to equal protection, to freedom of speech and travel, to freedom from punitive detention, and, ultimately, to exist in this country."
As The New York Times reported, former Heritage Foundation national security director Robert Greenway said two months after Khalil was arrested that it was “no coincidence that we called for a series of actions to take place privately and publicly, and they are now happening.”
CCR pointed to a "range of harms" Khalil has suffered as the result of being targeted by the Trump administration, starting when he was arrested in March 2025. During three months in detention, he was sent to Jena, Louisiana—nearly 1,300 miles away from his family and lawyers—and was forced to miss the birth of his first child. He also faces "an ongoing threat to his lawful immigration status in the United States," with his attorneys preparing to appeal his deportation case to the US Supreme Court.
Baher Azmy, legal director for CCR, said that "the brazenness of this conspiratorial plan is matched only by the exquisitely detailed and shamelessly public record the conspirators produced of a collaborative plan to silence the growing student movement protesting US support for Israel’s genocidal campaign," referring to the country's assault on Gaza that began in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
“The conspirators acted through forms of state repression and arbitrary detention that numerous courts have found are blatantly unconstitutional," said Azmy. "They targeted Mr. Khalil, smeared him, and subjected him to the torment of detention for nothing other than being Palestinian and supporting Palestinian rights in order to send a message of terror across the student movement for Palestine."
"The KKK Act was designed to prevent conspiracies to stifle advocacy for political freedom," he added, "and together we are demanding accountability for this outrageous injustice.”
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The Trump Administration Wants You to Be Afraid to Vote
An FBI raid on the Ohio Organizing Collective is part of a strategy that aims to intimidate voters and those who would help them exercise the franchise.
Jun 17, 2026
The vote is the heart of democracy. Every two years, citizen organizations mobilize to register Americans and ensure they are on the rolls. That work is especially vital in poor and minority communities. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is the leading voter registration group in the Buckeye State. In 2024, it registered 100,000 voters.
The group helped lead the fight for fair maps against an egregious gerrymander in Ohio. The Brennan Center represented it in court, where we prevailed repeatedly. When legislators simply ignored those court rulings, the activists went to Ohio voters. Together with a former chief justice of the state supreme court, Republican Maureen O’Connor, they supported a campaign to pass a state constitutional amendment to create a nonpartisan redistricting commission. They called the amendment Citizens Not Politicians. It would have benefited neither party but empowered voters. The ballot measure fell short in 2024, but it was an example of nonpartisan, cross-ideological civic activism at its best.
That’s why what happened late last week is so troubling. Indeed, so outrageous.
In a massive sweep, 100 FBI agents and other federal officers raided the Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s office and fanned out to the homes of volunteers, board members, and staff. Agents seized phones and computers, scooped up papers, and questioned startled citizens.
If citizens are afraid to register to vote, or to help others register, mission accomplished.
The rationale? According to a search warrant, the hunt for voter registration fraud.
This gives every indication of being an extraordinary abuse of power. It is part of a strategy that aims to intimidate voters and those who would help them exercise the franchise.
This is, after all, the same Justice Department that repeatedly has probed or prosecuted President Donald Trump’s critics, only to see those cases crumble before grand juries and judges. Combine that with an FBI led by Kash Patel, who wrote an election-denying children’s book about his fealty to the “king.”
This expanded strategy was mapped out in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for what became many Trump administration policies. Use the Justice Department, it urged, to go after state election officials and registration groups. Hunt the imaginary threat of widespread voter misconduct.
The Heritage Foundation for decades has been a principal purveyor of the myth that many voters are committing fraud. Now the entire federal government is in the grip of that conspiracy theory.
A reminder: The Brennan Center’s research shows that you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud.
What will be produced by this massive display of prosecutorial force? Probably not much of anything but—its progenitors likely hope—dread. If citizens are afraid to register to vote, or to help others register, mission accomplished.
In fact, the strategy seems focused not on enforcing the law but fomenting fear.
We saw that in January when the FBI raided the election office in Fulton County, Georgia, seeking to “prove” that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election there. When the affidavit that authorized the raid was released, it turned out to be a collection of long-debunked claims. The raid sent a message to election officials everywhere: If you oversee an election where we dislike the results, you might be met by a knock on the door.
We saw it last week when Trump declared that California’s primary election was “rigged,” because a Republican reality show star did not finish in the top two for the mayoral election in deeply Democratic Los Angeles.
We saw it last year when armed, masked federal border patrol agents showed up in force at a press event held by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to announce a redistricting ballot measure.
What can we do to protect voters?
We should stand up for those working to register and mobilize voters and ensure they have the best legal advice and follow the rules. We should redouble efforts to protect election officials who face torrents of abuse. We should encourage states to step up, by passing legislation to make doubly sure that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal law enforcement agencies cannot wreak havoc at the polls. We should lift up the nonpartisan work of police, prosecutors, and sheriffs through the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, which brings together election officials and law enforcement to train officials around the country. And we should unite against efforts to interfere in elections or intimidate voters.
