Chantelle, for some reason Quora is auto deleting this whenever I try to reply to you. So trying again at top level.
First in my response, I need to make it clear I am NOT suggesting anyone edits the article. It's because people I help shared it with me and told me they found it scary. So I DO have to discuss the article and tell them about its failings and omissions. They got scared because the Wikipedia article presents project 2025 with no criticism and they assumed that this meant it was going to happen and there was nothing to stop it.
So I did need to explain that Wikipedia articles with few active editors often have major omissions. And then I needed to explain those omissions.
I also needed specifically to debunk the Wikipedia article. Which I did by showing that it only presents one side of the story and never explains that project 2025 is constitutionally impossible and legally invalid and that there is no way any president could implement even a fraction of what they claim to be able to do.
I am NOT suggesting that anyone edits this article in any way. I expect that if it gets more attention these issues will be fixed naturally but it has few editors so far.
There are many Wikipedia articles with few editors. An article with few editors CAN be high quality. As an example, in Astronomy the many articles about newly discovered systems of exoplanets are so reliable I generally don’t even bother to check the cites (I would if I was using them as a basis for a blog post but not for personal use). Similarly for most topics in Astronomy.
In most topic areas it doesn’t matter if it has only one editor if that editor uses top quality sources and summarizes them accurately.
However Wikipedia itself recognizes that articles that haven’t had much work on them often have major omissions, and recognizes this with its classification scheme. This is a C-class article.
QUOTE STARTS
C [class]
The article is substantial but is still missing important content or contains irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant problems or require substantial cleanup (Wikipedia:Cleanup - Wikipedia).
More detailed criteria
The article cites more than one reliable source and is better developed in style, structure, and quality than Start-Class, but it fails one or more of the criteria for B-Class. It may have some gaps or missing elements, or need editing for clarity, balance, or flow.
Useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study.
Considerable editing is needed to close gaps in content and solve cleanup (Wikipedia:Cleanup - Wikipedia) problems
(Wikipedia:Content assessment - Wikipedia))
====================
This is a C-class article. You don’t expect it to be comprehensive. It may well have significant problems and leave out substantial material.
As an example of a major omission, in the reactions section the article has lots of paragraphs about people saying it would harm the US.
It has no quotes from anyone saying any of it is fantasy, or is legally impossible without changing the US constitution.
Project 2025 has had very little attention from legal experts or legal analysis. Since it would be hugely significant if it was legally valid, this shows they consider it to be too low quality to even bother analysing legally.
You can soon see why as soon as you start to read it. Have you tried? It doesn’t even try to be legally sensible.
NOT A PATH TO AN AUTHORITARIAN REGIME WHICH IS PRESENTED IN THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE AS AN UNCHALLENGED OPINION
The Wikipedia article says that numerous commentators see this as a viable path to ending American democracy and replacing it with an authoritarian regime:
QUOTE Numerous commentators see Project 2025 as a path to the ending of American democracy, which would replace it with an undemocratic authoritarian regime, possibly led by Trump as dictator (Dictator - Wikipedia).
That is all they say.
This is scary for the people I help as the article don’t mention anyone who says this is legally impossible.
The project 2025 mandate doesn’t explicitly say that it is a mandate to replace democracy by an authoritative regime. So it’s not clear where that is supposed to come from but that is one of the main things people believe the mandate can accomplish, so I debunk it by showing it’s unconstitutional.
The Wikipedia article doesn’t explain that this is unconstitutional or the difficulty of amending the US constitution to replace a democracy by an autocracy, which is essentially impossible.
So - I suppose there I’m debunking the popular understanding of implications -of the mandate rather than the mandate itself.
To end the US democracy and install a dictator with no term limit requires a constitutional amendment
It would be necessary to change the 22nd Amendment. Congress can’t do this by itself.
QUOTE No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
(The 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution)
Or alternatively to change article II. Every term is four years by article II, a constitutional amendment could change this to lifelong without any elections until the president decides to retire or dies:
(https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/)
There is no way the US is going to approve such an amendment, either of them. So this is legally impossible.
QUOTE FROM A LEGAL EXPERT SAYING THE MANDATE IS LEGAL FANTASY NOT MENTIONED BY THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE
Then, I gave a couple of quotes from reasonably reliable mainstream sources at least as good as the sources the Wikipedia used that present the opposite point of view that the article doesn’t mention.
Here is one that says there is an element of legal fantasy in it.
