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I MEANT KELLY!

Supposedly, she'll announce it on Monday. On Wednesday, the two of them will campaign in my hometown of Eau Claire.

Don't feel too bad -- the smarty-pants reviewer misspelled "fuchsia."

My fallback in such situations is "You must be very proud of this."

Doh, Bill!

Good thing Trump always speaks The Truth.

AP excerpt

NEW YORK — The director of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 vision for a complete overhaul of the federal government stepped down Tuesday after facing pressure from Donald Trump's campaign, which has tried to disavow a program created by many of the former president's allies and former aides.

Paul Dans' exit comes after the project ''completed exactly what it set out to do: bringing together over 110 leading conservative organizations to create a unified conservative vision, motivated to devolve power from the unelected administrative state, and returning it to the people,'' Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in a statement.

Democrats for the past several months have made Project 2025 a key election-year cudgel, pointing to the ultraconservative policy blueprint as a glimpse into how extreme another Trump administration could be.

The nearly 1,000-page handbook lays out sweeping changes in the federal government, including altering personnel rules to ensure government workers are more loyal to the president.

Yet Trump has repeatedly disavowed the document, saying on social media he hasn't read it and doesn't know anything about it. At a rally in Michigan earlier this month, he said Project 2025 was written by people on the ''severe right'' and some of the things in it are ''seriously extreme.''

''President Trump's campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,'' Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement. ''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.''

But Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump's running mate, wrote a foreword to a forthcoming book by Roberts in which he lauds the Heritage Foundation's work. A copy of the foreword was obtained by The Associated Press.

''The Heritage Foundation isn't some random outpost on Capitol Hill; it is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump,'' wrote Vance.

Quoting Roberts elsewhere in the book, Vance writes: "We are now all realizing that it's time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon."

Trump campaign representatives did not respond to messages inquiring about whether the campaign asked or pushed for Dans to step down from the project. The Heritage Foundation said Dans left voluntarily and it was not under pressure from the Trump campaign. Dans didn't immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.


In many ways, Project 2025 served as a potential far-right White House in waiting, a constellation of outside groups that would be ready for action if Trump wins a second term.

The project included not only the detailed policy proposals that Trump could put into place on day one at the White House. But Project 2025 was also building a personnel database of resumes for potential hires, drawing Americans to Washington to staff a new Trump administration.

Many Trump allies and former top aides contributed to the project. Dans formerly worked as a personnel official for the Trump administration. And Trump regularly campaigns on many of the same proposals in the Project 2025 book — from mass deportations to upending the Justice Department — though some of its other proposals, including further taxes on tips, conflict with some of what Trump has pledged on the campaign trail.

It was clear that Project 2025 was becoming a liability for Trump and the Republican Party.

Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign and top Democrats have repeatedly tied Trump to Project 2025 as they argue against a second term for the former president.

The Harris campaign said Project 2025 remains linked to Trump's agenda, written by his allies for him to ''inflict'' on the country.

''Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn't make it less real — in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding,'' said Harris for President Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez.

For months Trump's campaign had warned outside groups, and Heritage in particular, that they did not speak for the former president.

In an interview from the Republican convention first published by Politico, LaCivita said Project 2025 was a problem because ''the issues that are going to win us this campaign are not the issues that they want to talk about.''

It was almost certain that Trump's campaign forced the shakeup, said one former Heritage aide granted anonymity to discuss the situation.

Heritage says Project 2025 is not going away

Project 2025's website will remain live and the group will continue vetting resumes for its nearly 20,000-person database of potential officials eager to execute its vision for government, the Heritage Foundation said Tuesday.

The group said Dans will leave the Heritage Foundation in August and Roberts will now run Project 2025 operations.

Roberts has faced criticism in recent weeks after he said on an episode of former Trump aide Steve Bannon's ''War Room'' podcast that the country is in the midst of a ''second American Revolution'' that will be bloodless ''if the left allows it to be.''

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin (USA Today excerpt):






STEVENS POINT – Dozens of central Wisconsin community members packed the Portage County Democratic Party office Saturday to see Doug Emhoff, second gentleman of the United States, promote campaign efforts 101 days ahead of the Nov. 5 general election.

Emhoff’s appearance in Stevens Point comes less than a week after his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, received the endorsement of President Joe Biden to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in the November election.

