It seems like a million years ago now, but there was a moment back in 2024, in the heat of that weird presidential campaign, when everyone was talking about the radical blueprint for Donald Trump’s restoration. Project 2025 was so extreme, in fact, that his campaign had Trump disavow it publicly. He usually said that he hadn’t read the plan and didn’t intend to, but at times he went further. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, on July 20, 2024, Trump said, “Like some on the right, severe right, came up with this Project 25 . . . They’re sort of the opposite of the radical left. You have the radical left and the radical right, and they come up — I don’t know what the hell it is, it’s Project 25 . . . and then they read some of the things, and they are extreme, seriously extreme.”
Trump probably wasn’t lying when he said he hadn’t read it, but his advisers obviously believed he should keep his distance from the plan, which didn’t poll well, and when people found out what was in it, they were appalled. Project 2025 was a far-right manifesto, filled with the kind of pie-in-the-sky fantasies that denizens of conservative think-tanks had been churning out for decades in the hopes of influencing Republican administrations.
One such organization, the Heritage Foundation, had been publishing “Mandate for Leadership,” its so-called policy guide, since 1981 and updating it as necessary. But Project 2025 was different from the group’s previous effort. This time, the Heritage Foundation had organized a formal transition operation, created training sessions, personnel lists and a day-one playbook for Trump to hit the ground running with a flurry of executive orders and personnel changes.
This effort was largely guided by its co-author, Russell Vought, who served in the first Trump administration as the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Having worked for years for the Republican Study Committee in the House, a group of far-right members dedicated to social conservatism, tax cuts and the destruction of the federal safety net, Vought was an experienced bureaucrat with a specific vision: to shrink the federal workforce and bring as much power under the direct auspices of the president as possible. As a self-described Christian nationalist, he also believed that the U.S. should espouse fundamentalist Christianity, and that the country has no obligation to engage in global initiatives that do not directly benefit its own people.
(Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, listens as President Donald Trump speaks during the America.gov launch event on Sept. 29, 2026.
Vought was an active member of a group formed after the 2012 election called Groundswell, which included an eclectic group of influencers and activists such as Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and far-right political operative Steve Bannon, who had come to believe that Republicans needed to be much more radical in their methods and their goals. Seeing the federal workforce as nothing more than sinecures for dangerous liberals, Vought and his comrades planned mass firings under new rules such as Schedule F, which would reclassify thousands of federal workers as at-will employees, making them exempt from civil service protections. And if they could not be fired, he would make their lives so difficult that they would quit. As Vought famously explained:
We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.
Vought believed that the way to secure a mandate for this agenda, even under Democratic presidents, was to cut the federal workforce so massively that the government would be unable to function beyond the most basic services. We will have to see just how well that works out for them in the future. But the destruction is already monumental.
In the months after Trump returned to the White House, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency wreaked havoc on the federal government. Thousands were fired and departments were shuttered, leaving chaos everywhere. That’s the tech-bro style.
Vought believes that we are living in a “post-constitutional” time in which the “precedents and legal paradigms that have wrongly developed over the last 200 years” must be thrown off.
But Vought is a different breed. He is a patient and methodical destroyer. Vought believes that we are living in a “post-constitutional” time in which the “precedents and legal paradigms that have wrongly developed over the last 200 years” must be thrown off. And even while Trump’s presidency appears to be on the verge of collapsing from the weight of historically low poll numbers, Vought is quietly accomplishing his mission of comprehensive deregulation mostly under the radar.
On Tuesday, the administration ended Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students, effectively allowing them to be bullied and discriminated against in America’s schools. But since this is a man who joyfully prescribes “trauma” as a political tactic, it’s not entirely surprising that his crusade would eventually reach schoolchildren.
Vought’s influence is also being felt on Capitol Hill. As the chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has made her role a centerpiece of her reelection campaign. For years, she has argued to Mainers that her value lies in the seniority and influence she yields. But Collins should think again: One of Vought’s primary strategies for securing the unitary executive is through confrontation with the legislative and judicial branches. That conflict is currently playing out in the courts. But under a supine GOP congressional majority that has been willing to cede the powers granted to them by the Constitution, he is winning — and making more moves.
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According to the New York Times, an Oval Office meeting grew heated when Vought attempted to have the president rescind National Institutes of Health grants to universities that did not align with the MAGA agenda. Trump was on board with the idea, since it would have targeted Harvard University, an institution he sees as his enemy. After fierce pushback from members of both parties, the pair pulled back. But that reprieve could be temporary; conventional wisdom says they are likely to try again after the November midterms are over, when Vought’s new initiative to confront Congress begins in earnest.
