I normally find columns by Thomas B. Edsall less than satisfying. His columns appear in The NY Times on a weekly basis. He often takes on a particular issue of importance, but gathers input from various sources that often end up canceling each other out.
Not this time.
The link should allow full access. It’s worth reading because Edsall has done something that the mainstream media does not do often enough. He goes beyond the simple and easy horserace reporting about Trump vs. Biden, the coverage of Trump’s latest bizarre actions/words/lies, and other important but not terribly deep coverage to lay out the bigger picture.
In a rare display of unity, more than 100 conservative tax-exempt organizations have joined forces in support of Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda, forming a $2 billion-plus political machine.
Together, these organizations are constructing a detailed postelection agenda, lining up prospective appointees and backing Trump in his legal battles.
Most of the work performed by these nonprofit groups is conducted behind closed doors. Unlike traditional political organizations, these groups do not disclose their donors and must reveal only minimal information on expenditures. In many cases, even this minimal information will not be available until after the 2024 election.
Edsall names names, lists the organizations working together. He explains how they use the tax code to move massive amounts of money around under the radar. It’s a who’s who of dark money conservative oligarchs with an extremist agenda. It’s a long piece with a lot of links; it’s worth bookmarking or saving as a pdf.
The conclusion gives a good if scary picture of what they hope to accomplish:
At the start of the book, Paul Dans, executive director of Project 2025, pointedly wrote that “it’s not 1980,” when Heritage produced the first “Mandate for Leadership” to guide the incoming administration of Ronald Reagan. Instead, Dans argued, the United States in 2024 is at an apocalyptic moment:
The game has changed. The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand to reverse this tide and restore our Republic to its original moorings is too great for any one conservative policy shop to spearhead. It requires the collective action of our movement. With the quickening approach of January 2025, we have one chance to get it right.
This time, the conservative movement plans to exercise maximum surveillance over an incoming Trump administration. In other words, there will be no kidding around.
This is what too many people do NOT realize they are voting for if they vote for Trump. (And then there are those who think this is exactly what they want — the true deplorables.) These would-be masters of the universe have tremendous hubris if they think Trump, the master of chaos, can be controlled. Did they learn nothing from watching how well the Project for a New American Century turned out in Iraq? (That’s a rhetorical question.)
I have only two issues with this column.
1) There’s a peculiar reluctance by the Times and the rest of the MSM to use Fascism to describe what’s happening. When Trump is openly paraphrasing Adolf Hitler, it’s a little late to be concerned with civility. (See below)
2) This is buried on the Opinion Page. This isn’t opinion — this is reporting actual objective facts: who these people are, what they are saying, why they are planning to do it, how they plan to do it, and when they are going to do it. (Where is America, but also everywhere else their reach touches.) You know — actual journalism.
This should be on the front page above the fold, and it should spark followup articles examining all of this in detail.
READ THE WHOLE THING
ICYMI
This letter from Chris Quinn, the editor at Cleveland.com should be required reading as well: Our Trump reporting upsets some readers, but there aren’t two sides to facts: Letter from the Editor
...The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.
The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.
This is not subjective. We all saw it. Plenty of leaders today try to convince the masses we did not see what we saw, but our eyes don’t deceive. (If leaders began a yearslong campaign today to convince us that the Baltimore bridge did not collapse Tuesday morning, would you ever believe them?) Trust your eyes. Trump on Jan. 6 launched the most serious threat to our system of government since the Civil War. You know that. You saw it.
The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it...
emphasis added
Again — Read the whole thing. These two pieces from Edsall and Quinn should be mandatory reading for what’s left of the press.