Suffering through Project 2025 training videos so you don’t have to (Part 1)

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here, as always, with my spouse, Royce, and together we are The Ace Couple. And I hope, dear listener, that you are prepared for more misery, because we are once again talking about American politics. Always, always a fun topic. Specifically, we have even more information and insight that has come out about the infamous Project 2025.

Courtney: So ProPublica got their hands on, basically, the training videos. We mentioned in our first episode, where we talked about Project 2025, that they – specifically the Heritage Foundation and many of their allies and many former Trump officials – are making a very coordinated effort to not only make their demands for the country very clear, but to ensure that they get their people in every branch of the government for – what they keep saying over and over – the Trump presidency, but truly, it’s the next Republican president. If it wasn’t Trump, they would be doing the same thing, but it just so happens Trump is the guy this time around. Somehow, somehow, somehow still the guy. And as part of this, they are recruiting people, they are training people, they are writing manuals and guidelines so that everyone can all be on the same page. And their hope is that they can very effectively… ruin the country, in my opinion. So I went ahead and I watched the first video of these several videos that have been released. And I’ll put in the show notes, if you want to watch this video yourself or any of them, there is an entire playlist available to the public for free on YouTube right now.

Courtney: And I think it’s– it’s important to be aware about, I think, even for non-Americans, because we aren’t just talking about solely American policy. They’re talking about who are the advisors that we send to international summits, who are people who work hand in hand with other countries. So this does include positions that affect some level of foreign policy as well. Which, as we get into the two women who were hosting the very first video, both worked under the Trump presidency. One of them in particular mentioned many things she did as far as international relations are concerned.

Courtney: And today we’re just going to talk about that first video, because there was enough to talk about. And this is not only the sort of policy they’re hoping to steer, but this is really how they’re trying to combat any left wing ideology whatsoever and what they’re telling their people. And there is– there is a fair bit of propaganda in here, so it’s– it’s good to be aware of what they think and what they’re telling their people and how they’re treating words.

Courtney: Words. A lot of this one comes down to words. In fact, the title of the first episode is: Left-wing codewords and language. And if you haven’t watched it yet, maybe just hearing my recap of it will be a little more palatable to you, because these two women– not only were the things they were saying often terrible, but sometimes they get into these very cheesy, like, poorly acted, poorly scripted bits. So it was not entertaining. Or it was, if you– if you like profoundly bad attempts at acting in, like, think corporate training videos, kind of bad.

Royce: That’s what I was trying to articulate just now, because I didn’t watch these videos. I was wondering if it was one of those situations where someone turns on a projector or if you go far enough back wheels in a little TV on a stand and shows you like a 20 year old video.

Courtney: Yeah. It’s– it’s two women sitting in armchairs and when they talk to each other it’s very corny. They’re very clearly canned bits, very scripted. And then they just kind of take turns monologuing angrily, facing the camera, so like they sort of take turns on topics. But as they switch topics they’re like, “You know?” It’s so– Actually here– Here’s one of the examples. Right at the beginning, before they really even get into the meat of what they’re talking about, one of them looks at the other and says: “Now, do your children ever get scared of monsters under the bed or in the attic?” And the other woman responds, “They do, but we tell them that they don’t exist.” And the first woman says, “Well, we’ve got news for you, there are monsters in Uncle Sam’s attic.” And those monsters in Uncle Sam’s attic are, uh, left-wing code words. [chuckles]

Courtney: But yeah, like, to introduce herself– And like I said, these were both Trump officials. So this is another thing that we’ve been pointing out, especially in our more recent video about JD Vance. Because Trump and his campaign keep saying, “We don’t have anything to do with Project 2025. That’s not us.” But it is jam packed with former Trump officials. And even if he’s not having those same people back, even if he doesn’t want them, for whatever reason, they are handpicking and hand-training people that they’re going to try to get on there. And JD Vance is their guy. We made that very clear in our JD Vance video. He has very close ties with the Heritage Foundation. So do you think that Donald Trump – God forbid he get elected again – is going to personally know and vet every single appointed position and person? Absolutely not. That’s not how any of this works.

Courtney: So to open the video, the very first line of this video is a woman introducing herself and she says, “I’m just a normal American woman, but to the left, that makes me a cisgendered, ethno-imperialist birthing person with pronouns she/her. Tsk… words like that are quite a mouthful and it’s one America needs to spit out before we choke on it.” So there’s quite a lot to unpack there. First of all, cisgendered. I love how they always put the -ed on the end of it as if, like, we have cisgendered them. But yeah, we’ve been over it time and time again, and they talk about it more in this video. They think biological sex is, and should be, synonymous with gender 100% of the time. People this far to the right, we are not going to argue them out of that ideology. So that’s where you get the people who are like, “Cisgender is a slur.” It’s not. But I love how her definition of normal American woman also includes ethno-imperialist.

Royce: So she’s just admitting right out of the gate that she’s a white supremacist?

Courtney: Kind of?!

Royce: How– What other way is there to take that statement?

Courtney: She– She’s at the very, very least saying, like, white is normal, like that’s the normal.

Royce: Imperialist implies nationalism, I think. I don’t think you can get away from that.