The Brennan Center honored the Ohio Organizing Collaborative in 2024 at our annual Brennan Legacy Award Dinner, together with Chief Justice O’Connor. I told the crowd, “This is kind of a buddy movie that I want to watch.”
Molly Shack, the group’s dynamic leader, told attendees about how it approached its work. “We are organizing people in communities around education and criminal justice reform and democracy issues and an ability to have a government that works, that can actually be responsive to citizens in all of our interests.”
She continued: “I think the idea that democracy is a partisan issue is something that I think we’re all trying to fight against. A functioning democracy shouldn’t be about right versus left. It should be about right versus wrong.”
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When Covering Trump, Pay More Attention to the Team Behind the Curtain
While we’re kept dizzy and disoriented by Trump's onslaught, a behind-the-scenes team, which consists of players like the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and the tech broletariat, are quietly busy with the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
May 06, 2026
I’m old enough to have been politically cognizant, admittedly less so for a couple of the earliest, of 13 presidents (14 if you count one of them twice). Through all of those decades and all of those administrations nothing comes close to the way the current regime takes up ALL THE AIR IN THE ROOM! In fact, dare I say, no one has ever seen anything like it. The fire hose is so voluminous, ubiquitous, and inescapable that it literally takes one’s breath away.
How is this gargantuan enterprise sustained? I have a theory that President Donald Trump (or whoever are the real masters puling the strings on the public puppet) has at least two teams at work constantly. One team is in charge of producing the daily (or hourly or minute-to-minute) outrage and distraction. This is the team that has given us the Gulf of America, the takeover of Greenland, the cancer-causing windmills, the never-ending toilet flushing and never-working showers, the fight with the pope, etc., and then the really crazy stuff like the current war.
While we’re kept dizzy and disoriented by this onslaught, the other team, which consists of players like the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the tech broletariat, and other bastions of the oligarchic overlords, are quietly busy with the “deconstruction of the administrative state” (as Steve Bannon put it so aptly early on). At least those parts of the administrative state that serve the more general public interests. The parts that serve elite interests, however, like the military and their domestic adjuncts in the militarized police, the repressive courts and “justice” system, and the subservient elements of the media, are richly endowed and strengthened.
For just a moment, I’d like to dwell on the central role of the media (in its legacy and social forms) both in amplifying and downplaying the crazy as well as ignoring, minimizing, or trivializing the serious. Right now, both of these outcomes are accomplished through one certain mechanism, which I’ll name presently. One way that I try to keep up with the sometimes subtle changes in the inflections in the news cycle is by maintaining an evolving and revolving list of key words or phrases that become especially annoying, but through their (over)use capture an essential dominant characterization of events. Over the course of the past several months, and particularly at the height of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement invasions, the phrase du jour was “appears to contradict,” almost always in the circumstance of video footage putting the lie to the lies of administrative officials.
What might happen if serious journalists finally said enough is enough with the spectacle and distraction?
In a similar vein, and most often in the context of displaying the utter incompetence and buffoonery of administrative nominees or officials facing congressional “oversight,” we were repeatedly subjected to the slight variant phrase, “And he (or sometimes she) brought the receipts.” And finally, along these same lines, the now ubiquitous, “He (and again, sometimes she) said the quiet part out loud.”
What all of these anodyne formulations have in common is that they all highlight the crazy or horrendous without really calling them out explicitly. Which brings me to the current term of art, which because of its complete inadequacy is the most dangerous and enabling of all: sanewashing. This flaccid, hand-wringing, bland lament is now so easily deployed that those uttering it seem completely oblivious to its actual implications. Here the more “conscious” in the media have the opportunity to lodge a complaint against their less aware colleagues or competitors without themselves then having the obligation to call things out as they really are.
But do things have to be this way? I understand the exigencies that accompany access-requiring reporting, and I also understand the necessity for profit maximization for “news” organizations. But what might happen if serious journalists finally said enough is enough with the spectacle and distraction, and stopped covering the non-stop shit show that Team One puts out, and instead started to provide in-depth, relentless coverage of the activities of Team Two. The outrage and tantrums that would come from the main inhabitant of the White House at not being given constant attention, which could be covered as the lunacy they are, would produce enough controversy to guarantee viewer- and readership and healthy profits. And we could all use this breath of fresh air.
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Media Faces Reckoning After Helping Trump Downplay Project 2025 on Campaign Trail
"A Trump denial is not a fact," said one media critic.
Oct 03, 2025
As President Donald Trump openly embraces Project 2025, mainstream media outlets are facing criticism for their role in helping him downplay his ties to the wildly unpopular far-right governing playbook in the lead-up to his reelection last year.
After she became the Democratic nominee in July, former Vice President Kamala Harris made the Heritage Foundation's over 900-page manifesto for “the next conservative president” central to her case against Trump during the 2024 election, often referring to it as "Trump's Project 2025."
She and other Democrats warned that if he retook power, he would swiftly enact many of its most extreme and unpopular proposals and dramatically expand executive power while doing it.
