The district attorney of Philadelphia has filed a lawsuit to halt Elon Musk ‘s $1 million giveaways as part of his political organization’s effort boosting Donald Trump ‘s presidential campaign.
The suit by Democratic District Attorney Larry Krasner is the first legal action to be brought over the America PAC’s sweepstakes offering $1 million every day until Nov. 5 to a person in a battleground state who has signed a petition supporting the Constitution.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Krasner’s office said the lawsuit, coming just over a week before Election Day, doesn’t preclude potential criminal action.
“The Philadelphia District Attorney is charged with protecting the public from public nuisances and unfair trade practices, including illegal lotteries. The DA is also charged with protecting the public from interference with the integrity of elections,” Krasner’s office said in a statement published on its website.
A spokesperson for the billionaire tech mogul’s America PAC, emailed for comment on the lawsuit and asked if the cash awards would continue, responded with a link to an X post, which showed the latest $1 million winner holding an oversized check.
Krasner’s office didn’t immediately respond to questions about the lawsuit, including whether it compels Musk to immediately stop the giveaway or whether the dispute can be resolved before Election Day.
Reflecting the state’s importance in the election, both Harris and Trump have made numerous recent visits to Pennsylvania, including Trump’s photo op at a suburban Philadelphia McDonald’sand Harris’ Sunday visit in the city that included stops at a church and a barbershop.
Musk’s giveaway requires entrants to sign a petition backing the First and Second Amendments of the Constitution and calls for them to serve as spokespeople for the organization as a condition of winning.
The awards have carried on after election law experts raised questions that it violates federal law barring anyone from paying a person to vote or register to vote. The issue, they say, is that winning the award requires contestants to be registered to vote in one of a handful of battleground states. Musk has cast the money as both a prize as well as earnings for work as a spokesperson for the group.
In his statement announcing the lawsuit, Krasner characterized the $1 million prize as a “lottery,” which would make it more heavily regulated than if it were a prize or work-related.
Brought in Pennsylvania court, Krasner’s suit doesn’t directly apply to the other swing states whose residents are eligible for the $1 million.
Musk, who founded SpaceX and Tesla and owns X, has gone all in on Trump this election, saying he thinks civilization is at stake if he loses. He is undertaking much of the get-out-the-vote effort for Trump through his super PAC, which can raise and spend unlimited sums of money. He has committed more than $70 million to the super PAC to help Trump and other Republicans win in November.
(To get this story in your inbox, subscribe to the TIME CO2 Leadership Report newsletter here.)
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is one of the most enthusiastic champions of the Biden Administration’s climate agenda. Since the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) just over two years ago, she has hopped around the country and around the world touting U.S. clean technology investments catalyzed by the law and other infrastructure dollars. I’ve seen her speak everywhere from Houston to Paris, drawing big crowds and delivering a characteristically upbeat, almost cheerful view of the work being done to decarbonize and revitalize American industry.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]And yet, in an interview in New York last month, she told me she still worries that the public may not fully appreciate the magnitude of the change underway. “People don’t fully understand the moment in history we’re in with the incredible explosion of clean energy that is coming onto the grid,” she says. “Once the history is written, people will say, ‘wow, this was the moment where we really got serious.’”
In our conversation, Granholm touts familiar data points: 800 new or expanded clean technology manufacturing facilities in the U.S. during the Biden Administration; 60 GW of clean energy capacity this year alone (equivalent to 30 Hoover Dams). She touts the diverse geographic distribution of these investments. “How fantastic is it that every pocket of America is benefiting from this clean energy transformation?” she asks enthusiastically.
But when I ask what she’s most proud of, the first thing that comes to mind is the agency’s reorganization that has allowed the agency to achieve what it has. In the past, the Department of Energy (DOE) has focused in large part on nuclear energy and basic research. Under Granholm’s watch, the agency has continued that remit while turning its attention to helping deploy clean energy. Indeed, since she took office in 2021, the DOE has reorganized from the ground up, hiring nearly 1,000 people and creating new leadership positions. Those changes, she says, have helped the agency implement 60 new programs and fund thousands of projects.
“We are exercising a muscle we have not exercised before,” she says.
That deployment focus has homed in on activating the private sector—a choice clear from the personnel hired to execute the vision. David Crane, who was appointed the under secretary for infrastructure, previously served as the CEO of the energy company NRG. Jigar Shah, a well-known climate tech investor, took over the Loans Program Office, which is responsible for lending money. Vanessa Chan, a former partner at McKinsey & Company, became chief commercialization officer. Corporate executives sometimes complain about various challenges working with DOE (things like the quantity of paperwork), but there’s no question that the reorganization has allowed the agency to reach the private sector in a way it hasn’t before.
Whether the reorganization sticks will depend in large part on who wins the presidential election—a question that hangs heavy over the climate world. Former President Donald Trump’s allies have signaled a desire to return the agency to its older, more circumscribed remit. And while Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t offered too much detail on her climate plans, it’s fair to guess that she would provide continuity to the implementation of the IRA.
Granholm insists that the momentum will continue either way thanks to the simple economics of clean energy. “This momentum is inexorable,” she says, adding that with “the incentives we’ve made it irresistible.”