QUOTE Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the separation of powers and was not part of the Heritage project, said there’s a certain amount of “fantasizing” about the president’s capabilities.
QUOTE “Some of these visions, they do start to just bleed into some kind of authoritarian fantasies where the president won the election, so he’s in charge, so everyone has to do what he says — and that’s just not the system the government we live under,”
From an article published by The Hill.
.(Conservative groups draw up plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision)
QUOTE FROM ANOTHER EXPERT SAYING THAT SCHEDULE F WOULD BE VERY VULNERABLE TO LITIGATION - AGAIN NOT MENTIONED
Here is another about how even schedule F would face legal challenges and about how Biden’s executive order would make it legally far harder to implement.
QUOTE Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that seeks to make government more effective, has been working with the Biden administration on this and other proposals to bolster the civil service. He said he understands the vulnerability of the new proposed rule to being overturned, but he said it would make re-imposing Schedule F even more vulnerable to legal challenges than it was when Mr. Trump first issued the order.
From an article published by NY Times.
(Biden Administration Aims to Trump-Proof the Federal Work Force)
It is clear that Schedule F would be challenged and Biden’s team seem confident, especially after his executive order, that it would be found to be illegal.
Trump put Schedule F in place just before the end of his presidency and Biden of course immediately reverted it, so it never saw any legal challenges so it’s not tested for legality.
The Biden administration at least don’t seem too concerned about it especially with his new executive order.
Also Biden’s new executive order means it would take a couple of months or more to reverse what he just did, before they could even start on schedule F. So there would be time to start on the legal challenges and have all of them in line before he implemented Schedule F indeed they might be able to challenge his reversal of Biden’s order.
ANTI-LGBT MATERIAL AS LEGAL FANTASY - ACTUALLY THAT’S A POLITE TERM FOR IT - COMPLETE LEGAL NONSENSE THAT IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE A LEGAL EXPERT EVEN BOTHERING TO ANLAYSE
The anti - LGBT stuff is clearly impossible as there is no scenario where the Republicans have enough seats in the Senate in 2024 to pass the necessary laws. They wouldn’t be able to reverse the Respect for Marriage act, as many moderate Republicans support it. Even if they ran on a platform of reversing it they couldn’t do it, because if they replaced those moderate Republicans with far right candidates they would surely no longer have a majority in the House.
It’s highly unlikely they get a landslide of far right Republicans, in the House, such candidates are not likely to do well in battleground states,.
Then it is even more impossible in the Senate because only 1/3 of it is up for re-election as I say. They can only achieve 65 Republican senators and many of those will be moderates opposed to reversing the Respect for Marriage act who can’t be replaced until 2026 or 2028.
Also the Supreme Court is highly unlikely to overturn Obergefells.
Then going to the mandate itself, you don’t need to go far into it to find bizarre impossible stuff.
Wikipedia just quotes some of the anti-LGBT material without comment on its legality,
I won’t make any suggestions for how they could fix this :).
Even if I was a Wikipedia editor I wouldn’t want to touch an article like this! It would be tricky to navigate their no original research rules to find a way to say anything about it until or if anyone provides legal comment on the mandate, and any edits would be likely to be contested.
But this is very confusing for the people I help to say without comment as if it is something they could do. As a blog author I can point out that this is constitutionally impossible as I have no original research limitations on what I can say here.
EXAMPLE THE AIM TO REMOVE THE WORDS EQUITY, DIVERSITY, ABORTION AND MANY PHRASES FROM THE ENTIRE US CODE- LEGAL NONSENSE - THEY WOULD HAVE TO AMEND EVEN THE US CONSTITUTION TO REMOVE THE TERM “EQUITY
For example this is part of their agenda:
QUOTE The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.
The last part to remove words to do with reproductive health, abortion, reproductive rights, sexual orientation, gender identity etc from every piece of legislation that exists requires a majority in the house, a fillibuster proof majority in the Senate, a Republican president - and even then there is no way it is going to work.
The Supreme Court would strike down many of the changes as unconstitutional. Indeed if you take it literally I’m sure many laws would just become unintelligible.
There are 60 results in the US Code for “abortion”
425 for diversity
and 1450 for equity.
This is not written with legal precision.
Indeed what about the US constitution?.
They would have to amend the US constitution. It has two occurrences of Equity in:
Article III
QUOTE Article III, Section 2, Clause 1: The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority …
(article-3/section-2/clause-1/)
Eleventh amendment:
QUOTE: The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.
