Some quotes:

“The Mandate for Leadership” is a 920-page document that details how the next Republican administration will implement radical and sweeping changes to the entirety of government. This blueprint assumes that the next president will be able to rule by fiat under the unitary executive theory (which posits that the president has the power to control the entire federal executive branch). It is also based on the premise that the next president will implement Schedule F, which allows the president to fire any federal employee who has policy-making authority, and replace them with a presidential appointee who is not voted on in the Senate.

So they’re gonna take over the executive branch.

And businesses will support and fund this effort because:

The business wish list calls for eliminating federal agencies, stripping those that remain of regulatory power, and deregulating industries. The president would directly manage and influence Department of Justice and FBI cases, which would allow him to pursue criminal cases against political enemies. Environmental law would be gutted, and states would be prevented from enforcing their own environmental laws.

And what about the social wish list?

The social conservative wish list calls for ending abortion, diversity and inclusion efforts, protections for LGBTQ people, and most importantly, banning any and all LGBTQ content. In fact, “The Mandate for Leadership” makes eradicating LGBTQ people from public life its top priority. Its No. 1 promise is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.” They are explicit in how they plan to do so, as you’ll see in the paragraph below. They plan to proceed by declaring any and all LGBTQ content to be pornographic in nature.

“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”

When they talk about pornography, this includes any content discussing or portraying LGBTQ figures from the children’s books I Am Jazz and And Tango Makes Three to the Trevor Project’s suicide hotline. We know this by looking at how “don’t say gay” laws have been implemented in Florida: This is literally their model. It’s been tried in Virginia. It’s also arguable that LGBTQ parents would be subject to arrest, imprisonment, and being put on sex-offender registries for “exposing children to pornography” simply by being LGBTQ and having children.

It would also likely criminalize any therapist, doctor, or counselor who provided affirming therapy to trans youth. Indeed, the document makes it explicitly clear they want nationwide bans on abortion and access to affirming care for trans youth, while calling for conversion therapies to be the only available treatments. It could be argued as well that people who are visibly trans in public are pornographic or obscene, because they might be seen by a minor. This understanding of intent is in line with the call to “eradicate transgenderism from public life.”

There’s also the matter of the internet: Any Internet Service Provider (ISP) that transmits or receives data about transgender people could potentially be liable if conservatives have their way. When you read the final sentence of the excerpted paragraph, the clear intent is that the same would apply to any social media company that allows any (positive) discussion or depiction of transgender individuals, as it would be considered pornographic and contributing to harming a minor.

And how will they do this shit?

The organizations that drafted “The Mandate for Leadership” understand that blue states, which have sanctuary laws for transgender people, are unlikely to comply. It’s difficult to imagine California arresting and prosecuting teachers, librarians, doctors, therapists, bookstores (virtual or physical), LGBTQ parents, and especially LGBTQ people merely for existing in public. This is why they included the following paragraph:

“Where warranted and proper under federal law, initiate legal action against local officials—including District Attorneys—who deny American citizens the “equal protection of the laws” by refusing to prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions. This holds true particularly for jurisdictions that refuse to enforce the law against criminals based on the Left’s favored defining characteristics of the would-be offender (race, so-called gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.) or other political considerations (e.g., immigration status).”

This is calling for the executive branch to use the Department of Justice to threaten prosecution of any local or state officials if they do not charge LGBTQ people and their allies with crimes under the pretense that they are breaking federal and state laws against exposing minors to pornography. If people at the Department of Justice refuse to go along with this, then they can simply be replaced under Schedule F. While the excerpted paragraph above includes references to immigration, the fact that it explicitly includes gender identity, and fits in with the previous calls to designate anything trans-related as pornographic, clearly telegraphs their intent.

The result of these actions will be perhaps the biggest power play against states rights in American history, and the threat is clear. If blue states refuse to turn on their own transgender citizens, then the federal government will do everything in its power to decapitate the leadership of those states using the Department of Justice. Conservatives are making the bet that individual district attorneys will not risk prosecution, and prison, on behalf of a tiny, despised minority. They’re betting that state governors will not be willing to risk both prosecution and a constitutional crisis over transgender people.

Well, fuck!

In addition to voting, what should we do about this?

  • Jay@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    And it won’t stop with the LGBTQ. They won’t stop until they’ve destroyed everything that doesn’t fit their specific version of religion.

    • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.mlOP
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      10 months ago

      I see it the same way I see the lead-up to the holocaust: an effort to scapegoat a minority group and divert the outrage of a downwardly mobile middle class away from wealthy capitalists

    • Dubious_Fart@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      Just remember, this shit started a year or 2 ago with “We must protect the children” (the current attacks, before I get well achkshuallay’d. yes I know this shit inherently goes back to Reagan, and more)

      They got their foot in the door getting “controversial” stuff out of elementary schools, and immediately seized on that to get their undesirable content out of middle, and high school, and even colleges and public libraries.

