Perspective 129. If Trump Returns: The Specter of Autocracy?
Donald Trump still leads challengers for the Republican presidential nomination by a huge margin. Given how primaries work, it is hard to see how he can lose. Recent polls have him beating Biden by 51 to 42 percent and winning five of six swing states. And if Trump does regain the White House, will he try to reshape U.S. government by establishing presidential supremacy?
Yes. That is exactly what the Donald is promising to do. Numerous reports from inside the Trump camp detail plans to use federal troops to quell protests, to make the upper levels of government more subservient to the president, to prosecute political enemies, and to establish massive detention camps for undocumented immigrants.
In perspective, existing laws have always left much room for tyrannical abuse of executive powers; only the common sense of presidents has (so far) prevented it. But we would have a president who has called for “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” to reverse what he claimed was a rigged election in 2020. Trump would have no problem invoking laws and procedures, already on the books, that give the president seemingly unchecked authority.
Take for example the Insurrection Act of 1807, which empowers the president to deploy troops “whenever the president considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States.” The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally forbids using federal troops for domestic law enforcement – but left insurrection as an exception.
“Whenever the president considers”? This is a dangerous latitude to put in the hands of someone detached from reality.
As president, Trump apparently considered invoking the act to suppress Black Lives Matter demonstrations and to reverse the 2020 election. Next time around, as president he reportedly plans to invoke it from Day One – perhaps in response to “unlawful assemblages” of those protesting a Trump presidency.
Existing rules also provide room for a president to replace vast numbers of civil servants with his own loyalists. As president Trump had prepared an executive order – “Schedule F” – to increase the number of political appointees from about 4000 to a projected 50,000, converting the government into a Trump echo chamber. As returning president, he would presumably issue Schedule F as part of his plan to eradicate “the Deep State.” His followers are reportedly compiling lists of potential appointees to take over the government on all levels.
Once again in charge of the Department of Justice, a reborn President Trump would waste no time using it as a weapon against his perceived adversaries. He has announced his intention of appointing a special prosecutor to “go after” Joe Biden and family, and has proclaimed that anyone challenging him could be indicted. He is on record as saying the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, should be executed for treason. On the other hand, he would pardon all those involved in the January 6, 2021, insurrection – the one modern case that could have led to a legitimate use of the Insurrection Act.
But the expanded role of the military, under Trump, would serve other purposes. Apart from suppressing dissent, it would presumably be used to round up millions of undocumented residents and hold them in massive detention camps pending deportation. And his government would also try to put an end to birthright citizenship, though doing that without a change in the U.S. constitution might prove a bit daunting even for a resurgent Trump autocracy.
But the detention camps might also serve in the future for the millions of us resisting the slide into tyranny.