Courtney: It does imply nationalism, which they think is good, actually. And I– I caught them saying that in here also. But yeah… like, normal american woman: cisgendered ethno-imperialist. Also the birthing person. Like no one is calling this particular woman a birthing person. That’s not how that works. With pronouns she/her and the dramatic– She literally did a dramatic “Tsk” as someone who is very much not an actor.

Royce: Yeah, I mean, that was obviously a heavily scripted segment, that it probably took them a lot of time and energy to write.

Courtney: Yeah, yeah. Also like, the– The interesting thing is, a lot of us on the left don’t think that you have to give birth just because you have the parts for it. So that’s another thing they very often disagree with, but! So their whole thing is beware of these scary words, because the left is manipulating you to make it seem like one thing, but really they mean another thing. And the exact quote was: “The left twists words and phrases to support subconscious acceptance of a philosophy that was rejected or goes against the very grain of human existence, like what is a woman.”

Royce: [sighs] So the Venn diagram of current American right wing politics and conspiracy theorists is almost just a single circle. [Courtney laughs] It’s very close.

Courtney: If you go far enough in the right direction…

Royce: Well, the idea of subliminal messaging, mind control.

Courtney: And they even said the word subliminal. Because after that, they said that this is the left’s most effective tool, being constant, subliminal advertising. That was the phrase that they used, yes.

Royce: Yeah, that is just straight up, like, 60s era conspiracy theory.

Courtney: [reading] “Then they changed the word socialism to democratic socialism. Then they turned democratic socialism into social justice and equity. Therefore, social justice and equity is Marxism.”

Royce: I’m pretty sure people started saying democratic socialism just because there’s a whole section of people that have this knee jerk anger response to the word socialism, so they don’t actually learn what it means and engage in conversation. So you have to throw the word democratic in front of it to, like, buy yourself time to get into the conversation while they’re still listening.

Courtney: Well, there also are, just like politically, like, there are differences between democratic socialism and Marxism. Those are two different ideologies.

Royce: Yes. These different words are different words because they have different meanings.

Courtney: But yeah, so now they’re– They’re literally training not only their own constituents but the people they seek to put in positions of power in literally every branch of the government that when someone on the left says social justice, they mean Marxism. And obviously this is the party where they’re like “Marxism: always 100% bad, it is the number one enemy!” So that’s– that’s a whole lot. And of course, in the context of this conversation, they’re pulling out all of these scary quotes from Hitler and Stalin and Orwell. All references about controlling language and how that’s how you control people. And very dystopian sounding, very fear mongering, which I found very fascinating because they were like, here we’re going to basically break down the five main categories that we want you to watch out for, and we’ll train you what the left says versus what they mean. So they start with the first category, which is: women, children and family.

Courtney: Which they teach us: [reading] “Comprehensive sexuality education means teaching and normalizing sex at very early ages, even as young as preschool, and teaching girls who become pregnant that abortion is a preferable method of birth control.” Nobody says abortion is birth control, because it’s not, and certainly nobody is teaching that to preschoolers. But she said in her time working in the Trump White House that she was doing everything she can to make sure that comprehensive sexuality education doesn’t get implemented, it doesn’t get normalized, it’s not allowed, it is a bad thing. And she was explaining her role in a G7 summit. So this is representatives from seven different countries getting together, having a meeting, discussing, writing on the topic, primarily in this case, of women’s health, global women’s health. And she was adamant that comprehensive sexuality education cannot be a part of women’s health.

Courtney: And so, apparently in very vague detail, she recounts a story that someone proposed edits to try to make sure that we weren’t using the words comprehensive sexuality education, but even the edits he suggested she was like, “Oh no, what you’re suggesting is still considered CSE.” To which, allegedly, at this point, this unnamed person from an unnamed country just lamented like, “Oh gosh! They have literally co-opted the English language.” Which, uh, I don’t know if that happened or not, but it really sounds like you’re reading subliminal messaging where it isn’t, and rejecting everybody’s edits as the delegate from the United States, because you want to push your agenda that very much does not include abortion or sex education, or a lot of other very important components of women’s health. And then she did outright brag that she, and the US, was the reason that language around reproductive rights at this international summit got removed and softened and watered down. This was something she was very, very proud of.

Courtney: So this is another thing we need to consider when we talk about American politics. We do have an enormous platform on an international stage, and there are going to be people appointed by the next President who are going to be representing our country in so many different areas. Most of which you’ve probably never even heard of, because I don’t know all of them. I don’t know what all of our foreign delegates are or what they do, or all the different rooms they get to sit in, the different conversations they get to have, the different policies they get to influence, because it is vast. And so, after– after sharing this story and bragging about how, “Yes, we’re the reason why this language around sexuality education got removed,” they go on to make a list of words that the left says but it means something else. And it was so funny to watch this because everything they were accusing the left of doing, they were also doing.

Royce: Oh yeah, that’s been abundantly clear, just in you recapping the first little bit of this video.

Courtney: Yeah, because the thing is like she said abortion is murder. But then she went on to say all of these seven things mean abortion. Therefore, all of these seven things, when the left says them, this is code for murder. And these are the seven things– And she literally said like, “They all use these words to make it– to make abortion sound not like murder, to make– to make murder more palatable to people.” Sexual and reproductive health is one. Number two is reproductive rights. Three, sexual and reproductive health services. Four, reproductive health services. Five, health services. And six and seven are basically the same: sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, or sexual and reproductive health and rights. These are the seven things that mean [emphatically] murder!