And then there are other changing market dynamics. For the past two years, the energy transition—and the DOE by extension—has faced various headwinds. High interest rates have made deploying clean energy more costly. And supply chain hiccups have slowed down the transition. Slowly but surely, though, these challenges are being resolved. Interest rates have begun to come down; supply chains have adjusted to a post-COVID reality. Granholm calls those speed bumps “underbrush” and she says it’s “being cleared away.”
Granholm, a former governor of Michigan, touts specific examples of new manufacturing spurred by the IRA: iron-air batteries installed in Maine and battery manufacturers that have popped up in Washington state and West Virginia, to name a few. The investments have changed the situation on the ground, she says.
“In Michigan, we had the highest unemployment rate in the nation because of all the loss of these manufacturing jobs and the meltdown in the auto industry. And we used to say, ‘where are we going to find jobs for all of these people?’” she says. “Now we’re saying, ‘Where are we going to find people for all of these jobs?’”
When the chaos of the presidential campaign gives way to calm, the American public will have the opportunity to grapple with the policy choices that have led to a surge in clean technology in communities across the country. Building that popular understanding and support may be the best way to ensure that those measures are here to stay.
TIME receives support for climate coverage from the Outrider Foundation. TIME is solely responsible for all content.
After the death of a pope, the conclave of cardinals that meets to elect his successor are sworn to secrecy. As a result, the proceedings, which traditionally take place in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, are perfect fodder for authors and filmmakers.
In the movie Conclave—out in theaters today (Oct. 25) and based on Robert Harris’s eponymous 2016 thriller—a group of cardinals played by Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Lucian Msamati are rattled by secrets about one another revealed during the voting process. There’s also a cardinal of Kabul who nobody knew existed until he showed up (played by Carlos Diehz). On top of the explosive secrets, a car bomb shatters the windows of the Sistine Chapel. And the biggest secret of all comes out in the last five minutes of the movie.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]While Conclave is fiction, here have been real-life controversial conclaves throughout history. Here’s a look back at three of the most dramatic ones:
When the 1378 conclave convened, a debate raged about whether the pope should be in Avignon, France, or in Rome. The pope had been based in Avignon since 1309, as the French king sought greater influence over the papacy.
An estimated 20,000 people swarmed the 1378 conclave in Rome to make their opinion known, including peasants who traveled from the countryside.
According to Frederic J. Baumgartner’s Behind Locked Doors: A History of the Papal Elections, the crowd shouted things like, “We want a Roman pope, or at least an Italian, or else you will die!” One heckler shouted “If you cardinals don’t give us one, we will make your heads as red as your hats.” At one point, to shoo the mob away, the cardinals pretended they had elected an elderly, feeble Italian cardinal by having him stand at the window until the crowd dispersed.
The cardinals quickly elected the archbishop of Bari, Bartolomeo Prignano, and he took the name Urban VI. The cardinals assumed he would agree to resign immediately after things calmed down in Rome, so they could then elect whomever the favorite was. But Urban didn’t resign, and he flew into so many violent rages that the cardinals didn’t trust him and declared the papacy vacant. In his place they elected the cardinal of Geneva, who would take the name Clement VII.
“That’s the only time in history where you have at least a large portion of the same group of cardinals electing two different men as Pope,” says Baumgartner.
For the next four decades, there were two popes—even three popes at one point—until the Council of Constance (1414-1418) formalized the authority of a single pope in Rome.
At the 1605 conclave, cardinals who supported church historian Cesare Baronius and the cardinals who supported former soldier Domenico Tosco were so fired up that they began pushing and shoving each other.
The commotion could even be heard outside of the building. Elderly Cardinal Visconti suffered several broken bones. In the end, the cardinals choose someone both sides could agree on: Camillo Borghese, who became known as Paul V.
The 1605 conclave is “the only case of that kind of violence in a conclave, in which someone is actually injured,” Baumgartner says. “There’s an occasional example of pushing and shouting, but for the most part, these are elderly men [who] don’t have the energy to invest too much time in pushing and shouting.”
In the 1903 conclave, Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I vetoed the leading candidate, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla.
“The emperor used the right of exclusion, or jus exclusivæ, to block Rampolla’s election,” Massimo Faggioli, a professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University, wrote in an email. “This right allowed certain Catholic monarchs to veto a candidate for the papacy.”
It’s unclear why the emperor interfered.
There is a theory that Rampolla didn’t support a Catholic funeral for the emperor’s son, Crown Prince Rudolf, because he took his own life, believed to be a sin. “Several people have speculated that was because his son committed suicide,” says Baumgartner.
Once elevated, the chosen Pope, Pius X, banned that type of veto.
After the controversy in 1903, conclaves became much more secretive. “We know a great deal more about the election, say, of 1549 than we do about the elections back in 2013 because the documentation—diaries, ambassador reports, the ballot numbers—all of that stuff exists in large quantities for most of the elections before 1903,” Baumgartner says.
The more secret the conclave process has become, the more likely conspiracy theories spread. As Faggioli explains, “conclaves have acquired the potential to become more controversial in the 20th century because of the mass media and now in the 21st century because of social media, digital media, the crisis of mainstream media, conspiracy theories etc.”
