Why 2025 could be really, really bad

On a Trump 2nd term

(Dark clouds over the White House)

Want to read a truly frightening paragraph? Try this:

Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.

That’s the lede of a story the Washington Post ran over the weekend headlined “Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term.”

And that is FAR from the only scary reporting in it.

There’s this:

In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.

And this:

To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations.

This should not come as much of a surprise to people paying attention, Even as president, Trump openly wondered why “his” Justice Department wouldn’t do more to target those unfavorably inclined toward him.

In the wake of the 2020 election, Trump sought to weaponize the Department of Justice to pursue his false election fraud claims. (We know this because several Justice Department officials testified — under oath — that it happened.)

As I wrote way back in June 2021:

This is a President who – again and again, in ways big and small – showed that he thought the Department of Justice was, effectively, his own personal law enforcement and legal team. He pressured his attorneys general to do his bidding on his timeline – which often dovetailed almost exactly with own political fortunes.

But, here’s the thing: It’s not just the Justice Department. Trump and his allies are already looking at ALL government agencies and departments to see how they can consolidate power.

The New York Times reported on this effort back in July:

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

A bit of context is helpful here. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s election — and all the way through the first two-ish years of his presidency — he made some (emphasis on “some”) efforts to placate the political normies in his party.

He named Reince Priebus, a former Republican National Committee chairman, as his chief of staff. Put Exxon boss Rex Tillerson at the State Department. John Kelly at Homeland Security. H.R. McMaster as National Security Advisor. And so on and so forth.

Trump at least nodded to the notion that he was surrounding himself not just with loyalists but with known quantities in and out of Washington — men and women who might serve in the administration of any Republican president.

That all changed about halfway through his term. Out went all traces of “normal” Republicans and in came people who would do what Trump said — whatever he said.

He began to rely on acting Cabinet officials because they didn’t need to be confirmed by the Senate. “I like acting,” Trump said in January 2019. “It gives me more flexibility. Do you understand that? I like acting. So we have a few that are acting. We have a great, great Cabinet.”

By the end of his term, Trump was trying to install a junior member of DOJ — Jeffrey Clark — as Attorney General because Clark was willing to put the weight of the department behind election fraud claims.

And, in how he speaks about a 2nd term — and the policies he has proposed to put in place during it — it appears as though Trump would continue right where he left off at the start of 2021.

As the Washington Post put it in an April story:

Where he earlier changed border policies to reduce refugees and people seeking asylum, he’s now promising to conduct an unprecedented deportation operation. Where he previously moved to make it easier to fire federal workers, he’s now proposing a new civil service exam. After urging state and local officials to take harsher measures on crime and homelessness, Trump says he is now determined to take more direct federal action.

The reality staring us in the face is this: Trump spent at least part of his first term learning the ropes. Figuring out how far he could push. What the institutional forces were that limited what he could do.

He now has all of that knowledge as he seeks a second term. He knows what changes he can make to consolidate power in the executive branch. How he can turn all levers of government to enforce his will.

Simply put: Trump would hit the ground running — and not in a good way — on day one of his presidency. (His last day one was spent litigating how many people attended his inauguration.)

This fact feels particularly relevant today — as the political world has been rocked by new swing state polling by the New York Times that shows Trump leading in 5 of the 6 states tested.

Trump, it’s now clear to everyone (although it should have been clear for months now) can win. In fact, he may be a slight favorite to win.

Which makes his plans for what he will do if he wins all the scarier. Trump is planning nothing short of a full overhaul of the government — a transformation the likes of which we have never seen before.