J.D. Vance Is Getting Debate Help From a Project 2025 Contributor

Despite spending months trying to distance themselves from Project 2025, the top of the Republican presidential ticket seems committed to bringing the Christian nationalist manifesto closer to the White House.

Republican vice presidential pick J.D. Vance has enlisted key allies, including a Project 2025 contributor, in his debate prep sessions ahead of his first face-off against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on October 1, according to CNN.

Monica Crowley, who served as the United States assistant secretary of the Treasury for public affairs in the Trump administration, will assist Vance as a mock moderator this week, according to two unnamed sources that spoke with CNN. Crowley is listed in the Project 2025 policy book as a contributor. Project 2025 describes contributors as people who “generously volunteered their time and effort to assist the authors in the development and writing of the volume’s 30 chapters.”  

Vance has appeared remarkably open to the 920-page, far-right agenda. The Ohio senator has previously applauded Project 2025’s policy goals, telling Newsmax in July that “there are some good ideas in there,” and has advanced ideas for a second Trump administration that align with the project’s details, including overhauling the federal government with thousands of cherry-picked Trump loyalists.

Crowley is reportedly involved with the debate preparations in order to make the mock sessions feel as “real and professional” as possible.

“One of the benefits of doing hostile media nonstop is you become very well-versed in dealing with attacks on your record,” one source with direct knowledge of the preparation told CNN. “We have a lot of confidence in J.D. speaking about policy. The goal is to focus on Walz and his weaknesses.”

Project 2025 has advanced seemingly outrageous policy positions, including dismantling wholesale staples of the executive branch such as the Department of Education. It also proposes revisiting federal approval of the abortion pill, banning pornography nationwide, placing the Justice Department under the control of the president, slashing federal funds for climate change research in an effort to sideline mitigation efforts, and increasing funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

On July 5, Trump claimed that he “knew nothing about Project 2025” and had “no idea who is behind it.”

“I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

But just Monday night, he made a campaign promise straight out of the Project 2025 playbook: abolishing the Department of Education.

Senator Joe Manchin is retiring at the end of his term, but that won’t stop him from being a Democratic Party pooper all the way through the November election.

On Tuesday, following Vice President Kamala Harris’s announcement that she would do away with the filibuster in order to pass federal abortion protections, Manchin said this move was a step too far and that he’d rescind his endorsement of Harris for president.

“She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids,” said Manchin, speaking about the 200-year-old Senate rule to CNN. In his rant, Manchin seemed to paint Harris as a threat to democracy, appearing to forget who else is on the ballot.

Manchin said Harris’s plan to end the filibuster in favor of a simple majority vote is enough to make him rescind his support for her as the Democratic candidate. “I’m not endorsing. I think that’s basically something that can destroy our country, and my country is more important to me than any one person or any one person’s ideology.”

He went on to call ending the filibuster “the most horrible thing.” In the real world, perhaps bleeding out in a hospital parking lot is more horrible.

In his time in the Senate, Manchin used his commitment to the filibuster’s 60-vote hurdle to stop critical popular legislation such as voting rights legislation in 2022.

The West Virginia politician who made his millions from fossil fuels and recently registered as an independent also took the chance to get another jab in at the vice president when asked about her past positions on the filibuster. “Well, she said she supported banning fracking too, and she changed that. I was hoping she would change this,” said Manchin.

Kamala Harris has a plan for restoring abortion rights as they existed under Roe v. Wade.

On Tuesday, Vice President Harris said she would support eliminating the Senate filibuster in order to bring back federal abortion protections.

“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe, and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio.

Harris made clear that she supports averting the usual 60-vote threshold in the Senate and using 51 votes to put reproductive rights back into law “for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”

This comes after Senator Bernie Sanders, who previously had stood strong in support of the filibuster, said earlier this month that he would make an exception to the rule to pass abortion rights. In August, Senator Chuck Schumer suggested that Democrats would try to use the filibuster carve-out after November.

Back in 2022, Joe Biden indicated his support for a filibuster carve-out specifically to codify Roe but met roadblocks like Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who previously halted filibuster reform.

Reinstating federal abortion rights could prove to be a salient issue for voters in swing states.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump wants women voters to “no longer be thinking about abortion” as he’ll serve as their “protector.”

Earlier this year, two U.S. government authorities determined that Israel was deliberately blocking food and medicine deliveries into Gaza during its brutal massacre in the territory.

But even after the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department’s refugees bureau shared their findings with senior diplomats in late April, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress almost the exact opposite days later, ProPublica reported Tuesday, citing leaked reports.

