Project 2025 director coming to Congress? Ghislaine asks SCOTUS to let her out. A Jan 6 rioter is now a DOJ employee, and more. Scroll down for five stories to know about today.
—Sharon McMahon
Editor-in-Chief
Project 2025 Imploded. Now Its Director Wants a Senate Seat
“We have seen where the swamp is… and the top swamp critter is none other than Lindsey Graham.” The former director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, wastes no time explaining why he’s decided to try to beat Senator Graham in the Republican primary next year.
“There is no amount of lipstick that you can put on Lindsey to make MAGA fall for him, OK? That show is over. The jig is up. And it’s essentially Sunset Boulevard for Lindsey at this stage.”
If you’ve read The Preamble for a while, you might recall I’ve interviewed Paul Dans, and I pressed him about the fear some people had prior to the 2024 election that Donald Trump was going to move the country in the direction of authoritarianism. Dans told me that was ridiculous, because the real authoritarian was in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, and his name was Joe Biden.
According to Dans, Biden was an authoritarian because:
1. “Joe Biden and his cronies at the DOJ have engaged in lawfare against his political opponents.”
2. Biden had surveilled people, like Catholics, online
3. Dans had worked for an independent agency under the Trump admin and Biden fired him
Dans is set to formally announce his candidacy for the US Senate today, after leaving the Heritage Foundation last year. In fact, one of Trump’s campaign managers, Chris LaCivita, says that Dans’s tenure at Heritage was nearly a “torpedo” to Trump’s quest for reelection. “Like everything Paul Dans starts, this too will end prematurely,” LaCivita said.
Dans was fired from the Heritage Foundation for “professional misconduct and mistreatment of colleagues,” according to Kelly Adams, the HR director of the Heritage Foundation. Dans disputes this characterization, saying that he was scapegoated by the organization because of the PR nightmare that Project 2025 became.
President Trump has already endorsed Dans’s opponent, longtime ally Lindsey Graham, for Senate.
Who would you vote for, if given the opportunity?
Can We Pretend to Have the Rule of Law If We Hire Criminals?
Just so I’m clear: should criminals be in jail, or not? Because it seems like, according to the federal government, some categories of alleged criminals should be gleefully fed to alligators and deprived of due process, while other alleged criminals can become advisors to the Department of Justice.
Jared Wise is a former FBI agent who entered the US Capitol on January 6 — security cameras caught him triumphantly entering through one door and climbing out the window as he was leaving. According to the DOJ, while in the building, Wise screamed at the DC Police: “You guys are disgusting. I’m former — I’m former law enforcement. You’re disgusting. You are the Nazi. You are the Gestapo. You can’t see it... Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!”
When Wise began to witness the violent assault of officers — more than 160 were injured that day — he yelled at rioters: “Yeah, f*ck them! Yeah, kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”
Wise was charged with multiple felonies and misdemeanors, including “assaulting, resisting, or impeding” officers. He was in the middle of his criminal trial when Inauguration Day arrived and his case was dismissed by President Trump in a sweeping act of clemency.
And now: Wise has a new job, funded by your tax money. Undoubtedly, Wise could no longer meet the criteria to be an FBI special agent, as the background checks are extraordinarily rigorous. (Wise apparently left the Bureau after his supervisors became unhappy with his work.)
But his new job is for the DOJ, as an advisor to the “Weaponization Working Group” headed by Ed Martin, who we’ve written about here. Ed Martin has previously said that the January 6 rioters deserve reparations like “the asbestos money that we got for victims of asbestos."
Two years ago the DOJ announced, “Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Indicted in Federal Court on Felony Charges Related to U.S. Capitol Breach,” and now? Jared Wise is going to help investigate the agents that investigated him.
On a personal note, as someone with family in law enforcement: the idea that a former FBI agent would encourage people to kill local PD? Disgusting.
Evangelizing on the Clock
The Trump administration issued new guidance this week encouraging federal employees to share their religious beliefs in the workplace. Legal scholars have raised concerns about potential First Amendment violations.
