I don’t want to overstate the importance of this space, but now that I’ve read the whole thing, this will be the most important work I’ve ever done. It is definitely something everyone should make time to understand, because it will impact every single American in ways few comprehend. And it isn’t designed to shrug and say, “Oh well. The left lost 2024, but we’ll flip things in the 2026 midterms.” If they win in November, it will take at least a decade, probably two, plus bloodshed and much suffering, to return our government to something democratic and sane. It isn’t just about abortion. It’s about every freedom we on the left value. The US won’t be the same in our lifetimes.
Agreed. It is way more than abortion. But limiting our reproductive rights is a key part of control....and making us ashamed of sex. Everything is at stake.....our entire way of life and democracy herself. I'm often reminded of the Martin Niemöller quote from nazi Germany...... you know the one.... First they came for the Socialist but I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.....
It’s easier to talk about abortion. People can relate because they see and feel the impacts of these bans. They have specific stories to engage, to be activist, to stoke righteous anger.
It’s harder to get people to care about things that haven’t happened yet but absolutely will if they win.
To me abortion is the canary in the coal mine, the issue that most clearly shows what's really going on and what will happen with everything else: they enact extreme, highly unpopular policies, and go to extraordinary lengths to keep them in place. Bodily autonomy is the most fundamental human right, but beyond that there's also the lesson of how they operate.
Hey Zach 👋 thanks for calling my attention to Andra’s work. I call out the dangers of the Dominionist belief system in the comments of every site I’m on. I used to work with a nurse who was either Evangelical or Pentecostal.
She never wore pants, only shapeless mid-calf length skirts, had really long hair which she explained they don’t cut it because the long hair is a sign of
This is pretty common. In the church and school where I grew up, we had to start wearing dresses in 4th grade. We wore split skirts for PE. We signed a standard of conduct promising not to wear shorts or skirts above our knee and not to wear jeans. They didn't like for us to wear slacks because they weren't feminine. We didn't have the long hair thing, but looking like a woman was important.
They'd do something like this to women in society. Make up some dress code and try to enforce it. There are lots of people in that world who really get off on that kind of crap.
I expect it would depend on how long it takes to get everyone in the streets, and for some of the bloodshed to start. Preserving independent sources of information seems like the most vital thing if they win, and we would have to look outside of examples from democracy. I assume they would pretend to be working within the system at first, but when the resistance gets heavy they'll play hardball, and that's when the arrests and such would start. Again, we don't want to find out.
I hope I don’t sound like a shrill awful-izer. But I decided to be painfully direct here because we don’t have much time. While I don’t want people to shrug and go, “What’s the point of trying,” I also want to clearly state the stakes at every opportunity. This is a very different writing project for me, and I’m going to outline why before I put it behind a paywall.
And I haven’t said anything 45 hasn’t already promised. I don’t understand why so many Americans hear his ravings and, after everything else he’s already done, would say, “Oh, he’ll never do that.”
I think that if I didn't feel like I know you and trust you, that it might seem hyperbolic. That's really the problem Democrats have with this, and it's by design. Trump presents as so clownish, that far too many people don't ever take what he says literally, and that makes for a really good disguise. The Republican party often comes across that way too, so too many people don't believe they could really have this plan and that they could really pull it off. Well, the Nazis looked like clowns in the beginning too. I keep circling back to abortion, because that shows that they CAN do that kind of thing. Democrats need to find a way to make that connection, to take the conversation beyond just abortion.
Nope. They will play hardball from day 1 of the new regime. This document sets them up to roll from the words “so help me God.” They will violently quash demonstrations and protests. They will aggressively suppress dissent. They will use the full power of the government to prosecute their enemies. They will withhold all federal funding from blue states that refuse to comply with their demands. It will be a highly coordinated blitzkrieg of oppression. Americans can’t imagine what that will look like because it hasn’t happened here.
Well that's why I'm here; you've read it; I haven't! Perversely, there's a way in which that's a good thing (I really try to keep myself sane). If it's going to happen anyway, and no one is going to fight back until it's really bad, then it may as well get bad right away, because otherwise we're just wasting time. If we were putting the time we do have to good use it might be different, but I don't know if we will. That's why we have to try though and that's why what you're doing is so important.
What really scares me, & I keep shouting at Biden, Kamala, Dr Jill, 1st Gentleman, Senators, & Reps; anybody & everybody I can think of that our govt has better change course when it comes to their unequivocal support for Israel. That 300,000 Arab & Muslim votes in MI that they are NOT going to get is serious & that’s not counting all of the under 30 crowd who are also appalled that our govt continues to kind of shrug off the genocide that’s happening.
