A Holiday Letter
…CONTINUED
OUR IMPACT: 155,000 UNIQUE WEB VISITORS TO DATE & MILLIONS REACHED VIA OUR CAMPAIGN
The results speak for themselves. To date, we have had 155,000 unique visitors to our website and a growing global audience. Many partners and others have written to tell us how they are using our content and training toolkits to reach others. We gained another 10,000 viewers in the past month alone. It’s clear that people are still just learning about Project 2025, even as we brace for its weaponization by Trump 2.0. As we focus on resistance, we must continue educating people about its nefarious agenda.
Getting Our Message Out
Early on, we focused on a robust social media campaign, knowing that journalists and youth tend to get their news on X, TikTok, Instagram, Threads, Discord, and Facebook, among other platforms. Jay has ably led our social media campaign, creating a lot of memes and content, and we’ve gained thousands of subscribers. We thank Amare L-R and Samia U. for early help with graphics, and Mary L. for website help.
We have 2,400 followers to date in our STC 2025 Facebook community, and it remains an active space for sharing, complaint, inspiration, and discussion of all things Project 2025. That’s also due to the wonderful work of our admin FB community moderators: a big thanks to Audrey B. and Laurie S., helping Jay, Juno, and Citizen Vix. We also thank participants who help to keep the FB convo animated and civil and focused on community visions of resistance. We recently joined Bluesky as we eye our exit from X, the latter too full of toxic right-wing disinformation.
On the video front, we thank videographers Owen Crowley, and editors Dolly Meieran and Olivia Zimmerman for helping create videos for the campaign. We also appreciated collaborating with Sandy Radoff and Students for Voting Justice interns who made creative short videos about Project 2025 for Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms.
We developed our Revisioning Democracy podcast with support from Greg Newton and Donnie Jochum, co-founders of The Bureau of General Services— Queer Division (BGSQD), a collectively-run LGBTQIA+ bookstore in the West Village of Manhattan. It’s been great to collaborate with them and host our podcast there, and we plan more in 2025. You can find our past podcasts on The Bureau’s YouTube page (and our website). We also urge everyone to check out their great books and programs, and consider a holiday lit gift. Queer Love is resistance, too!
Rise and Resist allies in protest, NYC, 2024.
Photo: Jackie Rudin
Collaborators and Research Assistance
We also had help in the editorial and research departments. Early on, Megan McLemore, a lawyer and human rights activist, took on the job of summarizing several chapters of Project 2025, while Julie DeLaurier of Rise and Resist and ex-ACT UP NY’s Dolly Meieran brought an extra eye to proofing our chapter summaries. Lawyer Margaret McCarthy took a critical, careful look at all briefs, including judicial decisions and laws, and our training toolkit. Alexis Danzig, who pioneered ACT UP training for activists, proofread our toolkit modules with an eye on language and usage for community organizers. Communications expert Lisa Joy also came on board, among others, to offer a critical review of our web content with an eye toward 501(c)3 legal guidelines and accessibility, and did outreach to faith and youth groups. Amy DiPasquale helped with proofing.
At our DC launch, former journalist Tom Carter cornered me with a challenge: to further investigate the links and role of Leonard Leo, the Catholic activist who handpicked several conservative SCOTUS justices, and Opus Dei, the radical Catholic offshoot. I dug into them for our Special Report on Leo, and Tom shared our stories widely with many journalists and federal government contacts. We also compared notes on Opus Dei with Gareth Gore, whose financial exposé book Opus, came out in September; Gareth then joined us for a deep-dive podcast on how radical Catholics are leading Project 2025.
From there, I began to hone in more on Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian think tanks that advised Kevin Roberts and The Heritage Foundation on developing Project 2025. Joseph Brodsky came on board to help me research this and co-author our Special Report on the rise of Europe’s far right autocrats and their links to Project 2025, providing great insights on the topic.
We also benefited from the expertise of right-wing evangelical monitors. Author-reporter Jeff Sharlet and scholar Anthea Butler spoke at our first Town Hall in December 2023. We also talked shop about Christian nationalists and the role of the New Apostolic Reformation with author and investigative journalist Katherine Stewart and colleagues at Political Research Associates, including researcher Annie Wilkinson and Fred Clarkson; Fred was also our podcast guest, sharing his reporting on the NAR’s role in mobilizing faith groups to vote for Trump. PRA’s Religion Dispatches colleagues also published an early piece on our campaign.
