Weather by [color descriptor redacted] Marker Pen: Project 2025's Department of Commerce
Don’t let my deep dive into this chapter pass you by. Actualizing the content of Project 2025’s take on the Department of Commerce would involve repurposing its many impacts on the economy in ways that will affect each and every American. (That means you!)
The footprint of the Department is huge. Its data collection impacts business and political decision making at every level, from the surveys done by the Census Bureau to the forecasts provided by the National Weather Service.
There are thirteen bureaus in the department, listed below with links to give readers an idea of the breadth of its influence (and keeping this post short enough so you won’t fall asleep).
National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will be responsible for carrying out a significant portion of the administration’s objectives concerning artificial intelligence.
The bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act has enabled the Department to grant over $30 billion in proposed private sector investments spanning 23 projects in 15 states. These projects include 16 new semiconductor manufacturing facilities and are expected to create over 115,000 manufacturing and construction jobs across the country.
Project 2025 on the Department of Commerce. Author: Thomas F. Gilman*
After getting past the usual purges of civil service staff to make room for political appointees and making life easier for bigots, the overall objectives of this blueprint would be to:
Minimize climate change “panic”,
Collect data for reactionary priorities
Sell off parts of the agency to private enterprise,
And
Use the remaining authority to wage economic war on China. (And maybe Russia).
The ideological thread running throughout this section is the belief that reducing government regulation per se will lead to economic innovation and growth. ( FYI- It’s the quality of government regulation rather than the absence of regulation that influences these things.)
The single biggest Department of Commerce bureau (except decennial census years) is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service. More than $6.5 billion of the department’s $12 billion annual operational budget goes to NOAA, accounting for more than half of the department’s personnel in non-decadal Census years.
Page 664, Mandate for Leadership:
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.
The really big deal in P2025’s plan, discussed in news accounts and op ed columns, involves selling off the National Weather Service and commercializing data collection. Much of the data appearing in forecasts on virtually all media is currently supplied as a no-cost government service; we could end up having to pay for an app to find out the day’s temperature range. And those magic marker hurricane forecasts by Dear Leader would be marketed as truth.
From the Atlanta Journal Constitution News Service:
JoAnn Becker, a meteorologist and president of the union representing 4,000 NOAA employees, said everything the agency does and publishes is driven by data and guided by its mission to protect life and property.
She said the Project 2025 proposals could make government scientists vulnerable to political pressure. She pointed to the event that became known as “Sharpiegate” in 2019 when then-President Trump falsely claimed Alabama was in the path of a hurricane and then pressured NOAA into releasing an unsigned statement backing those claims, according to multiple investigations, including a report by the Commerce Department Inspector General.
“Our office in Alabama started getting all these phone calls from the public and from their partners, saying ‘What’s going on? Is this going to hit us?’” Becker said. “Our folks in that office were so fearful about telling the truth to the communities they serve, but they did … they were put in a very bad position.”
Mainly all this climate related knowledge suppression and manipulated information is about protecting the fossil fuel industrial complex and its billionaire owners. Having a president who believes that sea level rise would increase shoreline development possibilities is the kind of ignorance oil tycoon Harold Hamm appreciates as he persuades other fossil fuel exploiters to fund MAGA campaigns.
From the Washington Post:
Hamm has a wish list of policy changes in a second Trump term that would pad his profits and those of other oil executives. At the top of the list: opening up more federal lands to drilling, easing the Endangered Species Act and curbing numerous regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency, according to people familiar with his demands.
Hamm has encouraged other oil executives to share their policy priorities with Trump as well. Trump and Hamm have also bonded over their shared dislike of wind energy, according to people familiar with the matter.
Another lynchpin policy change at the Department of Commerce would involve restructuring census questions on race and ethnicity questions. Immigrant and historically disadvantaged populations would be less likely to participate, leading to undercounts and reductions in government funding for services.
The Department’s role in nurturing minority owned enterprises, if not eliminated completely, would be reduced to persuading business owners that free trade, no taxes and deregulation are keys to prosperity.
P2025 would have Commerce end closure of vast areas of the ocean to commercial activities, except for offshore wind energy development. Regulations Implementing the Marine Mammal Protection and the Endangered Species Act would be modified so as not to harm fisheries.
The section on cracking down on apps like WeChat and TokTok -by blocking updates, making them functionally useless in the long run) isn’t likely to get anywhere, given Trump’s sudden change of heart on the subject after billionaire Jeffery Yass boarded the MAGA money train.
It’s clear though, that Commerce would be weaponized to serve as a conservative administration’s spear tip in enforcing its foreign policy objectives through trade sanctions.
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(*) Author Thomas F Gilman. Director of American Center for Law and Justice (right-wing version of the ACLU, currently leading the fight for forced birthers), Chairman of Torn-gat Metals; former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Administration and Chief Financial Officer, US Dept. of Commerce in the Trump administration. Former CEO, Chrysler Corporation.
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Thursday’s Noteworthy News Links
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to meet with Kamala Harris to discuss Cabinet job via The Washington Post
After the initial publication of this story late Wednesday, Kennedy and his campaign confirmed the outreach to Harris to other news organizations. On Thursday morning, however, he dismissed the idea of endorsing Harris in a social media post.
“VP Harris’s Democratic Party would be unrecognizable to my father and uncle and I cannot reconcile it with my values," he wrote, referring to former president John F. Kennedy and former New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. “I have no plans to endorse Kamala Harris for President. I do have a plan to defeat her.”
The latest round of outreach follows earlier efforts to convince Democrats that Kennedy would make a better candidate on their ticket than Biden. Even after Kennedy left the Democratic nomination fight to pursue an independent campaign for president last November, his advisers continued to press the case privately that he could replace Biden as the Democratic nominee.
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What Are Females For? By Jill Filipovic
Was what Vance doing when his son was born all that important? No. But it was paid, and he’s a man. And in Vance’s view, care work is women’s work. The idea that he might take a year-long sabbatical to raise his own son doesn’t come up. His mother-in-law, on the other hand, is purposed to do just that.
To add insult to injury, Vance characterizes his mother-in-law’s help as “the most transgressive thing I’ve ever done against the hyper-neoliberal approach to work and family.” Except that, of course, he didn’t do anything. The women did all of it.
A grandparent coming to help out with a new baby isn’t unusual; it’s also a huge gift, and something too many American families have to rely on because we have no other safety net. A normal person might express gratitude to their mother-in-law for such overwhelming generosity. JD Vance used the story as an example of a post-menopausal woman’s purpose, and has used his political influence to force women into motherhood and further shred the safety net for women, mothers, and families. Yes, his way of speaking is extremely weird. But his views on women and work are much worse than weird: They’re dangerous.
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Daily Show video on weirdness of Project 2025, plus an imagined promo at the end.
mind boggling. Trump to NOAA (over coffee)--De Santis has said bad things again. Don't let Florida know about the coming hurricane. Sharpie it out.
The description of the chair in that video is worth a bazillion fossil fuel bazillionaires.