Democrats are going to lose this election if they don’t find a spine & say stop, & cut off the money & weapons.
Have you seen the YT video that’s titled “Son of Hamas Co-founder Denounces Group at UN?” There are some from as far back as 8 yrs ago & some more recent about 3 months ago. I’d like to get your opinion on what he has to say.
I have said this repeatedly, but it can use another round.
I feel abominable for Israelis and Palestinians. They are both people who are right, trying to share this tiny bit of land. What Hamas did was obscene. They should release the hostages. Netanyahu's response is genocidal madness. He is a fascist and a war criminal, surrounded in his government by blood-thirsty yes-people.
I am upset that the administration continues to support the killing of innocents in Palestine. Almost 30,000 dead is horrific.
However, 45 won't care if Netanyahu launches a nuke on Palestine. A Republican Congress and administration will (to use Tom Cotton's words ) bounce the rubble there. While I feel for everyone in this situation, not voting in November or voting independent or voting for 45 is a vote for this to get SO MUCH WORSE.
And not just in the Middle East. But for anyone of Arabic heritage here in the US. 45 hates Jews, too. If 300K Arab-Americans in Michigan don't vote, they will unleash a world of pain upon themselves. 45 doesn't believe in birthright citizenship. He and his ilk want to exclude any immigrant who isn't their definition of Christian. They absolutely loathe the Islamic faith. They will be targets of abuse and oppression, and they will regret not voting blue.
True story: My husband's last name is Irish. They shortened it when his ancestors came through Ellis Island, spelled it like it sounds. Turns out, the shortened spelling is also an Arabic name. We found that out when we applied for new Global Entry cards in 2020. I got mine in less than a week. His took 4 or 5 months, because 45's government ordered extra scrutiny for Arabic-sounding names. This is a first-world problem, but it is a taste of the kind of awfulness a new 45 administration and Republican Congress would unleash on Arab Americans. I know they're upset. I'm upset about genocide, especially when we have the power to stop it. But allowing 45 and a bunch of Christo-fascist Republicans to be elected is not the answer.
I myself stay out of the Palestine situation because it's a mess that I don't know how to untangle, and it's been that way for generations. Hamas is evil, and Netanyahu and his right-wing backers are okay with genocide if it serves their Zionist mission. Meanwhile millions of Israelis and Palestinians want to live peacefully but neither side can dislodge their warmongering leaders. The path to peace requires compromises that don't seem forthcoming from either side, and no doubt prejudice and mistrust stand in the way too.
The 2025 MANIFESTO is really what it is. Did it come from The Heritage Fondation?
This is down right scarey..... this is Iran and North Korea manifesto stuff. Yes the left leaning did not take this seriously over the past 50 years. They never thought local, state and government politics would get this uptight and righteous. Now the US is at a precipice. America needs to wake up!
Yes it's a huge policy document. As far as I know it's the Republican guidebook to turning the country into something unrecognizable, and if they win this election, they will finally have all the pieces to do it. There have been huge transformations of America at different points throughout our history, so no one should think it isn't possible. But there is definitely a very dangerous false confidence in the status quo right now. I'm thankful Andra is doing this so that we don't all have to read (and translate) it ourselves. We all just need to spread the message of what the Republicans are planning to do to us, to have a chance of stopping it.
This isn’t the first time they’ve written one. That happened before Reagan’s term. He adopted around half of their proposals.
However, this edition is definitely for 45. Several people from his former administration, including Jeff Clark, Peter Navarro, and Stephen Moore, author sections. They address obstacles they encountered during the 1st 45 term, as well as every guardrail they failed to demolish to succeed in their coup. It really is a “this is what we learned from failing in 2020 and how we won’t fail again” document.
Yes that's exactly what worries me. And the Reagan analogy is very scary too. It's always possible that they would still be clownish in their implementation, that they would fight amongst themselves, or that Trump's vanity might cause him to act unpredictably when faced with extreme unpopularity. But it could also go like it did for Reagan. Let's not give them the keys to the car to find out how bad the crash is going to be.
The other thing I think about is having a strategy for countering each and every of their planned actions. i.e. what can the citizenry do, given that they will hold all of the following levers of state power. I would like to think that this country's history of (relative) freedom and democracy would give us something to draw on that they didn't have in Nazi Germany, Iran, or Russia, and that the American people would stand up and fight when they actually have to. But I really don't want to have to find out.
They won’t be clownish. They are very coordinated and clear-eyed. 45 is a tool for them. They’re using him to transform our government into something they will control for decades.
I don’t want to be hysterical or hyperbolic, but I cannot state strongly enough that a Republican win in November will end the United States as we know it.