NOT ON OUR WATCH: New citizen monitoring app for reporting illiberal acts (Dem Labs)
All along, Deepak Puri of Dem Labs has actively collaborated with us to turn our campaign content and investigative reports into compelling interactive visual maps and graphics that reached new web audiences. He also launched a bilingual Not On Our Watch citizen monitoring app, with input from us and collaborating journalist Andra Watkins, a former Christian evangelist with a terrific Substack on Project 2025.
On the labor front, I worked closely with Steve Lenkart, Executive Director of the federal union National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), and lawyer James Goodwin at Center for Progressive Reform to develop a Special Report on Labor. They also joined our podcast to talk about how to mobilize resistance to Project 2025’s goal of weaponizing Schedule F to mass-fire the federal workforce – looming as a Trump 2.0 threat.
Todo en Espanol y Mas
We remain committed to language accessibility. Javier Morales and his Latinx+ colleague Gonzalo Arturo provided early Spanish translations; they became our main partners on a Latino global health and HIV webinar and our bilingual This is Personal video series, and continue to mobilize Latino HIV groups to respond to Trump 2.0. Livingstone S. (Spanish) and Jon P. (French) also translated our media releases, briefs, reports, and toolkit. Gracias et merci!
Most recently we have been able to offer readers automatic and immediate website translation to Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish.
Town Halls, Webinars, and Actions
Given our small team and limited funds and an election deadline, we chose to focus our outreach on putting information into the hands of key activists and frontline nonprofits in core sectors targeted by Project 2025. We started with a Town Hall in NY in December 2023 that drew an overflow in-person and online crowd, then organized an official launch rally at The Heritage Foundation with several co-sponsors.
Special thanks go to Jennifer Flynn Walker at the Center for Popular Democracy Action (now Popular Democracy) who provided logistical and financial support to get started and helped us connect with DC groups who spoke at both events, including Make the Road NY, VOCAL, People for the American Way and Human Rights Campaign. We got a great outreach boost from video taken by Patrick Young. I appreciate the insights of Beirne Roose-Snyder at Global Equality, talking shop about the global HIV and health dimensions of Project 2025’s attacks. One measure of our impact: we made Breitbart news, while AP photo coverage was picked up by other media outlets.
(L-top) Jen Flynn Walker and Interpreter; (R-bottom) Julie DeLaurier at our campaign launch protest rally at the Heritage Foundation
During 2024, we organized or joined about two webinars a month, reaching a diversity of audiences. We appreciated collaborating with Chromatic Black in Atlanta, led by Abeni Bloodworth and Memory Rhone, and consultant Julia Peter, on a PRIDE month webinar on Project 2025’s threats to Latino communities, co-organized with Latinx+ and activists across Latin America and the Caribbean. See our YouTube channel for past events. We also appreciated collaborating with founder Jill Nash and PA organizer Audrey Finci of Women for Biden-Harris on a webinar attended by hundreds of local members. I appreciated Rev. Dr. Susan Smith of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, who reached out to collaborate on a faith-focused webinar attended by 800+ Black progressive pastors where our colleague Bishop Joseph Tolton of Interconnected Justice also discussed Project 2025 as Jim Crow 2, and its colonialist global agenda. Andrea Jacobs of Tzedek Lab and Jewish Bridge Project and Paul Zeitz also engaged to help spread the word to interfaith activists.
I also want to acknowledge the many allies who found us and launched parallel Project 2025-themed websites to expand public awareness. Major chops go to Democracy Forward and hub Democracy 2025, unifying legal resistance to Trump 2.0. Onward!
Media and Video Outreach
We focused on our media work as a priority in December 2023, and engaged ally partner grassroots groups to share our media releases and campaign updates. We saw information from our research and investigative stories appear in myriad media stories from February 2024 on. While we didn’t get credited, with some exceptions, we took a victory lap each time, happy to see the information getting amplified to reach media audiences.
A note of appreciation goes to dynamo journo Mike Signorile of The Signorile Report on Sirius XM, who was the first to respond to my urgent plea last fall for media attention to Project 2025. Mike invited me back to his show later to chat about our Leonard Leo and Opus Dei exposé. Michael Lavers at the Washington Blade covered our DC launch, also expanding awareness in LGBTQIA+ circles. Dean Obeidallah also gave us the mic at Sirius XM; so did WBAI’s Jon Nalley and Bob Lederer and the crew at OUT- FM. We also spoke with Libby Edwards, working with Joshua Tjaden and our own Jay W. at Radio GAG. At Gay USA, our colleagues Ann Northrop and Andy Humm have regularly covered Project 2025. Community photographers Donna Aceto and Jackie Rudin documented our events and campaign. Sue L.M. assisted with media releases and Ann C. with special projects. All of them expanded our reach to activist audiences.
