David Graham On Project 2025

We talk executive power-grabs by both parties over the decades. And why this is new.

David Graham is a political journalist. He’s a long-time staff writer at The Atlantic and one of the authors of the Atlantic Daily newsletter. His new book is The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America. We go through the agenda and hash out the good and the bad.

For two clips of our convo — on whether SCOTUS will stop Trump, and what a Project 2029 for Dems might look like — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: growing up in Akron; his dad the history prof and his mom the hospital chaplain; aspiring to be a journo since reading Russell Baker as a kid; the origins of Project 2025; its director Paul Dans; Heritage and Claremont; the unitary executive; the New Deal; the odd nature of independent agencies; Dominic Cummings’ reform efforts in the UK; Birtherism; Reaganites in Trump 1.0 tempering him; Russiagate; the BLM riots vs Jan 6; equity under Biden; Russell Vought and Christian nationalism; faith-based orgs; Bostock; the trans EO by Trump; our “post-constitutional moment”; lawfare; the souped-up Bragg case; Liberation Day and its reversal; Biden’s industrial policy; the border crisis; Trump ignoring E-Verify; Labour’s new shift on migration; Obama and the Dreamers; Trump’s “emergencies”; habeas corpus; the Ozturk case; the Laken Riley Act; the abundance agenda; the national debt; DOGE; impoundment and Nixon; trans women in sports; Seth Moulton; national injunctions; judge shopping; and trying to stay sane during Trump 2.0 and the woke resistance.

This week Truman was in the studio as usual, and another pet joined the convo:

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on the Biden years, Sam Tanenhaus on Bill Buckley, Walter Isaacson on Ben Franklin, Tara Zahra on the last revolt against globalization after WWI, NS Lyons on the Trump era, Arthur C. Brooks on the science of happiness, and Paul Elie on his book The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Here’s a fan of last week’s pod with Claire Lehmann:

Claire is awesome! Thank you for yet another wonderful conversation!

Claire just rebooted her own substack after more than a year of dormancy: “Feelings, Facts, and Our Crisis of Truth.”

On the Byron York debate over Trump’s first 100 days, a listener writes:

I didn’t vote for Trump, and I certainly don’t regret that decision, even though it meant throwing my vote to a candidate for whom I had absolutely no enthusiasm. Still, after listening to your conversation with Byron York, I can’t help thinking that it may not be quite accurate to describe Trump as crazy — which is different from saying that he’s a deeply flawed character (and in fact has nothing resembling character in the classical sense). Crazy like a fox?

Trump’s way of operating strikes me as more like the sort of approach characteristic of a certain kind of chess player — Alexander Alekhine being the classic example. Alekhine often played without any particular strategy, aiming instead to create positions so thorny and complex that his opponents would make unforced errors, which he was always confident he would be able to exploit. Of course, Alekhine lost the world title to Max Euwe, whose game was famously balanced and lucid. I have no idea how far the analogy between politics and chess is going to hold up.

Me neither. Another writes:

Here’s where I might help you out on why so many Republicans despised Clinton and Obama: they were successful; and in Clinton’s case, he defeated an incumbent Republican (the same reason Republicans hated FDR for decades).

Many hated Obama even before he became successful, because of racism. Whatever complaints the Tea Party had about him were just cover for the fact that they really couldn’t accept a Black man as president. Not everyone opposing Obama was racist, but they were willing to use the Tea Party any way they could.

I thought Obama was a better choice than Hillary in 2008 — not because their policies were substantially different, but because I was certain that after Republicans demonized her for 20 years, Obama had better chance of winning. And if Hillary won, the Republicans would try to destroy her presidency from the start. I naively believed the Republicans would temper their opposition to Obama in order to not appear racist. I was wrong about that.

Another listener remarks that the following chart “highlights the hypocrisy and double standards in the criticism of Trump’s deportations”:

The crowd that says “Trump’s deportations are an unprecedented attack on civility” has been successful in pushing the narrative that Obama’s deportations mostly happened at the border, so they were not as “cruel” as Trump’s interior deportations. But as you can see in this chart, that narrative is false: Obama did indeed carry out massive numbers of interior removals — far more than Trump did in his first term.

But I missed the horror stories. Were there any? Or was the press covering it up as usual?

Here’s a chunk of the episode where Byron and I discuss Trump’s current priorities on immigration:

A listener dissents:

While it wasn’t a main focus of your conversation with Byron York, I have to admit I was frustrated by your constant criticism of Elon Musk’s work at DOGE. You’ll never hear me defend the way he goes about things, as I’m starting to believe he’s even more mentally unstable than his boss. But where else is there any serious attempt at tackling out-of-control spending?