Among those proposals were steep cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the "mass deportations" of millions of immigrants, the elimination of the Department of Education, new restrictions on abortions, the gutting of climate protections, and the replacement of career civil servants with political appointees, among many others.
Democrats amplified the plan's danger at the Democratic National Convention and in campaign ads, and Trump began to distance himself from the platform. Despite the fact that as many as 140 people who'd worked in his first administration—including Paul Dans, Heritage's director of Project 2025—had a hand in its creation, Trump said: "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it."
This was demonstrably untrue, even at the time. Media Matters for America dug up a clip from as far back as May 2023 of Dans stating that "President Trump's very bought in with this," speaking of the program.
Project 2025 was almost inconceivably unpopular. An NBC News poll from September 2024 showed that while 57% of registered voters viewed the plan negatively, just 4% viewed it positively.
But in the critical months leading up to the election, many media outlets took Trump's denial at face value, publishing fact checks and other commentary that painted Democrats' warnings about his connection to the plan as alarmist or misleading.
Responding to a social media post in July stating that "Trump has made his authoritarian intentions quite clear with his Project 2025 plan," a fact check by USA Today rated the statement "false," because, as the headline said, "Project 2025 is an effort by the Heritage Foundation, not Donald Trump."
In September, after Harris confronted Trump about Project 2025 at the first and only debate between the two, the paper published another fact-check with the headline: "Harris repeats claim that Project 2025 is Trump's plan. That's still not right."
In response to Harris' claim during the debate that Project 2025 was "a detailed and dangerous plan... that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected,” Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, whose coverage received a fair bit of criticism during the 2024 cycle, reported in bold text that "Project 2025 is not an official campaign document."
A CNN fact check of the Harris campaign's social media in September remarked that one account "frequently invokes Project 2025," before caveating that "Project 2025 is not Trump’s initiative, and he has said he disagrees with some of its proposals."
In an October interview on CBS's "Face the Nation," anchor Norah O'Donnell, Harris attempted to warn about Project 2025, before O'Donnell responded: "You know that Donald Trump has disavowed Project 2025. He says that is not his campaign plan."
After nine months back in power, the website Project 2025 Tracker estimates that Trump has already implemented approximately 48% of the objectives outlined in the policy document.
In addition to his key campaign promises many of his second administration's policies are highly specific to Project 2025, such as his pledge to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), his efforts to privatize the National Weather Service (NWS), his reconfiguration of Title X funding to promote pregnancy, and his elimination of the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
Trump is no longer hiding his connection to Project 2025, having brought in many of its hiring picks and authors to staff his administration almost immediately after his victory last November.
This week, he began to boast about it openly. As his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director, Russ Vought, one of Project 2025's architects, began using the current government shutdown to unilaterally cut off funding to infrastructure projects in blue states and cities, Trump lauded him as "he of PROJECT 2025 Fame."
"This was always the plan," Harris responded on social media.
While many commentators expressed outrage that Trump blatantly lied about his connections to Project 2025, others dredged up old clips of newspapers and anchors taking him at his word.
"All those 2024 media fact checks that said, 'Donald Trump and the Trump campaign deny any connection to Project 2025' look pretty ridiculous right now," said MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski. "A Trump denial is not a fact. You just used his lies to 'debunk' a reality that was obvious to anyone paying attention."
Mehdi Hasan, the founder of the independent media company Zeteo, highlighted the CBS interview, saying Trump's embrace of Project 2025 was "embarrassing not just for Norah O'Donnell but a whole host of leading American anchors and reporters who echoed Trump’s false denials."
"Nothing showed the difference between mainstream and independent media better than the response to Trump’s obvious lie about not knowing anything about Project 2025," said David Pepper, author of the book Saving Democracy: A User's Manual. "Most mainstream media started fact-checking those who claimed a connection to be somehow false. Others 'both sides'ed' it. Far more in independent media called it out as a whopping lie."
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GOP Investigation Pressures Wikipedia to Reveal Identities of Editors Accused of 'Bias' Against Israel
The effort furthers the goals of the Heritage Foundation, which has launched a plan to "identify and target Wikipedia editors" using a number of underhanded tactics.
Aug 28, 2025
A pair of House Republicans is moving forward with an investigation that will seek to reveal the identities of Wikipedia editors who have edited articles to include information that portrays Israel negatively.
On Wednesday, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, sent a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that owns the free encyclopedia.
The representatives asked Wikimedia's CEO, Maryana Iskander, for "assistance in obtaining documents and communications regarding individuals (or specific accounts) serving as Wikipedia volunteer editors who violated Wikipedia platform policies as well as your own efforts to thwart intentional, organized efforts to inject bias into important and sensitive topics."
The letter requested information about "nation state actors" or "academic institutions" that may have been involved in efforts to "edit or influence content identified as possibly violating Wikipedia policies."
A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation told The Hill that they were reviewing the request.
"We welcome the opportunity to respond to the committee's questions and to discuss the importance of safeguarding the integrity of information on our platform," the spokesperson said.
