NEW YORK – Electing loyalists to all 4,000 key positions in government and federal agencies for which the White House has the power to appoint. Decapitation of even the middle numbers by firing the 50,000 civil servants with key administrative functions, to be replaced by managers loyal to the new president’s America First program (their selection began some time ago, as well as the study of mechanisms to circumvent the cleaning ban). . The “militarization” of the Justice Department is intended to lead to the new leader’s revenge on the Republicans who fought him and the Democrats (starting with Biden) who he believes are pursuing him in court. And again, deploying the Army against predictable street demonstrations, invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to justify repealing the law that requires soldiers to defend America only against external threats. And finally, the hunt for undocumented immigrants (including asylum seekers) to be deported en masse.
Authoritarian government in the USA: Why it is no longer a political fiction
Dark political fantasy scenario? No, these are Donald Trump’s intentions if he is re-elected and those of the organizations that have coalesced around him. Unprepared in 2016, when the real estate developer who had unexpectedly entered politics became president, this time they acted in a timely manner and were determined to dismantle the administrative machinery that they defined as the “deep state.” That Trump intends to take advantage of his (possible) second term in the White House and seek quick revenge to govern in a much more authoritarian manner, thereby completing the work of destroying the institutions of democratic protection that he had already begun in his first four years as president is not a hypothesis, but a certainty: he himself speaks openly about it at rallies. When the Washington Post wrote, based on anonymous testimony, that a Trump president would again push his attorney general to prosecute Bill Barr and John Kelly (an attorney general and chief of staff he appointed), as well as a chief of staff, Gen. Mark Milley, who is Trump not only did not deny that he was guilty of resisting the use of troops against the demonstrators, but even confirmed it in an interview with Univision: “As president, if I see someone violently attacking me, I will say impeachment “Elevate him.” Previously, he had proposed the death penalty for Milley, whom he accused of treason. Everything is out in the open, even the promise of an authoritarian turn. Trump has never hidden his admiration for dictators like Putin. Now he believes, not just his to have convinced loyalists, but also many other Americans, that the current system must be torn down. He will use the four criminal trials awaiting him in 2024 as a platform to accuse Biden of being the instigator of political persecution by the judiciary. For this reason, he called for the trials to be televised. Days ago, during a rally in New Hampshire, he said, “Arresting your opponent is Third World stuff. And if they can do it, so can I.”
Trump is ahead: “Biden is the one who is destroying democracy”
His rallies obsessively repeat a classic of the rise of authoritarian regimes: the criminalization of political opponents with the aim of making democratic confrontation impossible. He promises to free America from the rule of “communists, Marxists, fascists, who live like parasites in our country by stealing, lying and manipulating elections: They want to destroy America and the American dream.” At the weekend’s rallies in It became even clearer in Iowa: in the future he would no longer govern with gloves, but with bare hands (take off his gloves), while Biden was “not the defender, but the destroyer of American democracy.” Not only progressives, but also many conservatives now see US democracy in danger and are calling for an awakening of awareness. Robert Kagan, old neoconservative hawk from the Bush White House (he left the Republican Party in 2016 after Trump’s election), just published a long analysis in the Washington Post entitled: “A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable: Let’s Stop.” “To act as if nothing had happened.”
Kagan sees dictatorship on the horizon (and accuses Americans of cowardice)
Kagan attributes America’s (and the world’s) lack of attention to this threat to “collective cowardice” and a lack of strong will to defend liberal democracy. Won’t he exaggerate? He himself admits that things could turn out differently: Unforeseeable events could change the development he predicted based on the available data. But the scholar convincingly argues that with the 2016 election, the 2020 election, and the events that followed that election, the barriers protecting the democratic nature of the American political system have fallen one by one. And no one seems to care: “As if we knew that in a year an asteroid was going to come and maybe hit the Earth, maybe not, and we didn’t do anything to protect ourselves.” In short: Kagan is like other pragmatic conservatives who detest Trump’s authoritarian populism – for example, David Frum or Karl Rove, two other former members of the Bush team – an extreme appeal to awaken the democratic conscience of Americans. But for many of those who, although they are not Trump supporters, do not listen to these appeals, the former president’s appeals are just campaign words that he, accustomed to exaggerating, but lacking administrative skills, cannot translate into concrete actions, such as in 2016. Not to mention that the 4,000 appointments over which the president can intervene must then be confirmed by the Senate, while federal officials can only be fired for serious reasons.
The Heritage Foundation is working to remake the state in a Trumpian version
However, this is where the Heritage Foundation comes into play, a famous think tank of the radical right, which for months has been selecting tens of thousands of professionals based on ideological and personal criteria, using Larry Ellison’s Oracle technologies. Loyalty to Trump and not to their competence: it will be up to them, to redesign the state machinery in an authoritarian manner. Accused by Trump of not recommending enough loyal figures to him in 2016, Heritage acted early this time: it even drafted a 920-page plan, Project 2025, to revolutionize government policy in the areas of law, regulation, military and services, according to the FBI . The elimination of those who oppose the authoritarian style is entrusted to an operation called Agenda 47. Of the four thousand ministers, ambassadors, heads of federal agencies and senior officials that any president is allowed to appoint, Trump and the organization supports him in wanting to add another 50,000 of lower ranks, but this is seen as an obstacle to his plans. The law, as noted, protects the careers of federal employees, but Trump issued an executive order (later repealed by Biden) called Schedule F back in 2020, just days before the election, that sought to create a new category of workers in politically sensitive ones and therefore committed to fire-hazardous areas: that is where the 50,000 that had to be eliminated had to end. A plan that will resurface with a second Trump presidency. As for key appointments, a Republican-majority Senate will confirm them without too much fanfare. In the case of a Democratic majority, the president will delegate powers similar (or close) to those of the incumbent. Additionally, as Congress has become increasingly paralyzed by extreme political polarization, presidents since Obama have increasingly relied on temporary appointments and White House executive orders to fill the gaps. Meanwhile, Heritage has already interviewed and recruited the first five thousand “loyalists” willing to pledge allegiance to the boss rather than the institution, and plans to select 20,000 more in the coming months. Everything is open here too. The conservative organization’s president, Kevin Roberts, and the project’s director, Paul Dans, publicly boast: “Never before have we launched such a massive movement and such a comprehensive plan to undermine this harmful administrative state.”