We're Uniting To Stop Project 2026 (with Rebecca Bramlett and Janice Robinson)

Red Wine & Blue is back from the holidays and ready to tackle 2026! So it feels right that we were joined for our first pod of the new year by two of our favorite RWB colleagues, Rebecca and Janice.

All last year, Rebecca did the hard work of tracking Project 2025 as Trump put it into place, one dangerous policy at a time. So of course we had to ask what her strategy has been to do this depressing research every day without losing her shit! She told us that the antidote has been seeing the amazing work that RWB and women across the country did in their local communities all year long.

So to hear more about that on-the-ground work, we also chatted with our North Carolina Program Director, Janice Robinson. Janice and her team have been training women to run for office, protecting kids from ICE at their local schools, and so much more.

The year 2025 may be over, but Project 2025 isn’t going anywhere. The Trump administration plans to continue and expand their authoritarian work in 2026. And although that feels daunting, we know how to counter it: by working in our local communities and talking to our friends, family, and neighbors.

As Rebecca put it, Project 2025 was “an enormous horrible group project” that included the work of hundreds of conservative authors. But we have our own group project to protect our communities and our country—and there’s no telling what millions of passionate women can accomplish when we work together.

2026 is going to be a big year. Let’s go!

For a transcript of this episode, please email comms@redwine.blue.

You can learn more about us at www.redwine.blue or follow us on social media!

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Transcript

HTNLYS Episode 15: “We’re Uniting To Stop Project 2026 (with Rebecca Bramlett and Janice Robinson)”

Katie: Hey everybody. Welcome to How To Not Lose Your Shit. I'm Katie Paris and I'm the founder of Red Wine and Blue. 

LaFonda: And I'm LaFonda Cousin, a part-time yoga instructor, self-care advocate, and the chief people officer here at Red Wine and Blue.

Katie: So today we are joined by two of our amazing colleagues, Janice Robinson and Rebecca Bramlett. Rebecca has been doing – y'all, hard work, all right? Over these last many, many months, she has been tracking Project 2025 and now Project 2026, so that this administration can't put its extremist plans into place without anyone noticing. And then we have Janice, who is our program director in North Carolina, where they've been fighting to protect their neighbors and our democracy, and they've been having a lot of success. 

So you can imagine, doing either of these difficult jobs day in and day out might make anyone lose their shit. So it was really interesting to connect with them about their work and what gets them hope. LaFonda, what did you take away from talking with Rebecca and with Janice today? And hey, we survived 2025! Welcome to 2026. 

LaFonda: It's here. We're here. We survived. We made it through. It was touch and go, but we're here. Um, I took away from our interview that our team, what I already knew, honestly, our team works really, really hard. I think I've said this about Rebecca's work all year, like it's amazing that you can track Project 2025 every day, read that news, get those alerts, synthesize that, write it down, put it in a way that it helps other people understand it and not lose your shit every single day. And the fact that she does that and has been doing that, it's like a freaking magic trick.

Katie: How's she pulling this off?  

LaFonda: It's crazy. It's crazy. The fact that she's been doing that for more than a year and is so good at it and still has this like really Rebecca spirit and is not crazy is just really, really inspiring to me. So, I mean, that was one of my biggest takeaways.

And we all know that like Janice is doing the Janice thing in North Carolina, people will hear all about it. Just the amount of women that she inspires to, you know, do their thing in North Carolina and run for office and the change that she's making and she has been making, her and her team have been makin, from the start. Really just everything that they do every day that we get to see up close and in person, that our listeners get to hear today is… yeah. I, I just feel really, really grateful on our first day back to be a part of this team again. 

Katie: Yeah, I love that we had Rebecca and Janice come on together. To me, it represents sort of the full circle of the work that we get to do here. So like. We're gonna inform ourselves, educate ourselves. We are going to really know our shit, right? And we are not gonna get too wonky about it. We're gonna know what we need to know. We're gonna break it down, like you said, in a way that we can understand it. Everybody can understand it. We can really wrap our heads around this stuff, but we're not gonna stop there. 

We're not gonna wallow though. That's justified when needed, tears as well. But we are going to do something about this shit, you know? And, and, and Janice represents that. She's taking the knowledge of what is happening with Project 2025, understanding how it's being implemented on the ground in her state of North Carolina, and then bringing together all these women she's been organizing for years and providing this such concrete way of standing up for our values in our neighbors. And then Rebecca, who also lives in North Carolina, is able to plug in directly to that work so she too can fight on the ground the very thing that she's been tracking. I, there's just something so beautiful and, and, and full circle and I just love the invitation of that. 

