I argued in my last column that Project 2025 will enable Donald Trump to wield great power. But Trump is running on two agendas that could expand his power exponentially. And whether intended or not, minorities will suffer the most as Trump solidifies his dictatorship.
Trump's two dangerous agendas involve a declaration of war against Mexican drug cartels to counter the fentanyl epidemic and a program that will deport suspected members of drug cartels without due process and that will require building massive detention camps to hold undocumented immigrants for deportation.
Elect Donald Trump (Or Some Other Republican) --Get a War With Mexico
Donald Trump wants to declare war on the Mexican cartels, but he isn't the only Republican who wants to do so. The New York Times carried a deep dive explaining how Trump's ideas have influenced other Republicans on the issue. Here are some excerpts, but read the entire article.
The first time Donald Trump talked privately about shooting missiles into Mexico to take out drug labs, as far as his former aides can recall, was in early 2020.
And the first time those comments became public was when his second defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, wrote in his memoir that Mr. Trump had raised it with him and asked if the United States could make it look as if some other country was responsible. Mr. Esper portrayed the idea as ludicrous.
Yet instead of condemning the idea, some Republicans publicly welcomed word that Mr. Trump had wanted to use military force against the drug cartels on Mexican soil — and without the consent of Mexico’s government. Mr. Trump’s notion of a military intervention south of the border has swiftly evolved from an Oval Office fantasy to something approaching Republican Party doctrine.
On the presidential campaign trail and on the G.O.P. debate stage in California last week, nearly every Republican candidate has been advocating versions of a plan to send U.S. Special Operations troops into Mexican territory to kill or capture drug cartel members and destroy their labs and distribution centers.
On Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers have drafted a broad authorization for the use of military force against cartels — echoing the war powers Congress gave former President George W. Bush before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. They have also pushed for designating Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations — a related idea Mr. Trump flirted with as president but backed off after Mexico hotly objected. Now, if Mr. Trump returns to the White House in 2025, he has vowed to push for the designations and to deploy Special Operations troops and naval forces to, as he put it, declare war on the cartels. . . .
At least twice during 2020, Mr. Trump privately asked his defense secretary, Mr. Esper, about the possibility of sending “Patriot missiles” into Mexico to destroy the drug labs, and whether they could blame another country for it. Patriot missiles are not the kind that would be used — they are surface-to-air weapons — but Mr. Trump had a habit of calling all missiles “Patriot missiles,” according to two former senior administration officials. During one of the 2020 discussions, Mr. Trump made the comment quietly to Mr. Esper as they stood near the Resolute Desk, within ear shot of another cabinet official. Mr. Esper, stunned, pushed back on the idea.
After leaving office, Mr. Trump didn’t stop talking about attacking the drug cartels. Instead, he turned the idea into an official policy proposal for his 2024 campaign for president.
In January, Mr. Trump released a policy video titled “President Donald J. Trump Declares War on Cartels,” in which he explicitly endorsed the idea of treating Mexican drug cartels like the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — rather than treating them as transnational criminal organizations to be addressed using law enforcement tools. . . .
Vivek Ramaswamy has promised to “use our military to annihilate the Mexican drug cartels.” Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has released a campaign ad vowing to “unleash” the U.S. military against the cartels. And former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina has said that when it comes to drug cartels, “you tell the Mexican president, either you do it or we do it.” . . .
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is a close ally of Mr. Trump, said he thought a president could bomb fentanyl labs and distribution centers on his own constitutional authority as commander in chief, without congressional authorization.
And just in case there is any doubt that Trump means business, he released an action plan on Truth Social which includes:
Order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other covert and overt actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations
This sounds like a good idea at first. But if you dig a bit deeper you will find that it won't work and will have disastrous consequences. In short, it is a monumentally stupid idea. Mehdi Hasan explains why:
Hasan’s analysis was brilliant, but he missed a few points. Many Republican commentators say, “What’s the big deal? We bomb a few fentanyl labs, the cartels will give up, and it is all over.” Some fentanyl labs are huge, but many are small, low tech, hidden, and mobile. Knowing where to target them can be a challenge. We can expect innocent civilians to be killed in a bombing campaign.
