Project 2025 update

Some sources are reporting that, Project 2025 proposes downsizing NOAA (National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration). This reporting is inspired by the human and economic damage that Hurricane Helene is causing in the southeast US. The Poynter Institute reports:

What does Project 2025 say about the National Weather Service, 

NOAA and National Hurricane Center?

The policy blueprint for a Republican administration says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ‘should be broken up and downsized’

As Florida braced for Hurricane Helene, some weather and politics observers were mad about Project 2025.

“Reminder that Project 2025 would dismantle the National Weather Service and NOAA,” wrote the League of Conservation Voters on X.

NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, founded in 1970.  

Project 2025 is the conservative Heritage Foundation’s policy blueprint for a Republican administration. Trump has disavowed it, but it was written by several former Trump administration officials. In 2022, when Trump gave a keynote speech at a Heritage event in Florida, he said the organization would “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

Project 2025 includes about four pages on NOAA and the National Weather Service. That part was written by Thomas F. Gilman, who was an official in Trump’s Commerce Department.

The document describes NOAA as a primary component “of the climate change alarm industry” and said it “should be broken up and downsized.”

The National Weather Service, one of six NOAA offices, provides weather and climate forecasts and warnings. The National Hurricane Center is part of the National Weather Service within NOAA.

Project 2025 would not outright end the National Weather Service. It says the agency “should focus on its data-gathering services,” and “should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.”

Dart update: As part of my ongoing public service efforts, 👍, I still actively dart folks who need it. The article quoted above was written by Amy Sherman. She works for PolitiFact, which is now part of the Poynter Institute. Just before posting this, I emailed Amy about her incorrectly referring to the Heritage Foundation as "conservative." Heritage is a radical right authoritarian propaganda machine, not conservative. The dart concluded with this:

Referring to American radical right authoritarians and their authoritarianism as "conservative", "hard right" or anything else that does not convey the idea of opposition to democracy, civil liberties and/or the rule of law as applied to elites amounts to false balancing. That false balancing amounts to a failure to tell the American people this truth at a time when they desperately need it unvarnished and unspun.

Why not call a spade a spade? Most of the MSM makes the same terrible mistake of calling authoritarians conservatives. All or nearly all old-fashioned pro-democracy and pro-civil liberties conservatives have been RINO hunted out of power and often the GOP itself. In view of how close the election is projected to be, this labelling error could wind up being a necessary factor that costs us our democracy and most of our civil liberties.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

 

Germaine's analysis: Calling 

authoritarians conservative 

is a big mistake