And the other thing it just makes me think about is that, you know, yes they did Project 2025, they've implemented much of it. Now they're carrying on with their Project 2026. But I feel like what Rebecca and Janice represent is that we need to tell a better story than their Project 2026. I wanna focus on our Project 2026, and that's what they represent. They are telling a better story. They are bringing people together who care deeply in giving them a way to channel that. And that is how we bring down the Heritage Foundation and their plans. 

I mean, listen, they're self-destructing a bit. I saw in, in the news over the last few weeks that several of their board members have quit over their blatant, overt support for antisemitism, racism. Um, they're falling apart and we're not. We're not. We are united and we are working together to stop this shit. And so that is the Project 2026 I am excited to build with you and with Rebecca and Janice, and this just feels like the perfect way to kick off our year because we're gonna have to work real hard once again to not lose our shit.

LaFonda: Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. And I, you know what, the other thing that inspires me, or the other thing that I took from this conversation is it doesn't just go one way. It goes both ways, right? Like Rebecca's got this big national project that she's tracking, but we know that Red Wine and Blue is all about the local. So it's trickling down one way. Janice is also tracking what's happening locally in North Carolina, and Rebecca said that she's feeding that information to Rebecca and Rebecca's using that information also in that tracker. 

And I think that's important too, is that our team is not one that's like, what's happening–and everyone knows this, but like– what's happening at the national level so we can inform what's happening locally. Our team does the exact opposite. It's what's happening locally so that we can get it in our documents and, and so we can inform what's happening nationally. 

And I think that that conversation, Rebecca said it really early in the conversation, this conversation really speaks to why Red Wine and Blue is so successful is because it's happening both ways. And it makes the work so much more successful because it's happening both ways. It makes so much sense. 

Katie: The women we get to work with are so smart, so smart.  We're lucky. 

LaFonda: So smart. Yeah.

Katie: Alright, let's get into it. 

LaFonda: Alright, we are going to take a break and when we come back we'll have our conversation with some of our favorites, Rebecca and Janice.

BREAK

Katie: Today we are joined by Rebecca Bramlett and Janice Robinson. Janice is our program director in North Carolina, and Rebecca does all kinds of research and writing for red wine and Blue, including. Our massive project 2025 Tracker. Thank you for joining us on the pod. Ladies happy 2026. 

Janice: Yeah, happy 2026 to you guys too. We're back! 

Katie: Yes, we are back here. We're ready to go. Ready to roll. 

Okay, so Rebecca, I wanna start with you. We had people reaching out to us all last year telling us how helpful our Project 2025 Tracker was. I'd love to hear more about your approach and your process to keeping track of all the ways that Project 2025, that thing, of course, that Trump said during the campaign had nothing to do with him, nothing to do with his agenda. And now we have seen it day in and day out be implemented on our country. And you have been, I don't know anyone who has tracked this more closely. Tell us about it. How are you doing? 

Rebecca: For better or for worse? Yeah. Well, it started before the election. You know, we started with our project 2025, explained resources for our members. So I love to hear anytime that our resources are helpful for people. But we had done the Project 2025 Explained, we did our best to warn people about it. And yet, you know, we had the outcomes we had and here we are.

So we had a lot of internal discussions about, well, what do we do next? So really what we did, because it's, I mean, it's a huge document, project 2025. It's 900 pages. We had already kind of gone through and, and picked out pieces that we knew our community really cared about, and that was in our Project 2025 Explained. So with the tracker we just said we're gonna watch and see how they get things implemented, if they get things implemented. 

My personal process for it, um… I read a lot of news every day. I keep track of the news, lots of different sources. I try and vary my sources and I rely on other people in the organization to flag things for me. Janice has actually, you know, sent me some news items that I've missed. So it's a team effort. But really just kind of watching the news and watching the alerts on the, the pieces that we know are really relevant to our community, and then trying to communicate it to our members on the tracker in a way that's understandable, that makes sense. And then give them some action items that they can actually take and do something with.

LaFonda: Rebecca that's, it's a lot of information to take in literally all the time. One of the things that I've personally admired over the last year is how much information that you take in and deliver and, and give to all of us all the time. I am curious about two things. One, what are some of the things that made you personally lose your shit last year? And then what is the balance? How do you keep from like not going over the edge? 'cause some of this shit is absolutely insane. 

Rebecca: Using the word balance is important. And I do have to say, every piece of it makes me lose my shit a little bit. And it's really hard. I, I was preparing for this conversation and looking back through things and like in just a couple minutes was able to list out, you know, 20 horrible things that we've tracked. So it is really hard. 