Then, on Wednesday, Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wis., blocked a Democratic bill that would have stopped Vought’s recent pocket rescission of $810 million in domestic spending previously approved by Congress. (In a statement released days before the vote, Collins decried the move.) The money had been earmarked for programs focused on immigrants, refugees, civil rights, climate change and children. Johnson said the issue will likely have to be decided by the Supreme Court, which approved Vought’s rescissions in 2025 because they pertained to national security. These funds do not, but it won’t be surprising if the Court’s conservative majority, which has been largely sympathetic to the unitary executive theory, finds another reason to allow it.
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If Vought and the administration were to win at the Supreme Court, Congress might as well just go part-time to approve presidential appointments, name post-offices and pass one big pile of money for the presidential monarch to spend as he pleases. Article I of the Constitution will be effectively dead.
Under Vought’s leadership, the damage to the federal government is already overwhelming, and it’s unclear if a Democratic congressional majority or administration will be able to fix it. But then, that’s part of the plan too. Trump’s presidency may be faltering, but Vought’s dream is being realized every single day.
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The post Trump’s failure hides Project 2025 success appeared first on Salon.com.
Baguetterezepte gibt es hier im Blog ja nun schon sehr viele. Dennoch füge ich der Sammlung ein Weiteres hinzu, das aus einer reinen Fermentationsspielerei entstanden ist und auf Anhieb ein klasse Ergebnis erbrachte.
Wenn man sich mit dem Brotbacken eingehender beschäftigt, dann ist das Spiel mit der Teigfermentation einer der spannendsten Punkte. Wie und auf welche Weise kann ich bestimmte optische oder geschmackliche Ergebnisse erreichen und was hat das mit der Art der Teigfermentation zu tun?
Der Biga, also der feste Hefevorteig, ist so eine faszinierende Unterart der Teigfermentation. In Italien werden teils riesige Anteile der Gesamtmehlmenge mindestens einen halben Tag in Form eines Bigas vorfermentiert, bevor daraus die endgültigen Teige geknetet werden. Bei Insta führen das insbesondere die Pizza Napoletana – Spezialisten vor und beim Ansehen der Videos wundere ich mich immer, was für ein unfasslich perfekt aussehender Teig von denen am Ende aus dem Kneter gehoben wird.
Rosette Soffiate ist ein Beispiel, an dem ich mich vor vier Jahren schon mal versucht habe. Auch habe ich das Prinzip für mein Mediterranes Bauernbrot im neuen Buch angewandt und später auch als Abwandlung in den Blog gebracht. Und aktuell beschäftige ich mich im Rahmen des Sylter Weißbrot-Hypes wieder damit. Es ist einfach spannend, dass die Reifeprozesse im Biga so abzulaufen scheinen, dass dieser nicht so rasch überreif wird. Dennoch entwickelt er ein tolles süßlich-mildes Fermentationsaroma, das im fertigen Brot auch noch gut erkennbar bleibt. Und er hilft weiche Teige so zu stabilisieren, dass sie ihren Stand nicht bei der weiteren Reifung wieder rasch verlieren.
Der Teig wird mit lediglich 0,3 Prozent Hefezugabe über insgesamt 17 bis 18 Stunden (Biga plus Hauptteig) fermentiert und das funktioniert, weil sich im Biga über dessen Reifezeit hin die Hefezellen vermehren. Der Hauptteig reift später nahezu genau so schnell, als hätte man ihm 1 Prozent Hefe zugefügt. Der Teig ist lediglich ein wenig „pappiger“ beim Formen als bei geringerer Vorfermentation, was sich aber durch gezielte Handgriffe und den Einsatz von etwas Streumehl im richtigen Moment gut beherrschen lässt.
Der Biga wird mich zukünftig noch weiter beschäftigen. Während ich dieses Rezept schreibe, backt im Ofen der dritte Backversuch eines reinen Vollkornbrots nach dem Prinzip des Sylters von vor zwei Wochen. Ich bin gespannt!
In AI circles, a “centaur” describes a certain kind of machine/human collaboration, in which “decision-support” systems (which the field loves to call “AI”s) are paired with human beings for results that draw upon the strengths of each, such as when a human chess master and a chess-playing computer program collaborate to smash their competition.
In labor circles, “chickenization” refers to exploitative working arrangements that resemble the plight of the American poultry farmer. The U.S. poultry industry has been taken over by three monopolistic packers, who have divided the nation up into exclusive territories, so that each chicken farmer has only one buyer for their birds.
