People Aren't Facing Up to the Horrors a New Trump Term Would Bring [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://newrepublic.com/article/174535/people-arent-facing-horrors-new-trump-term-bring

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https://archive.li/jG1Ar


People forget just how awful the Trump presidency was: daily chaos, naked power grabs, corruption, pandering to religious extremists, weaponization of government for personal vendettas, degradation of our democracy, and the constant assault on the rights of women, persons of color, and LGBTQ people. In the past week both The New York Times and The Economist have helpfully reminded us that the next Trump administration will be even worse, because this time they’re coming in with a plan.

The first iteration of his administration was embarrassingly unprepared because he never expected to win. He and his people blew off most of the normal transition-related activities expected of a president. Michael Lewis’s book The Fifth Risk described how the comically inept Trump crew held meetings in the dark at the White House because they literally didn’t know how the lights worked. As a result of this incompetence, Trump’s administration was somewhat limited in how much damage it could do.

Next time will be different.

He’s coming back with the entire conservative apparatus at his back, having spent four years in the wilderness methodically planning how to permanently alter the political and legal landscape of the country to favor an anti-democratic minority. As Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams told The Atlantic, their goal is to “effect a realignment of our politics and take control of all three branches of government for a generation or two.”

Central to this is the plan to reinstitute Schedule F for federal employees, which would allow the administration to fire any federal employee with policy-making authority. In practice this means that a Trump administration would replace vast swathes of the federal government bureaucracy with sycophants and ideological fellow travelers bent on implementing pro-corporate, pro-religious, and anti-minority agendas. This weaponizes the entire federal bureaucracy against women and LGBTQ people.

*snip*