Mother Jones / David Corn - Donald Trump Will Need a Police State to Implement His Agenda

[Dennis Donovan]

Mother Jones / David Corn - Donald Trump Will Need a Police State to Implement His Agenda

It’s going to get very ugly.

David Corn
January+February 2025 Issue

Mr. Smith, please come in, have a seat. Our records show you’ve been with the State Department for 17 years, the past five in the Bureau of National Security and Nonproliferation. Now it has come to our attention through an anonymous tip to the America First Compliance Program that you made a derogatory comment about the president. A subsequent internal investigation discovered your wife donated $125 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Through further inquiry—with the assistance of the TrumpX social media team—we located a deleted post from your daughter’s timeline that included a photograph of her and your wife knocking on doors in west Philadelphia for Kamala Harris. Under the new Loyal Americans in Government executive order, we are terminating your employment as of this moment. As you might know, your position has been reclassified and no longer enjoys the civil service protections of the past. There is no right of appeal. My secretary will provide you the separation paperwork. You may leave now.

Donald Trump has many plans for his return engagement at the White House. Several will require police-state tactics.

During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly and enthusiastically declared he would order the mass deportation of 11 million or so undocumented immigrants. At his rallies, diehard fans excitedly waved signs proclaiming the slogan they chanted: “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” Such a program would require deploying a paramilitary force—or even the National Guard or the military—to locate migrants, apprehend them, and guard them in a network of prisons and detention camps. (Executives at private prison, security, and surveillance software companies are already salivating.) This system would depend on Trump ramping up monitoring of workplaces and neighborhoods, and on anonymous tip lines susceptible to abuse and false leads. (Have a problem with a neighbor? Report ’em.) Perhaps the forces rounding up migrants will be afforded special powers to evade civil liberties protections. As in East Germany during the Cold War, an atmosphere of terror and intimidation will pervade.

Expect something similar within the federal workforce. Months before he left office at the end of his first term, Trump issued an executive order that would have removed employment protections from civil servants deemed disloyal to the president and that could have required expressions of allegiance before being hired—in other words, loyalty oaths for Trump. The order created a new employment category called Schedule F, to be applied to perhaps tens of thousands of federal workers (maybe more), permitting them to be fired without cause. President Joe Biden rescinded the order upon entering the White House and, in October, his administration issued final rules aimed at preventing a future president from reinstating it. But Trump has vowed to bring the plan back on “day one” and turn a large section of the federal workforce into a Trump corps—a stated goal of Steve Bannon and other MAGA schemers.

Reviving Schedule F, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) has warned, would be a “direct threat to our national security and our government’s ability to function.” Under such a regime, a broad range of federal employees—say, lawyers at the EPA who work on climate change, scientists at the CDC who prepare for pandemics, or analysts at the CIA who watch the Kremlin—could be dumped at will if they raise questions about a Trump position or don’t pay him obeisance. And the threat of a pink slip would not only silence dissent; it could be used to press government employees to take inappropriate actions—maybe jigger statistics to make Trump’s economic policies look good, or slow-walk disaster aid destined for blue states.

/snip

Scary stuff.