Economists from across the political spectrum are warning that we are facing a massive debt crisis. We are currently spending about $1.8 trillion more per year than we are taking in, and we’re approaching the point of having to borrow just to pay the interest on our debt.

You rightly note that non-defense discretionary spending is only about 14% of the budget, so there will be no real progress unless we reform entitlements. If you know how to make that happen, please enlighten us. When George W Bush tried to implement some reforms to Social Security, it effectively marked the end of his second term. And when Paul Ryan proposed reforms to flatten the growth of entitlements, your hero Obama’s reelection campaign (and the media that loved him) accused Ryan of wanting to throw grandma off a cliff.

The only other serious major proposal I recall hearing was from the Simpson-Bowles commission — slow the growth curve of entitlements, lower tax rates, but broaden and flatten the code by eliminating almost all loopholes — which Obama and most of Congress completely ignored. The result of Obama’s own much-touted promise to cut the budget by going “line by line” was savings of … $100 million. Be still, my heart.

We couldn’t even maintain the microscopic cuts from the 2012-13 sequester, which wasn’t even a “cut” but a decrease in expected growth (the 2013 budget was still higher than 2012’s, yet the media labeled the puny cuts “draconian”). I like to think that if I were president, I would propose something similar to Simpson-Bowles. How many Congressional representatives would support me? 10? 5?

If all Musk and his team accomplish is reducing spending by $200 billion, it’s woefully inadequate and far short of what was promised — but it’s still $200 billion more than what I see anyone else doing. The fact that his team has made so many errors is to be expected in light of a gargantuan federal government, for which no one can be an expert on every single nook and cranny. How much staff is actually needed in the Office of Orphan Products, for example?

In my support for Obama, Biden, and Harris, I had no illusions about controlling the debt. Maybe I should have written more consistently about it, but I’m strongly in agreement with my reader. I opposed the Bush tax cut for this reason; and, for the record, I constantly backed Simpson-Bowles on the Dish back in 2010. I find DOGE both dumb and trivial, although I have no problem at all stripping a lot of waste and excess from government spending line by line. We need to allow the Trump tax cuts on the wealthy to expire, and we need to tackle Medicare and the Pentagon. No other way to do this.

A Dishcast rec:

I noticed you recently “restacked” an interview with Professor Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School. If you haven’t considered him already, I think he would make a great guest for your podcast! He’s a conservative with a ton of integrity, a brilliant legal mind, and as one of his former students, I can attest that he’s one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. He’s also led a fascinating life and, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, is a committed Christian (one of the classes I took from him was a reading group called “Christian Conceptions of Justice and Mercy”).

Great idea. Next up, a reader on Pope Leo and President Trump:

I’m not, nor have ever been, Catholic, but I certainly consider myself a long-time interested observer of the Church and its leadership. So I’d appreciate a few minutes of your time to share my initial thoughts on the papal selection.

First, the externals: When Pope Francis first appeared on the balcony, he told all of us (on first sight) what to expect from him. The selection of an unused papal name communicated that we would see something new, and his simple dress implied a pope whose authority would be exercised through a place of humility. On the basis of these same two observables, Cardinal Prevost’s choice of name (Pope Leo XIV) and dress made me feel a bit queasy. It first appeared to me that taking an ancient name and a return to papal couture signaled that he would be moving the Church backwards.

Upon further reflection of recent Church history, though, I’m knowing a bit more hope.

I began to think about what happened in 1978. Although John Paul II was, to me, dreadfully conservative, it wasn’t his theological views that mattered in the end. What mattered was that he was a Pole, and that a lot of his papal authority emanated from his place of birth. That year the Cold War was still a big thing, and the Soviet regime was under pressure by the very real challenge posed by the Solidarity movement in Poland. The presence of a Polish pope added to that pressure, and the Soviets may have held back on responding with a severe crackdown simply because of the likely revolt of the Polish faithful due to the implied support of Solidarity by John Paul II.

While decades of bipartisan US foreign policy is usually given the major credit for the downfall of Communism, I have long believed that more than any other single person, John Paul II was responsible for the end of Soviet Communism.

And who did the cardinals select this time? An American!

