Project 2025’s Schedule F, Dana White, and the NELK Boys

One of the absolute joys of waking up Wednesday and realizing that now President-elect Trump was, in fact, returning to the White House in January 2025 was remembering all of the bad, evil shit he’s been spewing and promising the last four years. I simply forgot, as I’m sure most of your brains work. I could only hold and handle so much bad, evil shit on any given day, especially when it included the following: insane, economy-crushing mass deportations, gutting all Federal agencies, whatever the fuck RFK Jr. is talking about, nation-wide abortion bans, and believing Hannibal Lecter is a real person.

Throw in Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, which drew immediate comparisons to the infamous Nazi rally of February 20, 1939 and the whole mic/cock gagging thing and yeah, I needed to be fucking selective about what I let in.

But there was one comprehensive policy initiative that I completely and utterly blanked on that, considering the gravity of it and the fact that a few initiatives of the plan have already happened (a few under Biden’s watch) with others on the way, I probably shouldn’t have. The initiative in question is none other than the Heritage Foundation’s conservative agenda for the Trump administration, Project 2025. John Oliver explains at length below.

The initiative’s overarching goal is to ultimately reshape the federal government by implementing conservative policies across all sectors, including immigration, education, and energy. Its scope and implications for the structure and function of the U.S. government as we know it - especially when you consider figures like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel (along with Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller) hissing into Trump’s ears for the foreseeable future - will be changed, I don’t know…forever?

This essay isn’t entirely about breaking down Project 2025 and analyzing every horrifying bit. I want to focus specifically on the executive order issued by the Trump administration in October 2020 and what happened during Trump's victory speech in Florida on Wednesday morning when UFC CEO Dana White shouted out a fun and vile bunch of YouTube creators, Twitch, and Rumble, streamers, and podcast hosts.

You’ll probably recognize a few of the names.

White declared: "I want to thank some people. Real quick. I want to thank the NELK Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, and Bussin' With The Boys. And last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan."

If you aren't immersed in social media, YouTube, or the "manosphere" podcast ecosystem, most of these names - except perhaps Joe Rogan - may be unfamiliar as their target audience is primarily men aged 16-35. If you do recognize them, I want to stress that this is not an essay intended to attack any gender or demographic. Instead, as a writer, social theorist, and cultural commentator, I aim to connect dots by leaning on history to draw parallels. My goal is not to be deterministic but to engage in a conversation on the page.

With that out of the way, Dana White’s call out of this crew shows their appears to be a growing influence not only culturally, but politically. More importantly, it feels like its shaping this youth, this generation, ideologically, revealing a pattern: these content creators aren't just building audiences and talking about farts - they could be cultivating potential loyal recruits to whatever Schedule F morphs into in the coming years. Should Trump re-instate and implement Schedule F (he surely will), which would strip civil service protections from thousands of federal employees perceived as disloyal to the president, and thus allowing for their potential replacement with loyalists and ideologues, these influential figures and their followers could actually become a ready-made talent pool of culturally aligned replacements. It's not just a policy proposal - it's a potential pipeline for installing loyalists throughout the government as it is seemingly going to be gutted January 20th, 2025.

So, how would it work? And why are these content creators, innocent as they may seem and appear and act, using the guise of “freeing” freedom of speech and deriding the "alternative" voice to mainstream media, to benefit themselves? For one, money. Cumulatively, these creators are worth anywhere from $20 million to $200 million dollars, with Joe Rogan striking a $100 million dollar deal with Spotify in 2020. Safe to say, there is cash behind these podcasts which, in the eyes and minds of figures like President elect Trump and administration, means eyes, interest, and volume. On Spotify alone, Rogan has approximately 18.4 million subscribers on YouTube with estimates suggesting that each episode attracted around 14.5 million listeners on Spotify. That’s a lot of eyes and ears, especially when you throw in Trump who, after going on Rogan’s experience, saw almost 50 million views for that episode alone. And, it should go without saying, Rogan’s podcast (along with obvious data sets from the Nelk Boys, etc.) are predominantly if not all male, with Joe Rogan’s audience revealing 81% of listeners are men and 56% aged between 18 and 34. Similarly, the UFC’s viewership is largely male, comprising 90% of its audience, with the highest concentration in the 25 to 34 age bracket.

This is where Schedule F becomes critically relevant, as these podcasts and platforms—directly and indirectly—cater predominantly to young men between 18 and 34. The social dynamics amplify this impact, as it's rarely just one individual consuming this content but rather groups of listeners bound together by shared discussions, ideas, and moral frameworks. These frameworks increasingly appear to support Trump's agenda while simultaneously minimizing, bashing, and conspiratorially twisting real-life tragic events like January 6th (and others), encouraging listeners to view them as mere jokes or memes.

