Editor’s Note and Opinion:
President Joe Biden sent shock waves around the world when he announced that he was withdrawing his candidacy for reelection in 2024, only weeks before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. His announcement was greeted as welcome news by worried Democrats who expressed their appreciation to the president for putting the best interests of the country before his own personal ambitions. He will be remembered for his many accomplishments in office as well as his courageous decision to step aside and pass the torch to a new generation of leaders as personified in the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris.
So, now that the Democrats are infused with new energy, the challenge before them is to not only support the future goals of a Harris administration, but to ensure that a second Trump administration never comes to pass. If elected to a second term, Donald Trump will follow two playbooks which are being advanced by the Heritage Foundation and nearly 100 conservative groups. In this week’s guest opinion, Rogelio Landin outlines the dangers posed by these two conservative agendas. In future issues we will highlight what a Kamala Harris administration will propose to improve the lives of all Americans.
Time and space will not permit a thorough, comprehensive treatise to share with you everything you need to know in preparation for the next 100 days. When we wake up November 6th, one of two things will have happened; we will have succeeded in thwarting a coup of our present governmental system or we will have allowed the takeover of our government, as we know it, by former President Donald Trump and his MAGA party. For all intents and purposes, the Republican Party, as we’ve known it, no longer exists or exists in name only. Therefore, this is an appeal to you to invest some time to learn as much as you can about what is being proposed and what it means to you.
We witnessed the Republican National Convention, rife with misrepresentations, inaccuracies and inflammatory disinformation. Every primetime speaker engaged in at least one disingenuous remark. A massive accumulation of misinformation was disseminated to the nation. We will need to have a working knowledge of several documents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_47
1.) Agenda 47 – Wikipedia describes it as; Agenda 47 (styled by the Trump campaign as Agenda47) is the manifesto of the Republican Party candidate Donald Trump which details policies that are to be implemented upon his election as the 47th President of the United States. Agenda 47 is a collection of formal policy plans of Donald Trump, which will see several reforms to the economy, presidential powers, foreign policy, education, healthcare, immigration, national security and American media and journalism. Agenda 47 affects LGBT individuals, makes changes to law enforcement, and discusses social issues and infrastructure planning. The main critiques of the platform have focused on its feasibility, impact on inflation and threat of authoritarianism.
The tip of the spear is the issue of Immigration, which is code, for Hispanic/Latinx, promising a closed border and the largest deportation in history. This is quite simply, at its core, targeted discrimination. This is Mexican border security and Mexican deportation. Make no mistake, a President Trump will be coming after all of us, because he knows what we know in terms of our statistics, visit www.UnidosUS.org statistics. We pose a threat to his version of America.
The next document you need to scan is Project 2025; a 900-page treatise by the Heritage Foundation of a “Mandate for Leadership – The Conservative Promise” www.static.projedt2025.org. There is nothing conservative, measured or moderate about either document. They can both be described in three words: Suppressive, Oppressive and Regressive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025.
2.) The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, also known as Project 2025, is an initiative organized by the Heritage Foundation with the aim of promoting a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should Donald Trump win the 2024 presidential election. The Project asserts that the entire executive branch is under the direct control of the president under Article II of the U.S. Constitution and the unitary executive theory. It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees, in order to replace them with loyalists more willing to enable Trump’s policies. In doing so, proponents argue that the change would dismantle what they view as a vast, unaccountable, and mostly liberal government bureaucracy. The Project seeks to infuse the government and society with Christian values. Critics have characterized Project 2025 as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to steer the U.S. toward autocracy. Many legal experts have said it would undermine the rule of law, the separation of powers, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties.
The adverse societal and economic impacts of the adoption of any part of these plans would be devastating, if not catastrophic. An overstatement? Not in the least. By contrast, we will be revisiting the core documents that provide for the foundation of our system of governance, including The Charters of Freedom, 1.) The Declaration of Independence, 2.) The Constitution of the United State of America, and 3.) The Bill of Rights.
This may sound like a lot to ask but it is intended to better prepare you to understand the forthcoming series of articles that will serve to synthesize and compress the essential aspects of these documents as they relate specifically to our community. We will dissect Project 2025 and Agenda 47 with comparative analysis for the sole purpose of equipping you to better cast and invest your vote knowledgably, August 6th and November 5th, 2024.
Rogelio Landin led LULAC in the precedent setting Amicus filed in Bradley v. Milliken II (1976- 1978). The win served to protect and preserve Bilingual education and the classification of Minority per the Civil Rights Act. The case had national implications for the education of bilingual children and Hispanic civil rights.