      “For the children” has always been, and will always be, nothing more than an authoritarian attempt to push through power grabs and democracy undermining legislation.

  • Dick Justice@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    This is why I get so mad when people act like political opponents “just disagree with each other”, and that we should all still be able to get along. These people won’t be happy and won’t stop until they’re allowed to murder people like me in the streets just for being gay.

  • darq@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    For those of us not in the US, I think this also highlights the real need to loosen the US’s stranglehold on the Internet at large. The US has disproportionate power to control content on the Internet as a whole, because so many services and so much infrastructure resides there.

    This highlights the importance of building redundant services elsewhere in the world, and moving content outside the US in general. So if the US tries to remove LGBTQ+ content in some cultural crusade, you laugh at them. Make them firewall it, like China, if they don’t like it.

    • cobra89@beehaw.org
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      10 months ago

      As an American I couldn’t agree more. Since our government won’t and can’t (because courts keep siding with corporations) pursue any antitrust action or legislation; I beg other countries throughout the world to come up with alternatives and force competition into these market spaces.

      I would love it if there were a social media platform that didn’t reside in the US, and possibly Europe so they have to follow GDPR regulations and the like.

      At the same time it doesn’t seem likely because why build a platform that has to follow the regulations and cost more money when you can just build it in America instead? Sigh

  • ravheim@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    “Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”

    The Alt-Right fetishizes LGBTQ+ lifestyles and can not fathom that it’s not something that the average person does… Also, every accusation is projection and a confession at this point.

  • voodooattack@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I always found it extremely strange that a nation which enjoys true representative democracy has locked itself in a two-party system. And worse, they can’t even successfully launch a new, fiscally conservative party without all the batshit insanity and the prevalent bigotry associated with the GOP.

  • aggelalex@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Have they forgotten about external relations? If this happens, it wouldn’t be very hard to label the US a fascist state from an outsider’s pov.

  • regalia@literature.cafe
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    10 months ago

    Why are the Democrat’s not pushing to expose this? The GOP pushes culture wars with wanting to kill trans people. The Democrat’s should be just as loud but with exposing the disgusting things that the GOP do on a regular basis that is straight up fucking evil. They have practically unlimited material to work with!

    • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago
      1. Democrats don’t want to win and don’t have any true beliefs, they’re controlled opposition

      2. No one cares what you “expose” about republicans anyway. People vote for who they’re told to vote for no matter what. They were told to vote for trump, they voted for trump, despite the fact that he’s a self-admitted sexual predator. They were told to vote for Biden so they voted for Biden, even though he is also a sexual predator, and a well-documented racist monster just like Trump of course.

      3. By consolidating behind Biden they kind of cut off their ability to criticize people for being like Biden. And Biden is basically a republican.

      • michaelrose@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        Can you not spread your conspiracy theories here. I swear I have no idea why EVERYTHING is about sex for Qanon

          • michaelrose@lemmy.ml
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            10 months ago

            They were told to vote for Biden so they voted for Biden, even though he is also a sexual predator, and a well-documented racist monster just like Trump of course.

            Biden isn’t a sexual predator that is literally a qanon conspiracy theory. He was racist in the 60s. When you know better you do better. People actually sometimes do progress over 50 odd years.

            People don’t vote for Biden because they are told to the functional design of our winner takes all voting system is that there will always be 2 major parties because any third party that gets a substantial chunk of the vote ends up splitting the vote with the party it is most like resulting in the opposite side winning. If you want something better there are about half a hundred better systems like ranked choice voting that would allow people to credibly vote for third parties without throwing away their vote.

            Pretending we are just helpless because people are sheep just teaches people to be helpless instead of recognizing they are acting rationally given bad options.

            • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              Biden isn’t a sexual predator that is literally a qanon conspiracy theory

              That he is not a sexual predator is a blue-MAGA conspiracy theory. It is very apparent to everyone who isn’t on his team.

              He was racist in the 60s.

              The man eulogized Strom Thurmond, fuck off with this shit.

              • michaelrose@lemmy.ml
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                10 months ago

                MAGAs want to replace democracy with an autocracy of a Hitleresque figure who wants to put his enemies in prison and shoot protestors. He has said he plans to gut the entire federal government and replace it with folks that have sworn a loyalty oath to trump and imprison state goverment officials who don’t tow the line. They believe this is necessary because the majority of them believe in some part of the Qanon mythos which has an army of fictional children trafficked by a global cabal of vampires extending their life by harvesting the brain chemicals of their victims. This fits right in with the rest of their world view where the earth is less than 10,000 years old, vaccines containing microchips to control their brains, forest fires caused by Jewish space lasers, and the need to prepare the world for the climactic second coming of their zombie lord. It’s also awfully convenient because who needs to worry about that fake global warming if jeebus is coming back any day now.