In early conclaves, cardinals were overwhelmingly Italian and knew each other’s politics going into the process so there weren’t as many surprises. “The number of cardinals is very small, and they all knew each other very well,” Baumgartner says, “They knew what their sins were.”
As the number of cardinals grew in the 20th century, the more likely it was that cardinals would not know everyone in the room. If there are conclaves where cardinals find out secrets about one another, they are likely to be in the 20th and 21st centuries.
But there is no known precedent for the bombshell secret revealed about Pope elected at the end of the movie Conclave.
There is something especially disconcerting seeing Vladimir Putin smiling like the cat who ate the canary at this week’s BRICs Summit. Could it be more than coincidence that the coordinated Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi attacks on Israel, with Iranian support, were not just coincidental distractions from Russia’s stalemate in his invasion of Ukraine? Yesterday, Putin’s continued efforts to influence the U.S. elections to favor Donald Trump in concert with interference from China and Iran was documented by Microsoft and other cybersecurity experts. As President George W. Bush warned in 2002, there truly is an “axis of evil” still, Vladimir Putin at its hub.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]It is bewildering that the failed aggressor Putin has killed hundreds of thousands of his own people and destroyed his own economy but continues to hold influence over other leaders around the world. More than bravado, that influence extends through manipulation, sparking diversionary fires with and between nations, despite his own limited means as a failed superpower. As a KGB veteran, Putin has extended his tentacles, subverting democracy and undermining global harmony through propaganda and intrigue to compensate for lost industrial might.
Russia’s national income statistics have been suppressed from the IMF since 2022 because Putin is afraid to show the world how bad his economy is crumbling across every sector. Russia has become increasingly irrelevant to global commerce and diplomacy as major sources of revenue evaporate from collapsed energy and other raw material exports and reserves dwindle from a stalemate in the hapless war against Ukraine.
U.S. domestic tensions have flared with Trump’s resurgence. Divisive political extremism in France and Germany is on the rise. Ukraine faces massive suffering as threats to European safety escalate. Mideast instability has reignited amid brazen attacks on Israel and E.U. vessels by Iran and its proxies, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah.
Putin’s imperialistic invasion of Ukraine has resulted in over half a million deaths, including 120,000 Russian soldiers, 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers, and 12,000 innocent civilians, in addition to the reported kidnapping of 10,000 children. Russia has been set back decades, no longer a global superpower or even a significant economic force.
Putin has become more than just an aggressor engaged in a pursuit of empire building. He is the engineer behind the rise of a new, more powerful “axis of evil.” The “axis of evil” was a term initially coined by President George W. Bush during his 2002 State of the Union address. Then, Bush was speaking to a nation – and a world – looking for moral leadership after the horrific terrorist attacks on September 11. The axis members of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea were the perceived bad state actors responsible for collectively organizing attacks meant to “threaten the peace of the world.”
Hostile states have only expanded the use of terrorist proxies to advance their end game. Those actors continue to coordinate behind closed doors to expand their knowledge, resources, and capabilities, and pose a greater threat as a result. Trump does not seem to appreciate, or understand, these invaluable lessons from history.
Today, political leaders and national security experts have recast the axis of evil to feature Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Despite historically fraught relationships and renewed skepticism between members of the new axis, the four states and their proxies have boosted trade, enhanced diplomacy, and expanded military cooperation over the last decade.
Russia is giving away highly sensitive advanced military technology, information, and equipment, including nuclear weapons, ballistic missile and missile defense programs, and space satellites to axis members in an attempt to maintain its war against Ukraine. In exchange, Iran provides drones and ballistic missiles; North Korea supplies ammunition, ballistic and tactical missiles as well as thousands of fresh recent troops; and China now smuggles 90% of controlled dual-use goods imported by Russia for manufacturing missiles, tanks, planes, and drones. All actors benefit from the technical learnings of live weapons testing on the battlefield.
Iran and Russia export hydrocarbons to China, while the duo serve as an additional source of demand for Chinese goods – an attempt to replace trade lost from recent EU and U.S. restrictions. Meanwhile, China props up North Korea providing oil, critical consumer goods, and cross-border labor opportunities. Hamas and Hezbollah have also benefited, using new weapons from Russia, China, and North Korea to attack Israel.
Diplomacy, too, has improved. Russia has renewed partnership agreements with China and North Korea in May and June, respectively, and expects to sign a new agreement with Iran after a BRICS Summit this week, deepening relations in each case. China and Russia welcomed Iran to BRICS this year and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization last year, reintroducing the Middle Eastern country to a new group of possible partners and trade potential. China and North Korea have had a long-standing relationship dating back decades and will continue to remain connected as long as it serves China’s interests.
Soft diplomacy has also been a frequent tool deployed by Putin to forge new covert inroads with Western proxies. The documented ties between Putin and Marine Le Pen, former president of the strengthening French National Rally party, are long. Pro-Russian political parties in multiple German states notched substantial gains in the September regional elections. Similarly, Austria saw their far-right, pro-Russian Freedom Party capture the largest share of voters in the August national election. And to the consternation of Western allies, Serbia, Hungary, and Turkey have maintained close ties to the Putin regime, with the latter two nations often holding NATO votes hostage to assist the Kremlin.