If you take it literally it is legally absurd.
The other things they say there obviously would have numerous legal challenges too. I just picked on the most obviously absurd thing to make a point.
There is no way anyone is going to do a detailed legal analysis of this absurdity.
Even if you don’t take it as legally precise and try to get at what they are trying to say rather than what they say literally, the president can’t even reverse the respect for marriage act or do anything about Oberfells, how is the president supposed to remove LGBTQ equality from the US legislation and the executive?
SAYS THAT TRANSGENDER IS PORNOGRAPHY AND ANY PUBLISHER NEEDS TO BE IMPRISONED AND LIBRARIANS CLASSIFIED AS SEX OFFENDERS - SUPREME COURT WOULD STRIKE THIS DOWN AS NONSENSE AND THEY’D EVEN HAVE TO IMPRISON THE EDITORS OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN AND MOST MAGAZINE STORE OWNERS
The mandate also defines transgender as pornography and says publishers and distributors of books that cover the topic of LGBT (presumably including editors of many scientific journals as it is the topic of many science papers) should go to prison.
It says librarians who work in libraries that contain transgender literature should be registered as sex offenders:
It says that companies that facilitate its distribution over the internet should be closed down (presumably all social media companies unless they prohibit discussion of trans).
QUOTE Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children …
QUOTE The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.
There is NO WAY books and articles on the general topic of transsexuality could ever legally be classified as pornography in the USA.
QUOTE pictures and/or writings of sexual activity intended solely to excite lascivious feelings of a particularly blatant and aberrational kind, such as acts involving children, animals, orgies, and all types of sexual intercourse. The printing, publication, sale and distribution of "hard core" pornography is either a felony or misdemeanor in most states. Since determining what is pornography and what is "soft core" and "hard core" are subjective questions to judges, juries and law enforcement officials, it is difficult to define, since the law cases cannot print examples for the courts to follow.
Legal Dictionary - Law.com (Legal Dictionary - Law.com)
To take a very clear example again, there is no way that the Scientific American article: (Stop Using Phony Science to Justify Transphobia) counts as pornography! There is nothing there of any sexual nature it just describes the science and biology that leads to trans people.
As I talk about here:
They would have to try to imprison the editorial board of Scientific American and the author of that article for publishing it and all the bookshops that sell Scientific American for selling it and to classify all librarians for libraries that have copies of Scientific American including searchable online or databases as sexual offenders.
The Supreme Court if it ever got that far would be sure to strike it down if they tried to define the article: (Stop Using Phony Science to Justify Transphobia) as pornography. They wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on.
The rest also is just legal fantasy. Again they have to change not only the legislation but also the constitution.
There is just masses of RUBBISH like that in the mandate that clearly would never go anywhere.
It is being polite to call it “fantasy”.
You don’t have to read far to see that. All this which I discussed here is on page 5 of the Mandate For Leadership (https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf)
Nobody is going to do a detailed legal analysis of this nonsense.
TRUMP SAYING GENERAL MILLER SHOULD BE EXECUTED IS JUST AN EXAMPLE OF THE VERY BROAD US FREE SPEECH LIKE “LOCK HER UP” FOR HILLARY CLINTON - IT IS LEGALLY IMPOSSIBLE.
On Trump saying General MIlley should be executed, Trump says lots of very extreme things. He said similar things way back in his first term as president. Even in the campaign he got his crowds to shout “Lock her up” about Hillary Clinton which of course he had no right to do and when elected as president he didn’t put her in prison because he couldn’t.
Similarly here. This does NOT mean a president legally could do those things.
That is just the American free speech. Trump is legally permitted to say that Mark MIlley should be executed. That would surely NOT be permitted for a politician or anyone running for office in the UK which has far stronger hate speech rules.
But a president would NOT be legally permitted to order the execution of a retired general with no legally valid reason for the death penalty in the USA.
QUOTE the US Constitution is not universally interpreted the way Project 2025 has done
I hope you’ll agree after these examples that no justice would interpret it like that. There is no way the US Supreme Court accepts such an interpretation.
Recent example just today of how the Supreme Court is originalist majority, but NOT Republican.
On nitter:
https://nitter.net/Redistrict/status/1706681037466616287
On twitter:
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1706681037466616287They frequently struck down Trump's executive orders and are likely to strike down schedule F if it comes to them especially since Biden added an extra executive order that makes Schedule F actually remove rights that Biden will give to Federal employees as I explain in my debunk.