Republicans think we can bomb or invade Mexico with little resistance and that the Mexican government and the Mexican people will sit back and welcome, or at least tolerate it. Maybe they think the Mexicans will treat us as liberators from the Mexican cartels--just as officials in the Bush Administration thought the Iraqis would shower us with roses for liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein. They seem to think our campaign against the cartels will be over in a few days—or a few weeks at most. Funny. That’s what Putin thought when he attacked Ukraine. Wars have a way of unfolding in unexpected ways. And if this war is not over quickly, you can bet Russia will use the opportunity to organize an economic boycott of the United States. You can also bet that China will use the opportunity to invade Taiwan. And how will we be able to muster enough international outrage against China to put together an effective international fighting force or economic boycott against them for taking a police action against what they claim to be their own country while we are taking action against a country that is clearly not ours?
Republicans are always complaining about our porous border. If we can’t stop peaceful immigrants from crossing the border now, how many immigrants whose relatives have been killed by our invasion will cross the border with intention to return the favor?
I can’t say how this will all unfold, but it is a pretty safe bet that it will be a lot messier than Trump anticipates it to be. And if this war turns out to be longer and messier than anticipated, and if Mexican resisters cross the Rio Grande and attack our critical infrastructure or poison our water supplies, then expect our country to become even more divided than it already is. It is certain that hate crimes against Latinos--especially against Mexican Americans--will rise. And we may see competing protests develop between those who support and those who oppose the war. This would provide the perfect excuse for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the military to crush dissent. More on this later.
As Oprah Would Say, "You Get A Deportation Order! And You Get A Deportation Order! And You Get A Deportation Order!"
Trump's second policy plank of conducting mass deportations will compound the dangers his Administration poses--especially to Latinos and those who support the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel. This is from a very long New York Times article which I encourage you to read. I have added emphasis to the especially alarming parts. Note that Trump--or at least close advisors of Trump--are willing to dispose of due process for those suspected to be members of drug or criminal gangs. This should be alarming--even to law abiding citizens, for reasons that I will explain after this passage.
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.
The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways. . . .
He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year. . . .
To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. . . .
In a public reference to his plans, Mr. Trump told a crowd in Iowa in September: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The reference was to a 1954 campaign to round up and expel Mexican immigrants that was named for an ethnic slur — “Operation Wetback.” . .
In a second Trump presidency, the visas of foreign students who participated in anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian protests would be canceled. U.S. consular officials abroad will be directed to expand ideological screening of visa applicants to block people the Trump administration considers to have undesirable attitudes. People who were granted temporary protected status because they are from certain countries deemed unsafe, allowing them to lawfully live and work in the United States, would have that status revoked.
Similarly, numerous people who have been allowed to live in the country temporarily for humanitarian reasons would also lose that status and be kicked out, including tens of thousands of the Afghans who were evacuated amid the 2021 Taliban takeover and allowed to enter the United States. Afghans holding special visas granted to people who helped U.S. forces would be revetted to see if they really did.
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. . . .
All of the steps Trump advisers are preparing, Mr. Miller contended in a wide-ranging interview, rely on existing statutes; while the Trump team would likely seek a revamp of immigration laws, the plan was crafted to need no new substantive legislation. And while acknowledging that lawsuits would arise to challenge nearly every one of them, he portrayed the Trump team’s daunting array of tactics as a “blitz” designed to overwhelm immigrant-rights lawyers
“Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Mr. Miller said, adding, “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.” . . .
Since much of Mr. Trump’s first-term immigration crackdown was tied up in the courts, the legal environment has tilted in his favor:
His four years of judicial appointments left behind federal appellate courts and a Supreme Court that are far more conservative than the courts that heard challenges to his first-term policies.
The fight over Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals provides an illustration.
