2023-12-29 21:16:23
Activate when the Insurrection Act, last amended in 1871, reaches the White House, which would allow the military to be deployed on American soil to quell potential protests, send soldiers to act as police in cities governed by Democrats and in the border Appoint an attorney general who agrees with the idea of ending the independence of the Department of Justice to be able to persecute critics, opponents and those he considers to have been disloyal to him in his first term.
Weakening protections for tens of thousands of civil servants to purge them and install “conservative warriors” to help him dismantle the administrative state, which he refers to as the “deep state”. “Get revenge on the press”. Bring more currently independent government agencies under the control of the West Wing. Immigrant detention camps, mass deportations and the end of asylum or the right to citizenship by birth in the country…
The priorities on Donald Trump’s agenda if he succeeds in November 2024 to return to the presidency of the United States take shape through the public and private messages of the Republican favorite and articles detailing the planning of his potential second term. Alarms have gone off in the face of the radicalization of his proposals, due to the reinforcement of his autocratic tendencies and violent rhetoric and even seeing the drift towards an idea that in recent weeks has become central to the political conversation in the US : a potential dictatorship.
An extensive essay published on November 30 in The Washington Post by historian Robert Kagan asserted that “a Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable.” In the commented piece, which reviewed the weakening of the checks and balances that have served as safeguards of democracy and the continued submission of a Republican Party that remains prostrate at the feet of Trump, the warnings launched by Liz Cheney have been added in interviews, columns and a book. A special from The Atlantic magazine has also been added, which in 24 essays included under “If Trump wins” covers a future of “serious and extreme consequences” as well as countless analyzes and warnings from progressives and moderate Republicans.
The strategy
The alert is growing because Trump, the former president who is charged with 91 charges, the president who broke with the American democratic tradition and tried to reverse the results of 2020 that gave victory to Joe Biden and the peaceful transition of power, is, today, favorite, more than 50 points ahead of his main rivals in the Republican primaries. He also leads Biden in polls in key swing states. And both in statements and in strategy, whether its own or that prepared by allied groups such as Project 2025, it is allowing this potential radical second term to be ventured.
Trump, his conservative allies and defenders, accuse the media or figures like Kagan and Cheney of fueling paranoia, exaggerating, or taking seriously what they say are “jokes,” as the phrase the Republican uttered assuring that he would be “a dictator only on the first day”.
The reality is that he is repeating one of his tactics that have already been proven dangerous, such as using a playful tone that contributes to the desensitization to extremist approaches or launching anti-democratic ideas such as that of General Mark Milley, who being in his term chief of staff of the Defense and one of those who stopped him in his first term, he should be “executed for treason”.
“If you repeat something enough times, you normalize it. It’s making everyone desensitized to the effect it would have if it followed through on what it says, which is its intention. It’s turning it into a joke, which doesn’t mean it’s a joke “, warned Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology at Princeton University.
Trump is also using language with more than echoes of Adolf Hitler or European fascism. He has launched, for example, the idea that “immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country” and has promised: “We will wipe out the communists, Marxists, fascists and criminals of the radical left who live like vipers in our country.” .
the plans
Trump’s absolute priority is to elect the attorney general, who would be the key person to apply drafts already prepared by his team with plans to end 50 years of precedent that, following the Watergate scandal, have sought to guarantee the independence of the Department of Justice . He is distancing himself from jurists he considers too “institutionalist” or soft to make the changes he seeks, and he has distanced himself even from the conservative Federalist Society, which was key to his first term. Thus, he seeks new alliances to be able to carry out his plans to investigate and persecute those he considers political rivals or former disloyal collaborators, including Milley; John Kelly, who was his chief of staff; and William Barr, who acted as its Chief Justice.
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“You don’t need to change the statutes, you need to change the mentality,” explains Russ Vought, one of Trump’s allies, who ran the Budget Office and who is at the Center for Renewing America, a think tank overturned in the preparation of the possible second term. “You need an attorney general and a White House legal office that don’t see themselves trying to protect the Department of the President.”
From this same think tank comes Jeffrey Clark, accused in the federal case in Georgia and pointed out in the assault on the Capitol and who leads the work to prepare the possible invocation of the law of insurrection. Plans to alter the civil service system, removing protections against arbitrary dismissals of civil servants and turning multiple positions into political appointments, also cause special alarm.
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