In Philadelphia, I met The New Republic’s Editor-in-Chief Mike Tomasky, host of a Trump Summit TNR organized in Philadelphia; he invited me on the spot to talk about Project 2025 and our campaign with the audience. He also referred TNR journalist Nina Burleigh to discuss TNR’s coverage of Project 2025. Nina cited our research in her TNR piece on Leonard Leo and Opus, and in a recent post-election piece; she also joined our recent podcast to discuss what we expect on “Day One” of Trump 2.0. Laura Flanders expanded the conversation about Project 2025 at Laura Flanders and Friends. There are many other journalists, historians, and activists I chatted with this year, asking them to cover topics. Thanks to all who did.
I also appreciated V and the crew at V-Day who organized a summit on Project 2025’s intersectional attacks on racial justice, reproductive health, and other topics, where I met more journalist-activists who joined our podcast.
Amanda Lugg (L) at our campaign holiday lunch, officially joining the team.
Institutional Support
It takes financial and institutional support to launch a nonprofit project overnight. Another thank-you goes to Amanda Lugg, then Executive Director at African Services Committee, our starting fiscal agent, as well as colleagues Eric Sawyer, Sean Strub, Kathy Acey, and Mike Balaban, among others, who helped brainstorm donors and broker introductions.
Another thank-you goes to Rev. Pat Baumgartner, director of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, our current fiscal sponsor. It was frankly hard to raise money quickly as a new group organizing a campaign about a topic that few knew about, and who also worried about its political ramifications for nonprofit donors. We appreciate everyone who helped and offer a big thank-you to our first anonymous angel donor and to the Eclipse Fund/New World Fund. That seed funding made all the difference.
Glamming up to fight Project 2025 with Ellen Gavin (C) and Marisa Cardinale (R).
Photo: Courtesy of Ellen Gavin
Videos Gone Viral
In May, Ellen Gavin and I met at a monthly salon hosted by journalist Laura Flanders of Laura Flanders and Friends and her partner, Elizabeth Streb. Laura invited me to talk about Project 2025 at the inaugural salon and later, Ellen pitched salon guests on her ideas for a video campaign on Project 2025. Ellen works with the Writers Brigade in LA and planned to pitch the Lincoln Project, then distributing videos across the US. Above is a picture of Ellen, Marisa and me at a well-heeled Never Trumpers fundraiser where we talked about Project 2025. By July, Ellen’s first dramatic video on abortion, produced with Marisa Cardinale, went viral, reaching 14 million viewers to date; a second one on IVF also took off. Ellen then made a third video and is now turning to needed resistance messaging.
(L-top) “State Line”; (R-bottom) “Everything Is Different Now”
This Is Personal!
Marisa also produced a powerful video ad aimed at students and youth, ‘Everything Is Different Now,’ focused on Project 2025’s proposed crackdown on free speech and campus dissent. She co-funded and co-produced our This is Personal video series that put a personal face and voice onto Project 2025’s attacks. The ad and series were helmed by director Vincent Gagliostro and Jon Nazareth, director of photography at Keep or Destroy, and the talented KOD crew.
We also had a lively group of volunteer participants for that video series. Thank you Valarie Walker, Yolanda Diaz, Catherine Marino-Thomas, Benjamin Shepard, Amanda Lugg, Javier Morales, Gonzalo Arturo, Khadiatou Tubman, and on our team, Sally and me. We also made a video for Latinos of faith with progressive NJ pastor Rev. Bolivar Flores.
Yolanda Diaz (L), Rev. Bolivar Flore (R), getting personal about Project 2025’s threats
Video capture: “This is Personal – Eso Es Personal”
Tailored Swing State Outreach
In June, Saba convened some 200 volunteers to begin targeted spring state outreach and specific tasks that lasted until the election: research, graphic design, social media work, proofreading, and outreach to frontline actors in different sectors. We have too many volunteers to name everyone here but I want all of them to know how much we appreciate(d) their work.
An extra thanks goes to Zoe C, our youth and student outreach coordinator, and Zoë S., for coordinating the state teams. I also thank Matthew Redabaugh for helping with state outreach and now research on resistance to deportation.