Emhoff retold the events of the previous weekend from his perspective, which included a return to his family’s home in Los Angeles after time away campaigning and a canceled flight that would have brought him to Washington, D.C., Sunday morning. Instead Emhoff learned Biden would no longer be seeking reelection from a friend as they were eating lunch together in L.A.

“I still hadn’t seen her since I walked out of D.C. Friday morning to go to Phoenix and all this is happening and watching it, trying to stay connected,” Emhoff said, describing what it was like to be away from Harris after she received the president’s endorsement. “(I was) looking at her with a combination of awe, pride, and, OK, let’s do this thing.”

Stevens Point area residents showed up to hear more about Harris and to be part of the positive energy they have perceived since Biden stepped down from the race for president.

“I was a full Biden supporter, and I didn’t really think he should step down. I like what he’s done,” Cathy Derezinksi, 66, of Stevens Point, told a USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin reporter in line before the event. “But I’m really fired up, still fired up, more fired up maybe.”

Jen Brilowski, 51, of Stevens Point, said she communicates with a group of women online who are curious about politics and want to learn more and are unsure where to start. She said the week before Harris became the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee she had to work harder to engage people in that group than in the week since.

"It's like night and day. (We’re) not feeling like we’re stuck with these two old guys, and we don’t have a choice," Brilowski said after the event. "We have options now and that’s encouraging for a lot of people, I think.”

Emhoff’s role as husband to a prominent female political candidate drew Carly Wilson, 34, of Milwaukee, to Stevens Point on Saturday. Wilson trains Democratic women to run for office in southern Wisconsin. She said one training session is aimed toward candidates' families and teaching them what to expect while a wife or mother is campaigning. Wilson attended the event as a spectator.


“Not a lot of women have the most supportive families or spouses when they’re running for office so it’s so nice to see second gentlemen Doug Emhoff supporting her every step of the way and hitting the campaign trail and owning his nontraditional role,” Wilson said.

Wilson said one thing Emhoff particularly does for Harris is, “lets her sparkle.”

“He is in awe and supportive of the strong woman that she is,” Wilson said. “She is going to be the next leader of our country and he is just along for the ride and ready to help her do whatever she needs to do to be her best.”

Prior to his stop in Stevens Point, Emhoff attended the opening ceremonies of the Hmong Wausau Festival Saturday morning. During his approximately two-hour stay, Emhoff visited with representatives of the Hmong and Wausau communities, participated in a cultural ribbon-cutting ceremony and spoke to attendees. During the 15-minute speech he highlighted the strength he has from his family and the strength a community of any size has in being politically active.

"It's a future where we are not divided by hate; it’s a future where we are united by a shared vision of our country," Emhoff said of the vision his wife has for the future of America.

AP excerpt

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — William L. Calley Jr., who as an Army lieutenant led the U.S. soldiers who killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre, the most notorious war crime in modern American military history, has died. He was 80.

Calley died on April 28 at a hospice center in Gainesville, Florida, The Washington Post reported Monday, citing his death certificate. The Florida Department of Health in Alachua County didn't immediately respond to Associated Press requests for confirmation.

Calley had lived in obscurity in the decades since he was court-martialed and convicted in 1971, the only one of 25 men originally charged to be found guilty in the Vietnam War massacre.

On March 16, 1968, Calley led American soldiers of the Charlie Company on a mission to confront a crack outfit of their Vietcong enemies. Instead, over several hours, the soldiers killed 504 unresisting civilians, mostly women, children and elderly men, in My Lai and a neighboring community.

The men were angry: Two days earlier, a booby trap had killed a sergeant, blinded a GI and wounded several others while Charlie Company was on patrol.

Soldiers eventually testified to the U.S. Army investigating commission that the murders began soon after Calley led Charlie Company's first platoon into My Lai that morning. Some were bayoneted to death. Families were herded into bomb shelters and killed with hand grenades. Other civilians slaughtered in a drainage ditch. Women and girls were gang-raped.

It wasn't until more than a year later that news of the massacre became public. And while the My Lai massacre was the most notorious massacre in modern U.S. military history, it was not an aberration: Estimates of civilians killed during the U.S. ground war in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973 range from 1 million to 2 million.