Military engagement has steadily escalated and reached new highs recently when China and Russia held major multi-ocean joint naval exercises for “friendly states” to observe. Iran joined the two in a previous exercise. In support of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) led trainings for Russian troops in Syria to operate Iranian drones. Now, North Korea is sending special forces to Eastern Russia to prepare for fighting in Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Syria has played a crucial role in extending the reach of Putin’s military complex over the past decade and has continued to in the present moment with Ukraine. In 2015, Putin came to the defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his civil war against Islamic State rebel forces. While the move provided a lifeline for Assad, whose military received equipment, troops, training, and technology, Russia came out on top. Putin would receive control of western and central Syrian airspace and access to a port in the Mediterranean. Moscow was also presented an opportunity to reconstruct relations with Iran, which was already supporting Assad through the IRGC and Quds forces as well as Hezbollah.
Those gains have proved invaluable for Russia over time. The Syrian outpost bolstered its presence in the Black Sea, expanding commercial trade, and has served as key tool for its military power projection. The position has been used to facilitate military and covert operations, including the war with Ukraine, and to train thousands of military personnel from Russia, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis over the years. Putin has even recruited Syrian mercenaries to support the Ukraine war.
What brings the axis of evil together is not a common belief in a particular form of government or system of values but disdain for the current global, Western-led order and a reaction to Western-imposed sanctions. More notably, the bond is motivated by economic opportunism for China but encouraged by economic necessity for Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
Therefore, it is incumbent upon the U.S. and its allies to squeeze the three weaker states. The U.S. must more strictly enforce the current sanctions on Russia as well as secondary sanctions on entities supporting Russian aggression. Sanctions should be reinstated on Iranian oil exports, most of which go to China. New targeted sanctions should be readied when Russia, Iran, or North Korea overstep.
China has more to lose than its peers demanding a more nuanced approach. Total trade with its three peers represents less than a quarter of trade with just the U.S. and E.U., both of which represent critical consumer markets for the Chinese economy. The erratic behavior by Iran and North Korea and the embarrassing execution of the invasion of Ukraine does not give President Xi Jinping confidence. The U.S. and its allies then must provide Xi with a viable alternative, convincing him that the benefit of the current opportunistic policy is outweighed by the cost.
The timing may prove favorable for the West considering China’s current economic malaise. In fact, Xi recently signaled an interest to increase engagement with the U.S., saying: “China is willing to be a partner and friend with the United States. This will benefit not only the two countries, but the world.”
In each approach, a realistic strategic response will require more than tariffs and bluster. Instead, the West needs to develop a coordinated response that is firm but fair, tailored to China’s current economic and geopolitical situation.
This month, Bob Woodward revealed private conversations between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin continued after the former left office. Trump refused to deny these charges. The Woodward revelations of Trump’s affection for Putin following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of a peaceful sovereign neighbor is even more alarming given Trump’s prospective return to office. Trump’s continued sympathy towards Putin must be examined on the eve of the U.S. elections.
Western leaders must start by building a more unified front. Success will necessitate a degree of trust in each leader’s commitment to defend democracy, pledge to protect their allies, and respect for the rule of law as well as in their personal character. Those same attributes are also essential to strengthening emerging regional alliances in Asia Pacific and the Middle East and to establish new partnerships in other geo-strategic regions. Unfortunately, not a single trait could be used to define Trump’s leadership.
Nor did the Trump Administration leave America strengthened on the global stage once the Biden-Harris Administration took over. Trump’s tough-man act did more harm than good degrading relations with key allies in the West and East and diminished U.S. standing in the world. Trump diplomacy did nothing to limit North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Iran cut the time required to produce a nuclear bomb in half after Trump exited the Iran nuclear deal.
Decisions by the Trump Administration to exit or diminish partnerships and alliances left a void in global leadership, long filled by the U.S., allowing China to quickly step in. For example, Chinese foreign direct investment, via the Belt and Road Initiative, accelerated allowing the country to construct dual-use commercial-military capabilities in geostrategic locations and develop favorable trade relations with recipient countries.
Closer to home, Trump did not rebuild the military or improve preparedness as promised during his campaign. The ever-mentioned trade imbalances actually grew by more than 20% from the time Trump took and left office, nor did the trade imbalance with China decrease.
It will be incumbent upon next leader of the U.S., and its Western allies, to improve diplomacy, trade partnerships, and military preparedness. Blunt force tactics, broad-based tariffs and all, surely will not prove effective, nor will appeasement that is based on an obsession with strongmen regimes.
A singular focus on Russia will not deliver peace to the Middle East or ease tensions in Asia Pacific. Driving a wedge between the new axis of evil will require a foreign policy employing precision, tact, trust, stability, and cooperation. The U.S. cannot do this alone and needs a president who humbly but confidently recognizes that reality.
Collection action across world leaders has never been more urgent needed to counter the spreading evil of Putin’s agenda.
