Stunning Report Exposes Project 2025’s Ties to Radical Christian Group

One of the lead authors of Project 2025, the disturbing blueprint for a potential second Trump presidency, has close ties to a controversial international Catholic group, Opus Dei.

The Guardian reports that Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, receives weekly spiritual guidance from the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., led by an Opus Dei priest. He attends the institution weekly for mass and religious guidance.

In a speech last year at the CIC, Roberts echoed some of the same extreme measures that the Project 2025 manifesto is infamous for, such as outlawing birth control, and called on conservatives to adopt “radical incrementalism” to achieve their policy objectives.

Opus Dei has been criticized as radical, cultlike, and secretive. The organization was founded in 1928 in Spain to combat the anti-Catholic left in the country, and was later granted special rights and privileges by Pope John Paul II to respond to the rise of progressive liberation theology in Latin America. Opus Dei does not believe in the separation of church and state, seeing a symbiotic relationship between the two, and its American adherents view the United States as the last stronghold of Christianity.

Roberts’s ties to Opus Dei don’t end with the CIC. He founded a school in Louisiana, John Paul the Great Academy, that recognizes the organization’s founder, Saint Josemaría Escrivá, as its patron. He also was involved in an Opus Dei–affiliated high school leadership program in Austin, Texas, and has spoken at other Opus Dei-linked schools.

Roberts isn’t the only leading conservative close to Opus Dei, either. Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society co-chair who has led the conservative takeover of the judiciary up to the Supreme Court, is also linked to the CIC, even accepting an award from the organization in 2022. In his acceptance speech, Leo praised the center and called his political adversaries “vile and amoral current-day barbarians, secularists, and bigots” influenced by the devil.

Donald Trump and the GOP have been trying, unconvincingly, to distance themselves from the radical Project 2025, and now comes the news that the 900-page document’s leading author also has ties to a powerful religious organization opposed to the separation of church and state. Leo’s involvement only appears to be stronger evidence of the conservative movement seeking to impose a radical religious agenda if Trump wins the presidential election in November.  

It’s been one hell of a week for J.D. Vance. Sorry, that should read “hellish” week. Let’s rewind.

Last Thursday, Vance joyously accepted the nomination for Donald Trump’s running mate at the Republican National Convention. By Monday morning, everything had changed.

Vance awoke to discover that he’d become the target of Democratic vice presidential hopeful Andy Beshear, who slammed him for being a “phony” before he’d even held his first campaign event. When the Ohio senator finally hit the campaign trail, he started things off with an awkward, low-energy speech in his hometown, during which he suggested that he’d be considered “racist” for his love of Diet Mountain Dew, a strange gaffe that made him a laughingstock for a day and added fuel to the flames of Beshear’s attacks. Almost immediately, Trump allies began to suspect that the conservative calculus on Vance’s selection was fraught with errors.

All of this happened in one day. Every day since has been worse.

Over the next few days, it would be revealed that Vance had more than a few skeletons in his closet, ones that maybe hadn’t bothered anyone when he was supposed to be a mini-Trump but now seemed demonstrably damaging.

Vance drew ire for a slew of past comments, including calling Democrats “childless cat ladies,” suggesting that Trump had committed serial sexual assault, promoting a right-wing conspiracy theorist’s book that called progressives “unhumans,” and writing a favorable foreword for a book linked to Project 2025.

All of this was really bad, and none of it even held a candle to something said about Vance that wasn’t even true: A nasty rumor that he’d gotten sexual with a sectional overwhelmed social media on Thursday.

In terms of headlines, Vance has taken a serious beating.

And it seems to be translating into early approval polls.

By Friday, things still weren’t looking good. While it was previously reported that some Republican lawmakers had severe buyer’s remorse about Vance, one House Republican told The Hill that there was “major dissension” over Trump’s pick.

“The prevailing sentiment is if Trump loses, [it’s] because of this pick,” the lawmaker explained.

A few House Republicans spoke anonymously with The Hill about their take on the GOP nominee for vice president.

Vance “was the worst choice of all the options. It was so bad I didn’t even think it was possible,” one Republican representative told the outlet. “Anti-Ukraine, more of a populist. He adds nothing to the Trump ticket. He energizes the same people that love Trump.”

