How Democrats stormproof democracy from Hurricane Donald before Election Day

Donald Trump has some big plans for his second term should he be reelected, and they would be disastrous for American democracy.

Trump’s plan is called Project 2025, and it would involve replacing more than 50,000 career civil servants in the federal government with Trump loyalists. It’s a project being headed by the Heritage Foundation, and it’s so far backed by more than $20 million in funding. With those loyalists installed, Trump would be able to increase his power and abuse that power as he pleases.

Instead of just hoping Trump loses so that this plan doesn’t come to fruition, Democrats in Congress need to safeguard democracy by passing a law that would prevent Trump from carrying out this plan.

This won’t be easy while Republicans control the House. But the fractured GOP holds only a thin majority, and there may be enough disaffected Republicans who’d be willing to help. Even if Democrats fail to pass such a law, they must at least force Republicans to defend Trump’s plans and educate the public on Trump’s dangerous ploy.

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During Trump’s first term, he often wasn’t able to abuse his power in the way he wanted because career civil servants within his administration got in the way. Many even spoke out about what they were seeing. Trump derided them as part of an anti-Trump “Deep State.” But as non-political appointees who served the public’s interest, not that of Trump, they resisted his most MAGA orders and dictates out of obligation to their duties.

If Trump is able to fire these employees — he wants to implement a policy via executive order called Schedule F that would make it possible for him to fire these civil servants — he could replace them with political patrons and loyalists who would help him accomplish anything he sets out to do.

“It represents the learning process that has occurred since Trump was president first and where he is today,” Don Moynihan, a professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, tells Raw Story. “Trump certainly has much stronger opinions and preferences about the administrative state than he did in 2016. Partly Trump became more activated because of the impeachment process and his sense that he was surrounded by disloyal people, but what Project 2025 does is give him a blueprint for the tools to put those preferences into action.”

Moynihan says the best outcome for protecting democracy is that President Joe Biden gets reelected. But even that is, at best, a temporary fix. And given Biden’s dismal approval rating, no one can count on that. We’re still a year out from the 2024 presidential election, and polls are merely a snapshot in time.

But they do capture current voter sentiment, and they indicate that Trump — barring a massive defection to Nikki Haley or one of the other GOP presidential candidates — is likely to become the Republican Party nominee next year. And he is running ahead of Biden in many key general election states. Democrats, therefore, must act now to defend against the possibility that Trump, despite all of his legal troubles, could again occupy the Oval Office. It would be profoundly unwise for them to just cross their fingers and hope for the best instead of doing what they can now to lessen the damage that could be caused by Trump being reelected.

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“A plan that centers on Democrats always winning the presidency to defend democracy isn’t much of a plan, because eventually you’re going to lose,” Moynihan says. “Even if it’s not Trump, some of the stuff Trump is talking about is becoming embedded into the conservative governing philosophy.”

Democrats could pass a law that makes Schedule F illegal so that Trump would not be able to fire all of these civil servants and replace them with his loyalists. Moynihan notes that this has been attempted before, but it hasn’t yet been done.

“If you look at the history of authoritarianism, the way authoritarians accumulate and consolidate power is by neutering the judiciary and neutering the bureaucracy to ensure that they are loyal,” Moynihan says. “What he would do with the bureaucracy would be beyond anything we’ve seen in the last 140 years—when the civil service system was created.”

Though Democrats don’t currently control the House, so they might have trouble getting this conversation going there if Republicans try to block their efforts, they do control the Senate.

With Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in charge of what legislation goes to the floor and what debates are taking place in the Senate, Democrats could push to get legislation that would outlaw Schedule F passed and make it a topic that’s loudly being discussed in Congress.

“It would be a great idea if senators were to bring this to the floor and make the case for it,” Moynihan says. “The value of bringing it to the floor is going to be communicating to the public about what’s going on, drawing attention to this and holding hearings about how bad this could be. That’s part of Congress’ role. It’s oversight. It’s identifying which issues are important.”