Trump's Project 2025: Up Close and Personal-Chapter 4: The End of Vaccine Mandates
The Bill Press Pod
BP Pods
4.7 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
While Bill is on a research and writing sabbatical, we decided it’s important to revisit the horrors we laid out in our Project 2025 podcast series, Trump's Project 2025: Up Close and Personal – and to ask the author David Pepper tie them to what’s actually happened so far. This episode tells the fictional story of a middle school that opens its doors to unvaccinated students under a second Trump Regime as Trump eliminates Federal funding for schools with vaccine mandates. The story follows the school nurse, Stephanie Morris, as she navigates the influx of unvaccinated students and the resulting disease outbreaks that spread rapidly through the school and community. The narrative illustrates the real-world implications of the president's policy, with outbreaks of diseases like measles, whooping cough, and the flu causing hospitalizations and even deaths among vulnerable students and staff. The story highlights the challenges faced by the school nurse in trying to protect the health of all students, including her own daughter who has an autoimmune condition, without the backing of mandatory vaccination policies.
We'd like to thank all the artists who volunteered their time to make this episode: Laurie Burke, Leigh McGowan who read the chapters & Audrey Hakes, Joe Walsh, & others who contributed character voices. Sound design by Marilys Ernst and Jonathan Moser. Trump's Project 2025: Up Close and Personal written by David Pepper and produced by Pepper, Melissa Jo Peltier and Jay Feldman and is a production of Ovington Avenue Productions and The Bill Press Pod.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, good friends. Welcome to the latest episode of our relook at Project 2025, now that it's |
| 0:13.6 | happening for real. Yes, we brace for this onslaught, yet the speed and severity in which |
| 0:20.2 | it's happening are indeed staggering. |
| 0:23.0 | Hour by hour, the alliance of Donald Trump and Elon Musk is dismantling our civic pillars |
| 0:28.9 | precisely as our Project 2025 podcast last fall foretold. The judiciary, the press, |
| 0:36.6 | international alliances, public health, no sector has been spared |
| 0:40.3 | their intimidation and destruction. So while I'm on a research and writing sabbatical in Europe, |
| 0:47.4 | we decided to update and rerun our Project 2025 podcast series. What we once thought of as a cautionary tale has materialized |
| 0:56.8 | with alarming rapidity. Reunited with author David Pepper, we'll trace the threads connecting |
| 1:03.3 | Trump's Project 2025 blueprints to the unfolding devastation we see today. Our mission, |
| 1:13.6 | simply to illuminate Trump's machinations, |
| 1:21.5 | ignite a spirit of resistance, and secure an unequivocal repudiation of Trump and MAGA in the upcoming electoral cycle 2026. Through the lens of reporters at the fictional capital monthly, we present a fact-based portrayal of |
| 1:30.1 | life under a second Trump regime, telling the personal stories of those directly impacted by what's |
| 1:37.0 | unfolding. And now in episode four of Trump's Project 2025, up close and personal, the author of this series, |
| 1:45.2 | David Pepper, imagines a middle school in Colorado, where anti-vaxed parents are finally allowed |
| 1:51.2 | to send their children to a public school. |
| 1:54.3 | It's all hope at the beginning until nature takes over. |
| 1:58.8 | Lori Burke reads Part 1. |
| 2:02.5 | Sandy Kruger didn't know who was more nervous, Ellie or her. |
| 2:07.0 | But she definitely knew who was more excited. |
| 2:09.9 | 11-year-old Ellie was absolutely beaming as they drove the 10 minutes from their home in suburban Denver to Cherry Fork Middle School. |
| 2:18.3 | Mommy, this is the best day of my life. New friends, new teachers, and new life. |
... |
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