I also want to spotlight the impressive and exhaustive election and polling analysis research done for us for two months by volunteer Xander Laughlin, which generated a useful list of key demographic groups in contested counties of those swing states, matched to the top issues they most cared about, as related to Project 2025. The data allowed us to generate tailored state outreach packages and messages to grassroots groups in key areas.
Julie DeLaurier with Rise and Resist colleagues, NYC; Photo: Jackie Rudin
Taking It to the Streets
Our first campaign members include core activists from the New York groups Rise and Resist and Gays Against Guns. We want to thank Tricia Cooke and Lisa Fithian for offering space to host our first casual brainstorming potlucks. RAR and GAG members helped organize and promote our first town hall, joined our nascent messaging and graphics teams, and created catchy signs, buttons, and T-shirts used at events and for fundraising. Extra thanks to Donna Aceto, Jackie Rudin, Jamie Bauer, Alexis Danzig, Julie DeLaurier, and others in the RAR and GAG ranks, and Laurie Arbeiter. We appreciate their activist leadership in NYC in continued protests at Trump Tower and Fox News and the New York Republican Club. You rock!
Since then, the list of our campaign partners and allies has steadily expanded. You can see that list on our website, and if you’re in an organization interested in being a partner or collaborating on a project, please email us.
Pivoting with Purpose: What’s Ahead in 2025
As you see above, our campaign was built with many hands and hearts. So many people have contributed their energy, skills, insights, time, and support. Speaking for our team, I feel we far surpassed our initial goals of getting the word out, and putting tools and strategies into the hands of frontline activists and stakeholders. All this serves us as we pivot into greater resistance.
This week we uploaded a new report Project 2025 Steps Into Power, which presents a preview of the incoming administration and documents that 36 of 66 nominees have direct or close ties to Project 2025 (now it’s 37). We anticipate more will join that list.
We also released a two-part Substack report, Trump 2.0 IS Project 2025, which discusses the first steps to weaponize Project 2025 and take control of the Executive Branch, and the building resistance to this. Our reports focus on what is being done – and can still be done – to resist the planned attacks and prepare vulnerable communities.
On the positive side, pro-democracy groups and voices at all levels are moving quickly to enact counter-blueprints they have developed over the past months. We plan to be among them – an active team and campaign, with a sharp focus on finding and distilling how and where Project 2025 is unfolding and where the push-back is happening effectively. We’ll cover new voices and visions of resistance to Trump 2.0 and focus on revisioning our democracy, too. Please consider signing up for the new weekly Substack, which is free. We’ll also continue sending you our campaign updates in this newsletter.
Alexis Danzig, delivering the resistance battle cry for 2025. Photo: Jackie Rudin
Please consider a holiday donation and pledge your Resistance in 2025
Last year we were an unknown campaign; now, we have made our mark – together. We invite you to consider an end-of-year tax-exempt holiday donation to our 2025 campaign. We know you’re probably flooded with requests, and we hope we’ve made a strong case above. The reality is that our campaign has grown quickly and made a measurable, significant impact. Most importantly, it brought us together in a growing community of resistance. We plan to do even more in 2025 now that the stakes are so high, and in allyship with many others.
In closing, we invite you to consider your own pledge of resistance to our campaign and we invite you to consider new opportunities to get involved and to volunteer. We also welcome your feedback and ideas for how we can resist together. You can write to us at stopthecoup2025@gmail.com. Subject line: Resistance.
At the top of this letter I’m modeling our swaggy T-shirt, with our battleground message: We are the resistance. Will you consider buying a T this holiday for yourself or a family member or friend in the fight? Or a mug of resistance, as a way of supporting our campaign? Our swag is produced by Dan Kaufman at March Merch, a progressive print company and GenDemocracy ally. You can also make a tax-exempt donation to us on our website. We really, really need support to re-launch hard in January. In exchange, we pledge to give our all in 2025 to the expanded mission of Resisting Project 2025.
Mark Your Calendars for January 15 and the launch of our rebranded Resisting Project 2025 podcast. Join us at 7 pm in person at The Bureau in NYC or streaming online. We've restructured the podcast as an all-team effort and convo with some special regular features -- all focused on how we build and support community and broad resistance to Project 2025 and Trump 2.0 for the road ahead.
In a spirit of holiday gratitude, community, and resistance,
Anne-christine and the team