Courtney: [reading] “Therefore, none of these phrases should be allowed to exist anywhere in any official government documentation. So once you get appointed to the next Trump presidency, it is going to be your job to make sure, in whatever branch of government you’re working in, that none of these phrases exist.” Number five is health services! [whispering] Because that means murder. And they even further reinforce that by continuing to say, like, “It’s incredible how the left makes killing children and babies a pro-movement, how they can be so positive about it.”

Courtney: But then it was at this point that they started doing a weird thing that became a theme throughout the rest of the video. They have a deep resentment for career staffers within the White House. So the folks who have a job within the White House, sort of regardless of who the president is, regardless of which political party has the majority. They weren’t even really trying to hide their resentment. Like, the first time they said career staffers, but then they just call them The Careers and they’d say it, like, with acid on their tongue, as if like, “Oh, those Careers are going to try to make your job harder.” And they’re gonna– And they made it sound like every career staffer in the White House is on the left too, which I just– That can’t be true.

Royce: There’s no way.

Courtney: There’s no way.

Royce: But being people that work through multiple presidencies, they’re probably going to be more resistant to sudden changes. And, I would imagine, more often than not, are probably going to be moderate as a result, because they’ve had to work with different people. Because the whole point of Project 2025 is to try to swing the entire country as far right as possible, as quickly as possible.

Courtney: Oh yeah, and they kept saying that too, from day one is what they say. Here’s what you do: day one, hit the ground running. In the first instance of sharing a story and expressing disdain for the Careers was that she had to be adamant and tell all the Careers no, this is how we refer to this. It’s the protecting life and global health assistant policy. You can’t call it anything else. Because once it got passed, allegedly, some Careers started calling it the global gag order. And–

Royce: Which I imagine is a more accurate description of what the content was, going back to code words.

Courtney: Code words! Well, the thing is– So super, super duper brief summary because I’m not going to get deep into it, it’s not actually that important for the scope of this conversation, but Trump basically issued a presidential memorandum that was sort of meant to expand upon the – quote – “Mexico City policy”, which was passed by Reagan of course. And like, one of the main things of this memorandum required foreign NGOs to agree that they would not perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning. So, very, very pro-life stance that is affecting international countries. And here she is saying, “We have to call this the protecting life and global health assistance policy.” Which is really just baffling to me, because we can’t say health services, because we mean murder, but you can say global health and protecting life when really you are making it more difficult for people to access abortion, which can be a life-saving procedure.

Courtney: And she also goes– Like, they started this all with, like, you can’t let the left control language, because if you control language you control people. And Orwell, and Stalin, and Marx, and all these scary things and all these people– Hitler controlled language and look what happened with him! That was a bad dude. They were invoking all of these things, and yet here she is saying like, “No, you will not call it anything but this, when you work in my office.”

Royce: I mean, she also called herself an ethno-imperialist, and about that– about that Hitler.

Courtney: Hitler was just a normal American woman.

Royce: But no, it’s very plain, it’s very visible. It’s very frustrating to me personally to see that propaganda and attempts at manipulation are so transparent. Like it’s not clever.

Courtney: No.

Royce: Could you be more clever?

Courtney: [laughs] Could you at least be more clever in your evil scheming?

Royce: [sighs] So often, if I try to think how to refute something, it’s like, “Oh, this argument is just projecting.” You just– You’ve just taken what you’re doing and you turned it around, and that’s not complicated at all. I have– I’m already done thinking about this topic. Now I have to go on to find something else to think about.

Courtney: So the next category they go on to talk about is the environment. And they do their little bit, going back and forth, and they really– they just yuck it up the whole time and they’re like, “We were taught in school that we’d be frozen in an ice age and that was so scary. But then, no, we aren’t going to get frozen in an ice age, we’re going to get burned by acid rain. And then, after acid rain, it became global warming. And then, when science disproved global warming, the left changed the word to climate change.”

Royce: Sounds like this person did not have a very comprehensive education and is trying to pass laws to prevent other people from having a comprehensive education.

Courtney: Well, because then they go on to say climate change is actually about population control. They don’t want you to have children because of the impact on the environment.

Royce: [sighs] The changing climate is putting pressure on families. It is slowing population growth due to pollution and water and food scarcity, and all of the money that goes into natural disasters. If they wanted more children they should help fix the climate.

Courtney: Well, and admittedly, yes, there are individual people who will cite climate change as a reason why they personally have chosen not to have children. But the way they talked about this was the left doesn’t want anybody to have children, or they don’t want anybody to have too many children. And it’s like, nobody in America is policing, nobody is giving you a limit of ‘this is the number of children you can have’. Which was fascinating, because I also– I just– I just don’t believe this. But again, she was like, “Oh, when I worked in the White House, a career staffer–” which of course they say with disdain, apparently asked her one day how many children she has. And she’s like, “I already thought this was a weird question.” And it’s like, what was the context of the conversation? Did you say, like, “Oh, my kids,” and someone’s just being, you know, trying to get to know you as, like, new employee in the office? Like, “Oh, how many kids do you have?” Like, people don’t normally, in dead silence, in an office just be like, “How many kids do you have?” Like– like, I don’t know. Kids probably already came up at some point. But she said, “When I told him I had three, he said ‘Oh wow, that’s one and a half too many for the environment.’”