The GOP investigation coincides with a long-standing objective of the far-right Heritage Foundation, which has accused Wikipedia of anti-conservative bias and promoting content that portrays Israel in a negative light, and sought to unmask the identities of the internet users who run it.
The letter sent by Comer and Mace requests that Wikimedia provide Congress with "records showing identifying and unique characteristics of accounts (such as names, IP addresses, registration dates, user activity logs) for editors" who have been "subject to actions" by Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, which resolves internal disputes between editors.
It was, in essence, a request by Congress for Wikipedia to "dox" many of its editors.
"In the culture of Wikipedia editing, it is common for individuals to use pseudonyms to protect their privacy and avoid personal threats," wrote tech writer and Wikipedia expert Stephen Harrison for Slate in February. "Revealing an editor's personal information without their consent, a practice known as doxing, is a form of harassment that can result in a user's being permanently banned from the site."
Of chief concern to the legislators is investigating Wikipedia's handling of content related to Israel. They cited a report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a pro-Israel lobbying group, which the legislators said "raised troubling questions about potentially systematic efforts to advance antisemitic and anti-Israel information in Wikipedia articles related to conflicts with the state of Israel."
The ADL report makes the allegation that 30 "bad-faith" Wikipedia editors, whose identities are not public, were collaborating to edit pages about the Israel-Palestine conflict by "spotlighting criticism of Israel and downplaying Palestinian terrorist violence and antisemitism," and in the process violating Wikipedia's commitment to neutrality.
That report, however, has been heavily criticized, including by some of the academics it cited. In a piece for The Forward, Shira Klein, whose research on Wikipedia's documentation of the Holocaust appears in the report, said the ADL "inaccurately" used her work, and the work of others, as part of its "ramped-up efforts to police public discourse about Israel," and quoted other researchers who felt the same.
Klein described the study's interpretation of the facts as "very skewed" and said it was reliant "on a faulty premise: that criticism of Israel or Zionism is inherently antisemitic."
"To establish foul play, the ADL would need to demonstrate that Wikipedia content about Israel and Zionism regularly expresses as fact ideas that diverge from broadly held scholarly opinions on the matters in question," Klein said. "But where is the evidence of editors repeatedly misrepresenting or contradicting peer-reviewed literature? There is none. The report simply wants us to take the ADL's word for it."
The ADL's report, as well as a similar report from the Atlantic Council alleging that Wikipedia editors had conspired to spread pro-Kremlin propaganda, are the sole pieces of evidence cited by Comer and Mace in their request for identifying information on Wikipedia's editors.
However, right-wing efforts to undermine Wikipedia's independence and attack the privacy of its editors go back much further.
In January, documents obtained by The Forward's Arno Rosenfeld revealed a secret plan by Heritage, the think tank behind the authoritarian Project 2025 playbook, to "identify and target Wikipedia editors" who the organization said were "abusing their position."
Among the methodologies it directed Heritage employees to use include "analyzing text patterns, usernames, and technical data through data breach analysis, fingerprinting, [human intelligence], and technical targeting."
The targeting methods also included "creating fake Wikipedia user accounts to try to trick editors into identifying themselves by sharing personal information or clicking on malicious tracking links that can identify people who click on them."
According to Rosenfeld, "The Heritage Foundation sent the pitch deck outlining the Wikipedia initiative to Jewish foundations and other prospective supporters of Project Esther, its roadmap for fighting antisemitism and anti-Zionism."
Jewish Voice for Peace has described Project Esther as Heritage's "blueprint for using the federal government and private institutions to dismantle the Palestine solidarity movement and broader US civil society, under the guise of 'fighting antisemitism.'"
"Even if you take issue with how the site is currently framing the conflict, that doesn't justify Heritage's plan," Harrison wrote. "Targeting Wikipedia editors personally, instead of debating their edits on the platform, marks a dangerous escalation."
Coming amid the Trump administration's crackdowns against campus protests and efforts to deport immigrants over pro-Palestine speech, critics have described the House Republican investigation as the latest GOP attempt to censor criticism and the spread of unflattering information about Israel.
Adam Johnson, a co-host for the political podcast Citations Needed, described it in a post on X as "House Republicans working with the ADL and Atlantic Council to discipline Wikipedia into parroting the Israeli and NATO line."
Johnson noted that this push was coming as the clear majority of Americans, including an overwhelming number of Democrats, now oppose US support for Israel, with many now believing the country is committing a genocide.
"Rather than end the genocide," Johnson said, "the response instead is to continue firing, doxing, smearing, and attempting to censor inconvenient narratives."
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Analysis Finds Majority of Trump Cabinet Tied to Project 2025 Groups
"Project 2025 isn't just influential in Washington. Its friends and creators are literally running the show."
Jun 03, 2025
Despite repeatedly attempting to distance himself from Project 2025 during his reelection campaign, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration employs dozens of senior officials with links to the Heritage Foundation-led plan to expand executive power and shrink the federal government—including a majority of his Cabinet.
