Don't say he didn't tell you

By Political Editor David Bloviator

At least no one is claiming that the rise of white supremacist revanchism is due to economic anxiety anymore.

January 2025: All quiet on the Rio Grande

That's probably because their agenda could not be clearer.  They set it out for all to read and for their base to savor.

It seems like 10,000 outrages ago (which is part of the idea), but it's worth focusing on what White Power is promising if their champion the Tangerine-Faced Fascist is returned to power.  He's already promised to be a dictator on day one.  Here's what he'll do:

His top obsession will be the Justice Department, the FBI and the intelligence community — all of which he thinks conspired to investigate him, thwart him, screw him. He's been very clear that he's willing to unleash these agencies against political enemies.

Of course, he is not the first Republican to weaponize law enforcement against political enemies to subvert democracy.  Nixon famously sicced the IRS on hundreds of Vietnam War dissenters, ordered his personal burglary squad to break into the safe of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist in search of dirt, and threatened to take away The Washington Post's then-valuable broadcast licenses unless they muzzled their staff. 

Quick learner and Republican hatchet man Karl Rove then upped the ante in 2006 by ordering the firing of US Attorneys for not bringing enough bogus voter fraud cases, and then escaped punishment by deleting millions of e-mails, which of course contained nothing incriminating.  By the way, our Wonderful Republican Allies of today didn't say boo back then.

This open commitment to subvert both the rule of law and democracy on day one would be an automatic disqualifier, but there's so much more in the Tangerine-Faced Leader's day one agenda.

Number two:

The next priority will be the Department of Homeland Security and the border, with plans to erect sprawling detention camps, "scour the country for unauthorized immigrants," and "deport people by the millions per year," The New York Times reports. We're told Trump's top criterion for immigration officials will be whoever promises to be most aggressive. Trump has told allies he's confident the Supreme Court will back his most draconian moves. 

I wonder why he thinks that?  

We saw children and families separated and locked in cages during the Tangerine-Faced Racist's first term, so there's no particular reason to think he'll go less hard this time.  If pliable and morally flexible mouthpieces like Ron “Take the Babies ” Rosenstein were easily persuaded to sign off on this enormity last time, who will oppose it this time?  

Just put the librarians into Schedule F

And the massive sweeps of undocumented noncitizens promised by Trump are but a recrudescence of the cruel dragnets and deportations that disappeared parents from their children (many of whom are U.S. citizens, not that that matters to anyone) which were authorized by Republican flying ace George W. Bush during his years of madness, again without pushback from our Wonderful Republican Allies.

But wait – there's more:

....a key tool for Trump's "revenge term" would be the use of Schedule F personnel powers to wipe out employment protections for tens of thousands of civil servants across the federal government. Trump allies want a deep and wide purge of the professional staff that often serves across new administrations.

Officials close to the Pentagon tell us they're worried about a plan...to "rigorously review all general and flag officer promotions to prioritize the core roles and responsibilities of the military over social engineering and non-defense related matters, including climate change, critical race theory [and] manufactured extremism." Indeed, the Trump allies see obstacles to remove at every level of every agency. 

The translation from the German is a little obscure.  What's really going on?  As you know, both the civil service and the armed forces are supposed to carry out the will of the political branches, subject to legal restrictions (imposed by statute or the Constitution).  It's that proviso that the Tangerine-Faced Tyrant is so desperate to get rid of.  If a civil servant or a member of the armed forces can be fired for trying to operate within the confines of applicable law, that law is meaningless and is supplanted by the whim of the dictator.

While the words “civil-service reform” are often used as a safe non-narcotic alternative to Ambien, the reinstallation of Schedule F will succeed in purging all integrity from the Government.  When the head of the National Institute of Health Bobby Kennedy Jr. replaces vaccines with horse dewormer, you'll see Schedule F in action.  Stay healthy, my friends.

But we've save the best for last.  In case anyone dares to question the triumph of the Tangerine-Faced Duce's will, he's got one more card to play:

The Insurrection Act in action!

Donald Trump has made clear that, in a second term, he would govern differently than any president in U.S. history. He has hinted at suspending the Constitution, building vast deportation camps, weaponizing the Department of Justice, and mass firing career civil servants.

Here’s one you might have missed: he reportedly plans to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use the military as a domestic police force, on his first day in office.

Let's just say that Trump's views on insurrection have a great deal of, uh, validity.

But it's no joke:

The Insurrection Act’s central failing is that it grants virtually limitless discretion to the president. Its vague and archaic language...provides little meaningful guidance as to what situations do or not warrant deployment. One provision, for example, empowers the president to use the military or “any other means” to “take such measures as he considers necessary” to suppress any “unlawful combination[] or conspiracy” that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.” Read literally, this would permit the president to deploy the Marines to, say, arrest and detain two people suspected of conspiring to intimidate a witness in a federal trial.

Compounding the problem, the Supreme Court ruled in 1827 that the president alone decides whether invoking the Insurrection Act is justified; the courts may not review or second-guess that determination. As for Congress, if it disapproves of a president’s use of the act, its only recourse is to pass a law ending the deployment. The president would likely refuse to sign such a law, and Congress would then have to muster a two-thirds supermajority to override the president’s veto.  

 Not great.

Let's do a thought experiment.  On January 20, 2025, the Tangerine-Faced Dictator-for-a-Day declares that the United States is being invaded by noncitizens crossing at the southern border.  He orders the US Army and Marine Corps to take up positions along the Rio Grande and shoot to kill anyone seeking to cross.  Women and children included.

Or let's turn the clock ahead two years, when the TFD4D orders the military to seize voting machines to avoid a Republican midterm defeat.  He wanted to do that in 2020.

How could those decisions be challenged under the Insurrection Act?  If you're looking for a Republican bent Supreme Court to save you, well, as we say in Dixie, bless your heart.

“Maggie?  I'm privately opposed to ....”

What happens if military commanders think about disobeying the TFD4D's orders?  They have an obligation to refuse to carry out an unlawful order, but on what basis could they say the orders are unlawful?

The defects in the Insurrection Act could be readily remedied by new legislation.  Guess who's blocking it.

The Trump/Republican totalitarian agenda has already disappeared in the media without a trace, in favor of endless discussion about whether insurrectionists should or will be disqualified from running due to insurrection, as required by the Constitution.

The media has already returned to the usual horse-race nonsense, embellished with idiotic inside-dope reporting (which is nothing more than uncritically transmitting anonymous pro-Trump talking points and smears) by the leading Horse's Ass Whisperer, Maggie Haberman.

Ultimately the most shocking thing about this agenda is not that the presumptive Republican nominee has embraced it or that the White Power has made it public.  It is that a majority of white voters heard about it – and love it.  

Whether a majority of real voters in the right places to constitute an Electoral College win care enough to stop it remains to be seen.  What is clear, however, is that if they don't do so, they will not have the opportunity to do so again in their lifetimes.