And even if 100 million people who never vote suddenly wake up out of their stupor and vote for Biden, giving him an undisputed landslide, they will still contest the election. They will start with state and local violence well before the Electoral College certification in DC. That’s another mistake they’ve learned from, putting all their eggs in the Jan 6 basket. It will be sustained violence from Election Day onward. While I’m not optimistic that this Supreme Court will rule in favor of keeping off ballots due to the 14th Amendment, it really will be the only way to avoid much of the doom above.
And the left isn’t taking much of this seriously. So many are still stuck in a mindset where rule of law matters and guardrails exist. That’s magical thinking.
I decided to start with porn because it gives me a really good opportunity to do a deep dive into how their minds work and how they will limit freedoms everywhere. By the time you read the next couple of posts, you’ll understand that practically everyone is a pornographer to them. If you believe they’ll do even a fraction of what I outline, every American will be impacted. Every. American.
It’s such a sprawling thing with so many themes. It was really hard to know where to start. Because pretty much anywhere would be me saying, “This will be the worst thing ever for you,” and many people going, “Yeah, right. That will never happen.”
I think we need to get the attention of some of the journalists on CNN & MSNBC by email & direct them to this Substack. I’m going to contact Maddow & O’Donnell & maybe Stephanie Rhule
A couple of journalists are already following us. But talking about this with Rachel Maddow would be a dream, because she'd get it right away, and she'd use her platform to make a big difference.
Robert Reich wrote an oped for The Guardian yesterday about Republicans wanting theocracy. I was glad to see it. But he doesn't understand how to break it down like we do here. "Theocracy" is such a nebulous term to most Americans.
Andra could u reach out to Parker Malloy and get these Pornography bullet points on slides for distribution? Can I pull this language if I site you and your Newsletter to distribute? This is language Every Women and Man needs to read!
Love that you speak fluent far-right Evangelicalese....and they say Americans aren't bilingual.... LOL
I don’t want to overstate the importance of this space, but now that I’ve read the whole thing, this will be the most important work I’ve ever done. It is definitely something everyone should make time to understand, because it will impact every single American in ways few comprehend. And it isn’t designed to shrug and say, “Oh well. The left lost 2024, but we’ll flip things in the 2026 midterms.” If they win in November, it will take at least a decade, probably two, plus bloodshed and much suffering, to return our government to something democratic and sane. It isn’t just about abortion. It’s about every freedom we on the left value. The US won’t be the same in our lifetimes.
Agreed. It is way more than abortion. But limiting our reproductive rights is a key part of control....and making us ashamed of sex. Everything is at stake.....our entire way of life and democracy herself. I'm often reminded of the Martin Niemöller quote from nazi Germany...... you know the one.... First they came for the Socialist but I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.....
It’s easier to talk about abortion. People can relate because they see and feel the impacts of these bans. They have specific stories to engage, to be activist, to stoke righteous anger.
It’s harder to get people to care about things that haven’t happened yet but absolutely will if they win.
To me abortion is the canary in the coal mine, the issue that most clearly shows what's really going on and what will happen with everything else: they enact extreme, highly unpopular policies, and go to extraordinary lengths to keep them in place. Bodily autonomy is the most fundamental human right, but beyond that there's also the lesson of how they operate.
Hey Zach 👋 thanks for calling my attention to Andra’s work. I call out the dangers of the Dominionist belief system in the comments of every site I’m on. I used to work with a nurse who was either Evangelical or Pentecostal.
She never wore pants, only shapeless mid-calf length skirts, had really long hair which she explained they don’t cut it because the long hair is a sign of
“Respect” for your husband. 🙄
This is pretty common. In the church and school where I grew up, we had to start wearing dresses in 4th grade. We wore split skirts for PE. We signed a standard of conduct promising not to wear shorts or skirts above our knee and not to wear jeans. They didn't like for us to wear slacks because they weren't feminine. We didn't have the long hair thing, but looking like a woman was important.
They'd do something like this to women in society. Make up some dress code and try to enforce it. There are lots of people in that world who really get off on that kind of crap.
I expect it would depend on how long it takes to get everyone in the streets, and for some of the bloodshed to start. Preserving independent sources of information seems like the most vital thing if they win, and we would have to look outside of examples from democracy. I assume they would pretend to be working within the system at first, but when the resistance gets heavy they'll play hardball, and that's when the arrests and such would start. Again, we don't want to find out.
I hope I don’t sound like a shrill awful-izer. But I decided to be painfully direct here because we don’t have much time. While I don’t want people to shrug and go, “What’s the point of trying,” I also want to clearly state the stakes at every opportunity. This is a very different writing project for me, and I’m going to outline why before I put it behind a paywall.