Royce: That probably didn’t happen.

Courtney: [chuckling] That probably didn’t happen. But yeah. And then they were yucking it up too, and they were like, “When I think climate change, I just think the changing of the seasons, because that happens every year, as it’s supposed to. Because the seasons are supposed to change, climate is supposed to change. We have summer and we have winter. That’s climate change!” Oh, my goodness... But the reason why we invented climate change is because of the trillions of dollars in new investments, supported with taxpayer subsidies, to address made up problems that the government and special interests created. So they’re also making that a grand conspiracy about money and corruption.

Royce: Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industries are massive donors of Republican parties and have been for many, many decades.

Courtney: Funny, they didn’t mention that in this video.

Royce: But see, that’s what I mean. It’s frustrating that it’s always so simple. Like I want a TV thriller conspiracy. [Courtney laughs] I want something that just goes and goes in tunnels and webs. I want red string on a wall. But it’s always just like you gave yourself away in three sentences. You’re just doing the thing you’re saying someone else is doing.

Courtney: If you’re gonna be so terrible, at least make it interesting.

Royce: Yes, I’m not interested in amateur hour. We need a supervillain.

Courtney: [laughs] Too bad, you get Donald Trump and JD Vance.

Courtney: So the next category they go on to talk about is human rights and border security. And they started this one with, like: “Human rights… Rights, rights, rights. The left is always making up new rights.” But then she goes on to talk about how, like, [reading] “So many of these rights are not in our Founding Fathers’ documentations,” but then! Then she goes on to say that, basically, if it wasn’t in our Founding Fathers’ documentations, then it shouldn’t be a right. Like now we’re talking about, like, Bill of Rights stuff here, right? But she literally said, “Unfortunately, our founding documents were not sufficient.” And then goes on to explain how in 2019 and 2020, they made a commission on unalienable rights. Which– this commission’s job was to declare which rights are truly unalienable under the founding principles of our nation, after literally in the same sentence saying our founding documents weren’t actually sufficient for this. So you’re making shit up!

Courtney: So then they do the little, like, these are the dangerous terms that people on the left use. [reading] “These terms – they say – are carefully designed to ignore the horrors of the most devastating challenges America faces, which include illicit drug and human trafficking.” These two words that you should never use, you should never let any of your staffers use, should not be in any documents whatsoever in the government, are: 1. undocumented immigrants, such a dangerous phrase; and 2. migrants. Dangerous, dangerous words. Can’t have these horrible, dangerous phrases in our government. Where they then go on to explain their logic why. And they’re like, “Well, the word you should use instead of undocumented immigrants is illegal alien.” And they’re like, “I don’t know why the left hates this so much! Alien is not a pejorative, alien is simply a legal term.” Oh, woof… Yeah. As if there isn’t a vast history of dehumanizing the groups of people who are deemed to be other, and as if dehumanizing other people isn’t like literally the most important step in justifying genocides in, like, the history of the world. Like, but they’re like, “It’s just a legal term. It just means somebody who’s not from here.”

Royce: So does undocumented immigrant.

Courtney: Well, but they said, um, “Calling someone an undocumented immigrant is the same thing as calling someone who breaks into your house in the middle of the night and undocumented homeowner.”

Royce: No.

Courtney: No, it’s not the same. It’s not the same. But they said, the reason why we’ve made up the terms undocumented immigrants and migrants is because we, the left, want to wash away the value that is citizenship. And citizenship is nationality and sovereignty. So we just– we just want to wash away these concepts. These concepts, you see, they believe have inherent value and we want to destroy that inherent value. It’s very– If any other musical theater nerds out there like Hadestown… [chuckle] It’s very much– Well, “Build the wall,” is what Hades says, but that song was written way before Trump ever said it. Believe it or not. It’s very much: they want what we have, therefore, they’re dangerous to us, so we need to keep them out. But they did the whole, like, “The left thinks we’re anti immigration. We’re not anti immigration, we just want legal immigration. There’s a legal way to come into this country.”

Royce: That’s never been true. [Courtney laughs] That’s– That has never been true. It’s always been people who fundamentally know that their beliefs or their opinions will not have public support if they say them at face value have to keep walking their language back to find something that is palatable.

Courtney: But you’re really going to kick out of what they said.

Royce: I’m really going to kick out of…?

Courtney: You’re really going to– Nope, my brain just stopped there. You are going to get a kick out of what they said the word migrant should actually mean and how it should be used. [reading] “Migrant should only ever be a word that’s used for migratory people who, like birds, only come to the country for a season and then go back home. That’s what a real migrant is, because that’s what migration means. Like birds!”

Royce: I was trying to anticipate how that was going to come up, and I was waiting for birds to come up.

Courtney: It did. It did come up.

Royce: Although I didn’t know if we were going to have to take, like, an ecological fact break in the middle of this. That wasn’t what I was expecting when we started recording. But yeah, of course migration means a lot of different things. It’s often cyclical in nature because of the seasons.

Courtney: Which is climate change. [chuckles]

Royce: There is also one-way migration.

Courtney: Yeah, the word migrant and migratory are not even the same words. They have the same root. There’s a reason why they sound the same, but they are used differently. And I don’t know if they know this, but humans aren’t birds.