DACA is an Obama-era program that shields from deportation and grants work permits to people who were brought unlawfully to the United States as children. Mr. Trump tried to end it, but the Supreme Court blocked him on procedural grounds in June 2020.Mr. Miller said Mr. Trump would try again to end DACA. And the 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court that blocked the last attempt no longer exists: A few months after the DACA ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Mr. Trump replaced her with a sixth conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett. . . .
As he has campaigned for the party’s third straight presidential nomination, his anti-immigrant tone has only grown harsher. In a recent interview with a right-wing website, Mr. Trump claimed without evidence that foreign leaders were deliberately emptying their “insane asylums” to send the patients across America’s southern border as migrants. He said migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” And at a rally on Wednesday in Florida, he compared them to the fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter, saying, “That’s what’s coming into our country right now.” . . .
Mr. Trump and his aides have not yet said whether they would re-enact one of the most contentious deterrents to unauthorized immigration that he pursued as president: separating children from their parents, which led to trauma among migrants and difficulties in reuniting families. When pressed, Mr. Trump has repeatedly declined to rule out reviving the policy. After an outcry over the practice, Mr. Trump ended it in 2018 and a judge later blocked the government from putting it back into effect.
Soon after Mr. Trump announced his 2024 campaign for president last November, he met with Tom Homan, who ran ICE for the first year and a half of the Trump administration and was an early proponent of separating families to deter migrants.
In an interview, Mr. Homan recalled that in that meeting, he “agreed to come back” in a second term and would “help to organize and run the largest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”Trump advisers’ vision of abrupt mass deportations would be a recipe for social and economic turmoil, disrupting the housing market and major industries including agriculture and the service sector. . . .
One planned step to overcome the legal and logistical hurdles would be to significantly expand a form of fast-track deportations known as “expedited removal.” It denies undocumented immigrants the usual hearings and opportunity to file appeals, which can take months or years — especially when people are not in custody — and has led to a large backlog. . . .Mr. Trump has also said he would invoke an archaic law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to expel suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without due process. That law allows for summary deportation of people from countries with which the United States is at war, that have invaded the United States or that have engaged in “predatory incursions.”
The Supreme Court has upheld past uses of that law in wartime. But its text seems to require a link to the actions of a foreign government, so it is not clear whether the justices will allow a president to stretch it to encompass drug cartel activity.
More broadly, Mr. Miller said a new Trump administration would shift from the ICE practice of arresting specific people to carrying out workplace raids and other sweeps in public places aimed at arresting scores of unauthorized immigrants at once. . . .
And because of the magnitude of arrests and deportations being contemplated, they plan to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for immigrants as their cases progress and they wait to be flown to other countries. . . .
Let's look at some of the scenarios that could happen if Trump were to get his way. They might seem unlikely now, but remember--democracy will not die on the first day of his presidency. It will take time for him to chip away at it, and as Miles Taylor, a former Chief of Staff of Trump's Homeland Security Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, has said, Trump and his associates are planning a shock and awe campaign to weaponize the government against Trump's enemies. Trump plans to strip up to 50,000 civil servants of protection in the federal government and fire as many as necessary to ensure that only yes-men and yes-women remain. And if Republicans take the Senate, then they can ensure that Trump will be able to appoint hundreds of judges throughout the federal court system who will be sympathetic towards him. And even if the Supreme Court Justices rule that his plans are unconstitutional, Trump has practically said, "Constitution? Constitution? We don't need no stinkin' Constitution." What army does the Supreme Court have to enforce their rulings against someone with practically unlimited power?
And keep in mind, Donald Trump has called his political opponents "VERMIN". How low do you think he will go to get rid of those who he considers to be poisoning the blood of our country?
Some of these scenarios are far-fetched, but I ask you to pay particularly close attention to the fifth scenario. It is the most likely scenario. It is the scariest scenario. And it will have the most wide-spread impact of all the scenarios.
Scenario 1: Imagine your parents were undocumented aliens when they brought you into the United States when you were two years old. You are 17 and are not old enough to become a naturalized citizen. You've been speaking English all your life, and your command of the language of the country where you were born in is shaky at best. You get swept up in a raid and deported.