Another House Republican told The Hill that despite public support for Vance, lawmakers were relatively united in their hatred of him. “I think if you were to ask many people around this building, nine out of 10 on our side would say he’s the wrong pick,” the lawmaker said. “He’s the only person who can do serious damage.”

One week after his coronation, Kamala Harris’s approval rating is skyrocketing, and Vance is starting to look like the worst vice presidential candidate in history.

Right-wing attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris are skyrocketing, with conservatives attacking her record as a prosecutor, calling her the “DEI” candidate, and making desperate attempts to associate her with Communists.

One such attack came from right-wing political commentator Tim Pool, who let loose, calling Harris a “Communazi Despot come to put conservatives in concertation  camps.” The attack was so over-the-top that it even drew a reply from white nationalist Richard Spencer, who wondered, “A bit much?”

It’s hilarious that Pool, who has two million followers on Twitter, would get rebuked by an open white nationalist such as Spencer, who one would think has no love for Harris. Several commentators on X found the situation pretty funny.

Last week, Spencer caused some confusion when he endorsed President Biden over Trump, saying, “The nomination of J.D. Vance had reminded me what the GOP really is.” This was mostly due to conservative support for Israel, anathema to an antisemite like Spencer, but also possibly because of racism against Vance’s Indian American wife.

Spencer’s rebuking of Pool, while funny, has nefarious undertones. Spencer soured on Donald Trump and MAGA even before Trump’s presidential term ended, due to what he saw as his failed strategy on uniting white supremacists.

“I will never vote for Donald Trump. I wish him the worst,” Spencer told The New Republic in 2020. “I’m not exactly enthusiastic about voting for Joe Biden, but in all likelihood, I will.”

Still, infighting among the worst elements of the U.S. far right can only hurt Trump and MAGA, and give the rest of us something entertaining to read and watch.

Election authorities from around the country have officially weighed in on House Speaker Mike Johnson’s desperate claims that states won’t allow Vice President Kamala Harris on the ballot as the Democratic nominee. Their message was just the opposite: Harris is good to go. 

A CNN survey published Friday found that election authorities from 48 states and the District of Columbia said Harris would have no trouble getting on their respective ballots. 

Officials from Montana and Florida did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment, but experts indicated that those states’ election rules suggest that the vice president won’t face any friction there, either. 

Across the board, election authorities said that the Democratic Party’s decision to back a different candidate couldn’t possibly be a problem because President Joe Biden hadn’t been officially nominated. That process will take place via a virtual roll call early next month, and then more ceremonially at the Democratic National Convention later in August. 

Once a candidate and their running mate are formally nominated at the convention, their names are then submitted to the states to be placed on the ballot. Since Biden was never the nominee, he’s not technically being replaced. 

This wasn’t just the word in blue states, either: Reliably pro-Donald Trump states said the same thing. All seven swing states also confirmed that Harris would face no issues getting her name on the ballot if nominated next month. 

Johnson has repeatedly referenced vague “impediments” and “legal hurdles” the Democrats might face in installing Harris as the candidate across different states’ electoral systems, but he has neglected to explain what those issues would be. 

“It would be wrong and I think unlawful in accordance to some of these state rules for a handful of people to go in the backroom and switch it out because they’re—they don’t like the candidate any longer,” Johnson told ABC News Monday.  

Johnson’s office failed to respond to CNN’s questions about his claims. 

J.D. Vance’s policy stances are becoming known to the public ever since Donald Trump chose the Ohio senator as his running mate, and they match up with his remarks calling Democrats “childless cat ladies.”

A 2021 interview on the Charlie Kirk Show podcast has resurfaced where Vance advocates for higher taxes on Americans without children. Vance proposed the idea during a discussion on how Republicans could take some conservative ideas from “unthinkable” to acceptable.

At the time, Vance, who had not yet announced his campaign for the Senate in Ohio, suggested that the United States “reward the things that we think are good” and “punish the things that we think are bad” before he suggested his tax idea.

“So, you talk about tax policy; let’s tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good,” Vance said. “If you are making $100,000, $400,000 a year and you’ve got three kids, you should pay a different, lower tax rate than if you are making the same amount of money and you don’t have any kids. It’s that simple.”

The interview has disappeared from Kirk’s YouTube channel and his podcast’s Rumble account, but ABC News obtained a copy of the video.

