Announcing our debate watch-along in real time, tonight, on this page, starting 5:45 PT/8:45 ET
Please join us!
Friends,
Please join Heather and me right here on this page for tonight’s presidential debate. We’ll provide commentary, opinion, reactions, and, hopefully, some fun — all in real time as we watch it along with you.
We will go live at 5:45 p.m. PT / 8:45 p.m. ET.
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As many as 100 million Americans will watch the first presidential debate of this election year in just a few short hours. This may well be the single most important opportunity for the candidates to define themselves — and each other — to the American people before the election.
Most Americans have no idea how radically destructive Trump’s plan for “governing” in a second term, known as “Project 2025,” actually is.
Project 2025 is dangerous not the least because it dovetails perfectly with Trump’s own totalitarian vision for himself.
It calls for deportation camps for up to 7 million immigrants — Trump’s version of ethnic cleansing — to be carried out by his own white Christian nationalist government, which, in one short-lived Truth Social post, Trump called his “Unified Reich.”
The plan calls for weaponizing the Department of Justice to wreak vengeance on Trump’s enemies, and using the military to put down campus protests. It would eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, the Commission on Civil Rights, and countless other protections for consumers and marginalized groups.
Trump’s plans for education are alarmingly regressive, including abolishing the Department of Education and implementing universal school vouchers, which would funnel millions of public dollars into private schools. Many of these schools teach religious faith as if it were established fact, and aren’t obligated to teach actual science in science classes or actual history in history classes.
Under Project 2025, book bans will be expanded even beyond the more than 3,000 books banned in 2023. The books prohibited by the far-right censors focus mainly on the experiences of people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. Project 2025 also seeks to eliminate all programs that foster diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in schools and universities.
I hope tonight’s moderators ask Trump questions that highlight the proposals in Project 2025 and Trump’s plans for governing in each of these areas. For example:
— Under your administration, will you abolish the Department of Education as outlined in Project 2025?
— Do you support Project 2025’s call to expand book bans and defund schools that don’t comply at the local, state, and federal levels?
— Moms for Liberty, an anti-government extremist group that has quoted Hitler in its literature and threatened violence against teachers, librarians, and school boards, supports Project 2025. Will you disavow their support for your campaign?
We need the debates to clarify for all viewers that a second term for Trump would be far more destructive than his first. A second term would involve the methodical dismantling of the institutions that support and protect our democracy.
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Unfortunately due to CNN’s so called “balanced” reporting I think it will avoid the most inflammatory lines of questioning. Even though people desperately need to hear the truth.
I am so horrified and depressed by the fact that we’re even dealing with a potential dictator running for president that I can’t watch media coverage without the stress overwhelming me. I follow Dr. Reich’s posts and the comments, hoping for comfort knowing that there are still sane, intelligent, and moral people in this country.