Royce: I’m not sure if they do, given their fear of actual bodily education.

Courtney: Oh no. [laughs] I didn’t know where you were going with that when you started. But I see, well played. We can’t have health services in this country, so we can only have veterinary services. But then I am glad that so early you caught the conspiratorial nature of all this, because one minute they’ll be just sort of joking and yucking it up, and they’re like, “Alien is just a legal term, it’s not rude, it’s not a pejorative.” And they’ll be like, “Well, migrant, that should only apply to workers who just come in to work for a season and then leave, because birds migrate and that word is basically the same.”

Courtney: But then they will just drop the most untrue, vicious, vile, full government conspiracy in a single sentence, looking into the camera, like, with rage, and then move on. Like, this– it’s enough to give you whiplash. Because this one at the end of this, before moving on to the next topic, they just said, “There is an orchestrated invasion being led by the Biden administration in conjunction with the Mexican cartels.” And that’s why the left had to invent the word undocumented immigrant. So the next category is the gender cult, which I love. I love how they always call it the cult.

Royce: It’s probably the only cult I’m ever going to be a part of.

Courtney: I thought you were specifically not a part of gender.

Royce: Yeah, but I think from their perspective I’m a part of the non-existent gender cult.

Courtney: Yeah, that’s probably correct. So they state here that the word gender is now completely toxic and people on the right just shouldn’t even use it. That word is tainted, we’re not going to use it anymore. And they do another one of their silly little bits. One looks to the other and says, “Did you know that there are now between 72 and a thousand different kinds of gender?”

Courtney: But then this was the one that got really weird for me all of a sudden, because the previous ones, especially that very first topic, they were, like, “These are the words the left uses. We want you to identify these words and we want you to associate this word or this phrase with this.” At this point, now, they completely swapped that. Because now, all of a sudden, swapped that, because now, all of a sudden, this list is not dangerous words the left has changed the meaning of, now this list for this section was: here are the words we should always be saying. Here are the words you need to say instead of gender. Here’s the approved list of words. And they even said, in this category, “Words matter. Change the words, change the culture.” Which is fascinating, because that was what they critiqued the left for doing before they got into these, and they were like, “This is bad and this is why we need to fight it.” So there–

Royce: It’s so… simple!

Courtney: It’s so simple! But anyway, so now we’re pretending to be on the right, because here are the words we should always use instead of gender, because that word? Toxic, co-opted by the left. [reading] “We should only say: sex, biological sex, male or female. Except you cannot use the word sex if you use it in the phrase ‘sex assigned at birth’.” And then I had to scratch my head at a couple of these, because a couple things they said most of it I was following along with. It’s like, yes, I read this in the original Project 2025 document. I know where this is coming from. I’ve heard people say this. I have followed this logic long enough. But a couple things they said, like, surprised me. And I was like, I have to research this because I haven’t heard of this one yet. But they allege apparently even some conservatives have started to agree with this dangerous gender ideology, and those conservatives now use the phrase ‘gender as revealed at birth’.

Royce: I haven’t heard that one.

Courtney: I– I’ve certainly not even heard conservatives say that. But then they go on to– um, it’s also– It’s so inciting and inflammatory. Because this entire time, the disdain with which they’re talking about the Careers, they’re also like setting them up to be someone who’s going to fight you from day one, at every step of the way. And here’s how you need to watch out for those– those careers. And they literally said, “Careers will test you within the first couple days on the job by asking your pronouns.”

Royce: This is giving me stories of Christian high school telling children that they’re gonna go out into the world outside of their Christian private high school, and their faith in God is gonna be tested by random strangers constantly.

Courtney: Yes, very much that vibe. But it’s okay, because: “Don’t fear when these Careers test you by asking you your pronouns. This is exactly verbatim what you should say if someone asks you your pronouns.”

Royce: Oh, so this is basically an apologetics course.

Courtney: Yes, but instead of religion, it’s for– Well, we can’t say gender anymore. It’s– it’s for sex.

Royce: Sexual apologetics. [Courtney laughs] Gives this a different meaning, I think.

Courtney: Well, we’re on the left, so everything we says– everything we say doesn’t mean what it sounds like.

Royce: It’s code. I just don’t know what it’s code for yet.

Courtney: I don’t want to know what sexual apologetics is code for. If we’re being honest. I will allow myself to remain ignorant of this one. But, yes, so once these Careers test you, this is your proper response: “We’re here to implement the president’s priorities and agenda. We are not here to discuss pronouns.” Which is wild that, like, it doesn’t have to be a discussion. You could just answer the question. And if you are indeed, like, if you are indeed an overtly conservative person – especially in this case – a woman, middle aged woman, walking in in a dress and heels, like probably nobody is actually going to ask you your pronouns. And if they do, I promise that person means it with sincerity. They are not testing you. And it doesn’t have to be a discussion. You could just answer the question. But also now I love this idea in my head of someone who just like, very sincerely, is like, “But now I don’t know what to call you.”

Courtney: But it’s also really funny because when– when someone like you says that you prefer no pronouns, you’re part of the gender cult. But when someone like them says, “I don’t have pronouns,” they’re, they’re just a normal person. And you both could use the same phrase and they mean very different things.