                In comparison “Blue-Magas” want everyone to have affordable health care and college, tax rich people, let women and their doctors manage their health care decisions and think a fellow who has spent decades in government doing acceptable but not revolutionary work without scandal or nonsense is an OK guy. Do you even hear yourself? There aren’t any blue MAGAs.

                • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  10 months ago

                  MAGAs want to replace democracy

                  We don’t have democracy.

                  In comparison “Blue-Magas” want everyone to have affordable health care and college, tax rich people, let women and their doctors manage their health care decisions

                  No they fucking don’t, stop lying. You want to see your preferred sexual predator on the throne, that’s all you care about. He’s been on the throne for three years out of a four year term and hasn’t accomplished ANY of this. Your preferred dictator was on the throne for eight years not long ago and also didn’t accomplish any of this. Instead, he caged brown children at the border, murdered brown children overseas, and so on.

                  a fellow who has spent decades in government doing acceptable but not revolutionary work without scandal or nonsense

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_sexual_assault_allegation

            • Sean@liberal.city
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              10 months ago

              @michaelrose @booty Biden should have, for the good of the party and nation, step aside and have announced he wasn’t going to run for reelection. With a lively primary, the narrative in news cycle would be dominated by a bunch of Democrats saying why their vision was better riffing off of Biden’s accomplishment (as smell as they were) and contrasting against GOP’s criminal conspiracies and apologists for criminals. Instead we will have a return of hide-a-Biden strategy but no pandemic

  • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.mlOP
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    10 months ago

    Another quote from the article, emphasis mine:

    Most people aren’t aware of Project 2025, or its playbook, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”—but you need to be. In stark terms, Project 2025 reveals the conservatives’ plan to enact a sweeping “Don’t Say Gay” policy that will effectively blot out all LGBTQ content on the internet as well as any published material with LGBTQ content, no matter how benign.

    Project 2025 is a coalition of prominent conservative organizations that includes the Claremont Institute, Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Research Council, Hillsdale College, Heritage Foundation, Freedom Works, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Principles Project, and dozens of others. The organization’s goal is to lay out a “first 180 days” agenda for the next administration, and to recruit conservatives to fill positions within the federal government appointed by the executive branch.

    The Heritage Foundation alone is a massive, well-connected think tank with an annual budget of $38 million. Mike Pence joined in 2021. They were instrumental in staffing the Trump administration and directing his policies, with at least 66 Heritage Foundation employees and alumni given positions in the administration.

  • cobra89@beehaw.org
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    10 months ago

    The whole problem with this playbook and why it won’t happen is because if they succeed in doing this, they will have eroded any protections they can use to stymie a Democratic president and thus allow a D president to completely undo and then swing it all back the other way.

    This is even if they can overcome the ridiculous legal challenges associated with this plan. They literally just ruled against Biden having the power to control the executive branch when it comes to loan forgiveness, federal vaccine mandates, control at the border, oil drilling, hell even cruise ships. Someone they’re going to overturn all these precedents which will essentially give the executive branch unlimited power?

    SCOTUS is definitely going to strike down anything that gives the executive branch more power and the risk of taking power away from the courts.

    • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      Why do you assume a Dem President would “strike down” anything? Who was president when Roe was overturned? Who controlled congress when Roe was overturned? Who immediately used the overturning of Roe to fund-raise even though they had majorities and more, 50 years after Roe was decided to ensure that it couldn’t be overturned?

      • cobra89@beehaw.org
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        10 months ago

        This comment shows a distinct lack of knowledge of how the US government works or is disingenuous.

        • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          The Dems had 50 years to use the government and codify Roe. They didn’t. Are you saying they also don’t understand how the government works, or do they always seem to have “other priorities?” If they always have “other priorities” what does that say about the purpose of their party?

  • Grant_M@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    Good example of how liberal and ‘conservative’ political parties are NOT the same. Voting matters. VOTE.

      • AeroLemming@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        I mean… I’d agree normally, but this plan requires a Republican president, right?

        Granted, the electoral college makes your vote not matter much.

        • Catfish [she/her]@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          Yes it does, but how long do you think you can stop a republican president from taking power? If they don’t get elected in the next 8 years they’ll put one in power, probably by use of the electoral college or depending on the civil unrest we might even see an insurrection. I think that second one is more unlikely, the tools are made to benefit the Republican Party anyways. The rules are all made up and playing by them won’t protect you, you can only buy time.

  • pononimous@lemmy.ml
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    10 days ago

    PROVE IT! If anyone’s destroying anything, it’s you! You all HATE straight people with a passion I find hard to believe but you do and you’ll do everything you can to destroy everything straight and all things associated WITH straight. That’s YOUR agenda and everyone knows it. That’s why even the GAY COMMUNITY does NOT LIKE the TQ lunatics! Prove me wrong! Protip: you can’t!