Issued by the Office of Personnel Management with input from the White House Faith Office, the memo outlines scenarios in which employees can express their faith while at work: forming prayer groups, wearing religious clothing, and even proselytizing during breaks – including asserting that their faith is better than someone else’s – is explicitly allowed.
Public-facing workers, such as park rangers and VA doctors, are also told they may pray with hikers or patients, or that they can engage in activities like entering a patient waiting room to pray while on duty.
The move follows the creation of the White House Faith Office earlier this year and a task force focused on rooting out perceived anti-Christian bias in federal agencies. It also echoes a recent executive order aimed at allowing tax exempt churches to become more directly involved in partisan politics without losing their tax exempt status.
Critics say the memo blurs the line between personal faith and public service, and that praying over a group taking a national park tour, for example, is akin to the government establishing a religion.
Supporters say it reasserts religion in a secular bureaucracy. Either way, the message is clear: under Trump, federal employees are not just allowed to express their beliefs — they’re encouraged to.
I’d love to hear if you feel this a welcome chance to express your faith, or if these new guidelines are cause for concern in your mind.
The Detention Center With No Owner?
Roughly 100 people have already been deported from Alligator Alcatraz, the official name Florida officials gave to the remote immigration detention site in the Florida Everglades.
Attorneys for detainees say migrants are being held without charges, cut off from legal help, and coerced into signing deportation papers they don’t understand. The makeshift facility is drawing mounting civil rights concerns and legal scrutiny as the government scrambles to explain who’s in charge.
“We have not ever seen a situation where hundreds of people are being held without charge, without access to the immigration courts, under a legal authority that has not been explained,” Eunice Cho of the American Civil Liberties Union said during a federal court hearing this week in Miami.
Florida officials pushed back, claiming conditions have improved from when civil rights groups filed their lawsuit on July 16. Videoconference rooms have been set up and in-person attorney visits have begun for detainees.
Cho said federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are “disclaiming responsibility for people held at the facility” and telling detainees they are in state custody, with state officials claiming they are operating the detention center on behalf of the federal government under a cooperative immigration-enforcement program.
In the legal battle over Alligator Alcatraz, the federal government is setting new limits on how migrants can be detained with the help of the states — and it has reignited debate over how the US balances border enforcement with basic civil liberties.
The federal government is in negotiation with several other states to open similar facilities.
Ghislaine Maxwell Asks SCOTUS for Immunity
Ghislaine Maxwell is asking the US Supreme Court to overturn her 2021 conviction for sex trafficking minors, claiming she was wrongly prosecuted under a plea deal federal officials made with Jeffrey Epstein more than a decade ago.
In a petition filed this week, Maxwell’s lawyers argue that the 2008 agreement — which promised not to charge Epstein’s co-conspirators — should have protected her, even though she wasn’t one of the four individuals named in the document. Her legal team says the language “including but not limited to” was meant to extend immunity more broadly and that her prosecution violated constitutional protections.
The filing comes just days after Maxwell met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, as part of a broader Justice Department review into how the Epstein case was handled. The meeting — and Trump’s sudden interest in Maxwell’s legal fate — have drawn fresh scrutiny, especially given how conspiracy theories around Epstein’s ties to political elites have long circulated among Republican allies.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison after a jury found she recruited and groomed underage girls for Epstein and his associates.
The appeal is not an emergency request, but a formal petition for the high court to review her case after lower courts rejected similar arguments.
Former President Donald Trump — whose name has surfaced repeatedly in court documents related to Epstein — also made waves this week by suggesting he might consider a pardon if asked. “Well, I'm allowed to give her a pardon,” he said, “but nobody's approached me with it.”
The Epstein plea deal, brokered in 2008 by then-US Attorney Alex Acosta, has frequently been criticized for promising not to charge Epstein’s co-conspirators, effectively shielding people connected to Epstein from federal charges, and for limiting Epstein’s punishment. A Justice Department review later found Acosta exercised “poor judgment” in offering the deal, which was made without notifying victims.
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