A very long and
detailed post with background leading up to this critical question: How to hold
Trump accountable and not above the law for the crimes he has been charged with.
But first watch this short MSNBC video on Trump’s so-called plan called “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 President
Donald 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 Jack Smith’s request to quickly
rule on presidential immunity question.
· On Friday (Dec 22), the U.S. 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.
· 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, had paused the trial proceedings until
the appeals process played out.
· The issue is already being reviewed by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, with oral arguments scheduled for January 9, but Smith sought to speed things along by making his risky request to the high court.
· 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 wants: Delay every charge against him until after the election and if he wins: He tosses everything legal. He is free to continue “Project 2025.” His total dictatorship.
How Another Trump
Term in Office Would Look Like:
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 (NBC News): “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. His 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 appointment positions, as he believes that before “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 ensuring the 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 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 at one time that as president 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 the first Trump administration, 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.
Reporters for The New York Times have 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 with 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 GA state officials. But he continues to lay the groundwork for a second Trump term. He has made the case for Trump to use the military forces for domestic law enforcement. He has also written a legal analysis arguing that “the DOJ is not independent.”
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. But it is also suffused 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 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 to hold Trump accountable for the crimes he has been now charged with.
Trump’s game is 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, the dismantling of limits on presidential power, and bye, bye American pie just as the old song says.
Those Trump would call on and or appoint to serve and help him have been reported on here from Axios. Many names you probably already know include:
Jeffrey Clark; Russ Vought; Mark Meadows; Stephen 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; Pam Bondi; and Susie Wiles. Trump also looks to Rep. Jim Jordan, former Rep. Devin Nunes who now runs Trump's social media company and “Truth Social” and with far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Others in contention are: Steve Bannon; Michael Flynn; and others of that same ilk. What I predict is my hunch and gut feeling based on the “Project 2025” plan and aim and goal for another Trump term and based on Trump’s own words: We ought to believe him.
If true then we must take him at his words 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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