But that is unfair!!! I did nothing wrong! I feel as American as anyone else How am I going to get by in a land I do not know, while using a language I am unproficient in?
Yeah. Life is unfair. Tough luck kid. Deal with it. We can't have you around poisoning the blood of this country.
Scenario 2: Same as scenario 1, except your parents arrived here just before you were born. Lucky for you, the Constitution grants you citizenship. Right? Right??? Well, maybe--if Trump only wants to deprive birthright citizenship to those whose undocumented mothers gave birth to them after his anti-birthright policy is enacted. But what if he wants to try to strip birthright citizenship from those who had already obtained it because they were born before his policy was enacted? What will stop him? The Constitution? Again, WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' CONSTITUTION.
And, GET OUT OF HERE, KID--WE DON'T WANT YOUR BLOOD POISONING OUR COUNTRY.
Scenario 3: You are a foreign student who is here legally. You attend a rally protesting some government policy you don't like. If Trump's policy was in effect today, you would be deported for attending a protest against Israel. In the future, you could be deported for protesting an American invasion of Mexico. Or you could be deported if you were swept up while attending a pro-choice rally. It doesn't matter what policy you are protesting. If Donald Trump likes it, and you are protesting against it, then NO FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTION FOR YOU AND YOUR STINKIN' UNDESIREABLE ATTITUDE. YOU'RE OUTTA HERE!
Scenario 4: You are a law-abiding American citizen who always carries a copy of your birth certificate and your social security card with you. You've got nothing to worry about, right? Trump's deportation policy doesn't affect you, right? But suppose you have pissed off a local cop or ran across the wrong cop on a really bad day. It doesn't matter whether you pissed him off while he was on duty or not. Maybe you cussed him out. Maybe you screwed his wife (or even just bad-mouthed his wife.) Or maybe he just didn't like the way you look. It doesn't matter how serious or trivial your offense was--or whether you did anything wrong at all. What matters is you met the wrong cop at the wrong time. So he arrests you and accuses you of being a member of a drug cartel. You want to call your lawyer but he won't let you. You demand to call your lawyer since it is your Constitutional right as an American to get a hearing in court so you can clear your name. You show him your birth certificate and social security card to prove you are a citizen, but he just tears them up and laughs in your face.
Well, SCREW YOU! You've just been accused of being part of a drug cartel. You have no rights! NO DUE PROCESS FOR YOU!
Fortunately, no police officer or government official would EVER do that. There has never been a vengeful, bullying, immoral police officer in the history of our country who would stoop so low as to do something like that. And Derek Chauvin says, "hi".
Scenario 5: There are some disturbing parallels between Hitler's rise to power and Trump's attempt to become a dictator. (And no, I am not calling Trump Hitler. Hitler was a unique evil that I don't think Trump will attain. But he IS walking down the path that Hitler walked down. And Michael Godwin, the creator of Godwin's Law which mocks people who glibly accuse those they don't like of being Hitler, writes that the comparison is not totally inappropriate:
My very minor status as an authority on Adolf Hitler comparisons stems from having coined “Godwin’s Law” about three decades ago. I originally framed this “law” as a pseudoscientific postulate: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” . . .
But when people draw parallels between Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy and Hitler’s progression from fringe figure to Great Dictator, we aren’t joking. Those of us who hope to preserve our democratic institutions need to underscore the resemblance before we enter the twilight of American democracy.
And that’s why Godwin’s Law isn’t violated — or confirmed — by the Biden reelection campaign’s criticism of Trump’s increasingly unsubtle messaging. We had the luxury of deriving humor from Hitler and Nazi comparisons when doing so was almost always hyperbole. It’s not a luxury we can afford anymore. . . .
The steady increase in Hitler comparisons during the Trump era is not a sign that my law has been repealed. Quite the opposite. Godwin’s Law is more like a law of thermodynamics than an act of Congress — so, not really repealable. And Trump’s express, self-conscious commitment to a franker form of hate-driven rhetoric probably counts as a special instance of the law: The longer a constitutional republic endures — with strong legal and constitutional limits on governmental power — the probability of a Hitler-like political actor pushing to diminish or erase those limits approaches 100 percent.
