SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
jake sullivan
Biden National Security Adviser Among Those Crafting 'Project 2029' Policy Agenda for Democrats
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade," said one observer. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
Jun 30, 2025
Amid the latest battle over the direction the Democratic Party should move in, a number of strategists and political advisers from across the center-left's ideological spectrum are assembling a committee to determine the policy agenda they hope will be taken up by a Democratic successor to President Donald Trump.
Some of the names on the list of people crafting the agenda—named Project 2029, an echo of the far-right Project 2025 blueprint Trump is currently enacting—left progressives with deepened concerns that party insiders have "learnt nothing" and "forgotten nothing" from the president's electoral victories against centrist Democratic candidates over the past decade, as one economist said.
The project is being assembled by former Democratic speechwriter Andrei Cherny, now co-founder of the policy journal Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and includes Jake Sullivan, a former national security adviser under the Biden administration; Jim Kessler, founder of the centrist think tank Third Way; and Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and longtime adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Progressives on the advisory board for the project include economist Justin Wolfers and former Roosevelt Institute president Felicia Wong, but antitrust expert Hal Singer said any policy agenda aimed at securing a Democratic victory in the 2028 election "needs way more progressives."
As The New York Times noted in its reporting on Project 2029, the panel is being convened amid extensive infighting regarding how the Democratic Party can win back control of the White House and Congress.
After democratic socialist and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani's (D-36) surprise win against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week in New York City's mayoral primary election—following a campaign with a clear-eyed focus on making childcare, rent, public transit, and groceries more affordable—New York City has emerged as a battleground in the fight. Influential Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have so far refused to endorse him and attacked him for his unequivocal support for Palestinian rights.
Progressives have called on party leaders to back Mamdani, pointing to his popularity with young voters, and accept that his clear message about making life more affordable for working families resonated with Democratic constituents.
But speaking to the Times, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake exemplified how many of the party's strategists have insisted that candidates only need to package their messages to voters differently—not change the messages to match the political priorities of Mamdani and other popular progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
"We didn't lack policies," Lake told the Times of recent national elections. "But we lacked a functioning narrative to communicate those policies."
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have drawn crowds of thousands in red districts this year at Sanders' Fighting Oligarchy rallies—another sign, progressives say, that voters are responding to politicians who focus on billionaires' outsized control over the U.S. political system and on economic justice.
Project 2029's inclusion of strategists like Kessler, who declared economic populism "a dead end for Democrats" in 2013, demonstrates "the whole problem [with Democratic leadership] in a nutshell," said Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Mass—as does Sullivan's seat on the advisory board.
As national security adviser to President Joe Biden, Sullivan played a key role in the administration's defense and funding of Israel's assault on Gaza, which international experts and human rights groups have said is a genocide.
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade: Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Israel/Gaza War, and the 2024 Joe Biden campaign," said Nick Field of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
"Jake Sullivan is shaping domestic policy for the next Democratic administration," he added. "Who is happy with the Biden foreign policy legacy?"
Keep ReadingShow Less
What Next for Biden Officials Who Enabled War Crimes?
No matter how disastrously they perform in office—or what law-breaking they enable—departing White House officials from any administration can usually find cushy new jobs at lobbying outfits, hedge funds, media outlet, or major colleges and universities.
Mar 29, 2025
If a worker consistently and completely fails at a job, he or she should not receive a promotion, a pay raise, or a pat on the back. Sooner or later, that worker should receive a termination notice.
This is especially true of workers who engage in unethical behavior on the job. Almost any worker who violates office rules, defrauds their employer, or hurts their customers risks not only termination, but potential lawsuits and criminal charges.
Yet a small sector of workers in our nation do not face such consequences for such mistakes or misconduct on the job. Some people, no matter how badly they fail at their job or how many disasters they create on their job, can keep their positions or even move on to even better jobs.
Who are these special people who can “fail up” again and again?
Outgoing White House officials.
No matter how disastrously they perform in office, departing White House officials from any administration can usually find cushy new jobs at lobbying outfits, hedge funds, media outlets, or major colleges and universities.
To be very clear, McGurk and Sullivan were not civil servants carrying out orders. They were political appointees who developed, advocated, and executed disastrous, deadly and illegal decisions.
For the latest example of this pattern, look no further than where two of the most prominent and disastrous foreign policy officials from the Biden administration just landed.
President Biden's former National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, and his former National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East, Brett McGurk, left the White House when the Trump administration took over in January. Since then, both Sullivan and McGurk have obtained prestigious positions at some of America's most respected universities.
Without any hint of irony, the Harvard Kennedy School recently appointed Mr. Sullivan to serve as its first-ever "Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order." He has also just been appointed a Senior Fellow at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy.
Meanwhile, Mr. McGurk joined the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the end of last month as a senior fellow (he also, predictably, joined a hedge fund).
In a moral and rational society, neither Mr. Sullivan or Mr. McGurk would be able to land such jobs after leaving behind a trail of death and destruction stretching halfway around the world.
Take Mr. Sullivan. He personally spent months presiding over planning for the U.S. military's phased troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Remember how well that ended? Vietnam-like images of U.S. diplomats scrambling to evacuate the Embassy. Panicking Afghans overwhelming U.S. military bases and falling off of airplanes. The killing of 13 American soldiers and hundreds of Afghans at Abbey Gate.
