Leslie is joined by Joe Radosevich.  He is the Vice President for Campaigns and Outreach in the Advocacy and Outreach Department at the Center for American Progress. He works across teams to advance the organization’s priorities with external partners and elected leaders.

Leslie and Joe discuss the extensive piece he co-wrote with Will Ragland, titled, "Project 2025: The Plan To Seize Power by Gutting America’s System of Checks and Balances."

Here is the beginning of the eye-opening guide:

"The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is a road map for how a new far-right presidential administration can take over the country. The project contains four components: a 920-page book with far-right policy proposals, a personnel database of loyalists ready to replace tens of thousands of civil servants, a private online training center, and an unpublished plan for the first 180 days of a new administration.

Many of the proposals in Project 2025 are sweeping and would eliminate fundamental personal freedoms while cutting the take-home pay of millions of Americans. Unsurprisingly, Project 2025’s policies to increase taxes on the middle class, allow corporations to stop paying workers overtime, implement a national abortion ban, and raise the retirement age for Social Security are wildly unpopular.

That is why the most striking aspect of Project 2025 is a new strategy to gut the system of checks and balances that has long protected Americans’ personal freedoms. This strategy would concentrate power in the hands of the president—and set in motion a plan to flood the civil service with far-right loyalists to seize control of independent agencies. It is a playbook written for an authoritarian administration. This new vision would make it even harder for the American people to have a say in their government or oppose policies they disagree with.

The scope of Project 2025 is extensive. An ongoing series from the Center for American Progress unpacks specific proposals in Project 2025, from raising the cost of prescription drugs and restricting access to contraception, to slashing funding for early childhood and K-12 education. There are proposals to end civil rights protections, exploit the most vulnerable Americans, stop safeguards that protect clean drinking water, halt action to combat the climate crisis, and open the door to an unprecedented level of corruption at the expense of the public. Taken together, Project 2025 is a plan for a presidency focused on consolidating and holding on to power.

Many of the policies listed in the public 920-page agenda can be grouped into three core areas:
    - Gut the U.S. system of checks and balances to consolidate power.
    - Take away Americans’ fundamental personal freedoms.
   -  Raise costs on the middle class to give the wealthy billions."

Read the rest at this link: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/project-2025-the-plan-to-seize-power-by-gutting-americas-system-of-checks-and-balances/

Before joining American Progress, Joe served in a variety of senior roles for U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. As Governor Shapiro’s Chief of Staff, Joe led the combined legal and communications strategy that successfully defended Pennsylvania’s election results in 2020, and expanded the role of the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office into labor and environmental crimes.
The website for The Center for American Progress Action Fund is www.AmericanProgressAction.org.


(Image Credit: Getty/Alex Wong)