(NEW YORK) — Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries, his romantic partner and a third man were arrested Tuesday on sex trafficking and interstate prostitution charges, a spokesperson for federal prosecutors said.
Details of the criminal charges weren’t immediately available. They follow sexual misconduct allegations, made in civil lawsuits and the media, from young people who said Jeffries lured them with promises of modeling work and then pressed them into sex acts.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Jeffries’ attorney, Brian Bieber, said by email he would “respond in detail to the allegations after the indictment is unsealed, and when appropriate, but plan to do so in the courthouse — not the media.”
Jeffries and his partner, Matthew Smith, were arrested in Florida and were due to make an initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon in West Palm Beach. Co-defendant James Jacobson was arrested in Wisconsin; there was no immediate information on a court appearance.
Information on attorneys for Smith and Jacobson wasn’t immediately available.
Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Breon Peace and FBI and police officials were set to hold a news conference later Tuesday.
Jeffries became CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch in 1992 and left in 2014. The New Albany, Ohio-based company declined to comment on his arrest.
One lawsuit filed in New York last year accused Abercrombie of allowing Jeffries to run a sex-trafficking organization during his 22-year tenure. It said that Jeffries had modeling scouts scouring the internet for victims, and that some prospective models became sex-trafficking victims.
Abercrombie last year said it had hired an outside law firm to conduct an independent investigation after a report on similar allegations was aired by the BBC.
The BBC investigation included a dozen men who described being at events involving sex acts they said were staged by Jeffries and Smith, often at his home in New York and hotels in London, Paris and elsewhere. The BBC report described Jacobson as a middleman who recruited men for the events.
When the lawsuit was filed in New York last year, Bieber declined to comment on the allegations.
Abercrombie & Fitch traces its roots to a hunting and outdoors goods store that was founded in 1892. By the time Jeffries arrived a century later, the brand was a retail also-ran.
He was credited with transforming it into a darling of turn-of-the-millennium teen mall culture, known for its nouveau-preppy aesthetic — and for some controversy surrounding it. Jeffries alienated some customers by talking about how the company went after attractive kids who could fit into its clothes.
After the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession, A&F’s popularity started to fade again. By the time Jeffries left, a hedge fund had pushed the company’s board to replace him because of the company’s lagging performance.
But the company has rebounded in recent years.
(WASHINGTON) — For the past year, Project 2025 has endured as a persistent force in the presidential election, its far-right proposals deployed by Democrats as shorthand for what Donald Trump would potentially do with a second term at the White House.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Even though the former president’s campaign has vigorously distanced itself from Project 2025 — Trump himself declared he knows “nothing” about it — the sweeping Heritage Foundation’s proposal to gut the federal workforce and dismantle federal agencies aligns closely with his vision. Project 2025’s architects come from the ranks of Trump’s administration and top Heritage officials have briefed Trump’s team about it.
It’s rare for a complex 900-page policy book to figure so dominantly in a political campaign. But from its early start at a think tank, to its viral spread on social media, the rise and fall and potential rise again of Project 2025 shows the unexpected staying power of policy to light up an election year and threaten not only Trump atop the ticket but down-ballot Republicans in races for Congress.
Through it all, Project 2025 has not gone away. It exists not only as a policy blueprint for the next administration, but as a database of some 20,000 job-seekers who could staff a Trump White House and administration and a still unreleased “180-day playbook” of actions a new president could employ on Day One after the inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025.
Read More: Column: Project 2025’s Plan to Eliminate Public Schools Has Already Started
The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, who recently took the helm of the project, appears to relish the fight, moving full steam ahead.
“Rest assured we will not give up,” Roberts wrote in an email to supporters this summer. “We will not back down.”
When Project 2025 debuted in April 2023, it promised to “dismantle the administrative state” by putting forward the personnel and the policies that could serve as a roadmap for the next conservative president.
The former Trump administration officials working on the project said they wanted to avoid the mistakes of the first Trump White House by ensuring the next Republican president would be ready with personnel and policies to enact his campaign priorities.
“There is an impetus to really hit the ground running,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, in a 2023 Associated Press interview.
Centered at the Heritage Foundation, the venerable conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., the concept for the book touched back to an earlier version, its Reagan-era “Mandate for Leadership” that was said to be so popular at the White House that copies were put on work desks to guide the new presidency.
At least 100 conservative groups, many with alumni from the Trump administration, came together to craft the proposals for a vast restructuring of the federal government — from installing more political appointees at the Justice Department to reassigning government workers with law enforcement backgrounds to handle illegal immigration to dismantling the Department of Education.
One of the core proposals would make it easier to staff the government with Trump loyalists by reclassifying some 50,000 workers into jobs where they can be fired — a revival of the so-called Schedule F policy that Trump tried to put in place before leaving office. The idea is now central to the conservative vision of dismantling the “deep state” bureaucracy that they blame for blocking Trump priorities.
The rollout of Project 2025 on the foundation’s 50th anniversary was also a debut of sorts for Roberts; he had previously been seen as an ally to Trump rival Ron DeSantis, who keynoted the gala event at the start of the presidential primary season.