That's according to an interactive analysis published Monday by the international climate-focused news outlet DeSmog, which found that more than 50 high-level Trump administration officials have ties to groups behind Project 2025.
That figure includes many of Trump's closest advisers, including Stephen Miller and Elon Musk, who recently stepped down as the de facto head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. It also includes 14 out of 24 Cabinet-level officials, or 70% of the Cabinet.
"That's a hugely significant finding," Duke University history and public policy professor Nancy MacLean told DeSmog. "In Heritage's own longtime language, 'personnel is policy.' It shows the incredible bad faith of Trump's denials, because this is who he stocked his administration with."
🚨 NEW INVESTIGATION: We mapped the Trump administration's ties to Project 2025 and found something stunning—70% of his Cabinet is connected to the groups behind the Heritage Foundation plan. This despite Trump's repeated denials during the campaign. 🧵
— DeSmog (@desmog.com) June 3, 2025 at 6:19 AM
The analysis notes:
Some of the officials directly authored parts of "The Mandate for Leadership," the now-notorious, 900-page proposal to "dismantle the administrative state"—the meat of Project 2025. Others recently worked for, donated to, or otherwise collaborated with one or more of the dozens of conservative groups that created the distinctly Christian nationalist-flavored document. Some of these high-ranking officials have connections to five or more different Project 2025 groups.
"In other words, Project 2025 isn't just influential in Washington. Its friends and creators are literally running the show," DeSmog said. "Which helps to explain why the Trump administration has worked swiftly to implement the vision described in the 'Mandate.'"
DeSmog countered Trump's claims to "know nothing about Project 2025" or "who is behind it" by highlighting a host of his administration's policies and practices that track the the initiative. At least 140 people who worked in Trump's first administration—including six former Cabinet secretaries—have also been involved with Project 2025.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought co-authored the policy portion of Project 2025, which includes dramatic cuts to critical public programs, abolishing or gutting essential government agencies, a national abortion ban, and a litany of additional far-right wish list items.
Vought is lying. 60-70% of Project 2025's executive action proposals have been initiated or implemented — like gutting education and environmental laws. 30-40% is currently proposed as legislation — gutting healthcare, banking deregulations, voter suppression, and more.
[image or embed]
— Melanie D’Arrigo (@darrigomelanie.bsky.social) June 1, 2025 at 7:03 AM
"From across-the-board tariffs to the mass firing of tens of thousands of federal workers to attacking inclusive language and initiatives, from gutting whole agencies and departments to dramatically stepping up the rate of deportations to the broad-scale rollback of environmental regulations and initiatives, a clear pattern has emerged: if the Trump administration's doing it, Project 2025 probably spelled it out first," the outlet said.
"This matters because Americans overwhelmingly rejected Project 2025," DeSmog contented in a post on the social media site Bluesky. "A pre-election survey showed 4% approval. Trump wouldn't touch it. Yet the plan's architects and allies now run the executive branch."
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'Fall in Line or Else': Latest Trump Order Seen as Message to Workers
Executive order issued under cover of darkness, said one labor leader, is "a clear threat not just to federal employees and their unions, but to every American who values democracy and the freedoms of speech and association."
Mar 28, 2025
President Donald Trump's latest attack on the working class was delivered in the form of an executive order late Thursday that seeks to strip the collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal government workers, a move that labor rights advocates said is not only unlawful but once again exposes Trump's deep antagonism toward working people and their families.
The executive order by Trump says its purpose is to "enhance the national security of the United States," but critics say it's clear the president is hiding behind such a claim as a way to justify a broadside against collective bargaining by the public workforce and to intimidate workers more broadly.
"President Trump's latest executive order is a disgraceful and retaliatory attack on the rights of hundreds of thousands of patriotic American civil servants—nearly one-third of whom are veterans—simply because they are members of a union that stands up to his harmful policies," said Everett Kelley, president of the 820,000-member American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the nation's largest union of federal workers.
"The labor movement is not about to let Trump and an un-elected billionaire destroy what we’ve fought for generations to build. We will fight this outrageous attack on our members with every fiber of our collective being." —Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO
The far-reaching order, which cites the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act as the source of his presidential authority, goes way beyond restricting collective bargaining and union representation at agencies with a national security mandate but instead tries to ensnare dozens of federal agencies and classifications of federal workers who work beyond that scope.
According to the Associated Press, the intent of the order "appears to touch most of the federal government."
AFL-CIO president, Liz Shuler, responded with disgust to the order, pointing out that the move comes directly out of the pre-election blueprint of the Heritage Foundation, which has been planning this kind of attack against the federal workforce and collective bargaining for years, if not decades.
"Straight out of Project 2025, this executive order is the very definition of union-busting," said Schuler in a Thursday night statement. "It strips the fundamental right to unionize and collectively bargain from workers across the federal government at more than 30 agencies. The workers who make sure our food is safe to eat, care for our veterans, protect us from public health emergencies and much more will no longer have a voice on the job or the ability to organize with their coworkers for better conditions at work so they can efficiently provide the services the public relies upon."