I’m coming around to the opinion that the cardinals see MAGA as a direct enemy of Catholic (and otherwise-Christian) social teaching, and that the selection of Robert Prevost is in the same spirit as the selection of Cardinal Wojtyla. At this time, the only way for the Church to effectively speak truth to power, and to challenge the consciences of the faithful (and all others), is for an American to sit on the throne. The selection of this man could be explained as the cardinals’ attempt to bring back some humanity to our society and to challenge the cruelty of MAGA and capitalism run amok.

If this is at least partially the case, Leo XIV is walking a dangerous tightrope. Unlike Soviet Communist leadership, the leader of MAGA shows no respect for institutions, and appears ready, willing, and able to destroy any force that simply questions his views (much less actively opposes them). Who knows how he will react to statements backed by moral authority?

If what I’m positing has some basis in fact, this atheist’s prayers are that Leo XIV’s papacy is a success — because democracy’s survival may depend on it.

I explain my view in this week’s column. A couple of responses to this reader. The Pope doesn’t wear a dress! He wears vestments. Francis was a total exception and didn’t set a new rule. But so far, I haven’t seen Pope Leo doing an impression of Liberace, like Benedict did. I also don’t think non-Catholics should be egging the American Pope to take on MAGA. In fact, I’d advise strongly against it, and am quite sure Leo will not take the bait like that. Or at least I hope so. What he can do is represent a moral system that, in comparison, indirectly exposes Trump’s despicable character and amoralism.

Here’s a reader on my column “How Trump Could Re-Boot On Immigration”:

Great piece as usual. I can’t begin to imagine what a national e-Verify system would do to agriculture. I know the owner of a major fruit farm in California who is a huge Trump supporter. He seems to think that they won’t go after his type of people. I have tried to tell him that no one is safe. He flat-out said that he’d be essentially out of business if it weren’t for undocumented workers, as would the vast majority of farms that are very labor intensive, especially in the South and West. No American will do that job. I understand it for construction jobs, but it would cost $1 per strawberry if we do that for agriculture.

The reason Republicans aren’t pushing through any legislation is that Trump has a severe lack of qualified people on his team to help with it. A perfect example is his China expert from his first term, Matthew Pottinger, who is the real person who crafted most of his China strategy, especially limiting exports of technology. Without him we wouldn’t have been able to stop the UK from using Huawei for their 5G infrastructure. He resigned on J6, so there’s zero chance he would be used again, even though he’s probably the most qualified person in the country to work on China policy. The fact that one must say the 2020 election was stolen when answering your FIRST interview question if you want to work in Trump 2.0 seriously limits the most qualified people from being on the team.

Another email comes from a “long-time reader, occasional writer, and we met one time at Burning Man”:

I read with mild amusement your recent piece on Trump’s options for a “legal, humane, and more effective approach” towards immigration. About the arrests of judges, masked men in vans, and violations of constitutional rights, you asked, “There is another, far more American, way forward. Why not take it?” I wonder whether you have considered the possibility that perhaps Trump and his cronies don’t actually care about immigration, or American-ness, but are really just looking for a reliable excuse to arrest judges, send troops to blue state cities, and whisk people away in unmarked vans. It’s certainly something Occam would have considered.

I am indeed extremely concerned about these constitutional violations. Another reader turns to trans issues:

I tried to tell you, Andrew, that you had been far too glib in saying that federal civil rights protection for trans individuals was “settled” after Bostock. That ruling interpreted Title VII of the 1964 CRA only; the Fair Housing Act (Title VIII, initially passed in 1968) could be interpreted differently … and of course that is what the Trump administration is trying to do through HUD in the absence of a controlling SCOTUS precedent on this particular legal point. You should read this AP piece, “In battle against transgender rights, Trump targets HUD’s housing policies.”

Yes, public accommodations are the one remaining issue. The kind of housing discrimination in the story you cite is reprehensible and the Trump administration should be clobbered for it. If the trans activist lobby focused on protecting trans people from this kind of discrimination, they’d win majority public support. But this civil rights message is obscured by the radicalism of the rest of the gender revolution. There are a few things to do to protect civil rights for trans people. We should do them. We should not discredit the entire movement by gender extremism.

Another dissent:

I hope you had a good vacation! I saw your note about the legislative censure in Maine of Representative Laurel Libby. The facts here matter and I think you’ve missed some important information.

Libby was censured for her refusal to remove her post on Facebook. The post was on her official “Representative Laurel Libby” page and had two photos of a high school student — one when the kid was competing in the boys track competition and one when they were competing in the girls competition one or two years later. The pictures clearly show the kid’s face and included the two names they have used. You can imagine what the 60,000 comments look like.