“The conservative movement is coming together to prepare for the next conservative administration,” Roberts said in the announcement. Heritage, he said, sought “to ensure that the next president has the right policy and personnel necessary to dismantle the administrative state.”
President Joe Biden’s campaign had warned against Project 2025 early on, in social media posts ahead of his State of the Union address in April, and House Democrats launched a Project 2025 Task Force to amplify their concerns in June. Days later, comedian John Oliver mocked it on his HBO show.
But it wasn’t until Biden’s dismal debate performance with Trump in June that Project 2025 had its viral moment.
It wasn’t so much what was said at the presidential debate as what went unsaid: Biden failed to really even mention Project 2025, crushing the expectations of allies who expected more of a knock-out punch.
Read More: Column: Project 2025 Is About Much More Than Trump
That weekend, a single thread on X about Project 2025 took off, amassing nearly 20 million views, according to the Democratic campaign. Actress Taraji P. Henson, who had spoken to Vice President Kamala Harris in a segment for the BET Awards show, warned prime-time viewers: “The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look it up!” And countless young TikTok creators speaking directly into their cameras explained the threat they believed Project 2025 posed to their civil rights, reproductive rights and other rights in videos that went viral.
“This is really a case of the grassroots revolting,” said Joe Radosevich at the Center for American Progress. “They saw what was being offered as the contours of the race and completely rejected it.”
Especially in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling that ended the constitutional protections for abortion, Democrats and their allies wanted to make the case showing how the presidential election would impact people’s lives in the future, rather than simply giving voters a choice between the personalities.
People wanted a debate about policies, Radosevich said, not an election “purely on vibes.”
By the end of June, Google searches for “Project 2025” surpassed searches for Taylor Swift and the NFL, the Harris campaign said.
And by the time a giant-size replica of the Project 2025 book was hauled on stage for nightly ridicule at the Democratic National Convention, it wasn’t just celebrities and liberal convention-goers who were mocking it. Conservatives began blaming Heritage and Project 2025 for hurting Trump’s election chances.
Trump’s campaign never embraced Project 2025 and actively shunned it, despite the proximity of people and policies familiar to the former president’s time in the White House.
Other conservative groups with close ties to Trump are also preparing for a second term in the White House. Trump’s campaign team had repeatedly warned Heritage to tone it down and not portray Project 2025 as part of Trump’s campaign.
But Roberts appeared undeterred, even as he came under fire in July for suggesting, after the Supreme Court ruling granting the president broad immunity from prosecution over the Jan. 6 insurrection, that the country was in the midst of a “second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Read More: Column: How Project 2025 Would Jeopardize Americans’ Health
Trump spoke up forcefully against Project 2025 days later.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump posted on his own social media account. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Trump at the time was rolling out his own policy platform ahead of the Republican National Convention, drafted partly by one of his former administration officials, the conservative leader Russ Vought, who also contributed to Project 2025 and its 180-day playbook.
Heritage parted ways with Dans, the chief architect of Project 2025, who resigned at the end of the month, a move that apparently pleased Trump’s team.
“Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you,” said Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, the Trump campaign managers, in a joint statement.
As the races for control of Congress tighten to the point where a single seat could determine which party controls the House or Senate, Project 2025 is being used by Democratic-aligned outside groups to portray Republicans as linked to its hardline proposals.
The House Accountability Project has created micro-websites for more than a dozen House Republicans in some of the most contested seats, tying their past votes on abortion, government funding and other issues to Project 2025 proposals.
“The House GOP is actually pushing policies that are in Project 2025 as we speak,” said Danny Turkel, spokesman for the House Accountability War Room. “They’re already taking these policies into the Capitol.”
The House Republican campaign committee argues its candidates have nothing to do with Project 2025, and the attacks are concocted by Democrats to shift attention from their own border and inflation policies.
“They fabricated a false attack based on something House Republicans had never even read,” said Will Reinert, press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
He called the attacks a “desperate lie” as the House Democrats “see their chances of regaining the majority dwindling.”
It’s once again spooky season, which, for many, means it’s also time to cozy up on the couch, dim the lights—or turn them up to maximum brightness—and fire up a scream-worthy scary movie. Of course, with all the options out there, it can be difficult to determine which horror flicks are actually worth your time.
Luckily, Netflix currently has a wide selection of quality choices, from timeless classics like Psycho and Jaws to modern-day slashers like Pearl and Thanksgiving to franchise refreshers like Evil Dead Rise and 2018’s Halloween. Whether you find these films truly terrifying, hilariously campy, or somewhere in between, they’re guaranteed to at least make for an entertaining viewing experience.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]So, without further ado, here are the 15 best horror movies to watch on Netflix right now.
Writer-director Ti West’s prequel follow-up to his 2022 ’70s grindhouse homage X—and precursor to X‘s 2024 sequel MaXXXine—is widely considered the best of the critically acclaimed slasher trilogy. Mia Goth shines as the maniacal Pearl, a lonely farm girl trapped at home in rural Texas with her controlling mother (Tandi Wright) and infirm father (Matthew Sunderland) while her husband, Howard (Alistair Sewell), is serving in World War I. Pearl has fervent dreams of becoming a Hollywood star. Unfortunately, that means anyone she perceives as standing in the way of her big-city aspirations must die.
