“Authoritarianism is on the ballot”: Experts worry about Trump’s “alarming” 2025 plan

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Former President Donald Trump and his allies are already planning plans to significantly expand his presidential powers if he wins the White House again next year.

The New York Times reported Monday that Trump and his inner circle have a “broader goal: to change 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 freedom from White House political interference, according to an analysis of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.”

This sweeping plan included bringing independent agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency directly under the president, the return of “impounded” funds, a strategy banned during the Nixon administration that provided power to a president who refused to spend Congress- appropriated money to programs they didn’t want as well as removing job protections for thousands of career civil servants and an intelligence agency purging officials he held personal vendettas against and deemed “deep staters” and “the sick political class that hates our country.”

“We will demolish the deep state,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan. “We will throw out the warmongers from our government. We will throw out the globalists. We will throw out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw out the sick political class that hates our country.”

Under the plan Trump designed during his first term, independent agencies would be required to submit actions to the president for review, in an effort to consolidate such organizations “under the authority of the president.” The order was ultimately not enacted due to internal concerns such as how the market would react if the Federal Reserve were stripped of its independence.

“What we’re trying to do is identify pockets of freedom and take them out,” Russell Vought, who led the Office of Management and Budget during the Trump administration, told the Times. Open discussion of such political strategies is rampant at Trump campaign rallies and websites, according to the report, a tactic Vought described as planting “a flag” before the election.

Vought added that “at a minimum,” the Federal Reserve should be subject to presidential scrutiny. “It’s very difficult to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution,” he told the Times.

Former White House chief of staff John McEntee, who is credited with spearheading Trump’s 2020 efforts to oust officials he personally opposed, has also been tight-lipped about the former president’s scheme.

“The president’s plan must fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since FDR’s New Deal,” McEntee said. “Our current executive branch was devised by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure conservative. Not enough to correct the personnel. What is needed is a complete overhaul of the system.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung observed that Trump “has laid out a bold and clear agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.”

“Voters will know exactly how President Trump will grow the economy, lower inflation, secure the border, protect communities and dismantle the deep state that works against the American people once and for all,” he added. he.

But former White House chief of staff John Kelly said he felt the strategy would be “messy” because Trump “will continue to try to exceed his authority but will be accompanied by sycophants. It will be a non-stop battle with Congress and in the courts.”

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Experts have raised major concerns over Trump’s “alarming” outline.

“Anyone who opposes a Presidential autocracy in America should read this carefully,” warned presidential historian Michael Beschloss.

“Conservatives advocating for this should think for a second how shocked they would be if Biden did this,” tweeted national security attorney Bradley Moss.

“In 2024, authoritarianismunchecked, unembarrassed and undisguised will be on the ballot,” wrote Bill Kristol, a longtime NeverTrump conservative and founder of The Weekly Standard.

“Scared. This is on the verge of happening 18 months from now,” MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan tweeted. “Now ask yourself this question: are the cautious, in-denial, business-as-usual establishment Dems equipped, or even prepared, to address this anti-democratic, autocratic threat?”

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