Shuler said the order is clearly designed as "punishment for unions who are leading the fight against the administration's illegal actions in court—and a blatant attempt to silence us."
The White House practically admitted as much, saying in a statement that "Trump supports constructive partnerships with unions who work with him; he will not tolerate mass obstruction that jeopardizes his ability to manage agencies with vital national security missions." In effect, especially with a definition of "national security" that encompasses a vast majority of all government functions and agencies, the president has told an estimated two-thirds of government workers they are no longer allowed to disagree with or obstruct his efforts as they organize to defend their jobs or advocate for better working conditions.
"With this order, Trump is trying to destroy unions and labor rights as we have known them for 100 years," said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, in a statement on Friday.
"Trump's attempt to end federal labor unions is his most dangerous attack on working America so far," Casar added. "We must all rise up to stop this—in the streets and in the halls of Congress—or else Trump will hand over every last one of our rights to the billionaires."
Describing the move as "bullying tactics" by Trump and his administration, Kelley said the order represents "a clear threat not just to federal employees and their unions, but to every American who values democracy and the freedoms of speech and association. Trump’s threat to unions and working people across America is clear: fall in line or else."
"These threats will not work. Americans will not be intimidated or silenced. AFGE isn't going anywhere. Our members have bravely served this nation, often putting themselves in harm’s way, and they deserve far better than this blatant attempt at political punishment," he added.
WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 11: Members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union protest against firings during a rally to defend federal workers in Washington, DC on February 11, 2025.
Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images
Both AFGE and the AFL-CIO said they would fight the order tooth and nail on behalf of federal workers—and all workers—who have a right to collective bargaining and not to be intimidated for organizing their workplaces, whether in the public or private sector.
"To every single American who cares about the fundamental freedom of all workers, now is the time to be even louder," said Shuler. "The labor movement is not about to let Trump and an un-elected billionaire destroy what we've fought for generations to build. We will fight this outrageous attack on our members with every fiber of our collective being."
Kelley said AFGE was "preparing immediate legal action" in response to Trump's order and vowed to "fight relentlessly to protect our rights, our members, and all working Americans from these unprecedented attacks."
Jeffrey Hauser, executive director of The Revolving Door Project, a progressive watchdog, said, "Contrary to what Trump, Musk, and even neoliberals claim, a strong civil service is critical to the country. Few innovations have served the public interest more than the government permitting public employees to band together and create the protection of a union against politicians carrying water for America's most rapacious and least moral corporations."
With the arrival of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, now on the scene, Hauser said it's more vital than ever that public sector unions have the ability to protect the government workforce that has been targeted by the president and his appointed henchmen at DOGE, including world's richest man Elon Musk.
"It is time for all decent forces to condemn Trump and Musk's unlawful actions," said Hauser, "and decry the assault on the right of public employees to organize."
Update: This story was updated from its original to include comment from Revolving Door Project and Congressman Greg Casar of Texas.
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'Cuts to the Bone': Leaked Trump Doc Shows Feds Plan to Slash Up to 50% of Agencies' Staff
"How does this help the economy become great again, MAGA?" asked one writer. "I'll wait..."
Mar 27, 2025
The Washington Post reported Thursday that a White House document shows U.S. officials are preparing to cut 8-50% of agency staff in "the first phase" of President Donald Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk's effort to gut the federal bureaucracy—eliciting a fresh wave of outrage directed at them and their Department of Government Efficiency.
The document only covers 22 agencies and, according to the Post, "several people familiar with the document stressed that planning remains fluid," a sentiment echoed by Harrison Fields, White House principal deputy press secretary, in an email.
"It's no secret the Trump administration is dedicated to downsizing the federal bureaucracy and cutting waste, fraud, and abuse. This document is a pre-deliberative draft and does not accurately reflect final reduction in force plans," Fields told the newspaper. "When President Trump's Cabinet secretaries are ready to announce reduction in force plans, they will make those announcements to their respective workforces at the appropriate time."
When Trump took office, there were around 2.3 million federal workers. The leaked document—last updated Tuesday—includes the following potential personnel cuts:
- 30% at the Department of Commerce;
- 50% at the Department of Housing and Urban Development;
- 25% at the Department of the Interior;
- 8% at the Department of Justice;
- 30% at the Department of the Treasury;
- 10% at the Environmental Protection Agency;
- 33% at the Internal Revenue Service;
- 43% at the Small Business Administration; and
- 28% at the National Science Foundation.
"Cuts have already been announced at some agencies, including the Education Department, which said this month that it would be reducing its staff by half. The document did not list those reductions among its totals," according to the paper. "It also did not specify staff reduction goals for certain agencies, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs."
Trump and Musk's "DOGE-Manufactured chaos" is already impacting both federal employees and Americans who rely on them. At the Social Security Administration—which aims to oust roughly 7,000 staffers, bringing the agency down to 50,000—beneficiaries are dealing with website problems and hourslong wait times for phone services.
Responding to the Post's reporting on social media, writer and podcaster Wajahat Ali asked: "How does this help the economy become great again, MAGA? I'll wait..."