Its two sequels, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, may have severely missed the mark. But when filmmaker David Gordon Green brought estranged brother-sister duo Michael Meyers (Nick Castle and James Jude Courtney) and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) back to the big screen for a reboot set 40 years after John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 classic, there was a reason it resulted in one of the highest horror movie openings of all time. A direct follow-up to the original that ignores all previous sequels, 2018’s Halloween sees the franchise’s unstoppable big bad escape from prison just in time to set out on a new October 31st killing spree in Haddonfield.
Arguably Hitchcock’s most influential film, Psycho revolutionized the horror genre with a movie inspired by the case of real-life serial killer Ed Gein that delivered one of the most famous onscreen kills in cinematic history. The fundamental black-and-white thriller shocked audiences by—spoiler alert—butchering its apparent leading lady, Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane, less than halfway through the story. The terrifying fallout from Marion’s murder at the Bates Motel popularized the idea that a seemingly normal human being harboring a monster within had the potential to be way scarier than vampires, aliens, or any other supernatural creature.
It may have taken until the release of Longlegs earlier this year for writer-director Osgood Perkins to get the mainstream recognition he deserves, but the actor-turned-filmmaker has been delivering quality fright flicks for nearly a decade. In his slow-burn gothic horror I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, Perkins spins an unnerving tale about an easily-spooked live-in nurse (Ruth Wilson) who is hired to care for an ailing horror novelist (Paula Prentiss) who is suffering from dementia. Naturally, things soon begin to go bump in the night in the reclusive author’s remote home.
When archaeologist Scarlett Marlowe (Perdita Weeks) and her crew descend into the Catacombs of Paris in search of alchemist Nicolas Flamel’s Philospher’s Stone, a long-lost artifact that is said to grant eternal life, they soon come to realize they have actually entered an unspeakable hell. Writer-director John Erick Dowdle’s underrated found-footage offering is a claustrophobic thrill ride that will leave you with a palpable sense of dread.
Thanksgiving probably isn’t the first holiday that comes to mind when you think about horror. But Eli Roth’s festive slasher may convince you that Turkey Day deserves to play a bigger role in the modern scary movie pantheon. Based on Roth’s fake trailer of the same name that appears in 2007’s Grindhouse, the campy and over-the-top Thanksgiving chronicles the gruesome exploits of a serial killer dressed as Pilgrim John Carver who goes on a murderous rampage in Plymouth, Mass., in the wake of a fatal Black Friday riot at at the town’s local superstore.
Whether you see the Babadook as a metaphor for grief or an accidental queer icon, there’s no denying that the top hat-sporting monster of Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent’s feature directorial debut made an outsized impact on pop culture when it exploded onto the horror scene in 2014. The psychological thriller—which follows a widowed mother and her young son as they’re haunted by the titular boogeyman—has been praised as a “slam-bang scare-fest” and “the best horror movie so far this century.” It’s often also cited as a major jumping-off point for the rise of the popular subgenre known (sometimes controversially) as “elevated horror.”
Those who suffer from ornithophobia, beware! Loosely based on Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 short story of the same name, this Hitchcock classic sees the birds of a coastal California community launch a massive, coordinated, and unexplained assault against the local townspeople. The film’s effects may be a bit hokey by today’s standards, but its chilling tale of nature in revolt—led by Tippi Hedren’s chic San Francisco socialite Melanie Daniels and Rod Taylor’s suave defense attorney Mitch Brenner—stands the test of time.
More than 40 years after the release of Sam Raimi’s beloved cult classic—and a decade after Fede Álvarez’s gruesome 2013 soft reboot—the fifth Evil Dead movie marked a brutal new chapter in the long-running Book of the Dead saga that opened up fresh possibilities for the future of the franchise. The Lee Cronin-helmed gore-fest sees the parasitic demons known as Deadites possess struggling single mother of three Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) while her estranged sister Beth (Lily Sullivan) is visiting the family at their dilapidated high-rise apartment in Los Angeles. You’ll need a strong stomach for this one.
Before M3GAN, there was Annabelle. Not nearly as yassified as her AI-powered derivative, but several degrees spookier, the possessed doll of Conjuring universe fame got her own spinoff shortly after appearing in the original film in the franchise. Annabelle follows a couple whose vintage porcelain doll becomes a conduit for a demonic spirit shortly after their home is invaded by satanic cultists, resulting in a prequel story that strongly invokes elements of Roman Polanski’s 1968 horror classic Rosemary’s Baby.
For many kids of the ’80s and ’90s, the visceral horror of the three folklore-inspired Scary Stories books is nothing new. But for anyone who ever wanted to see author Alvin Schwartz and illustrator Stephen Gammell’s haunting collaborations brought to life on the big screen, boy does André Øvredal have a film for you. The Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark movie takes six of the original stories—including iconic entries like “Harold,” “The Big Toe,” and “The Dream”—and unites them within an overarching plot that serves up a healthy does of nostalgia if not necessarily all-out terror.