In a statement to Congress on May 10, Blinken said, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

Before his statement to Congress, Blinken received a 17-page memo from USAID on Israel’s conduct, obtained by ProPublica, which described instances of Israel killing aid workers, bombing hospitals and ambulances, tearing down agricultural structures, regularly turning away trucks of food and medicine, and sitting on supply depots.

Food for Gaza, including flour that could have fed nearly 1.5 million Palestinians for five months, was stockpiled less than 30 miles from the Gazan border in an Israeli port, the memo stated. In February, however, Israel stopped allowing flour into the territory, accusing the recipient, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, of having ties to Hamas. An independent investigation would find no evidence for Israel’s claims.

On its own, the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration also concluded that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid, recommending that nearly $830 million in weapons and bombs to Israel, paid by U.S. taxpayers, should be frozen under the Foreign Assistance Act. USAID echoed the recommendation, writing in its memo that the U.S. should pause additional arms sales to the country.

These findings appear to have been either overlooked or ignored by Blinken and other leading Biden administration officials. The United Nations has declared a famine in Gaza, saying that many Palestinians in the territory go days without food and that many children have starved to death. The war also has created a health emergency in Gaza, including the territory’s first confirmed case of polio in 25 years.

The State Department issued a statement in response to questions from ProPublica, claiming that it had pressured Israel to allow more aid into Gaza.

“As we made clear in May when [our] report was released, the US had deep concerns during the period since October 7 about action and inaction by Israel that contributed to a lack of sustained delivery of needed humanitarian assistance,” the statement read. “Israel subsequently took steps to facilitate increased humanitarian access and aid flow into Gaza.”

The U.S. government’s handling of USAID’s memo led to internal conflict, with one official in the State Department, Stacy Gilbert, resigning in May over Blinken’s statement to Congress.

“There is abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid,” Gilbert wrote in a statement at the time. “To deny this is absurd and shameful. That report and its flagrant untruths will haunt us.”

There are no signs that Blinken or the Biden administration plan to change their policies toward Israel or its war in Gaza, even as the war has killed more than 41,467 Palestinians, including 16,500 children, almost certainly undercounts and not including death tolls from Israel’s military attacks in the West Bank and southern Lebanon. Even in the face of evidence collected by U.S. agencies themselves, the Biden administration refuses to consider an arms embargo against Israel or acknowledge Israel’s many war crimes.

Even Donald Trump’s allies can’t seem to find any evidence of the Haitian immigrant conspiracy that’s plagued Springfield, Ohio, since it was elevated by the top of the Republican presidential ticket two weeks ago.

After a visit to the beleaguered Ohio town, biotech millionaire Vivek Ramaswamy brushed off the plainly racist MAGA theory that Haitian residents had been stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets.

“Having gone to Springfield, I didn’t see that evidence,” Ramaswamy said during a Tuesday appearance on CNN, before attempting to flip the script back on Democrats.

“So when we’re getting into fact-checking, I think we should apply the same standard 360 degrees,” Ramaswamy continued, referring to comments Kamala Harris has made about women “bleeding out in parking lots” due to abortion bans.

Host Kasie Hunt was quick to push back, mentioning Amber Thurman, a woman who died in Georgia after waiting more than 20 hours for care under the state’s restrictive abortion ban. But Ramaswamy was unfazed, despite having just admitted that there is truth behind Harris’s words and none behind Trump’s.

“Let’s not use the fringe words that somebody on either side might say,” he said. “And let’s focus on the actual content of the debate, even when we disagree most. I think that’s going to be a key step to reviving our country.”

Multiple city officials, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, and even J.D. Vance himself have stated in no uncertain terms that the Haitian immigrant conspiracy is false.

Since Vance and Trump began elevating the myth just two weeks ago, Springfield has received at least 33 bomb threats, forcing it to evacuate and temporarily shutter several of its schools, colleges, festivals, and a significant portion of its government facilities, including City Hall, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Ohio License Bureau, the Springfield Academy of Excellence, and Fulton Elementary School.

Meanwhile, the surrounding area has seen a restructuring of its local Republican boards in light of the controversial conspiracy. One Ohio sheriff lost his election duties after he elevated the conspiracy by inviting locals to send him the addresses of constituents with Harris-Walz signage in their yards.

Donald Trump just can’t stop talking about Kamala Harris working at McDonald’s—and now he’s escalating things for absolutely no reason.

Harris has previously said that she worked at the popular fast food chain when she was a college student, and referred to her experience as part of her call for livable wages and protections for workers from sexual harassment and abuse.