Point of clarity in case you think I am trying to use my blog in some way to influence Wikipedia.
This is NOT to suggest anyone fixes the article to include these things!
I am not trying to instigate anyone to evade the block on me editing.
I think the decision of the Wikipedia editors to do an indef block was mistaken, I have explained in public posts on my Science 2.0 blog why I think it was a mistake. I was indef blocked for trying to fix an article with only one active editor. My edit, and a separate article I wrote that expanded on the topic in detail remained in place for a year until he returned and reverted it.
By Wikipedia’s own rules, I am not permitted to say anything in Wikipedia about their decision but those rules only apply to their website.
I have every right to say publicly outside of Wikipedia that the decision was a mistake.
I was told that there is no possibility of life on Mars and told I was pushing my own agenda by doing an article about the many proposals for ways there could be present day life there.
I wasn’t. there was nothing of my own work there. I was summarizing the research of others not myself.
As I explained, it is the second half of NASA’s first goal to see if there is present day life on Mars.
Goal 1: determine if Mars ever supported, or still supports life
(Banfield et al., 2020. Mars science goals, objectives, investigations, and priorities: 2020 version: 9).
But nobody checked that cite because the sole editor of Wikipedia's “Life on Mars” article said I was mistaken to say NASA are looking for present day life on Mars, and others who voted to delete my article believed him over me.
This was one of main reasons given for my indef block. I go into some of the others in that article.
They also indef blocked me for supporting another editor who used sources such as the Dalai Lama to write about my own religion, Buddhism, in the Tibetan tradition.
I didn’t edit Wikipedia on that topic or suggest any edits of the articles myself (except very minor things like tagging an article as having problems).
I just argued strongly they should restore previous content they had before, based on sources such as the Dalai Lama.
I did this immediately after a Wikipedia editor went on a big editing binge removing just about all content sourced to Buddhist authors like the Dalai Lama, or indeed similar authorities from other traditions such as Thai Buddhism, Sri Lankan Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism etc from all the main articles on Buddhism in Wikipedia including ones I thought previously were excellent.
He is of the view Wikipedia should only cover Buddhism as presented by Western academics and that text using Buddhist sources should only be used if they back up what a Western academic says. I don’t think that is a correct interpretation of Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources.
I tried to get his edits reverted that’s all.
But other Wikipedians agreed with him rather than me and when I didn’t concede that he had won his argument and tried to elevate it to get more attention they responded by giving me a topic ban from the Buddhism topic area.
That’s a bit like having to ask to restore material on Christian theology sourced to Anglican Bishops or Archbishops or to the Pope, for an article that’s been edited to remove all his content and instead presents Anglicanism, and Catholicism as it is described in articles by Hindus (say).
The Dalai Lama has a different sort of role. Buddha said nobody should take any role of leader of the tradition after he died. So there are limitations on Buddhist parallels for archbishops or the pope.
But in terms of respect for his understanding of the Buddhist teachings, especially the very vast Tibetan literature that few Westerners can even read in the original language he is widely regarded by everyone as an authority. He also amazed other Tibetans with his learning as a young man and got his Geshe degree at an i extraordinary young age which you only get with a very thorough knowledge of Tibetan Buddhist writings on Buddhism. There are few Westerners who have ever completed this training and the Dalai Lama has it not only in the main Gelupa tradition but in all four of the main traditions of Buddhism in Tibet.
But Wikipedia editors couldn’t agree with me that the Dalia Lama is more authoritative on his own religion and texts written in his own native language than some very minor Western figures they promoted in his place, who made numerous mistakes (understandably) but who they prefer over him for some reason.
So, that is my perspective.
I then collaborated with the editor whose content had nearly all been removed from Wikipedia in that big purge, who in my view was an excellent editor with an amazing broad knowledge of my religion, and we set up our own Encyclopedia of Buddhism.
I haven’t done any work on it for some time but he still works on it. He works on the teachings. I didn’t feel comfortable working on those, so I tackled the biographies.
The core of it is based on the material deleted from Wikipedia but it is now far more comprehensive.
I did the same with the astrobiology.
I continued to work on the article they deleted for some time.
I don’t keep it up to date any more. But it is here:
(Possible present day habitats for life on Mars (Including potential Mars special regions))
Also this one, for some reason Wikipedia still has this one though they deleted one section of it for no apparent reason.
(Present day Mars habitability analogue environments on Earth)
I find it rather strange that they think it is okay to keep an article about terrestrial analogues for present day habitats on Mars but to delete the article about the proposed habitats that they are intended as analogues for, but that is what they did.