Also, the Harris campaign posted a 2022 speech on Thursday where Vance suggested that parents should have greater voting rights than people without children.

“Doesn’t this mean that nonparents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Yes. Absolutely,” Vance said to applause from the crowd at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a nonprofit that promotes conservative ideas on college campuses.

Vance has recently taken heavy criticism from lawmakers and celebrities alike for calling Democrats “childless cat ladies” in a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson. These latest revelations indicate that it wasn’t a throwaway remark but something that the Republican vice presidential nominee has actively thought about—and it won’t endear him to the wider electorate beyond the MAGA faithful. It’s little wonder that the GOP is having misgivings about Vance as Trump’s running mate.

Anthony Scaramucci, who set the record for shortest time served in the Trump administration, predicted on CNN Thursday that J.D. Vance won’t last much longer on the Republican ticket.

Scaramucci foretold that Trump’s 2024 campaign obituaries will consider Trump choosing Vance over a more moderate pick, namely Nikki Haley, a misstep. “He could have appealed to a broader base of people, to women, to more independents. But he didn’t. He went hard MAGA, he went with a strange guy that’s very dull on stage, and you know, Trump hates that,” Scaramucci said.

Scaramucci, as he told the CNN host, knows a thing or two about short-lived relationships with the former president. In 2017, he served as White House communications director but was fired from that role by then-President Trump after only 11 days.

His astonishingly short stint in the Trump camp led to the popularization of “Mooch,” a “nonscientific term for a unit of time equal to 11 days, the length of Scaramucci’s White House employment,” per The Atlantic. First coined by Trump White House aides, the eponymous unit has since been embraced by Scaramucci himself, who found it particularly useful to predict the timing of Vance’s removal from the Trump ticket, which he considers all but inevitable.

Asked if he thought Vance would be replaced, Scaramucci replied, “I’ve had that experience with Donald Trump. I do think he could. It’s just a question of how many Scaramuccis J.D. is going to last.”

Scaramucci is not the only one making such predictions. While the Trump campaign insists it has no intention of booting Vance, there has been growing speculation in recent days that he is not long for the V.P. slot.

The vice presidential nominee made headlines yesterday for his remarkably poor performance in polls. Citing one from CNN, Business Insider reported that Vance is “the least-liked vice-presidential candidate since 1980.”

Donald Trump’s newest lame excuse for not debating Kamala Harris just evaporated in a matter of hours.

In a statement released Thursday night, Trump’s campaign explained that they would be putting any future presidential debates on hold.

“Given the continued political chaos surrounding Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrat Party, general election debate details cannot be finalized until Democrats formally decide on their nominee,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung.

In the days following President Joe Biden’s endorsement of Harris, Trump took to Truth Social to air his grievances over the upcoming debate, scheduled for September 10. He seemed to be complaining about the debate’s host, ABC News, to create a context for skipping it all together.

Now Trump has offered a slightly different excuse. Despite the fact that Harris has become the party’s presumptive nominee, officially gaining enough support to snag the nomination next month, the Trump team was still unwilling to move forward with the next debate while Harris lacked support from one specific person.

“There is a strong sense by many in the Democrat party—namely Barack Hussein Obama—that Kamala Harris is a Marxist fraud who cannot beat President Trump, and they are still holding out for someone ‘better,’” said Cheung. “Therefore, it would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds.”

Harris responded in a post on X (formerly Twitter) by resharing a report about Trump backing out of the debates. “What happened to ‘any time, any place’?” she wrote.

But Trump’s scheme to sidestep debating his new opponent fell flat by Friday morning, when Harris shared a video of her speaking to Obama and his wife, Michelle, on the phone.

“We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and to do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” said the former president.

Harris thanked them both for their friendship and their support, and promised, “We’re going to have some fun with this too, aren’t we?”

Despite Trump’s repeated attempts to avoid going head-to-head with Harris, she has continued to push for a debate on September 10. “Voters deserve to see the split screen that exists on a debate stage,” she wrote in a post on X Thursday. “I’m ready. So let’s go.”

Donald Trump is seriously pissed that FBI Director Christopher Wray is asking questions about what really happened during the attempted assassination of the former president.