As Elon Musk famously observed, "Fate loves irony," further elaborating that "the most ironic outcome often becomes the most likely one." The irony is indeed palpable when considering that one of the most pivotal moments in the 2024 election hinges on two media personalities: a man who hosted "The Apprentice" for 14 years and the former host of "Fear Factor" and "The Man Show." Together, they are steering and defining the United States of America while convincing millions that there's nothing amiss in this distorted version of the American dream.

Schedule F will then be the pipeline, defined as, “…a proposed federal employment category aimed at reclassifying certain civil service positions to enhance accountability and efficiency within the U.S. government…by reclassifying these positions, the government seeks to hold employees more accountable for their performance and alignment with the administration’s policy objectives…reclassification aims to streamline the hiring and removal processes for policy-related roles, allowing for a more responsive and adaptable federal workforce.” Now, if you’re confused, let’s just ask ChatGPT and see what their answer is. See below.

“Yes, the reclassification under Schedule F would shift significant control from the broader federal civil service to the current administration’s policy objectives. By allowing the executive branch to appoint and remove individuals in policy-related positions more freely, it centralizes authority, potentially reducing the traditional independence and nonpartisanship of the federal workforce.”

Interesting, terrifying, troubling, especially when you consider/speculate on the idea that what Schedule F is looking for is what the Heritage Foundation/Project 2025 has been actively preparing for years. Preparing what? Specifically, a database of individuals interested in serving in a future conservative presidential administration for years now, going so far to invite potential appointees to submit their resumes for inclusion in this database ensuring a “well-prepared and vetted pool of candidates for key government positions.” Additionally, Project 2025 has been offering training programs, such as the “Prepared to Serve” certificate program, designed to equip “aspiring appointees” with the necessary knowledge and skills for federal service or, you guessed it, Schedule F.

The negative outcomes here are obviously vast but could ultimately lead to the a loss of nonpartisanship in the civil service, more centralization of power, increased polarization (it’s very high already if you haven’t noticed), and risks to effective governance which, however much Musk and Thiel and other techies love to fawn over burning everything down, ultimately means it would be built back up in their own interests, and not the people of the United States of America.

I want to end by saying that this is of course speculation and, being a writer and a creative one at that, this idea can and likely will be misconstrued as overtly alarmist or maybe even offensive to some people. That is not my goal, as my intention is to say to young men: following the voices and minds of people you will likely never meet or shake hands with, people who have created and use their platforms to tell you the “truth” are, in the end, using you to likely benefit themselves. As a young white Millenial man who grew up and was in college when MySpace and Facebook (now Meta) launched, the debates and discussions around how these platforms have appeared to sour a large percentage of them (Gen Z) forcing me to look back and remember my own past; remember how confused I was, how sad I could get, how angry and betrayed I would feel with no outlet other than the exterior world.

In closing this out, all I can say that you find yourself on your own, and rarely, if ever, do you find your true self through fear, hate, violence, and avenues where one is forced to subscribe and follow to belong. For my journey, I connected to reading and expression via acting, writing, and journaling, as it helped me see the multitudes of beauty in the world and its expanse. These mediums allowed me to train myself to think critically, not to run or embrace bias, but to see the wide breadth of history, and to connect not only with all those who struggled and came before me but also observe their mistakes, their triumphs, their defeats, and how intimidation and mockery isolationism for the sake of survival was never, in the end, worth it.

Suffering is truth, is life, but it’s become a way of one’s life for so many because we, as a society and individuals, let it be. Which is what truly scares me about Schedule F possibly utilizing social media influencers’ audiences as a talent pool for federal positions and the potential erosion of democratic institutions and norms. It's so appealing and in our natural need to connect and be part of something bigger than oneself but, when it's connected, subtly or not, to actual human suffering, behind the paywalls and distance of these digital spaces Gen Z men and younger have literally been raised on, we witness the dangerous transformation of tragedy into content, of pain into performance, creating a disconnect between online engagement and the visceral reality of human experience that threatens to reshape how an entire generation processes and responds to real-world trauma.

There is beauty in one's singular pain, and there is pain in one's singular beauty—this paradox defines the human condition. But the journey through personal darkness, whether navigated in solitude or in communion with fellow creators, demands more than the simple algebra of blame or “othering”. True transformation requires alchemizing our wounds into wisdom for the greater collective good of all, and not weaponizing them against those certain parties or people deem different.

That's hubris. That's ego. That's what Freud observed as: "The ego resorting to various protective measures known as defense mechanisms," a process that reduces immediate anxiety while warping one’s shared reality and stunting personal growth, all in service of perpetual, savage digital self-soothing that gets us, unfortunately, where we find ourselves today.

Be kind. Love. If you’re reading this and you’re angry, sad, scared…strive to see that your anger will not be relieved by taking it out on any other.

“Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.”

― James Baldwin

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