To paraphrase, Wikipedia basically says
* “Mars is uninhabitable, there is no life there”
But in a separate article says:
* “look here are lots of terrestrial analogues for potential habitats on Mars”.
I find it a bit bizarre but there you go.
They still have most of this article in Wikipedia. and most of it is my work.
Anyway, I am much better at explaining things than I was back then and I probably would never have got into that situation if I’d been better at communication back then in some respects.
I’d have explained better, and I’d have left the conversation when it became clear nobody was listening if I wasn’t able to explain my point of view, I’d have picked up the signals better that the conversation is over and there is no potential for further dialogue.
I also got upset and depressed and angry about it, and didn’t give myself enough space, and that doesn’t help in a situation like that.
But that’s water under the bridge and it’s happened.
I respect that they don’t see it like that. That is their perspective. I don’t understand it but it is their right to run the site as they do.
I DO STILL THINK WIKIPEDIA IS A GOOD PROJECT AND WANT THEM TO SUCCEED
And I do still think Wikipedia is a good project. I’d want to help them if I could but I can’t. I think it is good for others to help with the project :). But I can’t any more.
So, that is their decision. That is how they decided to run the site.
From my perspective, I tried to help as a volunteer to make it a better encyclopedia. All my edits were in good faith.
They didn’t want me. It is their website and it is for them to set the rules and now that I’m blocked I know I can’t edit it.
I feel they lost a good editor. But from my side then it has freed me up. I would likely still be spending hours every week editing Wikipedia if it weren’t for the indef block.
There is NO WAY that I want to get involved in anything like that in my life again. It was quite devastating for me at the time though now I’m over it.
IF MY INDEF BLOCK IS EVER REMOVED - PROBABLY ONLY POSSIBLE IF NASA FIND PRESENT DAY LIFE ON MARS - I WOULD ONLY HAVE TIME FOR MINOR EDITS ANYWAY AND IT HAS FREED ME UP TO DO MANY THINGS I PROBABLY WOULD NEVER HAVE DONE IF I WAS STILL EDITING WIKIPEDIA SEVERAL HOURS A WEEK
If my indef block was ever removed (not likely, perhaps if we find life on Mars they might remove it - otherwise probably never.
I can never say to them that it was wrong for me to edit Wikipedia to say that one of NASA’s main goals is to find out if there is present day life on Mars. As far as I can tell that is currently one of the main things I’d need to do to get unblocked, so I can’t get unblocked.
But if NASA or anyone else do find present day life on Mars, then I think it might just possibly be worth trying an unblock appeal again.
Not sure if I would try, if I thought it would lead to a lot of hassle I wouldn’t bother.
If I do get unblocked ever I wouldn’t spend the time I did on it before as a volunteer, I’d just do minor edits to fix obvious errors and if a fix was challenged I wouldn’t bother to get into discussion about it.
I’d just be like many casual editors who can’t be bothered with the hassle.
I wouldn’t have the time anyway.
Instead of that I’m helping scared people over the internet which I feel is something of great value to do. I’m doing these blog posts. Also the work I did for Wikipedia on potential present day habitats for life on Mars and on planetary protection, summarizing the literature gave me the background knowledge I needed to go on to work on a paper on the topic and then to challenge major issues in NASA’s biosafety plan for its Mars mission. I will be sending it to peer review soon. I expect it to pass peer review, if it does then part of the reason it’s possible is because of many hours of voluntary work on material on the topic for Wikipedia which then lead to many blog posts after I was indef blocked and other material. Plus invitation to give a talk to an astrobiology conference in Oxford in 2015, small one attended by some of the leading astrobiologists of our time and now to this possible book.
So - the material isn’t even really lost, it’s just lost from Wikipedia but has been very useful for what I did next :).
I was upset at the time but that is well behind me now :).
I’ve moved on.
I have no wish to try to evade rules that owners of a website make for it.
But people I help got scared by the Wikipedia article because it presented project 2025 with no criticism and they assumed that this meant it was going to happen and there was nothing to stop it.
So I did need to explain that Wikipedia articles with few active editors often have major omissions.
And then I needed to explain those omissions. The reason I had to mention the article is because people were sharing the Wikipedia article with me saying it scared them.
So I needed specifically to debunk the Wikipedia article. Which I did by showing that it only presents one side of the story and never explains that project 2025 is constitutionally impossible and legally invalid.