Former President Donald Trump and his allies are already scheming up plans to significantly expand his presidential power if he wins back the White House next year.
The New York Times reported on Monday that Trump and his inner circle have a "broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president's authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him."
This wide-ranging plan would include bringing independent agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency directly under the president, the return of "impounding" funds — a strategy banned during the Nixon administration that empowered a president to refuse to spend Congressionally-allocated money on programs they dislike — as well as the removal of employment protections for thousands of career civil servants and an intelligence agency purge of officials he holds personal vendettas against and has deemed to be "deep staters" and "the sick political class that hates our country."
"We will demolish the deep state," Trump said at a rally in Michigan. "We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country."
Under Trump's plan — which was drafted during his first term — independent agencies would be required to submit actions to the president for review, in an effort to consolidate such organizations "under presidential authority." The order was ultimately not enacted due to internal concerns such as how the market would react if the Federal Reserve was stripped of its independence.
"What we're trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them," Russell Vought, who headed the Office of Management and Budget during Trump's administration, told the Times. Open discussion of such political strategies is rife in Trump's rallies and campaign websites, according to the report, a tactic Vought described as planting "a flag" ahead of the election.
Vought added that "at the bare minimum," the Federal Reserve should be subject to presidential review. "It's very hard to square the Fed's independence with the Constitution," he told the Times.
Former White House personnel chief John McEntee, who is credited with initiating Trump's 2020 efforts to expel officials he personally opposed, also did not mince words regarding the ex-president's scheme.
"The president's plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn't been done since F.D.R.'s New Deal," McEntee said. "Our current executive branch was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It's not enough to get the personnel right. What's necessary is a complete system overhaul."
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung observed that Trump has "laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done."
"Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all," he added.
But former White House chief of staff John Kelly said he felt the strategy would be "chaotic" because Trump would "continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts."
Experts raised major concerns over Trump's "alarming" plot.
"Anyone who opposes a Presidential autocracy in America should read this closely," warned presidential historian Michael Beschloss.
"The conservatives who are pushing this should imagine for one second the panic they would express if Biden did it," tweeted national security attorney Bradley Moss.
"In 2024, authoritarianism—unchecked, unembarrassed and undisguised—will be on the ballot," wrote Bill Kristol, a longtime NeverTrump conservative and founder of The Weekly Standard.
"Be afraid. This is on the verge of happening 18 months from now," tweeted MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan. "Now ask yourself this question: are cautious, in-denial, business-as-usual establishment Dems equipped, or even willing, to address this anti-democratic, autocratic threat?"