Cuts to the bone: “the Department of Housing and Urban Development as cutting half of its roughly 8,300-person staff, while the Interior Department would shed nearly 1 in 4 of the workers…the IRS would cut nearly 1 in 3.” @ELaserDavies www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
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— Rocky Kistner (@therockyfiles.bsky.social) March 27, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Brian Donlon, the retired head of programming at Scripps News, tied the looming job cuts to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led agenda for a far-right takeover of the federal government, from which Trump unsuccessfully tried to distance himself while on the campaign trail.
"I have been rewatching Trump campaign rallies (I watched most live while running programming at Scripps News)," he said. "I can't find any references to an austerity budget or a downsized federal government. Project 2025 however does. Will keep looking."
Bluesky user J. Offir, who has a Ph.D. in social psychology, said that "my main concerns are health, education, and the environment (all of which relate to public health) but the casualties of this war are everywhere."
Offir also noted "the hell" at agencies under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—which is now led by conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who earlier Thursday announced a major restructuring and 20,000 job cuts, including employees who took the administration's infamous "Fork in the Road" offer.
Take a look at the size of the federal workforce to help contextualize today's news about planned layoffs at HHS.
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— STAT (@statnews.com) March 27, 2025 at 2:42 PM
"This announcement is shocking. There is no way that HHS will be able to continue providing the lifesaving services and research it is mandated to provide after losing a quarter of its workforce between the layoffs and early separation packages," said Jennifer Jones, the director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement.
Jones explained that "these are people who ensure our medications and food supplies are safe, help protect us against infectious diseases, and conduct research to treat disease and help people live longer, healthier lives. HHS staff also oversee Medicaid and Medicare, the health insurance programs critical for low-income and elderly Americans as well as those with disabilities."
"Keep in mind, these cuts are brought to you by a man who has made a career out of peddling fringe conspiracy theories and misinformation. He is part of an administration that is incompetent and corrupt. He's known for his debunked anti-vaccine rhetoric, and his response to the deadly measles outbreak in Texas, which has spread to other states, has been nothing short of inept," she added. "Secretary Kennedy minimizes this action as 'a painful period' for the agencies, ignoring the pain that will be inflicted on everyone in this country."
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DOGE Is Hitting the Accelerator on the Creeping Privatization of the US Government
Trump’s latest moves can be viewed as a massive speedup of a decades-long trend, rather than a break from the past.
Mar 22, 2025
Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has aggressively moved to shrink the federal government. His administration has frozen federal grants, issued executive orders aligned with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and, most prominently, created what he calls the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
DOGE has been billed as a cost-cutting initiative, although the actual amount of money being saved remains unclear. To lead DOGE, Trump appointed Elon Musk, a megadonor whose companies hold federal contracts worth billions. Musk has already moved forward with major cuts, including sweeping workforce reductions, the curtailment of government operations, and purges of entire agencies. Thousands of federal workers have lost their jobs.
While certainly dramatic, these actions reflect a longer trend of privatizing government. Indeed, my sociological research shows that the government has steadily withdrawn from economic production for decades, outsourcing many responsibilities to the private sector.
3 indicators of privatization
At first glance, total government spending appears stable over time. In 2024, federal, state, and local expenditures made up 35% of the U.S. economy, the same as in 1982. However, my analysis of Bureau of Economic Analysis data offers a new perspective, recasting privatization as a macroeconomic phenomenon. I find that U.S. economic activity has become increasingly more privatized over the past 50 years. This shift happened in three key ways.
First, government involvement in economic production has declined. Historically, public institutions have played a major role in sectors such as electric power, water delivery, waste management, space equipment, naval shipbuilding, construction, and infrastructure investments. In 1970, government spending on production accounted for 23% of the economy. By 2024, that figure had fallen to 17%, leaving the private sector to fill the gaps. This means a growing share of overall government spending has been used to fund the private sector economy.
The privatization trend risks eroding democratic accountability and worsening racial and gender inequalities.
Second, government’s overall ability to produce goods and services—what economists call “productive capacity”—has fallen relative to the private sector, both in terms of labor and capital. Since 1970, public employment has lagged behind private sector job growth, and government-owned capital assets have trailed those of the private sector. Although public sector capital investments briefly rebounded in the 2000s, employment did not, signaling a shift toward outsourcing rather than direct hiring. This has significant implications for wages, working conditions, and unionization.
Third, and relatedly, government increasingly contracts work to private companies, opting to buy goods and services instead of making them. In 1977, private contractors accounted for one-third of government production costs. By 2023, that had risen to over half. Government contracting—now 7% of the total economy—reached $1.98 trillion in 2023. Key beneficiaries in 2023 included professional services at $317 billion, petroleum and coal industries at $194 billion, and construction at $130 billion. Other examples include private charter schools, private prisons, hospitals, and defense contractors.
The Meaning of Privatization
Privatization can be understood as two interconnected processes: the retreat of government from economic production, and the rise of contracting. The government remains a major economic actor in the U.S., although now as more of a procurer of goods and services than a provider or employer.
