Introduction and Repost
of the Subject Topic that Follows: A rather long and detailed post (with
minor changes) on the background leading up to this critical issue discussed in
the Michigan Advance with this their article headline:
“Project 2025, if allowed,
will cement America as a rightwing authoritarian state”
I note right up front that this subject and contents are NOT hyperbole, but it is based on facts of the topic of “Project 2025” as stated in the links herein.
FYI: A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government characterized
by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no
limitations.
Simple question: How does the judicial system of the nation hold
Trump accountable to ensure that he is not above the law for the crimes he has
been charged with and now ready to face justice?
First watch this short MSNBC video on “Project 2025.”
The latest:
The U.S. Supreme Court rejects special counsel Jack Smith’s request to
fast-track a ruling on whether presidential immunity protects former Trump from
being prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, likely delaying
the federal trial.
January 6 election
interference: The Supreme Court rejects S/C Jack Smith’s request to quickly
rule on presidential immunity question.
· On December 22, the Supreme Court rejected a request
by Smith to fast-track a decision on whether presidential immunity protected
Trump from prosecution in the case that alleges he defrauded the United States
with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election (The AP reports).
· The court’s decision not to immediately rule on
that question puts the March 4 start date for Trump’s federal trial in
jeopardy. Note: The justices
did not offer reasons for rejecting Smith’s request.
· Judge Chutkan, who ruled Trump was not protected
by presidential immunity in the case, has paused the trial proceedings until
the appeals process played out.
· Jack Smith noted that an appeal of the D.C. Circuit’s
ruling might not reach the Supreme Court before its summer recess.
· Trump’s lawyers had asked the court to slow down
the process.
This last point is
what Trump has wanted all along: Keep delaying every charge against him
until after the election and if he wins: His new DOJ would toss everything and free
him to continue “Project 2025” and his
total dictatorship.
What Another Trump
Term Would Look Like: Trump’s plans for his predicted victory in
November 2024 election is based on “Project 2025” (being developed by his
rightwing supporters). More details are here from the NY TIMES with this headline:
“Trump Has a Master Plan for Destroying the Deep State”
Trump puts his win in 2024
in apocalyptic terms: “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the
deep state.”
Note: This is not
an empty threat. He has a real and plausible plan to utterly transform American
government. It will undermine the quality of that government and it will
threaten our democracy.
A second Trump administration would be very different from
the first. Trump’s blueprint for amassing power has been developed by a
constellation of conservative organizations that surround him, led by the
Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025.
That three-part plan is based 100% personal fealty to Trump center
of all government employment, employees, processes, and institutions.
Part One: Trump will put only loyalists into positions, as he believes that “the resistance to his presidency included his own appointees.” Unlike in 2016, he now has a deep bench of loyalists.
The Heritage Foundation and dozens of other Trump-aligned organizations are screening candidates to create 20,000 potential MAGA appointees. They will be placed in every agency across government, including the agencies responsible for protecting the environment, regulating workplace safety, collecting taxes, determining immigration policy, maintaining safety net programs, representing American interests overseas, and impartial rule of law.
These are not
conservatives reluctantly serving Trump out of a sense of patriotic duty, but
those enthusiastic about helping a twice-impeached president who tried to
overturn the results of an election.
An influx of appointees like this would come at a cost to
the rest of us. Political science research that examines the effects of
politicization on federal agencies shows that political appointees, especially
inexperienced ones, are associated with lower performance in government and less
responsiveness to the public and to Congress.
Part Two:
The plan is to terrify career civil servants into submission. To do so, he
would re-impose an executive order that he signed but never implemented at the
end of his first administration.
The Schedule F order
would allow him to convert many of these officials into political appointees. Thus Schedule
F would be the most profound change to the civil service system since its
creation in 1883 since Presidents can currently fill about 4,000 political
appointment positions at the federal level.
This already makes the United States an outlier among
similar democracies, in terms of the degree of politicization of the
government. The authors of Schedule F have suggested it would be used to
turn another 50,000 officials — with deep experience of how to run
every major federal program we rely on — into appointees.
Other Republican presidential
candidates have also pledged to use Schedule F aggressively.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), for example, promised that he would “start slitting throats on Day 1.”
Schedule F would be a catastrophe for government
performance. Merit-based government personnel systems perform better than
more politicized bureaucracies. Under Trump’s first term, career officials were more
likely to quit when sidelined by political appointees.