Courtney: But then they explain that what we mean when we say gender affirming care, we mean sterilizing puberty blockers, which– [sighs] That’s– Sterilizing. That’s something I’ve been saying for years. Not only puberty blockers, which are not sterilizing, but other medications that aren’t even pertaining to gender affirming care, are things that are going to be attacked with increasing regularity over the years. We’ve already started seeing groups come for, like, antidepressants in teenagers. People will say, like, “Oh, these antidepressants are, you know, turning the kids asexual and that’s bad.”

Courtney: And so there are genuinely some people who are advocating for, like, no puberty blockers, no antidepressants, no… Even birth control. There are people who will still cite totally made up bullshit, as this can actually affect your fertility, or– you know, all these horrible things. So it’s– they are not ever going to just stop at what they perceive to be gender affirming care, which is already egregious enough. We should already be furious about it. But they’re going to keep coming. They’re going to keep coming for it.

Courtney: But it wasn’t just that. It was sterilizing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital mutilation. Always with the genital mutilation with these people. And then, seemingly an unrelated thought, but they just had to, like, dig it in there at the end. They just had to say the idea that gender is fluid is evil. Which I think they mean here fluid as in you can change from one to the other. So they actually just mean, you know, trans people. Which trans people can be gender fluid, but are not always. But they don’t want to have that conversation. They aren’t here to talk about pronouns.

Courtney: So then, the final category of this video is equity, and what equity means is prioritizing unequal treatment for people who aren’t from a marginalized class. And they’re really doing the, like, if we give marginalized people more rights, that means I have less rights. They’re trying to take rights away from me as a normal American woman! They want to treat me unfairly.

Royce: Because there is a finite pool of rights. There are only so many rights that all of humanity has access to.

Courtney: And she was on the committee that determined what those rights were, because the founding documents weren’t good enough.

Royce: Why didn’t she allocate more?

Courtney: Really, this sounds like a her problem. She– she could have fixed this and she didn’t. Shame on her. But, yeah, this one I don’t have as much to talk about, because a majority of this section was very tutorial, like, once you have this job, once you’re in the White House, we want you to do X, Y and Z. And obviously the people listening to this podcast are not going to be appointed to the next conservative administration.

Courtney: A lot of that is very irrelevant, but the basic premise of that walkthrough, and the things that she wants everyone to know is basically a ‘how to’ on how to monitor and eradicate guidance orders on anything pertaining to equity positions that have been created.

Courtney: And she mentioned like, oh, someone– there was a gender advisor position or something that was made. And so a lot of these guidance orders are like best practices, and a lot of them do come from or get signed by whoever is the President. Like, this is my White House. This is what I would like all of these branches to keep in mind as you go forward, as you work.

Courtney: And in her case, she was absolutely furious that so many of her best practices, while– She was right, she was working in a sector that included a lot of grant writing, so allocating money. And one of these best practices that she was presented with by those dreaded Careers was a policy of equity, and policies of, like, if you provide a grant to this organization, we would like this organization to have a certain amount of diversity, to have certain best practice– practices implemented and everything. And so her whole thing was basically: figure out if this is actually a law, is this actually legally binding, or is it just a – quote – “best practice”. And basically she wants to say, like, ignore best practices if it’s not actually a law, if it isn’t an executive order, if it hasn’t been signed into law. Figure out if you actually have to abide by this or not.

Courtney: So that was the whole premise of a majority of that section. But then the one thing that had me going on a bit of a research tangent, because this was the one where I was like, “Whoa, I haven’t heard that one yet.” Obviously we have been hearing about the right’s war on critical race theory for so long. And how they say, “Oh, critical race theory is happening in our elementary schools and our high schools.” When truly, critical race theory is– has far more depth as a theory and as a school of thought, and is usually, you know, college courses to get that deep. But they have turned the concept of critical race theory into learning about anything that has to do with race.

Royce: Yeah, many of the instances of right-wing outrage are just teaching accurate history in history classes.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: Because there’s been such a long history of propaganda in textbooks, particularly when it comes to, like, the Lost Cause of the South, or something like that.

Courtney: Yes. I recently learned that one of the songs that we learned in elementary school music class, that quite literally, like, they put the sheet music and the lyrics in front of us, they taught it to us, we all sang it, we were taught it was an American folk song… I recently just learned it was literally a minstrel song. And of course we were never taught the racist history of that. I don’t think we should have learned that song at all. I don’t think that should be a hot topic. But that is kind of what growing up and getting educated in America is. You learn a lot of things have holes or gaps, or you learn something with a racist history that was never properly explained to you.

Royce: Sometimes you learn that what you learned was intentionally covered up or made to seem better than it actually was.

Courtney: Yeah, and over the last couple of years, as critical race theory has become a bigger target for the right, a lot of their concern is just like, “Well, we don’t want our white children to feel guilty or to feel bad about crimes they didn’t even commit.” Or sometimes it’s not even as personal as we don’t want our kids to feel bad. Sometimes it’s more nationalistic, like, “We don’t want our kids to think America is a bad country, or has ever done anything bad.” Spoiler alert America has done a lot of bad things. And we continue to do bad things every single day. So I’ve known this fight of theirs has been growing in prominence. But they said the left has a new word for critical race theory, a new phrase that we need to be aware of, and that new phrase is social emotional learning.

Royce: Haven’t heard that one either.

