Today’s read: 6 min 57 sec

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PRESENTED BY GENESIS CODE

Has World War III Already Started?

Tensions in the Middle East continue to escalate. The Ukraine conflict seems to be spiraling out of control for NATO and the west. And rumors are swirling that China could be preparing for war.

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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

🚨 Secret Service Director Cheatle resigned. After USSS Director Kimberly Cheatle was lambasted by bipartisan members of Congress, she finally resigned from her post. Despite stating last week she had no intention of stepping down, she was forced to resign due to the massive security failures and incompetence of the Secret Service at Trump’s rally, which nearly led to his assassination.

🎙 President Biden will address the nation tonight. Three days after dropping out of the presidential race via X, the president will officially speak to the American people directly on Wednesday night from the Oval Office. Republicans continue to urge President Biden to resign, arguing that if he is unfit to run a presidential campaign, he is also unfit to govern the nation.

🗣 Kamala Harris held her first presidential rally. Vice President Harris rallied 3,000 Wisconsinites in her first major event since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. Harris highlighted her previous role as a prosecutor, taking on “predators,” “fraudsters,” and “cheaters” while the crowd broke out into a familiar chant, “Lock him up!”

🧑‍💻 Senate is pushing forward with an online safety bill. The Senate will consider a bill this week that aims to protect minors from online harms such as sexual exploitation and bullying, marking a significant tech industry regulation. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) aims to pass the bipartisan legislation, which has strong Senate support, before the August recess.

WHAT WE’RE HEARING

• Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) are reportedly the leading candidates for Kamala Harris’s running mate.

• House Republicans were told to focus their attacks on Kamala Harris’s record, not her gender or race.

• Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said there would be a “zero-tolerance policy” for pro-Palestine protesters during P.M. Netanyahu’s Congressional address on Wednesday.

IN THE LOOP

• Pro-Palestine protesters overtook the Capitol rotunda.

• An elderly Trump supporter is in critical condition after a “politically motivated” attack.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with Donald Trump on Friday in Mar-a-Lago.

• Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced articles of impeachment against V.P. Kamala Harris.

• The GOP unified against one central idea at last week’s Republican National Convention. (Member-only)

• The most clicked link in our last newsletter was the ad in our free version for Genesis Code’s #1 thing to stockpile.

MEDIA

Project 2025 bogeyman falls flat

• Portraying Project 2025 as “devious” and “dangerous” detracted attention from Biden’s poor debate performance

• Many of its fear-mongered policy prescriptions were dismissed by former president Trump

• It recommends staffing executive agencies with loyalists — as is the president’s prerogative

The story

In the days following last month’s presidential debate, President Biden’s declining mental state dominated the news. Democrats’ decreasing faith in Biden’s ability to defeat Donald Trump turned the spotlight directly on their intra-party turmoil.

To deflect heat off the president and his party, the left aimed floodlights at Project 2025, allegedly a Trump-approved policy plan to reshape America, should he hold office again.

Donald Trump was not shy about distancing himself from the plan amid a media onslaught which painted the project as “a very concrete manifestation of what could happen if Trump is inaugurated in January, whether or not Trump wants to admit it.”

Because Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposal is so lengthy, many critics aren’t pushing back against its granular policy prescriptions; it is being used instead as a shibboleth to frighten voters into thinking that Trump will enact sweeping reforms to bring about a “second American Revolution which will remain bloodless if the left allows it,” according to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts.

At 920 pages, Project 2025 is comprised of contributions from more than 400 authors — each with their own perspective on conservative policymaking. Naturally, some ideas are more extreme. But, left-leaning media and politicians are using those policy proposals to paint conservatives as radicals intent on completely remaking America.

The politics

The media is abuzz about Project 2025; The New York Times published a dozen articles, and The Washington Post published even more.

Business Insider claimed that Project 2025 “aims to enshrine radical conservative policies into the law and erode U.S. government checks and balances.”

MSNBC named a news segment “The 'evil genius' of Project 2025 and its attack on American freedom,” and asserted that the plan recommends abolishing the Department of Education and banning stem cell research.

Kamala Harris is using the policy blueprint to fundraise for her presidential campaign. Meanwhile, some on the left are praising the conservative think tank for producing its own in-depth analysis of its policy vision, and question why the left hasn’t produced its own version.