And I haven’t said anything 45 hasn’t already promised. I don’t understand why so many Americans hear his ravings and, after everything else he’s already done, would say, “Oh, he’ll never do that.”
I think that if I didn't feel like I know you and trust you, that it might seem hyperbolic. That's really the problem Democrats have with this, and it's by design. Trump presents as so clownish, that far too many people don't ever take what he says literally, and that makes for a really good disguise. The Republican party often comes across that way too, so too many people don't believe they could really have this plan and that they could really pull it off. Well, the Nazis looked like clowns in the beginning too. I keep circling back to abortion, because that shows that they CAN do that kind of thing. Democrats need to find a way to make that connection, to take the conversation beyond just abortion.
Nope. They will play hardball from day 1 of the new regime. This document sets them up to roll from the words “so help me God.” They will violently quash demonstrations and protests. They will aggressively suppress dissent. They will use the full power of the government to prosecute their enemies. They will withhold all federal funding from blue states that refuse to comply with their demands. It will be a highly coordinated blitzkrieg of oppression. Americans can’t imagine what that will look like because it hasn’t happened here.
The comment I just wrote below should be a reply to this, hate when that happens :)
Well that's why I'm here; you've read it; I haven't! Perversely, there's a way in which that's a good thing (I really try to keep myself sane). If it's going to happen anyway, and no one is going to fight back until it's really bad, then it may as well get bad right away, because otherwise we're just wasting time. If we were putting the time we do have to good use it might be different, but I don't know if we will. That's why we have to try though and that's why what you're doing is so important.
What really scares me, & I keep shouting at Biden, Kamala, Dr Jill, 1st Gentleman, Senators, & Reps; anybody & everybody I can think of that our govt has better change course when it comes to their unequivocal support for Israel. That 300,000 Arab & Muslim votes in MI that they are NOT going to get is serious & that’s not counting all of the under 30 crowd who are also appalled that our govt continues to kind of shrug off the genocide that’s happening.
Democrats are going to lose this election if they don’t find a spine & say stop, & cut off the money & weapons.
Have you seen the YT video that’s titled “Son of Hamas Co-founder Denounces Group at UN?” There are some from as far back as 8 yrs ago & some more recent about 3 months ago. I’d like to get your opinion on what he has to say.
I have said this repeatedly, but it can use another round.
I feel abominable for Israelis and Palestinians. They are both people who are right, trying to share this tiny bit of land. What Hamas did was obscene. They should release the hostages. Netanyahu's response is genocidal madness. He is a fascist and a war criminal, surrounded in his government by blood-thirsty yes-people.
I am upset that the administration continues to support the killing of innocents in Palestine. Almost 30,000 dead is horrific.
However, 45 won't care if Netanyahu launches a nuke on Palestine. A Republican Congress and administration will (to use Tom Cotton's words ) bounce the rubble there. While I feel for everyone in this situation, not voting in November or voting independent or voting for 45 is a vote for this to get SO MUCH WORSE.
And not just in the Middle East. But for anyone of Arabic heritage here in the US. 45 hates Jews, too. If 300K Arab-Americans in Michigan don't vote, they will unleash a world of pain upon themselves. 45 doesn't believe in birthright citizenship. He and his ilk want to exclude any immigrant who isn't their definition of Christian. They absolutely loathe the Islamic faith. They will be targets of abuse and oppression, and they will regret not voting blue.
True story: My husband's last name is Irish. They shortened it when his ancestors came through Ellis Island, spelled it like it sounds. Turns out, the shortened spelling is also an Arabic name. We found that out when we applied for new Global Entry cards in 2020. I got mine in less than a week. His took 4 or 5 months, because 45's government ordered extra scrutiny for Arabic-sounding names. This is a first-world problem, but it is a taste of the kind of awfulness a new 45 administration and Republican Congress would unleash on Arab Americans. I know they're upset. I'm upset about genocide, especially when we have the power to stop it. But allowing 45 and a bunch of Christo-fascist Republicans to be elected is not the answer.
I myself stay out of the Palestine situation because it's a mess that I don't know how to untangle, and it's been that way for generations. Hamas is evil, and Netanyahu and his right-wing backers are okay with genocide if it serves their Zionist mission. Meanwhile millions of Israelis and Palestinians want to live peacefully but neither side can dislodge their warmongering leaders. The path to peace requires compromises that don't seem forthcoming from either side, and no doubt prejudice and mistrust stand in the way too.
The 2025 MANIFESTO is really what it is. Did it come from The Heritage Fondation?