Courtney: It’s also not critical race theory, but it is actually something that is a popular choice for elementary school teachers. Because it is quite literally like teaching children how to identify and understand and respond to their emotions. So I did find, and this was actually from 2022, I found an article on NPR, which I’ll also link in the show notes with everything else we’ve talked about, called: “How social emotional learning became a frontline in the battle against CRT.” So this has actually been around for a couple of years and this is just news to me. But from this article it says essentially [reading] “Social emotional learning teaches students how to manage their emotions, how to make good decisions, how to collaborate and how to understand themselves and others better. It’s more common in younger grades. All 50 states have standards related to SEL in preschool and more than half have standards in K-12.”

Royce: So that’s why they’re against it. They’re teaching cooperation and empathy, which is education and awareness that helps people not be pulled into, like, fascist cult ideologies.

Courtney: Yeah. It’s also really interesting because they’re saying, like, it’s also– it has been around for decades. They’re like it has sort of changed names, but it’s all been the same concept. And they’re like we’ve called them non cognitive skills, we’ve called them character education. I got character education as a kindergartner. Like I remember that being the kindergarten curriculum. And they’re like, “You know, adults might call them soft skills.” So it’s communication, it’s emotional regulation, it’s something that is very important for all humans to learn how to do.

Royce: Particularly at that age too, when you’re coming from, like, early elementary school when this might be the first time that you’re really interacting with larger groups of people, after mostly just being around your family.

Courtney: Yeah, or even just experiencing new types of frustration. You’re learning– You’re starting to learn things like math and maybe, if it doesn’t come very easily to you, maybe that’s a deep source of frustration. And learning, like, learning how to, you know, regulate and channel that frustration in a positive way. But, like I literally remember in my– and it was mostly kindergarten. Because there were, like, songs that we’d learn and there were different concepts of character that we learned, and a lot of them were just like respecting other people. Like that– That is what it means to have good character is to have respect. And we were learning things about, like, caring and fairness. And those are just, like, I don’t know man, normal things that you teach young children.

Courtney: And there’s, in this article, it even says that there is research that shows that students deemed more socially competent by kindergarten age were more likely to graduate from high school on time, complete a college degree, get a stable job in young adulthood. And like that kind of contributes to a ton of different areas of society that can contribute to reducing crime, positive things for the economy. Like–

Royce: I mean, yeah, of course it does. Because if you don’t learn it in school, in a, like, a well-made curriculum that is designed to do this, then you just grow up not knowing how to communicate effectively or regulate your emotions, and you make a ton of mistakes until, hopefully, you eventually figure it out.

Courtney: Mm-hmm, but they don’t think crime comes from their nice children. Crime comes from the Mexican cartels illegally invading the country because Biden gave them the okay to do that. None of this is how any of it works.

Royce: I mean, they also believe in very old, strict gender roles which have a tendency to not place blame or accountability where it’s supposed to be.

Courtney: Mm-hmm. Yeah. But this article I found so fascinating because it actually talks to some educators from Virginia Beach, in this case, where– the location where these folks are from. And they said, all of a sudden they had school teachers and principals who just, one year, started getting a ton of questions from parents that were like, “Can you talk to me about how you use social emotional learning in your school and are there connections to critical race theory?” And they were like, “What are you talking about? What? What is going on? Where did all these questions come from?” And, like I said– Like I have said when we were talking about the book bans, so even before talking about any of this project 2025, these organizations are very coordinated and they have their talking points, they have their propaganda, they have very specific goals, and they train people in very black and white terms. So they’re like this means this, that bad, go get them.

Royce: And this is a logical extension of book banning. This is an attempt to remove the areas of education that would lead people to an understanding that what these groups are trying to do is bad.

Courtney: Mm-hmm, which is also– So, you know, fascinating too. Because we talk about critical race theory. This article defines it as a decades old legal framework. And it’s interesting to frame it as a legal framework, because I have always known it to be a concept of, you know, racism is not one individual person who is bigoted toward another race. Racism is the systemic issues. It is how inequality gets embedded into law. And– But when you think of it that way, like, yeah, laws, policies, government, that is a legal framework. So this is a legal lens for viewing the tangible effects of racism in our society. And of course, they’re not going to see it that way. But they kept defending using illegal alien, because they’re like it’s just a legal term. It’s just a legal term. But what do you suppose they would say if we say, “Well, critical race theory is just a legal term”? They’re gonna say, no, you’re indoctrinating our children.

Royce: And they’re the only ones who are supposed to be able to indoctrinate their children.

Courtney: Nobody’s indoctrinating my children, except for me! I mean literally. That’s why there’s such a war against public schools in general. And why so many of these organizations are making a big push towards homeschooling too. So yeah, that is very fascinating. But basically what they’re saying is this is a Trojan Horse. Social emotional learning. I said that backwards a little bit, let me try that again. So what conservative activists have been saying is that social emotional learning is a Trojan Horse for critical race theory and transgender advocacy. So they are quite literally telling their camp if your child is learning social emotional learning, SEL, it’s really just critical race theory and transgender advocacy. That’s what’s at the heart, that’s what’s actually inside. And this is how they’re pushing it on, they are secretly pushing them in. And it’s– They even called it a new variant of the CRT virus. Because we know they care so much about new variants of dangerous viruses. I say as we’re in another historic wave of COVID.

Royce: I have to ask what would a super spreader event of the CRT virus look like?