To me, having a public official share that type of image and information was both cruel but also dangerous. I’m still not sure why she refused to remove the post other than her efforts to create a name for herself in the MAGA online universe (an effort you are assisting via your note).

I think there is space to address questions about trans kids playing sports without public humiliation of those kids. In fact, Maine’s governor has said that how to best allow for trans kids’ participation in youth sports is “worthy of a debate,” while at the same time she was defeating Trump’s foolish, overreaching Executive Orders in court. In short, you are often rightly critical of the poor reporting done on this topic and I was disappointed to see you fall in the same trap.

Thanks for fleshing out the story some more. Glad to understand it better. But I have to say I disagree. Why can’t a state representative post photos from public high school sports events that concern a burning political controversy? High-school track meets are not conducted in secret; the web is awash with photos of them; and the athlete, who appears to be 16 or 17, posed for photographs on the medals podium. S/he also posed for a photo holding up a big sign that exclaims: STATE CHAMPS with clear sponsorship by Hammond Lumber. Is the lumber company also being censured for using a trans high school athlete as promotional material?

You can’t have it both ways. If you get up and accept a gold medal in public, if you’re happy for your face to help promote a lumber company, it surely cannot be some unforgivable act for someone to post a photo of it. And I thought these young people were moral heroes anyway? Can they be praised but never criticized?

You can check out the actual Facebook post here — it’s very hard to find elsewhere. There’s no last name; and the photos are there to make an obvious point: someone who finished fifth a year ago as a male now places first as a female. No one is doxxing anyone. Libby didn’t post any “personal information,” so far as I can find. (If she did and was actually doxxing a private trans teen, it would of course by an entirely different matter.)

I’ve seen countless videos and photos of sports events like this online — both in favor of men in women’s sports and against. None blur out the face of the trans athletes. You can also see plenty of photos in the press of this very high school’s students protesting in favor of biological men competing in women’s sports, many minors, and none of their faces are blurred.

But let’s concede that this is a question of judgment, and the lawmaker crossed a line for some people and the legislature decides to censure her. No problem. But prevent her from voting in perpetuity unless she apologizes? It’s an insane over-reach, and a violation of core free speech principles.

It is also symbolic of the LGBTQ+ movement’s pathetic desire to impose by force massive social change — and not have it democratically debated or discussed. Sorry, but this is a democracy. Debating these difficult questions is what we do. You tried to smuggle this through with no one noticing and you failed. And if you think this biologically male athlete defeating women in the pole vault is today’s version of Rosa Parks, why wouldn’t you want his/her face everywhere? Disenfranchising Libby’s constituents for this kind of grandstanding reveals little more than the fanaticism of the trans activist lobby.

Thanks as always for the emails, especially the dissents, which you can send here: dish@andrewsullivan.com.

You can follow more Dish debate in my Notes feed. The following note got the highest number of comments this week:

Got a text this morning from a friend of over thirty years informing me not to interact with him in any way if our paths cross in Provincetown this summer, as they usually do. Shunning and ostracism are integral to the LGBTQ+ movement.

One reader could relate: “At least you got a text. Usually they just ghost me.” I replied:

Yeah that’s everyone else in my peer group. Texts ignored; emails not returned. The silence is the worst thing. I have a podcast that is very civil, but even an invite to a sitting congresswoman, Sarah McBride, is just ignored. Not a decline. But no answer at all. Same with others I have invited.

I still have a few great gay friends. I have some wonderful straight friends. I have close and loving siblings, and about the best readership a writer could hope for. I have an awesome pup. I miss married life but I’m still close to my ex-husband and we still love one another.

And it’s not most normie gays and lesbians who are like this. Most have no idea who I am and don’t care (why should they?) and in private tell me to keep it up.

It’s entirely the higher-educated class of gays. The ones who control everything.

The reader followed up:

Yeah I can relate — different ruling class, same basic problem — as I’m sure can many of your listeners. It’s mostly fear, I think, masquerading as moral disapproval. Still, it sucks, especially if it dredges up old memories and opens up old wounds.

Read the whole thread here. One more note:

Just had another close shave walking my pup on a crosswalk in DC. It’s been happening a lot lately — drivers’ treating pedestrians as irritants to be ignored. I was used to this when I lived in NYC, but DC was better. Not any more. None of the drivers who nearly ran me over were on their phones — they just don’t seem to think pedestrians should have the right of way if it might slow a car down.

Looked up the stats and they have indeed doubled recently. Per capita they are now five times the NYC rate which is falling! Weird.

Here’s the Dish pup:

See you next Friday — when I’ll be Dishing from Ptown.

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