Trump, whose first job as the son of a real estate mogul was investing in real estate, seemingly cannot tolerate this bullet point on Harris’s résumé, and has latched on to right-wing conspiracy theories that it was a lie. The former president has become so obsessed with trying to discredit Harris’s job experience that he told a crowd of his supporters he would try out working at McDonald’s for the day.

“I think I’m gonna go to a McDonald’s next week, some place,” Trump said during a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Monday. “I’m gonna go to a McDonald’s, and I’m going to work the french fry job for about a half an hour. I want to see how it is.”

As Trump spoke about Harris’s résumé, he got so worked up he started shouting, almost incoherently. “But she said she worked, and grew up in terrible conditions, she worked at McDonald’s, it was such—SHE NEVER WORKED THERE!

“And these FAKE news reporters will never report it. They don’t want to report it because they’re FAKE! They’re FAKE! They don’t want to report it,” Trump said. Unfortunately for the Republican presidential nominee, the press does not typically report on stories if they’re not true.

“She never worked at McDonald’s, but it was a big part of her résumé,” Trump continued.

Here, Trump appears to overstate the role that Harris has given her experience at McDonald’s. Harris explained at a campaign event in June 2019 that “I did the french fries and I did the ice cream.”

Trump explained his own in-depth fact-checking process, to show how he was able to determine Harris was lying: “They went to, they went to the different places, ‘Did she work here?’ ‘Did she work here?’ ‘Did she work here?’ She said, ‘We don’t know who the hell she is, leave us the hell alone, we’re making hamburgers!’” He did not clarify who the “she” who told “them” to leave her alone is.

Clearly, Harris’s claim that she worked at McDonald’s is eating away at Trump—he already ranted about the same thing in a post on Truth Social last week.

“How bad is it when a Candidate running for Office makes a major part of her Campaign that she works at McDonald’s, and it turns out not to be true, but the worst part is the Media refuses to talk about it!” Trump wrote.

At a campaign rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Donald Trump railed against Haitian immigrants, riling up the crowd who began chanting for their deportation.

Trump warned that left-wing think tanks are trying to “inundate” small towns like those in Pennsylvania, changing their character, and claimed that “they will never be the same.” He then mentioned the increase of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio—who are in the country legally—and alluded to the racist pet-eating conspiracy that his campaign has helped to fuel.

“Do you think Springfield will ever be the same? I don’t think. The fact is, and I’ll say it now, you have to get ’em the hell out, you have to get ’em out, I’m sorry,” Trump said. “Get ’em out. Can’t have it. Can’t have it. They’ve destroyed it.”

The crowd roared its approval as soon as Trump said, “Get ’em out,” and then began chanting, “Send them back.”

For several weeks, Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, have repeated and fueled a racist conspiracy that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are capturing and eating pets, ducks, and geese, with Trump even repeating it during the presidential debate. Trump has used it to bolster his plan for mass deportations if he returns to the White House, and Vance has doubled down despite being fully aware that the story isn’t true. Meanwhile, the town has been inundated with violent threats to its hospitals, schools, and government buildings.

Last week, Trump singled out another town, Charleroi, Pennsylvania, for its Haitian population, drawing an immediate response from town officials, who said that Trump’s claims weren’t true. Like the immigrants in Springfield, Charleroi’s recent arrivals are in the United States legally. But the Trump campaign isn’t likely to stop its attacks, especially since the former president and convicted felon relied on anti-immigrant slogans in his first campaign in 2016. It will be up to Democrats to find a way to counter Trump’s hateful and odious message.

Representative D’Esposito doesn’t want to answer questions about a report that he gave jobs in his office to his former lover and his fiancée’s daughter.

After a scoop from The New York Times, the Long Island politician is under fire for this possible nepotism, which could be grounds for a House ethics investigation. It’s a little ironic, given that D’Esposito led the charge and eventual expulsion of former fellow New York Republican George Santos from Congress.

After the news broke Monday evening, D’Esposito could be seen dodging reporters, hurrying away from even softball questions. His only answer came when he was asked if he believed the report was a “political attack”—to which he responded, “I do.”

As he gave reporters the silent treatment on Capitol Hill, he released a formal statement Monday night that did little to deny the accusation and instead attacked the media.

“The latest political tabloid garbage being peddled by The New York Times is nothing more than a slimy, partisan ‘hit piece’ designed to distract Long Islanders from Democrats’ failing record on border security, the economy, and foreign policy,” he wrote. “My personal life has never interfered with my ability to deliver results for New York’s 4th district, and I have upheld the highest ethical standards of personal conduct. Voters deserve better than the Times’ gutter politics.”

