Surviving-ISH Podcast
"Surviving-ish" is a podcast with a unique and purposeful dual focus. The "Surviving-ish" is our way of creating a space for lightheartedness—it’s about the everyday, petty grievances that are frustrating but also a source of shared, human comedy. These are the moments we survive, like when the laundry pod explodes all over the clothes, your morning coffee isn't quite hot enough, or a passive-aggressive text from a relative ruins your mood.
The core mission behind "Surviving-ish" is to show our audience that while we may have been victims of serious circumstances, that does not mean people have to walk on eggshells around us. We believe in the power of laughter and the importance of finding humor in life's small frustrations. By blending serious topics with these minor, everyday grievances, we aim to normalize the idea that it's okay to joke and laugh, even after enduring significant challenges.
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Surviving-ISH Podcast
Project 2025 EXPOSED: The Blueprint Behind Trump’s 2026 Power Grab (Schedule F, Schools, FCC)
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The host frames the episode as a non-expert, trauma-informed attempt to understand politics and then argues that by May 2026 Project 2025 has become the governing blueprint, despite Donald Trump publicly claiming in 2024 he didn’t know its authors. They describe Project 2025 as a roughly 900-page Heritage Foundation “mandate for leadership” written by many Trump-aligned former officials, and point to cabinet staffing—naming FCC head Brandon Carr and Attorney General Pam Bondi—as evidence the authors are now in power. The episode focuses on “Schedule F” reclassification, describing an executive order that turns tens of thousands of civil servants into fireable political appointees, prompting an exodus of about 50,000 professionals replaced by a vetted loyalist database. It also warns about Department of Education plans like universal school choice, phasing out Title I funding, and federal investigations of curriculum around gender identity and systemic racism. The host previews part two on “Operation Restore” and a mass deportation plan and invites discussion. #Project2025 #ScheduleF #Trump #HeritageFoundation #FCC #DepartmentOfEducation #SchoolChoice #TitleI #Politics #MAGA #ExecutiveOrders #Media #CivilService #CultureWar #Deportation
Hey, what's up, guys? So I want to give everybody a reminder that I'm not an expert. I'm just a guy trying to make sense of this fucking crazy ass political world. Now I do want to say that my perspective is shaped by what I've lived through as a minority, uh, you know, being a gay man and a survivor of some pretty heavy trauma. And so I want to have some strong opinions and yeah, probably some triggers. And so this show is gonna be for anyone else out there that's trying to understand politics without the ego. I want us to learn together, and there are gonna be times where we're gonna be extremely late to conversations because I want to go back on a process. I want to, you know, like educate myself on it, fact-check things because in AI America and especially Donald Trump's America, we don't always know what is the truth. I just want to make sure that I'm using my voice for the right reasons. All right, so let's get started. I want us to talk about Project 2025. So I feel like what's happening now in May of 2026, it's not just politics, and it's definitely not the politics we've always known. It's kind of like a complete renovation of the house that we've all lived in, and the blueprints is everything that was in Project 2025. I do want to have this conversation without the I told you so attitude, but I can't make any promises. So remember in 2024, it feels like forever ago, but it was only two years ago. Back then, half the country was losing their minds over Project 2025, while the other side was swearing Donald Trump had nothing to do with it. So, Project 2025, I think had like 900 pages. It was like this massive document. It was a mandate for leadership, and it was put together by the Heritage Foundation, and it was basically a how-to guide for a total conservative takeover of the of the federal government. And you remember what Donald Trump said about it. He was on Truth Social, he was in interviews with all these networks, and he was adamant. He said, I have no idea who is behind it. I have nothing to do with them. He even called them, uh he even said that their ideas were abysmal. He played it off like they were like some group of nerds in a basement that he had never met. But how I found Project 2025 and actually started reading about it was from a link on his website. So, okay, so here we are in 2026, right? The 2025 inauguration has come and gone. If we look at the cabinet meetings happening in the White House today, it's not a room full of strangers. It's the authors of this document. It's the very people he claimed he didn't know. But I want us to think about the sheer audacity of all of this. It's like a guy is standing in a kitchen covered in flour, holding a rolling pin, telling you he's never heard of a bakery while the oven is preheating to 400 degrees. And the I don't know them line was one of these staged moves from this particular administration. It was a tact a tactical lie to get through the election, and now the power secured, they've dropped the act. So I feel like what I'm learning is that the people are the policy that if you want to know what the president is actually going to do, don't listen to the campaign speeches. Look at who hires to run the departments, follow the money. The project 2025 mandate was written by over 140 people who worked in the Trump's first administration. This wasn't some outside group, it was the quote unquote A-team waiting in the wings. Okay, so let's talk about Brandon Carr. He's the guy that's currently running the FCC. And he liter literally wrote the chapter in Project 2025 about how to take over the