National Review’s Rich Lowry is calling Democrat attacks “hilariously irrational and unhinged” and makes the point that, if Donald Trump is democratically elected, he will have vested authority to assert “more control over the unelected bureaucracy.”

Michael Cuenco brushes aside left-wing criticism of the Heritage Foundation’s policy outline: “Beyond culture war bromides, Project 2025 is a largely incoherent hodgepodge of establishment conservative priorities.”

Because so many right-leaning contributors are sympathetic to — or are members of — the political establishment, Cuenco remarked, “there is little serious regard for the former president’s authentically populist instincts.”

Beyond the headlines

Many accusations leveled against Republicans about enacting the more radical proposals do not align with what high-level conservative politicians are actually advocating.

For instance, no federally elected Republican advocates eliminating free healthcare or preschool for 800,000 low-income children, as the left purports. Other criticisms of the plan’s "radical" policies are aimed at standard Republican priorities — like restructuring entitlements and reducing government overspending.

A powerful catapult of Project 2025’s sudden massive media presence was John Oliver’s episode of Last Week Tonight, when he dove into the project’s plans to enact conservative policy changes. Oliver specifically called out its intent to staff the White House and, indeed, the entire federal government with people who will not be a roadblock to enacting a Republican executive’s policy plans.

Oliver postulates that the Trump team never expected to win the 2016 election and got off to a slow start because there were not enough recruits to staff his government, leaving many Obama administration holdovers.

While it’s true that Project 2025 is compiling a list of conservative staffers for the administrative state, a democratically elected president has always had the authority to staff the government with whomever he pleases. The executive agencies serve at the pleasure of the president.

Although Donald Trump clarified that he is not affiliated with the Project 2025 policy vision, he has his own initiative — Agenda47. He recorded a series of videos addressing topics that he considers important.

Despite many of Trump’s former staffers having contributed to Project 2025, he is not a policy wonk with an interest in enacting sweeping controversial policies. With his recent shift toward the center, he is focused on common-sense governance rather than pushing the GOP's decades-old priorities.

Why it matters

The Democrat plan to spotlight the more controversial recommendations of Project 2025 will likely fall flat with the American public, since Donald Trump has publicly distanced himself. If the former president insists he won’t eliminate the Education Department or ban pornography, the accusations have no basis and won't stick.

The Heritage Foundation’s policy blueprint does involve contributions of conservative intellectuals and political players. Project 2025 is not some fringe manifesto, but a serious work of conservative thought. While some aspects may require Republicans distancing themselves, one crucial objective remains — restaffing executive agencies, referred to among some conservatives as “the deep state.” For the next conservative president to implement significant changes, he will require a compliant federal bureaucracy.

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Interview: Jeremy Carl on tokenism and why Americans ignore anti-white racism

Jeremy Carl is an author, political commentator, policy advisor, and former civil servant. He is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, where he examines nationalism, immigration, technology, and other subjects.

Previously, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior under President Trump and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

His new book on anti-white racism, “The Unprotected Class,” can be found on Amazon. Jeremy is on X @realJeremyCarl and at his Substack: The Course of Empire.

On why he writes about anti-white racism, “It needs to stop being controversial and stigmatized,” he asserts. “I believed that if I laid out the best set of arguments for why anti-white racism is wrong and what we should do about it, it would have a positive effect and move the Overton window.”

How Carl approaches the discussion: Liberals still freak out about anti-white racism, but extremists are not his audience. His audience is the average Republican or independent voter. He believes, “The facts spoke for themselves — there was no need to wave my arms and scream.”

On Republicans tokenizing black Americans to speak about anti-white racism, “I have strong opinions on that topic. When I decided to write the book, my conservative friends often reacted with some version of ‘That's great, but Candace Owens should write this,’” Carl asserts. “I felt very strongly that white people needed to make this argument on our own behalf.”

On Supreme Court victories, Carl says, “Sometimes politics is downstream from culture. Sometimes culture is downstream from politics. If you don't control the commanding heights of culture, winning can be difficult.”

“Diversity is about fewer white people. It is not about creating diversity,” Carl believes. “Cal State, Los Angeles, is only 3 percent white. I guarantee that school does not offer beneficial scholarships for white students as an underrepresented minority.”

OUR QUESTION TO YOU

POLL RESULTS FROM YESTERDAY

Do you think Biden willingly stepped down?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👍 Yes (42)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 👎 No (1181)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤔 Unsure (57)