Farmers are “independent small businesspeople” who nominally run their own operations, but because all their products must be sold through a single poultry processor, that processor is able to exercise enormous control over the operation. The processor tells the farmer which birds to raise, as well as what the birds are to be fed, how much, and on what schedule. The processor tells the farmer how to build their coops and when the lights are to go on and off. The processor tells the farmer which vets to use, and tells the vets which medicines to prescribe.
The processor tells the farmer everything…except how much they’ll be able to sell their birds for. That is determined unilaterally when the farmer brings their birds to market, and the payout is titrated to the cent, to represent exactly enough money for the farmer to buy birds and feed and vet services through the processor’s preferred suppliers, and to service the debts on the coops and light and land, but not one penny more.
Chickenization has spread beyond chicken farming. Uber drivers are paid on a variable reinforcement drip-feed that gives them just enough to keep up the lease and gas and insurance payments on their vehicles, but not enough to give them breathing space to think about changing careers.
Likewise for Amazon drivers. Amazon styles the drivers as subcontractors working for a “Delivery Service Partner” (DSP), and the DSP is fully chickenized: They have to buy Amazon vans and subject them to Amazon maintenance, but Amazon reserves the right to fire a DSP without notice, stranding them with vehicle and lot leases and payroll liabilities.
The DSP owners are chickenized, but the drivers themselves? They’re more like the chickens. Or rather, they’re centaurs: From the instant you get behind the wheel of an Amazon van, you are being surveilled by an array of cameras hooked up to high-handed, judgemental AIs that monitor your facial expressions, your eye movements, and your ability to meet an impossible quota.
But even though an Amazon driver represents the tight coupling of a human and a machine to do more than either could do on their own, that’s not the kind of centaur that we talk about when it’s a chess master paired with a chess program. That chess master is being augmented by the machine, and the machine is the junior partner in the relationship. The human is the head, and the AI is the body.
By contrast, an Amazon driver is a reverse-centaur. The AI is in charge, and the human is the junior partner. The AI is the head, telling the body what to do. The driver is the body — the slow-witted, ambulatory meat that is puppeteered by the AI master.
The next generation of labor exploitation merges chickenization with reverse-centaurs. DoorDash and other gig companies use apps to script the movements and conduct of “independent contractors” to the finest degree, while hiding their true wages from them until they’ve finished their jobs.
The simplistic answer to this is, “Well, if you don’t like it, don’t work for a gig company.”
But that’s not how labor rights work. Behind every labor struggle is a recognition that business owners have negotiating power over workers that will, over time, shift more and more value from workers to bosses. Labor market outcomes are not a matter of individuals bargaining with one another: In a labor market, atomized workers bargain with consolidated firms.
It’s hard for workers to play companies off against each other to get higher wages (and companies get furious when they pull it off), but it’s easy for businesses to play workers off against each other to pay lower wages.
Historically, worker power has come from unions, which were able to bargain for workers at a specific job-site, or across a sector, and, just as importantly, to win labor regulations that protect all workers. Forty years of all-out assaults on labor organizing have weakened that source of worker power, and both Republicans and Democrats are deeply committed to keeping unions weak.
Despite this lack of institutional support, unions are coming back with a vengeance, and they’re pulling it off by creating new, high-tech organizing tools and strategies that answer high-tech employer tactics with high-tech worker tactics.
Using messaging tools to organize unions is an effective but indirect answer to chickenization and reverse-centaur tactics. A new kind of tech-based labor tool confronts these tactics head-on: counter-apps that help workers seize the means of computation from their bosses.
Take Para, a collection of apps for gig workers that undo the reverse-centaur relationship between workers and gig employers. For example, when DoorDash sends a job offer to a “Dasher,” Para unwraps that offer and reveals the total compensation on offer, which the DoorDash app hides by default until the job is done.
DoorDash understands that its customers want cheap deliveries, and it understands that its drivers don’t want to service cheap jobs where they actually lose money after factoring in time, gas, and depreciation. By hiding the total compensation from drivers, DoorDash is able to trick some of them into making unprofitable runs, allowing the company to offer customer-attracting loss-leader prices that are billed to drivers.
That’s where Para steps in. Para’s long-term goal is to build apps that automate the process by which workers play gig companies off against one another. That way, the auction process, where workers bid to see who will do the job for the lowest pay, is replaced by a process where employers bid to see who will pay the most for a worker’s time.
That’s a powerful vision, but it’s only part of the answer to the chickenized reverse-centaur industry. After all, there’s only so much bargaining power an individual worker can exert. Groups of workers, on the other hand, have a long track record of wringing concessions from employers.
Dashers understand this. The #DECLINENOW movement organizes Dashers (via online forums) to turn down all jobs below a certain payment threshold, with the understanding that the DoorDash algorithm will bid up the offered payments until a worker agrees to do the job.
