Scott Gurvey's Public Offerings

The closer we get to the election, the clearer a picture we get of Donald Trump’s plans for a second term as President. It is enough to scare anyone who cares about the nation. And it has proven to be enough to get people who served in the first Trump administration to come forward and express their fears. As this is being written more than a dozen people who worked for Trump endorsed Trump’s longest serving chief of staff, Marine General John Kelly’s assessment that he is a “fascist” threat to the constitutional order.

But the most important voice sounding a red flag warning is Trump himself. Listen to what he says. Believe him.

Trump’s closest acolytes know the increasingly incoherent candidate cannot control his mouth. Amid the meandering and rambling of his public rallys and the strange vision of him swaying to music for more than half an hour instead of speaking at all or trying to work the fryer at a McDonald’s, Trump details what his second term will be like.

According to Trump, January 20, 2025, starting at noon right after he is sworn into office, vowing to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States”, he will take up the role of dictator. He will fire Jack Smith, the independent federal prosecutor who has been bringing criminal cases against Trump. He will shut the border to all immigration. And he will sign several hundred executive orders, securing his grip on the government and attempting to ensure his ability to wield “extreme power“.

Nothing in the Constitution gives a president such power. But with the current conservative supermajority having already found a president has “immunity“, you shouldn’t count on the high court acting as a guard rail this time around.

In fact, the first order of business in Trump’s plans is to replace the selective service system which makes most government jobs apolitical with an old-fashioned patronage system where government jobs go to people vetted by Trump and loyal to Trump. You can read about it here in the AFPI, America First Policy Institute’s, America First Agenda, the product of a right wing think tank which has been making plans and collecting resumes of Trump devotees since he lost the 2020 election.

Where I see a civil service system of professionals making up the bureaucracy, taking direction from political appointees at the top, but honoring their oath of office, to protect the Constitution and the rule of law. The AFPI sees left leaning civil servants in the federal government who, resisting illegal acts, obstructed the Trump agenda. One section of their report is titled, “Tales from the Swamp: How Federal Bureaucrats Resisted President Trump.”

If some of this sounds familiar you are right, America First has been competing for Trump’s favor with the Herritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda, the 900-page “Mandate for Leadership”. That document contains a long list of horrors:

• End no fault divorce
• Complete ban on abortions without exceptions (pg 449-503)
• Ban contraceptives (pg 449)
• Additional tax breaks for corporations and the 1 % (pg 691)
• Higher taxes for the working class
• Elimination of unions and worker protections (pg 581)
• Raise the retirement age
• Cut Social Security (pg 691)
• Cut Medicare (pg 449)
• End the Affordable Care Act (“O’Bamacare”) (pg 449)
• Eliminate the Department of Education (pg 319)
• Use public, taxpayer money for private religious schools (pg 319)
• Teach Christian religious beleifs in public schools (pg 319)
• End free and discounted school lunch programs
• End civil rights & DEi protections in government (pg 545-581)
• Ban African American and gender studies in all levels of education (pg 319)
• Ban books and curriculum about slavery
• Ending climate protections (pg 417)
• Increase Arctic drilling (pg 363)
• Deregulate big business and the oil industry (pg 363)
• Promote and expedite capital punishment
• End marriage equality (pg 545-581)
• Condemn single mothers while promoting only “traditional families”
• Defund the FBI and Homeland Security (pg 133)
• Use the military to break up domestic protests (pg 133)
• Mass deportation of immigrants and incarceration in “camps” (pg 133)
• End birth right citizenship (pg 133)
• Ban Muslims from entering the country
• Eliminates federal agencies like the FDA, EPA, NOAA and more (pg 363-417)
• Continue to pack the Supreme Court, and lower courts with right-wing judges

At the Democratic National Convention, Project 2025 was a running topic. Harris aired several campaign commercials referring to “Trump’s Project 2025 agenda.” During the presidential debate, Harris spoke repeatedly of “a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing.”

Following these attacks, Trump claimed not to know anything about Project 2025. I’ve found the truthfulness of an assertion is directly proportional to how loudly Trump is denying it.

Six of his former Cabinet secretaries helped write or collaborated on the 900-page Herritage agenda. Four individuals Trump nominated as ambassadors were also involved, along with several enforcers of his controversial immigration crackdown. And about 20 pages are credited to his first deputy chief of staff. At least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, a CNN review found, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors.

Well known are some of Trump’s other promises, threatening revenge and encouraging violence. He says he’ll begin the biggest deportation in American history, to prosecute political opponenets including former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Adam Schiff, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and various members of the news media. He also promises to strip the broadcasting licenses of television networks whose news divisions broadcast reports he does not like.

Just Google for the quotes, or listen to NPR. Read the documents for yourselves. And be afraid. Be very afraid.

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