The Pentagon, which often reported to President Biden through Mr. Sullivan, capped the Afghan withdrawal disaster off by launching a drone strike on a supposed ISIS car bomber who turned out to be a well-known humanitarian aid worker returning home to his family. The attack killed 10 civilians, including children who were outside and visible to drone operators when they fired on them. Under Mr. Sullivan's leadership, no one faced any accountability for this war crime.
In a moral and rational society, neither Mr. Sullivan or Mr. McGurk would be able to land such jobs after leaving behind a trail of death and destruction stretching halfway around the world.
Both Mr. Sullivan and Mr. McGurk also played critical roles in ensuring U.S. financial, military and diplomatic support for the Israeli government's war crimes against the people of Gaza.
When asked in 2023 if Israel’s targeting of civilian infrastructure in Gaza constituted a war crime, Sullivan attributed such reports to the “fog of war.”
In November 2023, when the Israeli government was carrying out the defense minister’s pledge to block all food, fuel, water to everyone in Gaza because they were fighting “human animals,” Mr. McGurk endorsed the illegal collective punishment of an entire civilian population by saying that if all the hostages were released, humanitarian aid would be allowed in.
According to reporting by The Atlantic, Mr. McGurk would push back against colleagues concerned by civilian casualties in Gaza by “invoking his stint overseeing the siege of Mosul during the Obama administration,” an operation that cost the lives of 9,000 Iraqi civilians.
During a May 2024 press briefing, Mr. Sullivan denied that what was going on in Gaza was a genocide, and in 2025 he went on to preposterously say that President Biden’s policies saved lives in Gaza.
In addition to their rhetorical support for war crimes in Gaza, Sullivan and McGurk helped develop and execute the policy that led to massive arms shipments to the Netanyahu government.
In April 2024, the Biden administration approved a shipment of $17 billion in unconditional military aid to the Israeli government. The administration also approved a shipment of over $20 million worth of fighter jets and other military equipment in August 2024. In one of their final acts, the administration approved an $8 billion dollar arms deal with Israel in January 2025.
By overseeing arms shipments to the Israeli government long after it was well-established that American weapons had been used in the commission of war crimes by Israeli forces, Mr. Sullivan and Mr. McGurk brazenly violated federal laws, including the Leahy Law, Section 6201, and Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act.
To be very clear, McGurk and Sullivan were not civil servants carrying out orders. They were political appointees who developed, advocated, and executed disastrous, deadly and illegal decisions.
Harvard and the University of New Hampshire’s decisions to reward McGurk and Sullivan with prestigious appointments represent the worst example of failing up. The appointments also show a callous, arguably racist disregard for the countless Palestinian Americans whose family members were victims of the White House’s policies.
Everyone knows that if these two officials had enabled the slaughter of 40,000 blonde-haired, blue-eyed Europeans instead of 40,000 mostly Muslim people of color, Harvard and UNH would never hire them.
Starting with Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk, it's time for White House officials to face the same treatment that most other Americans would face for sparking disasters on the job.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Biden Greenlights 'Racist' and 'Sociopathic' $8B Arms Sale to Israel
Multiple human rights organizations and international bodies have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza
Jan 04, 2025
The administration of US President Joe Biden announced on Saturday an arms sale to Israel valued at $8 billion, just ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House.
Biden has repeatedly rejected calls to suspend military backing for Israel because of the number of civilians killed during the war in Gaza. Israel has killed more than 45,000 people in Gaza, primarily women and children.
The sale includes medium-range air-to-air missiles, 155mm projectile artillery shells for long-range targeting, Hellfire AGM-114 missiles, 500-pound bombs, and more.
Human rights groups, former State Department officials, and Democratic lawmakers have urged the Biden administration to halt arms sales to Israel, citing violations of US laws, including the Leahy Law, as well as international laws and human rights.
The Leahy Law, named after former Sen. Patrick Leahy, requires the US to withhold military assistance from foreign military or law enforcement units if there is credible evidence of human rights violations.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s most significant Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called Biden’s new $8 billion arms deal “racist” and “sociopathic.”
Multiple human rights organizations and international bodies have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for committing war crimes.
The US is, by far, the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, having helped it build one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world.
CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said on Saturday:
“We strongly condemn the Biden administration for its unbelievable and criminal decision to send another $8 billion worth of American weapons to the government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu instead of using American leverage to force an end to the genocide in Gaza.
“Only racists who do not view people of color as equally human, and sociopaths who delight in funding mass slaughter, could send Netanyahu even more bombs while his government openly kidnaps doctors, destroys hospitals, and exterminates the last survivors in northern Gaza.
“If President Biden is actually the person who approved this new $8 billion arms sale, then he is a war criminal who belongs in a cell at The Hague alongside Netanyahu. But if Antony Blinken, Brett McGurk, Jake Sullivan, and other aides are making these unconscionable decisions as shadow presidents, then anyone with a conscience in the administration should speak up now about their abuses of power.”
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US accounted for 69% of Israel's imports of major conventional arms between 2019 and 2023.
On the other hand, incoming President-elect Donald Trump has also pledged unwavering support for Israel and has never committed to supporting an independent Palestinian state.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular