There is everything wrong, though, with that former president using the occasion to generate visual fodder for his bid to return to the White House. Trump brought along a photographer and videographer from his campaign to capture images of the visit — which his campaign team knew, and he surely knew, was forbidden.
And, of course, there is everything wrong with physically shoving aside a worker at the cemetery who was doing her job and trying to enforce the rules.
“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” Arlington Cemetery officials said this week in a statement. This was made clear to Trump’s team as the visit was being planned, officials said — including the strict enforcement of the rule at Section 60, where grief and loss are still raw.
“What was abundantly clear-cut was: Section 60, no photos and no video,” a defense official told The Post.
Despite that warning, though, the Trump team brought its cameras into Section 60. When a cemetery employee tried to stop them, according to The Post, “a larger male campaign aide insisted the camera was allowed and pushed past the cemetery employee, leaving her shocked.”
No one can dismiss the incident as a misunderstanding by Trump and his aides, since their official position is that Trump is infallible. The campaign’s response, as usual, was a lie — a false and gratuitously cruel statement from spokesman Steven Cheung to NPR, which first reported the cemetery clash: “The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony.”
The campaign promised to release footage to corroborate its version of the encounter. That turned out to be a TikTok post — a political ad — with video of Trump in Section 60. And the campaign released an image of Trump standing with family members of the fallen amid the still-fresh graves. He is shown flashing a broad smile and giving a thumbs-up.
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), tried to chime in MAGA-style by attacking Vice President Kamala Harris — the surging Democratic Party presidential nominee — for any role she might have played in the Afghanistan withdrawal. “She wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up?” Vance said at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. “She can go to hell.”
For the record, at that point Harris had not yelled, or said anything at all, about the cemetery incident.
Also for the record, it was Trump who negotiated the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and forced the Afghan government to release thousands of jailed Taliban fighters in a prisoner swap. Those decisions helped make possible the Taliban’s swift return to power.
And a point of personal privilege: The ashes of my father-in-law and mother-in-law, Edward Rhodes Collins and Annie Ruth Collins, are interred at Arlington. He was a Navy veteran who came under fire in the South Pacific during World War II and later in Korea.
Arlington National Cemetery is a place of honor. Donald Trump thinks honor is for suckers and losers — and values sacrifice only if it might help him win an election. Do not become numb to his nature.
--Enact a two-income tax bracket system that would raise taxes by $3,000 for the median family of four—which makes about $110,000 a year—and raise taxes by $950 for the typical single-person household, which makes about $40,000 a year. (see Appendix for state-specific data)
--Provide an average $1.5–2.4 million tax cut for the 45,000 U.S. households making more than $10 million annually from the combination of the “two-bracket” system and cuts to taxes on the wealthy’s investment income.
--Cut the corporate tax rate to 18 percent, which amounts to a $24 billion tax cut for the Fortune 100.
--Replace all individual and corporate income taxes with a consumption tax in the long term. This could take the form of a value-added tax well above 45 percent, which would produce an enormous one-time burst of inflation and raise prices.
The centerpiece of Project 2025’s “intermediate tax reform” plan consolidates seven individual income tax brackets, ranging from 10 to 37 percent, to just two brackets: 15 percent and 30 percent.
Project 2025 says this is a way to “to simplify the tax code,” but the number of tax brackets is already one of the simplest parts of the tax code, especially since tax-filing software instantly calculates how much tax families owe for income in each bracket. Moreover, 70 percent of tax filers only have enough income to be in the first two brackets, so they effectively are already in a two-bracket system.
Project 2025’s new tax bracket system, however, represents an enormous shift of the tax burden from wealthy tax filers to middle-income tax filers. This is because the two current bottom brackets (10 percent and 12 percent) are lower than the 15 percent tax bracket proposed by Project 2025. This effectively raises the tax rate on a married couple’s income between about $30,000 and $120,000 and on a single filer’s income between about $15,000 and $60,000. Higher-income tax filers, on the other hand, would get a tax cut, as the proposed 30 percent tax bracket is lower than the current 32 percent, 35 percent, and 37 percent brackets that much of their income falls into.*
The end result of these changes would be a tax increase for middle-class households. The median family of four made about $110,000 in 2022 and would experience about a $3,000 tax increase from this change. They would experience a tax increase in all 50 states outside of Washington, D.C., where the median family of four—making $195,000 in income—would experience a tax cut. In addition, the median one-person household made about $40,000 in 2022 and would experience a $950 tax increase under the plan. They would also experience a tax increase in all 50 states, as well as Washington, D.C. (see Appendix)
Project 2025 also “eliminates most deductions, credits and exclusions.” The calculations above do not include the effects of removing these tax provisions since it is not known which ones Project 2025 would eliminate and many middle-income households do not use many of them, such as the mortgage interest deduction, since they take the standard deduction. If Project 2025 were to eliminate the child tax credit and earned income tax credit, the tax increases on low- and middle-income families would be even larger.
Project 2025 takes further steps to cut taxes for the wealthy. It says “capital gains and qualified dividends should be taxed at 15 percent,” which is exclusively a tax cut for the less than 2 percent of households making more than $500,000 a year, since taxpayers making below that amount already pay a 0 or 15 percent tax rate on that income. Project 2025 would also eliminate the net investment income tax, which is a 3.8 percent tax on capital gains, dividends, and other investment income received by households making more than $200,000.
Combining the changes to tax brackets, the cut in the tax rate on capital gains and dividends for the wealthy, and the elimination of the net investment income tax, this would deliver an average tax cut of up to $2.4 million for the 45,000 households making more than $10 million annually. If Project 2025 were to eliminate all itemized deductions—including the charitable deduction—and the deduction for pass-through business income for this group, their average tax cut would still be $1.5 million.
Project 2025 does not stop at cutting taxes for wealthy individuals; it also proposes an array of tax cuts for corporations. This starts by doubling down on the staggering 14 percentage-point cut in the corporate tax rate that the majority of congressional Republicans enacted in 2017 by further cutting the rate from 21 percent to 18 percent.
This would amount to a $24 billion tax cut for the Fortune 100, the 100 largest companies in America, based on CAP analysis of their latest financial statements. This includes:
--A $1.3 billion tax cut to the five largest U.S. oil companies: Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Marathon Petroleum/ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, and Valero Energy
--A $1.6 billion tax cut to the five largest drug makers: Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, AbbVie, and Bristol Myers Squibb
--A $2.1 billion tax cut to the five largest Wall Street banks: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs--A $800 million tax cut to the five largest grocery companies: Kroger, Costco, Albertsons, Target, and Walmart
And Project 2025 would further cut taxes for corporations by repealing the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax increases for corporations, including a 15 percent minimum corporate tax rate for the largest corporations and an excise tax on stock buyback.
There is even more of this article at the link here.
And this link takes you to all of the articles in this Project 2025 series.
These guys have done some serious work here. I know that everyone is getting bombarded with solicitations for money, but consider tossing a few bucks to the Center for American Progress.
The People’s Guide to Project 2025
What is Project 2025?
The Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project is a well-funded (eight-figure) effort of the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 organizations to enable a future anti-democratic presidential administration to take swift, far-right action that would cut wages for working people, dismantle social safety net programs, reverse decades of progress for civil rights, redefine the way our society operates, and undermine our economy.
A central pillar of Project 2025 is the “Mandate for Leadership,” a 900+ page policy playbook authored by former Trump administration officials and other extremists that provides a radical vision for our nation and a roadmap to implement it.
We read Project 2025’s entire 900+ page “Mandate for Leadership” so that you don’t have to.
What we discovered was a systemic, ruthless plan to undermine the quality of life of millions of Americans, remove critical protections and dismantle programs for communities across the nation, and prioritize special interests and ideological extremism over people.
From attacking overtime pay, student loans, and reproductive rights, to allowing more discrimination, pollution, and price gouging, those behind Project 2025 are preparing to go to incredible lengths to create a country only for some, not for all of us.
If these plans are enacted, even without congressional approval, 4.3 million people could lose overtime protections, 40 million people could have their food assistance reduced, 220,000 American jobs could be lost, and much, much, more. The stakes are higher than ever for democracy and for people.
These threats aren’t hypothetical. These are their real plans.
The Heritage Foundation and the 100+ organizations that make up the Project
2025 Advisory Board have mapped out exactly how they will achieve their extreme ends. They aim to carry out many of the most troubling proposals through an anti-democratic president and political loyalists installed in the executive branch, without waiting for congressional action. And, while many of these plans are unlawful, winning in court is not guaranteed given that the same far-right movement that is behind Project 2025 has shaped our current court system.
To combat the threats posed by Project 2025, we have to first understand them.
What follows are some of the most dangerous proposals that make up Project 2025, specifically those that could be implemented through federal agencies and a far- right executive branch.
The majority of Americans share the same values and priorities, but Project 2025 wants to push an extreme, out-of-touch agenda on all of us. By reading this guide and sharing it, we can begin to address these threats and go on offense towards building a bold, inclusive democracy for all people.
The People's Guide to Project 2025.