I will say a few of the things that like really gave me a, like, physical visceral response was… one is, it was actually surprising to me too was the extent to which Project 2025 and the actions the administration are taking towards environmental issues and basically rolling back a lot of the regulations that have protected our environment and that extends to our public lands, national parks.

It's kind of one of those things, you don't realize something's missing when it's missing. So like pollution when you don't have it and, and your air is clean and the nature around you is beautiful. Like you take that for granted, I think, and seeing how much they are rolling back on regulations that protect our environment and not just our environment, but how our environment affects us, like our drinking water. It was really kind of surprising and kind of gave me some gut reactions when reading some of the executive orders and the policy changes. So that's one. 

The other is the, the work that they're doing, they say is towards election integrity. Some of the executive orders and actions are taking towards elections processes and trying to take more control of elections. So I think that's really important going into 2026. 

So those are two that really struck out to me, but really everything in it is, is kind of egregious. It's hard, and I try not to be, I, I kind of joke and, and so you mentioned balance, and I think balance is important to come back to. I try and set boundaries for myself. I limit the time that I do that work and that I spend on that research. And then try and balance that with going outside for a walk and regrounding myself in nature around me.

Or, you know, finding humor. I try not to be like the, the Debbie Downer like the Rachel Dratch SNL character. Cause a lot of times, you know, I'll share information that I find in my research with our team and I don't always wanna be the person that's sharing bad news and awful news. So trying to find balance in what I do with my time and also how I share it with others and in my personal life. I, you know, try and talk about happy things sometimes too. 

Katie: I'm actually really struck by that. Rebecca, you are not the Debbie Downer among our crew. You know, I mean, you do such beautiful writing based on the organizing that's happening on the ground, telling the stories of women in our communities. I get tons of hope from reading what you write, and I think that's, that's so incredible to me because you do have this project where on a daily basis you are consuming some of the worst of, of what is happening.

And being able to find that balance… I don't know, I think you need to do a masterclass or something. What is it that you hope that people do with everything that you're tracking, not only on Project 2025, but you're also tracking now what's going on with Project 2026, which I think is essentially the continuation of Project 2025, right?

Rebecca: Yeah. The thing I say to people and I've said to some of our organizers as they go out and make presentations in their communities, that it's really important for people to remember about Project 2025, and now the priorities they've set for 2026, is that it was years in the making. And a lot of people were behind it. I mean, the Heritage Foundation in itself that created Project 2025 is an entire foundation. But the document cites an advisory board of 54 other organizations. 34 separate authors for the different chapters and um, you know, almost 300 individual contributors. So like, it's an enormous, horrible group project. So when people look at it and get overwhelmed, that's by design. 

And so, you know, the first thing to remember is that there are things you can do and just acknowledge –and something I acknowledged for myself – was, we can't fix this overnight. So the work that we're doing is important. It's gonna take some time and that's okay.

So with that, what I hope people do with it is share it. And we have lots of ways for people to share the tracker and share information. And then really kind of focus on what in it gives them the physical reaction, like I had to a few pieces. And then find ways to work on, you know, one thing at a time, one place at a time.

And, you know, it goes with the, the local work that we do. None of us can do it alone. So pick the thing that speaks to you the most and work on that. And if it's really hard to narrow down to one, which it is, you know, maybe just do one at a time or a few at a time. But just speak to one thing that, or you know, that you can do and, and, and we need to take it piece by piece.

Katie: I've never thought about using it in that way, and I think that's so smart. You know, people often say like, “Well, I don't know” when, when people ask the question, “I don't know what to work on” and then they say, “well, find the thing that you're passionate about.” And I think sometimes that's like a vague question though. Cause it's like, “well, I, I, but I'm so overwhelmed. What am I passionate about?”

But the idea of actually using this tracker, because it does break down with such plain language and specificity of what's going on and using that… read through that, see what makes you feel, like Rebecca has described, like what happens in her body, to physically react to those things. And maybe that is, it's almost like a diagnostic tool, you know? Let me find in myself where I am called. The world is being broken apart in so many ways right now and there's healing needed for all of it, but where can I find my place in standing up to this horrible group project, essentially. 

LaFonda: Yeah. Or even what's important for you to preserve. I think what I heard Rebecca say is like where she finds her balance in what's going on that's horrible is taking a walk in nature. But also what drives her crazy or what, you know, what she has the, one of the most visceral reactions to, is what's in Project 2025 about environmental protection.

And so “what I'm going to do for balance is take in nature right now.” I hate to say like “while we still have it,” 'cause that sounds really gross, but honestly, if that's what's driving you, then where can you sort of find your place in making sure that we're doing something about that? 

