SCROTUS approves 'really dangerous plan'
By blocking justice, they guaranteed this would happen.
Bulwark columnist A.B. Stoddard on Monday warned that former President Donald Trump is priming his supporters to block the certification of the 2024 presidential election for as long as possible.
Appearing on Greg Sargent's "The Daily Blast" podcast, Stoddard said that Trump's threat over the weekend to prosecute anyone whom he deemed to have engaged in election "cheating" was a call to action for his supporters who work at county-level governments to gum up the works should he not win this fall.
"There are Republicans who have been fully radicalized since 2020 at the ground level who intend to delay, at the county level, the certification of the election," she said. "This really, really dangerous plan that is afoot. They want to come up with ways, as county canvassers, to avoid certifying in the days following November 5, which is a perfunctory and administerial and nondiscretionary duty."
Stoddard also touched upon Trump's comments over the weekend that his mass deportation program would be a "bloody" affair, and she believed that the former president and his base wanted to relish in the suffering of immigrants being removed from their communities and sent to detention camps.
"They want images of roundups to be dramatic and brutal and punitive in order to show that they are controlling the border and decreasing immigration," she said. "Spectacle is something that he knows his base very much craves."
What will happen on day one of Trump’s presidency, according to Project 2025
As Trump utters the last phrase of the oath of office – ‘so help me God’ – the first phase of what Project 2025’s authors call ‘the playbook’ begins.
First come the firings. Thousands of federal, non-partisan civil servants –environmental and food safety regulators; authorities in disaster relief coordination; attorneys overseeing anti-discrimination policies in housing, education and employment; medical and scientific researchers – receive immediate layoff notices. Many will not be replaced, as entire federal programs and agencies are shuttered. The new personnel that do arrive come from conservative thinktanks, or are rightwing activists who applied through the Project 2025 application database. Political cronyism is now the official hiring policy of the US federal government.
Next come the roundups. As drafted by the Maga nativist-in-chief Stephen Miller, a broad range of law enforcement, from the national guard to state and local police are deputized for a new deportation army. Sweeps of neighborhoods and businesses take aim at blue states and cities, but general terror is their intended goal. Detention centers are established on military bases and federal facilities with quick access to airfields to execute mass removals. Nearly a million lawfully present immigrants are stripped of their legal protections, subjecting them to immediate deportation. An end to Daca and a return of the Muslim ban follow.
In the following months other parts of the agenda unfold. Cuts in corporate taxes so generous they would make the robber barons blush. An end to federal funding for public television and radio that forces many local stations to shutter. The termination of Head Start programs leaves hundreds of thousands of parents and guardians without preschool or childcare. The elimination of the Department of Education and programs like Title I halt funding and many protections for students with disabilities, English learners and students from low-income households.
Pornography is criminalized. Ditto for abortion rights, emergency contraception and many reproductive health programs. Adiós also to most public sector unions, labor organizing rights and anti-poverty programs.
Stephen Miller at CPAC, described the deportation plans in chilling detail. Speaker after speaker at a Turning Point USA conference promise violence and retribution against political opponents, the dismantling of nearly all public goods, and plans to bring a shrill Christian nationalism to the center of governance and civic life. I’ve listened to unapologetic defenses of eugenics and scientific racism on rightwing media channels with millions of followers.
And these ideas are not limited to the Heritage Foundation or Trump alone. They have been embraced across a network of rightwing formations, some with agendas even more extreme than Project 2025.
Nor can this agenda be described as populist. Polls show large majorities of the US public deeply opposed to the Project 2025 agenda. Corporate giveaways, drastic cuts to public services and legalized discrimination against queer people won’t alleviate any of the very real crises faced by masses of people in the US and around the world.