D’Esposito faces a tough race in New York’s 4th congressional district in a rematch against Democrat Laura Gillen. The Nassau County GOP has defended the Republican congressman against the reports, calling the Times piece “politically motivated and baseless mud-slinging.”

Santos, meanwhile, is celebrating his colleague’s downfall.

“Before anyone says anything, YES I’m petty!,” wrote Santos on X in response to the video of D’Esposito hustling away from reporters. “This is just the tip of the iceberg folks!”

House Republicans have a slim four-seat majority in the House, meaning the pressure is on for the New York congressmen to find a better answer, and quick.

Donald Trump is still escalating his anti-immigrant rhetoric.

In a thinly veiled threat on Truth Social, the Republican presidential nominee likened immigration to “the destruction of America” and promised that, if elected, he would end “migrant flights” to Pennsylvania immediately and send “those who do not belong… back home.”

“It takes centuries to build the unique character of each state. But reckless migration policy can change it quickly and permanently. Just like we’ve seen in London, and Paris, and Minneapolis,” Trump wrote early Tuesday (apparently lumping international capital cities in with states). “If Kamala Harris wins this election, she will flood Pennsylvania cities and towns with illegal migrants from all over the world—and Pennsylvania will not be Pennsylvania any longer.”

“When I am president, all migrant flights to Pennsylvania will STOP the moment I take the oath of office,” he continued. “Those who do not belong, will be sent back home. We will end the invasion of small-town Pennsylvania—and we will END the destruction of America.”

It’s the second such warning that Trump has made this week, and that comes in the wake of a bewildering and baseless conspiracy contrived by Trump and his vice presidential pick J.D. Vance accusing Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating pets. Multiple city officials, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, and even Vance himself have stated in no uncertain terms that the conspiracy is false, but that hasn’t stopped a deluge of bomb threats from tying up the city, forcing it to evacuate and temporarily shutter several of its schools, colleges, festivals, and a significant portion of its government facilities.

In a weekend interview with Full Measure’s Sharyl Attkisson, Trump posited the idea of giving noncitizens “serial numbers” for the purposes of mass deportations, a mental image that echoes the identification numbers forcibly tattooed on concentration camp prisoners. In the same interview, Trump argued that the U.S.—which was founded by and has historically been a nation of immigrants—shouldn’t be a “dumping ground” for newcomers, and said that less U.S. media coverage of border issues and his proposed deportation programs could be a solution to allowing him to follow through on his extreme plans.

“If you take a young woman with two beautiful children, and you put her on a bus, and it ends up on the front page of every newspaper. It makes it a lot harder,” Trump told Full Measure. “You put one wrong person onto a bus or onto an airplane, and your radical left lunatics will try and make it sound like the worst thing that’s ever happened.”

Donald Trump has spent months trying to distance his campaign from Project 2025, but some of his comments during a campaign stop in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Monday revealed that his platform is still nearly identical to the 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto.

Speaking before roughly 5,000 people at the Kovalchick Convention and Athletic Complex, Trump flatly promised to demolish the Department of Education, claiming that the federal authority was the reason for the country’s floundering education rates.

“We spend more money per pupil than any other country by far, and yet we’re at the bottom of the list,” Trump said. “Out of 40, we’re ranked about Number 40.”

“And I’m going to close the Department of Education and move education back to the states,” he continued. “And we’re going to do it fast.”

The United States actually ranks twenty-second out of 41 countries, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Better Life Index.

The Republican presidential nominee then continued to compare individual states to countries that consistently place high on international education rankings, such as Denmark or Norway, which use national socialist structures to fund their public schools. For Trump, those states include Idaho and Iowa—but not California, where Trump believes Governor “Gavin Newscum” would interfere with localized education systems.

“We’re going to have 35 like, different ones—Iowa will do good. A lot of the states will do very good. I can think of probably 30, 35 will be do—five will be OK, 10 will be OK. You’ll have four or five that will be terrible, but that’s OK, we have to control it,” Trump said. “But you’ll have, you’ll have Idaho, you’ll have Idaho will do a great job, no debt; they run a great state.”

Project 2025 has advanced seemingly outrageous policy positions, including dismantling, wholesale, staples of the executive branch such as the Department of Education. It also proposes revisiting federal approval of the abortion pill, banning pornography nationwide, placing the Justice Department under the control of the president, slashing federal funds for climate change research in an effort to sideline mitigation efforts, and increasing funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

On July 5, Trump claimed that he “knew nothing about Project 2025” and had “no idea who is behind it.”

“I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”