Katie: To me, the difference between, you know, going through this, seeing the parade of horribles of this group project, the difference between reading through that and just feeling horrible and hopeless… and reading that and feeling a sense of hope… is seeing what I can do about it. 

And that's where I wanna bring Janice in because this is your superpower, Janice, working on the ground with your team in North Carolina. You all celebrated some great wins last year. Tell us any stories you've got to give us. Like you always give me hope because that's exactly what you're doing is taking these terrible things that are going on, whether it's in the state government, federal government, and figuring out how to channel people's passion for wanting to make a difference amidst the overwhelm. Do you have any stories you can share with us about what it's been like to be on the ground organizing in the midst of all of this?

Janice: I love our mantra “when they go low, we go local.” It can be so overwhelming when you think about, and I've been involved in this space going on 12 years after the first time that an idiot got elected, here in North Carolina. It can be overwhelming. I know how overwhelming it can feel, but when I focus on “okay, going local” and, and I have taken that and I live by that I focus on that way here in North Carolina. 

Because in feeling like, “wow, it's so overwhelming, what can I do?”... I know that if I can get people, local elected officials, who will not capitulate and will fight for me, fight for us in our community. That's where my most power is. And so we center around that. 

I, I really like our taking a stand, Red Wine and Blue, we took a stand and decided we gonna put our thumb on the scale when it comes to these primaries. And with that, we were going to make sure we supported more Black women to get elected too. Nine of our Black troublemakers got elected. Um, nine out of fifteen. We put a call out and I said, “okay, some of you have been, some of our troublemakers have been with us for four, four years or more. It's time for us to step up and run for office.” 

Because as women we gotta fight for ourselves. Nobody can advocate for you like you can advocate for yourself. So it's time for us to step up. I set a goal at the beginning of the year, 2025, to have at least 20. I had no vision! At least 20 troublemakers run for office. We had 26 to step up. And so many of them won. 

Katie: That is so incredible. Many of these women had never done anything, you know, show up at a local meeting a few years ago, right?

Janice: Yeah. I remember when we first started our first year, Katie, and the first time the North Carolina team got together, we had our little retreat at Renee's house, and when we realized our first year that so many of the women – because Red Wine and Blue strategically targets women who are not a part of the choir. Women who for whatever reason have been reluctant to get engaged in the political arena. And we realized that so many of these women just had no clue how all of this worked. 

And so driving to Renee's house, we passed by the police academy. Our team came together and I remember Tanya said “We need to do an academy,” and we decided that we were gonna start a civics training, civics one-on-one training, and we decided we would call it our Trouble Maven Academy. We've been running that cohort, training our troublemakers here in North Carolina on how all of this works, I mean, from the general assembly to the school boards to the city councils, how to write op-eds. Building their political chops to help them to become more politically educated, but more importantly, become more politically savvy.

So how are we gonna fight this thing in 2026? I believe that it's an all or nothing this year for 2026, because I believe, and I'm gonna tell you, I'm, I shared with the group that I went to Ghana over the holiday break, and I left Ghana sitting in the JFK airport and thinking, “I can't live in a developing country. I can't. So I gotta fight like hell even harder to make sure this country is the Americana America I wanna live in.” 

And I believe that the primaries are the first strategy. Because I'll be honest with y'all, I'm not excited about some of these damn Democrats who we get in office. I'm not. So we're gonna be working like hell to get strong, progressive candidates elected during the primary. Then we are gonna take it to the general. 

Katie: Yeah. It's incredible to think that when you started and we were just meeting up at Renee's house to figure out how to get more women involved in North Carolina. I didn't know that story about driving by the police academy. I love that that was the evolution, you know, from where you started to what Trouble Maven Academy has become. 

But now that you have all these women who actually know far more about how this all works than the incumbents probably that are sitting there very comfortable in office. And here come those Troublemakers. And that ties back completely to Project 2025 to me, because this gives these women a concrete way of standing up to this total shit show. And that gives me hope. I know it gives them hope and I, that that is, that's how we beat this thing. 

Rebecca: Yeah. Some of the differences that they put in Project 2026 actually is that they're trying to pivot to working at state and local levels because they were unsuccessful in some things at the federal level.

Katie: They saw that when they went low, we went local. 

Rebecca: Yeah.

Janice: Yeah. And yeah, a lot of what they're doing is just modeling things that, you know, progressive organizations are doing. That's why we have to, I think we have to go hard. The strategy, I tell people, the Red Wine and Blue strategy works. It does. I've, I've done it the other way. It works. Using relational organizing, getting people to talk to their friends, family and acquaintances, and educate their friends, family, and acquaintances, and get them to the polls. It works. 