The government’s shift away from production largely stems from mainstreamed austerity politics—a “starve the beast” approach to government—and backlash against the New Deal’s expansion of federal economic involvement. In 1971, the controversial “Powell Memo,” written by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, mobilized business leaders around the goal of expanding private sector power over public policy. This fueled the rise of conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the eventual architect of the Project 2025 privatization agenda.
While government production shrank, government contracting expanded on promises of cost savings and efficiency. These contracting decisions are usually made by local administrators managing budgets under fiscal stress and interest group pressure, including from businesses and public sector unions.
Yet research shows that contracting frequently fails to reduce costs, while risking monopolies, weakening accountability and public input, and sometimes locking governments into rigid contracts. In many cases, ineffective outsourcing forces a return to public employment.
The Consequences of Privatization
Trump’s latest moves can be viewed as a massive acceleration of a decades-long trend, rather than a break from the past. The 50-year shift away from robust public sector employment has already privatized a lot of U.S. employment. Trump and Musk’s plan to cut the federal workforce follows the same blueprint.
This could have major consequences.
First, drastic job cuts likely mean more privatization and fewer government workers. Trump’s federal workforce cuts echo President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 mass firing of more than 11,000 air traffic controllers, a source of prolonged financial struggles and family instability for many fired workers. Trump’s firings and layoffs are already reaching far beyond Reagan’s.
As Trump’s administration aggressively restructures federal agencies, these changes will likely proceed without public input, further entrenching private sector dominance.
In addition, since federal spending directly contributes to gross domestic product, cuts of this magnitude risk slowing the economy. The Trump administration has even floated the idea of changing GDP calculations, potentially masking any reality of economic decline.
Rapid privatization is also likely to trigger significant economic disruptions, especially in industries that depend on federal support. For example, USAID cuts have already sent shock waves through the private sector agricultural economy.
Finally, the privatization trend risks eroding democratic accountability and worsening racial and gender inequalities. That’s because, as my prior research finds, public sector unions uniquely shape American society by equalizing wages while increasing transparency and civic participation. Given that the public sector is highly unionized and disproportionately provides employment opportunities for women and Black workers, privatization risks undoing these gains.
As Trump’s administration aggressively restructures federal agencies, these changes will likely proceed without public input, further entrenching private sector dominance. This stands to undermine government functioning and democratic accountability. While often framed as inevitable, the American public should know that privatization remains a policy choice—one that can be reversed.
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'They Will Have to Come Through Us': Sunrise Protests Trump Attacks With Education Department Study-In
"Trump and Musk want to defund public schools so they can give their fellow billionaires a bigger tax break," warned one organizer. "We won't let them rob us of a good education."
Mar 21, 2025
Students and allies rallied outside the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the U.S. Department of Education on Friday for a "study-in" protest against President Donald Trump's plan to shut down the federal agency—a longtime policy goal of right-wing groups including the organization behind the infamous Project 2025—and other administration attacks on their future.
Protesters set up school desks with signs reading "Trump, Stop Stealing From Kids" and "Kids Deserve Good Schools" on a sidewalk outside the agency's main office. Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate campaign that led the demonstration, vowed to "defend our schools, our futures, and our democracy" from attacks by Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
"If Trump and Musk want to destroy the futures of millions of students across the country, they will have to come through us," Sunrise Movement said on Instagram ahead of the protest.
On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order directing billionaire businesswoman-turned-Education Secretary Linda McMahon to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the states." Trump's order followed the Department of Education's announcement earlier this month that it would fire half of its workforce.
The executive order delighted conservatives, who have long targeted the agency tasked with protecting civil rights and equal access in schools, administering federal student aid programs, funding billions of dollars in scholastic loans and grants, and more. The Heritage Foundation, which led Project 2025—often described as a blueprint for a far-right takeover of the federal government—applauded the directive.
However, according to Sunrise Movement:
Abolishing the Department of Education would have severe impacts on students, teachers, and parents. Schools will face larger class sizes, fewer teachers, and severe underfunding, making it even harder for students to get the education they deserve. Pell Grants would be eliminated, putting higher education out of reach for millions. Programs that support students with disabilities, English learners, and low-income families—as well as funding for school safety, mental health services, and building repairs—will be slashed.
"Trump and Musk want to defund public schools so they can give their fellow billionaires a bigger tax break," 19-year-old Sunrise Movement schools organizing manager Adah Crandall of Washington, D.C. said Friday.
"We won't let them rob us of a good education," Crandall vowed, adding that she won't let "Musk and his goons" destroy her generation's future.
Wanya Allen, a student at Seminole State College of Florida and Sunrise Movement's Philadelphia community lead, said: "The Department of Education is a human right. We are responsible as the youth to take the torch from our ancestors to continue the fight."
"The Pell Grant that allowed me to attend college is only made possible by the Department of Education," Allen added. "Trump and his billionaire Cabinet are stealing from everyday people like me and our opportunities to access education."
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