Forget about the dud that was the original Ouija. With horror maestro Mike Flanagan at the helm of the subsequent prequel, the spirit board-centric franchise got a new lease on life. Set in 1967 Los Angeles, Origin of Evil follows a recent widow (Elizabeth Reaser) and her two daughters (Lulu Wilson and Annalise Basso) as they introduce what they believe to be a harmless Ouija board into their family’s fraudulent medium act—to extremely sinister results.
The entirety of the action takes place on a single computer screen in director Levan Gabriadze’s jump scare-fueled online revenge thriller. A gory meditation on the perils of cyberbullying, Unfriended follows a group of six teens whose chatroom is infiltrated by a supernatural entity out to exact vengeance for the role the friends played in the death of a classmate who killed herself a year earlier.
Duunnn dunnn… duuuunnnn duun…If you’ve ever seen Jaws, we’re willing to bet that even just reading the opening notes of John Williams’ iconic score sent a bit of a chill down your spine. Steven Spielberg’s haunting tale of a man-eating great white out for blood in the waters off the coast of the fictional tourist hotspot of Amity Island did its job so well that some scientists believe it caused a generation of people to develop an irrational fear of sharks. Going for a swim in the ocean hasn’t been the same since.
From the apparently twisted mind of Mark Duplass comes one of the most effectively unnerving entries in the horror canon in recent memory. The micro-budget Creep follows struggling videographer Aaron (Patrick Brice) in the days after he answers a Craigslist ad for a job at a secluded cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains filming the final messages of terminally ill cancer patient Josef (Duplass). While Josef claims to want to record a video diary for his unborn son, his increasingly alarming behavior soon begins to hint at a far more nefarious motive. The found-footage cat-and-mouse-thriller doesn’t need any gore to leave you feeling like you might need to sleep with one eye open.
BEIRUT — Palestinians in northern Gaza described heavy Israeli bombardment Saturday in the hours after airstrikes killed at least 22 people, as Israel continued to tell people there and in southern Lebanon to get out of the way of its offensives against the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.
In Lebanon, the United Nations peacekeeping force said its headquarters in Naqoura had again been hit, with a peacekeeper struck by gunfire late Friday and in stable condition. It wasn’t clear who fired. The shooting occurred a day after Israel’s military fired on the headquarters for the second straight day. Israel, which has warned the peacekeepers to leave their positions, didn’t immediately respond to questions.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Hunger warnings emerged again as residents in northern Gaza said they hadn’t received aid since the beginning of the month. The U.N. World Food Program said no food aid had entered the north since Oct. 1. An estimated 400,000 people remain there.
Israel’s military renewed its offensive in northern Gaza almost a week ago while escalating its air and ground campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said an Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in the Zarout coastal area on the edge of Barja south of Beirut, and the Health Ministry said four were killed. The ministry said another airstrike on the village of Maisra northeast of Beirut killed five.
The total toll in Lebanon over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is now 2,255 killed, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Hezbollah continued to fire into Israel.
“We will keep standing with the Lebanese people during these difficult circumstances and also with the Palestinian people,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said Saturday while touring the scene of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.
In northern Gaza, residents told The Associated Press many were trapped in their homes and shelters with dwindling supplies while seeing bodies uncollected in the streets as the bombing hampered emergency responders.
Those who rushed to the scene of the latest deadly airstrikes in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya found a hole 20 meters (65 feet) deep where a home once stood.
At least 20 bodies were recovered as of Saturday morning, while others likely were trapped under the rubble, emergency service officials said. Elsewhere in Jabaliya, a strike on a home killed two brothers and wounded a woman and newborn baby, the officials said.
Another strike in the afternoon hit a Jabaliya home and killed at least four people including a woman, said Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the emergency service.
Israel’s military did not immediately respond to request for comment on the strikes. Military spokesperson Avichay Adraee told people in parts of Jabaliya and Gaza City to evacuate south to an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone as Israel plans to use great force “and will continue to do so for a long time.”
Israel has repeatedly returned to parts of Gaza as Hamas and other militants regroup. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Once again, some families moved south on foot, in donkey carts or crowded in vehicles that navigated piles of rubble. Others refused to go.
“It’s like the first days of the war,” said a Jabaliya resident, Ahmed Abu Goneim. “The occupation is doing everything to uproot us. But we will not leave.”
The 24-year-old said Israeli warplanes and drones struck many neighboring houses in the past week, He counted 15 relatives and neighbors, including four women and five children as young as 3, killed in neighboring homes. He said there were dead in the streets and “no one is able to recover them because of the bombing.”
Hamza Sharif, who stays with his family in a school-turned shelter in Jabaliya, described “constant bombings day and night.”
He said the shelter has not received aid since the beginning of the month. “Families depend on what they have stored, but they will run out of supplies very soon,” he said.
The World Food Program said it was unclear how long the limited food supplies it distributed in northern Gaza earlier will last.
The U.N.’s independent investigator on the right to food last month accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians, which Israel has denied.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza started after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, when militants stormed into Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not specify between combatants and civilians. Gaza’s Health Ministry said hospitals had received the bodies of 49 people killed over the past 24 hours.