This is down right scarey..... this is Iran and North Korea manifesto stuff. Yes the left leaning did not take this seriously over the past 50 years. They never thought local, state and government politics would get this uptight and righteous. Now the US is at a precipice. America needs to wake up!
Heritage was involved, yes. Along with scores of others like Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, Liberty University, and Alliance Defending Freedom.
Yes it's a huge policy document. As far as I know it's the Republican guidebook to turning the country into something unrecognizable, and if they win this election, they will finally have all the pieces to do it. There have been huge transformations of America at different points throughout our history, so no one should think it isn't possible. But there is definitely a very dangerous false confidence in the status quo right now. I'm thankful Andra is doing this so that we don't all have to read (and translate) it ourselves. We all just need to spread the message of what the Republicans are planning to do to us, to have a chance of stopping it.
This isn’t the first time they’ve written one. That happened before Reagan’s term. He adopted around half of their proposals.
However, this edition is definitely for 45. Several people from his former administration, including Jeff Clark, Peter Navarro, and Stephen Moore, author sections. They address obstacles they encountered during the 1st 45 term, as well as every guardrail they failed to demolish to succeed in their coup. It really is a “this is what we learned from failing in 2020 and how we won’t fail again” document.
Yes that's exactly what worries me. And the Reagan analogy is very scary too. It's always possible that they would still be clownish in their implementation, that they would fight amongst themselves, or that Trump's vanity might cause him to act unpredictably when faced with extreme unpopularity. But it could also go like it did for Reagan. Let's not give them the keys to the car to find out how bad the crash is going to be.
The other thing I think about is having a strategy for countering each and every of their planned actions. i.e. what can the citizenry do, given that they will hold all of the following levers of state power. I would like to think that this country's history of (relative) freedom and democracy would give us something to draw on that they didn't have in Nazi Germany, Iran, or Russia, and that the American people would stand up and fight when they actually have to. But I really don't want to have to find out.
They won’t be clownish. They are very coordinated and clear-eyed. 45 is a tool for them. They’re using him to transform our government into something they will control for decades.
I don’t want to be hysterical or hyperbolic, but I cannot state strongly enough that a Republican win in November will end the United States as we know it.
And even if 100 million people who never vote suddenly wake up out of their stupor and vote for Biden, giving him an undisputed landslide, they will still contest the election. They will start with state and local violence well before the Electoral College certification in DC. That’s another mistake they’ve learned from, putting all their eggs in the Jan 6 basket. It will be sustained violence from Election Day onward. While I’m not optimistic that this Supreme Court will rule in favor of keeping off ballots due to the 14th Amendment, it really will be the only way to avoid much of the doom above.
And the left isn’t taking much of this seriously. So many are still stuck in a mindset where rule of law matters and guardrails exist. That’s magical thinking.
Yes, that's the other thing. Win or lose, there's violence either way. Trying to live like 2024 is the last year, because it might be.
Also, your comment is a really good lead for a post. Not that I can argue with trying to get eyeballs by starting with porn :)
I decided to start with porn because it gives me a really good opportunity to do a deep dive into how their minds work and how they will limit freedoms everywhere. By the time you read the next couple of posts, you’ll understand that practically everyone is a pornographer to them. If you believe they’ll do even a fraction of what I outline, every American will be impacted. Every. American.
It’s such a sprawling thing with so many themes. It was really hard to know where to start. Because pretty much anywhere would be me saying, “This will be the worst thing ever for you,” and many people going, “Yeah, right. That will never happen.”
I think we need to get the attention of some of the journalists on CNN & MSNBC by email & direct them to this Substack. I’m going to contact Maddow & O’Donnell & maybe Stephanie Rhule
A couple of journalists are already following us. But talking about this with Rachel Maddow would be a dream, because she'd get it right away, and she'd use her platform to make a big difference.
Robert Reich wrote an oped for The Guardian yesterday about Republicans wanting theocracy. I was glad to see it. But he doesn't understand how to break it down like we do here. "Theocracy" is such a nebulous term to most Americans.
Yes, Dictatorship....and it can happen. America thinks it could never happen but it can.
Thank you for the work you are doing!! So appreciate you and just became a subscriber!!
I’m happy to have you here. I’ve always loved your handle.
Thank you so much!!
Omg! I can’t believe you know my handle! You just made my whole month!!
Andra could u reach out to Parker Malloy and get these Pornography bullet points on slides for distribution? Can I pull this language if I site you and your Newsletter to distribute? This is language Every Women and Man needs to read!
You can use as long as you credit me and my newsletter.
Yes, always! What is ur sub handle? Sorry I am not the best at this.
How Project 2025 Will Ruin YOUR Life by Andra Watkins
project2025istheocracy.substack.com