That’s a process that’s ripe for automation — imagine if Dashers could form co-ops around apps that hid job offers unless they came with a profitable payout.
Counter-algorithmic activism is subtly different from Para’s model: While Para exposes hidden information and automates the process of uncovering it, counter-algorithmic work actually seeks to turn workers into centaurs, not reverse-centaurs.
For example, in 2020, there was a widely shared story about Amazon drivers hanging their burner phones from tree branches near Amazon warehouses. They were doing this because the Amazon delivery algorithm required them to make impossible quotas — impossible in part because of the number of deliveries they had to make, but also impossible because the system wouldn’t allocate a delivery to them unless they were close to the warehouse. By hanging their phones from trees at the warehouse gates, the drivers were able to trick the system into allocating deliveries to them.
This is a crude hack, but in Indonesia, it’s been elevated to a science, thanks to the proliferation of tuyul apps. These are apps created by and for delivery drivers that modify the official delivery dispatch apps. One key tuyul feature: spoofing the GPS telemetry fed to the dispatch algorithms so drivers don’t have to enter dangerous traffic jams around train stations in order to book rides with commuters as they arrive.
In other words, tuyul apps dispense with the fuggly hack of hanging phones from trees, and replace it with transforming phones to act on behalf of workers, not their bosses. (Tuyul apps do a lot more! Check out Rida Qadri’s fantastic reporting on the subject.)
Labor movements have done the most good when they build solidarity across sectors and industries. Lucky (?) for the chickenized reverse-centaurs, there’s plenty of people finding themselves in that circumstance.
Take Taylor Lorenz’s excellent Washington Post article on “algospeak,” an emerging dialect of euphemisms that social media users deploy to bypass the filters that the dominant platforms use to keep discourse brand-safe and minimize publicity scandals.
Much of that article dealt with the problems all communicators face. For example, if you want to talk about suicide and mental health, you have to use the euphemism “become unalive” because the filters downrank any mention of suicide.
But algospeak isn’t just a communications issue: It’s a labor issue. The people who truly live and die by algorithmic ranking choices are the people whose ability to put groceries on the table is directly tied to whether a social media platform suppresses their videos or text.
These video creators are also the source of the bulk of the platforms’ wealth, but — like other chickenized workers — they have no way to know what they’ll get paid for their labor, and don’t find out until the algorithm digests their materials and decides whether or not they will be exposed to the people who’ve explicitly subscribed to their feeds.
These workers are also allies in the fight to create true centaurs out of reverse centaurs. That’s where Tracking Exposed comes in: They’re a loose collective of digital human rights advocates who offer browser plugins that help reverse-engineer the recommendation systems of Facebook, Pornhub, Amazon, TikTok, and YouTube.
These are producing data that creators can use to “walk without rhythm so they don’t attract the sandworm” (AKA the algorithm’s downranking fist). This is fully compatible with the Online Creators’ Association’s demand for “Transparent and Responsive Moderation.”
But these analyses are also yielding new recommendation systems: Tracking Exposed’s YouChoose tool replaces YouTube’s recommendations with recommendations from across the web, which you can understand and modify.
It’s not just online creators and Amazon drivers and Dashers who have natural solidarity when it comes to rendering algorithmic judgments legible and accountable. Tracking Exposed’s other work includes detailed analysis of the way that these systems influence elections and how recommenders create “an alternate universe” in autocratic, warlike states.
The pandemic was a boon to the bossware industry, as locked-down employees discovered how quickly “work from home” could turn into “live at work.” The promise of bossware — tools that monitor your face, your fingers, your conversations and more — is that someday, all workers can be chickenized reverse-centaurs.
The project of understanding and then seizing the algorithm couldn’t be more important to these workers, and soon enough, to all of us.
Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, and blogger. He has a podcast, a newsletter, a Twitter feed, a Mastodon feed, and a Tumblr feed. He was born in Canada, became a British citizen and now lives in Burbank, California. His latest nonfiction book is How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism. His latest novel for adults is Attack Surface. His latest short story collection is Radicalized. His latest picture book is Poesy the Monster Slayer. His latest YA novel is Pirate Cinema. His latest graphic novel is In Real Life. His forthcoming books include Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid (with Rebecca Giblin), a book about artistic labor market and excessive buyer power; Red Team Blues, a noir thriller about cryptocurrency, corruption and money-laundering (Tor, 2023); and The Lost Cause, a utopian post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias (Tor, 2023).
Revenge of the Chickenized Reverse-Centaurs was originally published in OneZero on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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