LaFonda: Listening to you talk, my only question is when can we add you to the list of all of the people that are running?

Janice: For years, people have been trying to get me to run for office, and this is what I tell them. I don't run for office because I'll be cussing people out.

LaFonda: Actually that's true.

Katie: Come on, people can handle a little cussing.

Janice: Well, but cussing people out.

Katie: Well. 

Janice: I'm not going to, I'm not the kind of person who's going to answer to everybody who wants me to be a certain way. I am who I am, I'll not changing for anybody. 

Katie: Well, you're modeling that for a lot of women who are running and so maybe that's an even bigger impact. 

LaFonda: Yeah, just. Keeping it local and getting other people to run is is working for us in North Carolina. So we'll take that. 

Katie: Janice, I do want to hear from you about how you have been working with women on the ground to stand up to ICE in North Carolina. Border Patrol was sent by the federal government into the Charlotte area where you live before the holidays and you got organized fast. How were you able to do that? What happened? And do you have advice for others who are facing, you know, a similar situation where they live? 

Janice: Yeah, so we took the lead from the Hispanic activist organizations Carolina Migrant Network and Siembra. And we decided we would fill in any gaps that they needed us to. 

I volunteered to take on the schools. Because we knew that we needed to have some patrols at the schools to protect the kids and their families and so forth. So me and Charlotte Area Liberal Moms, we worked together and set up this school patrol. And we got volunteers to sign up. A Signal group was set up for us, and people started coming over to the Signal group. And what I, what I, what I said is that I felt like people just needed to volunteer to take responsibility for the school in their community. Again, local. 

One of our volunteers set up a spreadsheet. Our first meeting we had, people just started signing up for the schools that they would take on. We asked them, you take on your school. And then you all work as a team. And we have 150, 156 public schools here in Charlotte, and I think we had over like a hundred schools that were being monitored, that people had signed up for.

And that was along with those of us who had took the training from Carolina Migrant Network, how to be ICE spotters and so forth. And how to get the information to the immigrant activist organizations so we could protect people. But our little group, we were, we were focused on protecting the schools and alerting families who were bringing their kids to schools if ICE was in the area.

The people who are most affected, in this case, it was the Hispanic community... Demographic groups know what their communities need. And I'm, I'm, I have preached this for years. People know what their community needs. They do not need people to come in and try and tell them what their community needs. You support. You ask them, what can I do to help? And that's what we did. And so we, we filled in gaps, you know? 

ICE was here and there some reports there were put out there saying how we basically drove them out. It was, yeah. I felt like, I felt like it was like we were part of the underground. It was, it was so intense. We were seeing the videos of them taking people and, and arresting those of our, you know, volunteers who were chasing them. We had whistles, a whistle brigade. It was very intense. 

And so we had a meeting today to kind of see this morning about what we're gonna do for 2026, because we're gonna keep the infrastructure in place because they will be back. And the main reason why they will be back is because Republicans are asking them to come back.

Katie: Rebecca, as the person who has been tracking in detail all the ways in which Project 2025, and their plans for cracking down on immigrant children and their families in this country, and you have tracked the ways in which they've done that… what does it feel like to hear what Janice just described in terms of how the community came together to stand up to those actions? 

Rebecca: Well, that gives me hope. Right? And actually I'm also in North Carolina. I'm in the Durham area, and when ICE was finished in Charlotte, they tried to come here. And a lot of the same organizations that did the work that Janice was talking about in Charlotte had networks here. So the Durham community was able to respond just as quickly, or you know, as quickly and as effectively, because groups on the ground in both places were speaking to each other. 

So yeah, that it gives me hope and, you know, to kind of answer the question from the beginning of the session, that all of this work and seeing the work that people do coming together and doing that local work that our, you know, TroubleNation groups do you know, our Troublemakers do… that's what keeps me going. That's what, that gives me hope, because you also see that it works, you know? We were able to drive them out of these cities in North Carolina for now. We know they may come back, but, but yeah, just seeing that local organizing works and can make it different and to be involved in it, that's really incredible to get to see it and fight back against it right alongside others in your community.

Katie: Thank you both so much for the work you're doing. It makes me so proud of our team at Red Wine and Blue. It makes me grateful for both of you. And it's some concrete advice on how to lose our shit just a little bit less in 2026 too. Thank you for sharing this with us and giving us all such concrete ways of fighting back.

LaFonda: Thank you.

Janice: Thanks for having us. Thanks for starting Red Wine and Blue. 

Katie: Anytime.

Rebecca: Thank you. 

LaFonda: Thanks y'all.