While appearing before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, Wray testified about the agency’s ongoing investigation into the deadly shooting at a Trump rally almost two weeks ago. Wray said it was still unclear what had caused the injury Trump suffered to his ear, whether a bullet or a piece of shrapnel from a teleprompter.

Trump, who began claiming within hours of the attack that he’d been struck by a bullet, didn’t like that one bit. He said as much in a rant on Truth Social Thursday night, which took aim at Wray (whom Trump appointed) specifically.

“FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress yesterday that he wasn’t sure if I was hit by shrapnel, glass, or a bullet (the FBI never even checked!), but he was sure that Crooked Joe Biden was physically and cognitively ‘uneventful’—Wrong!” Trump wrote.

“That’s why he knows nothing about the terrorists and other criminals pouring into our Country at record levels. His only focus is destroying J6 Patriots, Raiding Mar-a-Lago, and saving Radical Left Lunatics, like the ones now in D.C. burning American flags and spray painting over our great National Monuments—with zero retribution,” Trump continued.

In the nearly two weeks since the attack, Trump’s team has not released an official medical report on Trump’s injury, only a memo from Trump’s former White House physician, Texas Representative Ronny Jackson. Still, Trump has continued to double down on his claims that it had been a bullet that grazed his ear.

“No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard. There was no glass, there was no shrapnel. The hospital called it a ‘bullet wound to the ear,’ and that is what it was. No wonder the once storied FBI has lost the confidence of America!” Trump wrote Thursday.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is fighting back against Donald Trump’s move to throw out his hush-money convictions.

After the Supreme Court ruled that presidents have immunity for “official acts” last month, Trump asked the state of New York to throw out his 34 felony convictions. Bragg’s office replied with a legal filing of its own asking the state to reject Trump’s bid, arguing that even if official acts were excluded, they were “only a sliver of the mountains of testimony and documentary proof” the jury saw before voting to convict Trump.

The filing, made public Thursday, stated that the evidence Trump’s lawyers are challenging isn’t protected, citing a footnote in the Supreme Court’s ruling that includes a “public records exception” for introducing evidence from protected official acts. Even if protected evidence was introduced, “any error was harmless in light of other overwhelming evidence of defendant’s guilt.”

“The Supreme Court has long recognized that a President can act in an unofficial, personal capacity,” the filing, written by Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo, states. “Nothing in the Court’s recent immunity decision changes that basic fact.… This case involved evidence of defendant’s personal conduct, not his official acts.”

In May, Trump was convicted of falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime in the first degree by using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels under the rug before the 2016 presidential election. He has long alleged that the case, along with his other criminal and civil cases, is part of a plot against him by those opposed to his presidency.

Judge Juan Merchan is expected to rule on Trump’s immunity in early September. If he rules in favor of the district attorney’s office, sentencing for Trump’s conviction will take place on September 18, possibly leading to the first prison sentence ever for a former president.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks Elon Musk shouldn’t throw stones in a glass house.

When Ocasio-Cortez pointed out Wednesday that the more than 100 empty seats in Congress were being filled by nonmembers “in order to project the appearance of full attendance and support” at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech, Musk took it upon himself to attack the politician.

Musk must have been feeling personally offended, as he was one of those butts in seats, having been personally invited to Capitol Hill by Netanyahu.

“The Democratic Party has become openly & boldly antisemitic,” he replied to Ocasio-Cortez.

Ocasio-Cortez was quick to point out that Musk should probably be careful with accusations of antisemitism, considering his repeated enabling of antisemites on his social media platform. She posted a screenshot of a Wall Street Journal article about Musk agreeing with a post last year stating that Jewish people hold a “dialectical hatred” of white people.

“Hmm 🤔 sometimes being quiet is free and good for you,” Ocasio-Cortez responded.

At the time of the incident last year, the Anti-Defamation League said Musk was using his “influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories.”

In response, Musk doubled down. “I am deeply offended by ADL’s messaging and any other groups who push de facto anti-white racism or anti-Asian racism or racism of any kind,” he said. “I’m sick of it. Stop now.”

Similarly, even after getting embarrassed by Ocasio-Cortez, Musk continued to post about it late into the night. “People who have been lifelong Democrats refuse to accept the clear reality that the Democratic Party is rapidly become openly antisemitic,” Musk wrote. “This trend is accelerating, not slowing down.”