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Christopher Webb

@cwebbonline

Oct 3

THE PURGE

Polls show that Project 2025 didn’t resonate, that voters thought it wasn’t real. Well, now we’re living it and it’s already 47% complete after only 9 months.

Trump’s shutdown is a shortcut: gut the federal workforce, fire career experts, and replace them with loyalists. Laid out in P2025.
🧵

This is chilling:

“The goal is to unravel enough of the federal government now. That it will make it impossible for Democrats to rebuild it even when they do get back to the White House.”

2/3

📌 Project 2025, Chapter 1 (“Executive Office,” pp. 75–77):
“The incoming Trump Administration must reinstate Schedule F … allowing the removal of policy-related careerists who resist the agenda and their replacement with personnel committed to implementing the president’s directives.”

📌 And it gets clearer:
“Civil service protections have entrenched unelected bureaucrats who thwart presidential priorities. By reclassifying these positions under Schedule F, the executive can dismiss non-compliant employees and install loyalists.”

-end-

Read 4 tweets

Christopher Webb

@cwebbonline

Sep 7

🧵
Something folks are missing here: this raid wasn’t about “illegals taking American jobs.” It was about ICE storming the Hyundai–LG battery plant in Georgia, part of a $7.6B Metaplant project that isn’t even operational yet.

They dragged out more than 300 South Korean engineers and specialists. People flown in to help stand the place up so it could eventually employ thousands of Georgians/Americans.

This plant wasn’t scheduled to start running until late 2025 or early 2026. These workers weren’t taking jobs; they were building the factory that would create them.

Reports suggest this wasn’t about “undocumented” workers. At worst, it was visa infractions—the wrong paperwork, the wrong classification. Instead of sorting it out, we humiliated our allies and hauled their workers off in shackles.

South Korea is one of America’s most important partners. And in an election stunt, we just told them their people are expendable. Farmers already learned this lesson in Alabama when crops rotted in the fields. Now Georgia might learn it the hard way with batteries.

The questions we should be asking: will this plant ever get up and running on time—or did politics just kneecap one of the biggest clean energy projects in the country? And is the damage done to our relationship with South Korea long-term?
2/3

Now let’s chat about the “informant” and her ill-thought-out plan. Tori Branum, a Republican running in Georgia’s 12th, bragged about pushing the ICE raid on Hyundai’s construction site.

It was a political stunt. But she didn’t think it through. The raid stalled a battery plant that isn’t even scheduled to open until 2026—a plant that would have employed Georgians in good-paying jobs. She screwed her own voters.

Most of the South Korean workers weren’t “taking jobs.” They were specialists brought in to get the plant operational. Their expertise was the bridge to thousands of American jobs down the line.
3/3

Read 4 tweets

Christopher Webb

@cwebbonline

Jul 8

NMSOP isn’t a dark money group. It’s the one group in New Mexico telling the truth about corporate healthcare.

They filed every required disclosure. They operate in the open. And they exist to protect you—not hospital execs, not insurers, not private equity.

So why is Think New Mexico attacking them?

Because this is about power, not principle. And Think New Mexico is siding with the people who already have too much of it.
🧵

2/
Think New Mexico wants you to trust them. Private equity already does.

They’re helping corporate hospitals rewrite New Mexico law to protect profits, not patients.

They call themselves a “nonpartisan” think tank. But follow the money and you’ll see the scam.

3/
Start here:
Private equity is swallowing up healthcare.
• $115 billion in buyouts last year
• 1 in 5 U.S. patients now treated in investor-owned facilities
• States are scrambling to keep care affordable and safe

New Mexico is the test kitchen.
43% of community hospitals there are already investor-owned.

Read 10 tweets

Christopher Webb

@cwebbonline

Jun 15

The Father I Didn’t Know – And What It Taught Me

On This Father’s Day, I want to share something I learned the hard way. It’s a bit rough in the beginning, but it’s leading to something that will hit. Especially if you’re a dad.

About two and a half years ago, my father passed away. Massive heart attack. It was a Sunday, the anniversary of Bloody Sunday. My sister called to tell me the news. It was also her birthday.

As a family, we decided to cremate him and hold a celebration of life later that summer. A home-going. And when July came, we gave him the best home-going you could imagine. In a venue right on the water.