media. He wanted to use the government to punish the news organizations that the administration doesn't like. And look at Pam Bondi, she was the attorney general. Her fingerprints are all over the legal strategies laid out in the 900-page book. Look at the people that are running the Department of Labor. It's almost like the it's like a high school reunion at the for the Heritage Foundation. What I'm trying to figure out is how does this matter? What is this going to do to us? And I'm finding that it matters because of something called schedule policy. This is the boring stuff that actually changes your life. For about a hundred years, the people who worked for the government, the scientists, the FDA making your making sure your medicine is safe, the experts at the weather service, the lawyers who go after corporate fraud, they were civil servants. That meant they were like nonpartisan. They stayed through Republicans and Democrats. They were the brakes on the car, is how it was explained to me. They were the ones who would say, sir, you can't do that. It's illegal, or sir, the science doesn't support that. Project 2025 said, get rid of the brakes. Take them off. So then that leads me to day one of 2025. The president reviewed an executive order that reclassified tens of thousands of these experts as political appointees. This is the schedule policy or schedule F purge. It means that you can be fired for any reason. And so as of now, we're seeing a mass exodus. We're talking about 50,000 career professionals being shown the door and who's replacing them? The Project 2025 Personal Database, a list of thousands of loyalists who are vetted not for their expertise in the science, but for their loyalty to the mandate. So now I want to talk about like what this can mean for our wallet and most importantly what it means for the younger generations for our kids. One of the biggest chapters in Project 2025 playbook was the total destruction of the Department of Education. The plan they've been rolling out over the last year straight out of the manual. It's called Universal School Choice. And a sound bite, it sounds great, right? Choice. It's a beautiful word. But here's how it actually works. When you take public tax dollars and turn them into private school vouchers, you aren't just giving people a choice. You are draining the pool of public school systems. So I was reading how Project 2025 wants to phase out Title I funding. And that's the money that goes to schools in low-income areas to make sure kids have books, teachers, and a decent building. They want that money gone within the next decade. And if you live in a county where you don't have five private schools to choose from, you have the one public school down the road. If that school loses 30% of its budget, so a wealthy family in the city can get a discount on their private academy tuition, your kid loses. It's a wealth transfer and it's disguised as freedom. And it's not just the money, it's the content. The administration is now using the Department of Education as a culture war, and this is the headquarters. They are investigating any school that mentions gender identity or systematic racism. They're using federal funding as a weapon. It's teach them what we want, or your kids don't get lunch money. Now they told us they were for local control, but look at what they're doing. They're centralizing power in the White House to tell a teacher in Tennessee what they can and cannot say in a classroom. That's not local control. That's a federal takeover. I was trying to find out why maybe he was lying about it. And I think it's because they know the American people would not vote for this if they saw it clearly. They knew that if people realized Project 2025 meant losing their job protections, losing their local school fundings, and having a conservative army running the FDA, they'd say, hell no. So they staged the distancing move. They made it look like the Heritage Foundation was just some random think tank. They waited until the ink was dry on the election results to show us their hand. Now, in my opinion, the receipts were everywhere. Like I said, I found Project 2025 on Trump's website and I think also the White House website, but it was removed shortly after, um even before the inauguration. But yeah, in my opinion, the receipts were everywhere, but only to people outside of the cult. Every executive order signed in the last 18 months has a corresponding page that is numbered out of the 900-page document. The I don't know them line was the opening act of the play that we all are now starring in, whether we want to or not. Of course, I'm always here for the victims, and you know, I have been very mad at MAGA, but I've been trying to have a little bit more empathy and realizing that there's, you know, brainwashing is real. Cult mentalities are real. And so I'm also trying to learn. So bear with me on that. I'm trying to be a little bit more empathetic to the people that thought they were voting for lower prices and they were and they ended up voting for a government that cares about their wallets more than the price of eggs. And if our children, if the family first, America First movement was even worried about feeding our children, and if so, feeding them healthy food. So the next time on part two, I think this is going to be a three-part series. I want to get even deeper into the logistics of the operation restore. And that's the massive deportation plan that's turning our border into a billionaire's playground. I want to follow the money and the detention camps right back to the people who funded the 2024 campaign. I just, we can't let the staged version of the news fool us any longer. Look at the people, look at the policies, and look at your own community. The blueprint is an action. And like I said before, it's it's in its project 2025. All right, guys, questions, thoughts, comments, I would love to discuss. Like I said, I'm just learning. So uh I'll see you next time.