First, let's look at what The Washington Post reported:
Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.
The orange vulgarity not only plans to target President Biden. Take a look:
In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.
Of course, there's no evidence of any criminal wrong doing but apparently to Donald Trump it is enough of a crime to criticize Donald Trump.
There's more:
To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations.
And also invoking the Insurrection Act to quell any protests after he's seized power.
The NYTimes has some details:
Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.
He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.
He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”
And there's also this from The NY Times:
Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.
And:
And Mr. Trump would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born in the United States to undocumented parents — by proclaiming that policy to be the new position of the government and by ordering agencies to cease issuing citizenship-affirming documents like Social Security cards and passports to them. That policy’s legal legitimacy, like nearly all of Mr. Trump’s plans, would be virtually certain to end up before the Supreme Court.A Supreme Court where three of the nine Justices were appointed by Trump himself.
As Maya Angelou said, when someone shows you who they are, believe them.
One last note.
The AP reporting of this story has been posted at Triblive:
A mass deportation operation. A new Muslim ban. Tariffs on all imported goods and “freedom cities” built on federal land.
Much of the 2024 presidential campaign has been dominated by the myriad investigations into former President Donald Trump and the subsequent charges against him. But with less than a year until Election Day, Trump is dominating the race for the Republican nomination and has already laid out a sweeping set of policy goals should he win a second term.
And so on...
Why do I point this out?
Well there's this from The Times:
Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.
And this from The Post:
Clark’s involvement with Project 2025 has alarmed some other conservative lawyers who view him as an unqualified choice to take a senior leadership role at the department, according to a conservative lawyer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks. Project 2025 comprises 75 groups in a collaboration organized by the Heritage Foundation.
Do you see where I'm going? Long time readers of this blog will remember the many many blog posts pointing out the many many deep financial ties between then Trib's owner, Richard Mellon Scaife (1932 - 2014) and The Heritage Foundation.
It's been almost a decade since Scaife shuffled off his mortal coil but it's safe to say that The Heritage Foundation would not be what it is today were it not for Scaife's financial largess. And now it's The Heritage Foundation that's part of Trump's projected attack on the federal government.
Given that history, shouldn't the current owners of The Trib (whoever they are) at least comment on their news source's past connections to the guy who funded the foundation that might, just might, dissolve our current system of checks and balances?