🧵

My father was retired, but he had been a documentary filmmaker, a media director at a college, a jazz musician, and an art lover with a large collection of Black art. He was also a pack rat, which, in this case, was a blessing. He’d kept nearly everything. We set up a series of exhibits in the space: his art, his films, college mementos like his track spikes. We also reunited his bandmates who agreed to play that day. We played a film of his life’s work. Guests could walk from station to station, remember him, and talk about him.

I made a point to speak with every single person there. What I didn’t expect were the stories. Stories of how he used to cook entire Thanksgiving meals—multiple turkeys, pies, sides—and give them to the homeless. Stories from younger Stanford alumni who said, “When you get to Palo Alto, find Salah. He will show you the ropes and connect you with who you should be connected with.” Remember there aren’t too many Black people at Stanford. One told me, “He helped me get into Stanford.”

That one hit me. Years earlier, my dad had worked every angle trying to get his grandson, my son, into Stanford. He’d reached out to trustees, pulled every string he could, but his grandson wasn’t accepted. Pop was so mad. He took it harder than my son. I told him not to be so upset, that I had read even board members can’t get their kids in. But hearing folks say he helped them get in made me realize why he took it so hard that he couldn’t get his own grandson in. Hearing those stories later, I understood just how far back his reputation went.

(2 of 4)

Then, about a week after the home-going, I got a call from a Bay Area number. I normally don’t pick up unknown numbers, but I answered.

“Hi Chris, you don’t know me, but my name’s Max. I was really close to your father.”

I hadn’t heard that name before. I asked if we’d met at the service. He said no. “I couldn’t come. I just couldn’t get it together. That’s why I’m calling.” And then he started crying. Hard.

He told me that during his divorce, my dad took him in, cared for him like family. They would say “I love you” to each other like brothers. As Max sobbed, I found myself trying to comfort him when I think he called intending to comfort me. And in the middle of that call, something hit me that I wasn’t ready for:

The man Max was mourning, the man so many had described, I didn’t know that man.

I knew the dad who had a sharp sense of humor, who was strict, who could be tough on his kids. But this man? This deeply compassionate, generous man? That was someone his friends got to know.

And I wish I had.

That realization messed me up. The next day, I couldn’t even make it to the office.

(3 of 4)

Read 4 tweets

Christopher Webb

@cwebbonline

May 6

A CASE STUDY- that no one wanted to experience…

If you want to know what cutting Medicaid does to rural America—look at Mississippi.
#DontFuckWithMedicaid

Their Republican governor refused to expand Medicaid. Now over half their rural hospitals are at risk of shutting down and many already have.

Killing Medicaid kills healthcare in rural communities.
No Medicaid = no hospitals. No doctors. No care.
#DontFuckWithMedicaid

In states that rejected Medicaid expansion, rural hospitals are shutting down left and right.
People are dying because care is miles—or hours—away.
#DontFuckWithMedicaid

Read 7 tweets

Christopher Webb

@cwebbonline

May 3

NAFTA: My Front-Row Seat to the Race to the Bottom…

Let me tell you what NAFTA looked like from the inside—because I lived it. Americans didn’t just lose jobs to Mexico, jobs were lost to China too.

When it was ratified in 1994, I was the head designer at a company called Z Cavaricci.

We tried moving production from Los Angeles to Mexico, thinking we could take advantage of the trade deal. But it was a disaster. Every factory we tried fell short—bad quality, missed timelines. Also, our styling was too complicated for most factories used to doing basic 5-pocket jeans.

And if you know manufacturing, you know it’s all about consistency and relationships. You can’t just bounce around.

So I told the owner: we had to do production in China if we wanted to compete. We did.
🧵

We started producing pants, non-denim fabrics, eventually denim with all kinds of treatments and novelty work. It was cheaper. A lot cheaper. And the capabilities in China were things we simply couldn’t pull off in the U.S.

We weren’t alone. Everyone in fashion was making the same move—Mexico or China. Because in this industry, it’s not just about style. It’s about price. The buyer sees two pairs of jeans, and the cheaper one usually wins.
2.

What came next was predictable: American denim mills after denim mill closed. Graniteville, Avondale, Burlington—these weren’t just businesses, they were the economic backbone of entire towns. Gone.

And over time, American consumers got used to cheap. Or at least the option of cheap.

NAFTA didn’t just shift where things were made—it rewired how we think about value. It sparked the era of price wars. Manufacturers racing to the bottom, and consumers rewarding it.

This race has no finish line. Just a slow grind downward in quality and stability.
3.

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