The January 6 insurrection was Trump's first attempt to seize power away from his democratically elected opponent. Hitler's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch was his first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of Germany. Both the January 6ers and the Nazis glorified those who participated in the failed coups as martyrs to the cause. There was a website that pointed out the similarities between January 6 and Hitler's Putsch, but it is no longer available. Fortunately, the Internet Archive has preserved parts of the site, so you can read about the similarities here. (You may have to scroll up or down a bit to find buttons marked "1920s to 1940s" and "Present Day". Push the buttons to see the similarities.)
But that is not where the potential similarities end. As discussed above, we are likely to see bombs explode on American soil if we unilaterally bomb or invade Mexico to destroy the cartels. And if that happens, Trump will use the fear and panic that will result to pressure Congress into giving him more power, just as Hitler used the fire that burned down Germany's parliament (the Reichstag) in 1933 as a pretext to consolidate power. Timothy Snyder, author of "On Tyranny" explained the significance of the Reichstag fire:
The Reichstag fire shows how quickly a modern republic can be transformed into an authoritarian regime. There is nothing new, to be sure, in the politics of exception. The American Founding Fathers knew that the democracy they were creating was vulnerable to an aspiring tyrant who might seize upon some dramatic event as grounds for the suspension of our rights. As James Madison nicely put it, tyranny arises “on some favorable emergency.” What changed with the Reichstag fire was the use of terrorism as a catalyst for regime change. To this day, we do not know who set the Reichstag fire: the lone anarchist executed by the Nazis or, as new scholarship by Benjamin Hett suggests, the Nazis themselves. What we do know is that it created the occasion for a leader to eliminate all opposition.
In 1989, two centuries after our Constitution was promulgated, the man who is now our president wrote that “civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins.”* . . . The aspiring tyrants of today have not forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terror—real or fake, provoked or accidental—can provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy.
The most consequential example is Russia, so admired by Donald Trump. When Vladimir V. Putin was appointed prime minister in August 1999, the former KGB officer had an approval rating of 2 percent. Then, a month later, the bombs began to explode in apartment buildings in Moscow and several other Russian cities, killing hundreds of citizens and causing widespread fear. There were numerous indications that this was a campaign organized by the KGB’s heir, now known as the FSB. . . . .
It is aspiring tyrants who say that “civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins.” Conversely, leaders who wish to preserve the rule of law find other ways to speak about real terrorist threats, and certainly do not invent them or deliberately make them worse.
So all the ingredients are in place for Scenario 5--Trump's use of a war as an excuse to seize absolute power. And even though undocumented immigrants will be the first to feel Trump's boot in the face, they will not be the last. Those massive detention camps that Trump will build to hold them for deportation can also be used to hold anyone he considers an enemy.
But what if people take to the streets to protest Trump's war with Mexico like opponents of the Viet Nam War did during the late 1960s and early 1970s? If that happens, Trump will call a state of emergency and demand that protesters disperse. And if they don't leave, we will see Tiananmen Square style massacres on American soil. More on that next.
*Snyder was referring to Donald Trump when he wrote about "the man who is now our president wrote that 'civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins.'" Trump made that statement in this full-page ad calling for the end of civil liberties and the execution of five Black teenagers who were accused of a brutal rape in Central Park. Though Trump's ad didn't refer to the Central Park Five by name, it's timing left no doubt about who he was referring to. It's a good thing Trump did not get his wish, because the five were later exonerated by DNA evidence, and a serial rapist confessed to the rape. Did Trump apologize to the Five for calling for their execution after they were fully exonerated? No, just the opposite. The City reached a $41 million settlement with them for their wrongful imprisonment, and Trump responded by writing an editorial expressing disgust with the settlement and insisting that "Settling doesn’t mean innocence."
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Trump Will Become a Dictator--Introduction/Table of Contents
