Notably, the document is remarkably explicit about its recommendation to appoint acting personnel in departments already known for their abuse of American civil rights. They suggest instead indefinitely using acting personnel in vacant positions, particularly ones the first Trump administration was hostile to like State Department diplomatic posts. In fact, the document’s authors advocate that an incoming Trump administration circumvent the Vacancies Reform Act, which establishes standards for congressional vetting of temporarily appointed federal personnel. So reads the first major section of that Mandate, which outlines how a second Trump administration would assert far more direct White House control over this country through the federal bureaucracy. For years now, the Orange Jesus has made no secret of his urge to launch retribution against those in the Washington bureaucracy who opposed him and ensure that tens of thousands of career public service positions in federal agencies and the White House will, in (his) future, be held by people vetted for their loyalty to him (and only him!). When it comes to the plans of Trump’s advisers to reshape the executive branch in an autocratic fashion, should he be reelected, the title in the relevant section of their document - “Taking the Reins of Government” - perfectly catches the top-down approach to power they envision. Let me flag a few parts of that document that I find particularly concerning and suggest small ways in which you and I might act to preserve democratic values in a country that seems either to take them all too much for granted or care about them less and less. The document covers everything from how a Trump administration ought to handle federal staffing to how it could restructure military and federal law enforcement agencies to its own benefit. It’s a document labeled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (though all it really purports to conserve is an abiding American focus on funding our military-industrial complex). You may have noticed that a set of conservative think tanks and scholars, who call themselves Project 2025, have drafted a nearly thousand-page blueprint for a hypothetical Trump second term. To do so, we’d first have to take a closer look at what some of his most influential supporters are planning for the next time around. Isn’t it time, imagining the worst to come, to start talking about what an anti-Trump resistance would look like? With the 2024 election heading toward us the way that asteroid hurtled toward the dinosaurs, while our sensationalistic political culture shows little sign of changing anytime soon, I’d suggest that we turn the conversation from the crazy stuff “Orange Jesus” loves to say to the fact that Trump and his supporters are, for the foreseeable future, going to be among us. Big as we are on short-term gratification (or gloom) and the latest polls, we seem so much less interested in examining what presidents actually do. It turns out she needn’t have worried! It seems the media is far more eager these days to cover the former president’s endless missteps (or are they just steps?) than highlight the investments made by President Biden’s administration, which have finally started to pay off in terms of higher wages, more jobs, and lower carbon emissions. As one fictional mom quipped in a Saturday Night Live skit at the end of his term in office, “If he’s gone, what am I supposed to do? Focus on my kids?” She was also mockingly lamenting the possibility that startling headlines like “‘Grab ‘em by the pussy” would disappear from our all-American world. He’s also provided some of America’s favorite headlines and jokes, even for progressives like me. Regardless of whether Trump wins the 2024 election, the “ Orange Jesus,” as one Republican congressman reportedly called him, is here to stay. Meanwhile, his supporters are all too happy to carry out violent attacks in his name. He’s managed to capitalize on his 2020 election loss, using his failed insurrection, a stream of violent threats and verbal attacks against political opponents and journalists, and the disinformation machine of Fox News and similar outlets to peddle his stories of white American victimhood (above all, of course, his own victimhood). Photograph Source: Gage Skidmore – CC BY-SA 2.0Ĭount on one thing: Donald Trump, who seems to gain Republican support with every new indictment, is not going away.
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