Schedule F would also damage democracy.
The framers included a requirement, in the Constitution
itself, that public officials swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution and not whoever occupies the White House,
or Congress.
By using Schedule F to demand personal loyalty, Trump would
make it harder for them to keep that oath. When he was president, his
administration frequently targeted officials for abuse, denial of
promotions or investigations for their perceived disloyalty. In a second
administration, he would simply fire them.
Trump loyalists reportedly have lists ready of civil servants
who will be fired because they were not deemed cooperative enough during his
first term.
Part Three:
Trump’s authoritarian blueprint is to create a legal framework that would allow
him to use government resources to protect himself, attack his political
enemies and force through his policy goals without congressional approval.
Internal government lawyers can block illegal or unconstitutional actions.
The New York Times has uncovered a plan to place Trump loyalists in those key positions.
This is
not about conservatism.
Trump grew disillusioned with conservative Federalist Society lawyers despite drawing on them to stock his judicial nominations.
It is about finding lawyers willing to create a legal rationale for his authoritarian impulses.
Examples from Trump’s time in office include Mark Paoletta, the former general counsel of the OMB who approved Trump’s illegal withholding of aid to Ukraine, or in Jeffrey Clark, who almost became Trump’s acting AG when his superiors refused to advance Trump’s false claims of election fraud on January 6.
Clark is now under indictment for a “criminal attempt to communicate false statements and writings” to Georgia state officials. But he continues to lay the groundwork for a second Trump term. He has made the case for the president using military forces for domestic law enforcement. He has also written a legal analysis arguing that “the DOJ is not independent,” while Paoletta told The NY Times: “I believe a president doesn’t need to be so hands-off with the DOJ.”
If government lawyers will not defend norms of the DOJ, Trump will use the department to shield himself from legal accountability and to pursue his enemies.
We sometimes think of democracy as merely the act of voting. But the operation of government is also democracy in action, a measure of how well the social contract between the citizen and the state is being kept.
When
values like transparency, legality, honesty, due process, fealty to the
Constitution and competence are threatened in government offices, so too is our
democracy. These democratic values would be eviscerated if Trump returns to
power with an army of loyalists applying novel legal theories and imposing a
political code of silence on potential holdouts.
American bureaucracy is often slow and cumbersome. The civil
service system in particular is in need of modernization. It also is saturated with democratic checks that limit the abuse of centralized
power.
This is why Trump and his supporters are so precisely
targeting the administrative state, taking advantage of an antipathy toward
Washington that both parties have long nurtured.
My earlier related “Project
2025” posts, here
and here.
My 2 Cents: Short and sweet – I don’t trust the USSC to do the right thing since it appears they are beholding to Trump and not to the nation as a whole, and especially NOT ready to hold Trump accountable for the crimes he has been charged with.
Trump’s 2024 campaign announcement is based on his game of delay, delay, delay and well, delay so he can win and not go to trial.
But we shall see – I may be wrong and I hope that I am. If Trump has a chance to implement his various plans, expect a weaker American government, worse public service, dismantling of limits on presidential power, and bye, bye American pie just as the old song says.
Those Trump
would call on and appoint to serve and help him are seen here from Axios.
Many names you probably already know include: Jeffrey Clark (mentioned above) – the controversial lawyer Trump had wanted to install as attorney general in the end days of his presidency; Russ Vought, the former head of Trump’s OMB; Mark Meadows; Stephen “Strong Anti-Immigrant” Miller; Ed Corrigan; Wesley Denton; Brooke Rollins; James Sherk; Andrew Kloster; Troup Hemenway; Dan Scavino; John McEntee; Richard Grenell; Kash Patel; Robert O’Brien; David Bernhardt; John Ratcliffe; Peter Navarro (now ready for prison); Pam Bondi; and Susie Wiles.
Trump also looks to Rep. Jim Jordan (OH); former Rep. Devin Nunes (CA) who also now runs Trump's social media company and “Truth Social;” and ultra-far right crazies like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA); Steve Bannon; Michael Flynn; and others of that same ilk.
What I predict is only my hunch and gut feeling based on “Project 2025’s” plan and aim and goal for another Trump term but mostly in his own words, so: We ought to believe him, right.
If true then we must take him at his word about the things he intends to do under that plan and so much more.
I fear for the country and any future we think we have left.
Thanks for stopping by.
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