Courtney: I don’t want to know. [laughs]

Royce: I feel like it’s a free hormone party.

Courtney: Free hormone party. Well, if they are in fact saying that critical race theory and transgender advocacy go hand in hand, then sure. So that is what they said. They said critical race theory and transgender advocacy.

Royce: Oh, I flubbed my delivery. I meant HRT party, not CRT party.

Courtney: I mean a Chappell Roan concert maybe. But yeah, I mean, to them, they’re saying it is all one and the same. They’re saying this is all dangerous, putting it all in the same box. They’re all very different things, but this is how they have chosen to respond to anything the left says. It’s to tell their camp, “Nothing they say is what they mean. It always means something different and it’s always something sinister and dangerous that’s going to ruin the country.” But yeah, it’s also– It’s very fascinating here. Because they also linked to an indoctrination map. It is a map of the United States where conservative groups, parents defending education, tracked incidents in schools related to gender ideology, ethnic studies, and social emotional learning. And just look at all those incidents!

Royce: For those of you who can’t see the map, it is where you would expect basically all of the places where there are lots of people, with a pretty narrow blank column in the plains area and fewer dots in the south than you would expect.

Courtney: But I also find it fascinating because on the main page, like, you can just sort of scroll down and see the most recent incidents that have been here. And, oh no, in a middle school somewhere they reported that a Palestinian flag was displayed in an eighth grade social studies classroom. Oh, a social studies classroom dare inform students that there is such a thing as Palestine?! But then everything else on the front page are all universities. And I’m not going to go through right now to see how many of these are actually middle and high schools or elementary schools. But, like, why are you complaining about the University of Honolulu, the University of Illinois, Westchester University, University of Colorado? Like, these are all grown ass adults who are paying a lot of money to learn the things that they’re learning.

Courtney: And, heaven forbid, Missouri State University has courses that feature topics such as critical race theory, white privilege and whiteness. They’re saying this is a dangerous incident that they need to track.

Courtney: Again, someone is paying a lot of money to learn these things.

Courtney: But yeah, the basic takeaway from this concept and this article is that parents in general, but especially highly conservative ones, are always going to be paranoid that teachers are indoctrinating their kids into something. And the thing is, critical race theory being their main target of focus for so long is not actually a course in middle schools. It’s not. Actually, you’re not going to see the words critical race theory in an elementary school curriculum. But you are genuinely going to see social emotional learning in curriculums across the country, especially for younger children. So they’re trying to use that as a, like, “A-ha! See that. There it is. I found the thing that makes me uncomfortable.” And it is a very false equivalence. However, the effect is still the same. It is still very dangerous, it is something to be aware of.

Courtney: And, yeah, they just conclude the episode by saying like, all of these dangerous phrases and words that we’ve talked about today are in documents in every area of the government. Therefore, when you get appointed to your position and you get into the White House, it’s going to be your job to make sure that they are all eradicated. Because we can never use these words again. They’re dangerous. RIP health services. So I think that is our episode for today that completely summarizes the entire first episode of this training course. It was probably longer than the course itself, but hopefully a little more tolerable. I don’t know if I’m going to feel like talking about the other videos or not, but if I do, we just might make this a multi-part series.

Courtney: But to round out today’s episode, I am super ecstatic to share our featured marketplace vendor of the week. We’ve got some things relevant to this American election, to politics, and also just some fun things that I genuinely love. Our vendor today is the Geeky Knot. It is a shop that is asexual, neurodivergent and non-binary owned, where you can find handmade fiber arts and sticker designs. If you are the kind of person who would like to express your voting choices in the form of a sticker, we have Step Moms for Momala 2024. A sticker that says Madam President 2024. And Step Parents for Harris. To name just a couple. From the item description, you can also: “Join your fellow anti-Zionist Jewish family in declaring Not In Our Name in a bright, vibrant way. Show your faith and your solidarity with Palestine all at once when wearing this watermelon kipa.” And there are a couple of different color options for those. We also have just a bunch of other queer and political stickers. One that says Masking Is Punk, and we’ve got some trans, ace, and aro Pride things.

Courtney: But I personally just really love the fiber arts on this page. A couple years ago I actually ordered a couple of things from this page. So there are these really cute, like, ice cream pint cozies, and there was an asexual pride flag colored one, which is very nice for eating my vegan Ben and Jerry’s ice cream with, very lovely. I also bought what was listed as a Krampus hat. Just big, beautiful, like, twisted horns, big goaty ears. I actually wore it when we were playing a game of D&D and I was playing a satyr and that was a very fun time. But do check this shop out. There is a lot more than that. There are scarves with various Pride flag colors, aro scarves, ace scarves, bi scarves, and even some really beautiful purses and tote bags. There’s all kinds of stuff on this store. So, as always, links to find the Geeky Knot are going to be in the description and the show notes.

Courtney: And I will also give everyone a reminder that our Gaza action doc is still in the description of every single episode. So please crack that open now and then find some action items, contact your representatives, donate money if you have some to give, find ways to volunteer. I know the particular politics of an election year has everybody very focused on the country, very anxious about our future, but we can’t let that anxiety get in the way of our ongoing work. And so that’s all for today. Tune in next time for possibly more politics, or perhaps something else entirely? We will find out when we get there, ta-ta.