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Notes -
Signs point to Donald Trump soon invoking the Insurrection Act (paywalled, but you can get around it with Reader View):
And here's the linked EO they're referencing:
The Insurrection Act of 1807 essentially allows the President to declare martial law by deploying the military to "suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion".
I still don't think that Trump is going to make a serious attempt at establishing permanent one-party rule. What would be the play, exactly? Declare permanent martial law and then cancel elections in four years? I don't think there's much appetite for that, either with him or with the members of his inner circle. But then again, I also never predicted that he would cut off military aid to Ukraine either, so my predictions have already been wrong once!
It seems like we've had a slight uptick in leftist (or at least anti-Trump) posters lately so I'd be particularly interested in hearing their thoughts.
I’m a hard skeptic here. At least on the version where this is the Literally Hitler moment that the liberals fear.
For one thing, if you were planning on some form of dictatorship, why are you waiting on a report? Firstly, the report isn’t necessary to satisfy a law. There’s no “if homeland security and DOD don’t agree, then it’s illegal,” clause in the insurrection act, in main because neither agency existed in 1807. It doesn’t change whether or not the president can be investigated or charged, we had a Supreme Court ruling specifically stating that official acts are protected. It’s not going to convince anyone who wasn’t on board with the idea before. It’s a waste of time at best.
Second it telegraphs the punch. If you tell the opposition that you plan to use the Insurrection Act, and give them a specific date at which you might do it, planning countermeasures, calling for strikes and work stoppages and blocking buildings becomes easy. Especially if the opposition knows exactly what will be the justification will be. If this is about ICE and immigration, blocking those kinds of things is easy because everyone knows where to block the roads and protest.
I think there’s the possibility that it’s about drawing out the opposition. If you can get stupid kids on campus to be really stupid (and it’s not that hard), you can defund those schools. If you can draw out protesters and get them to do something stupid (also not that hard), you can arrest them to applause. At the same time, doing things like this wears down their will to keep going. Protest is fun for a while, but it’s not something that people with jobs can do at tge drop of a hat for months at a time. So if you if you overwhelm them, have them showing up getting arrested, and so on for months, eventually they run out of steam. Eventually you run out of time, money, and will to keep up for months.
This has been the procedure for his whole 2nd term. Flood the zone with shit. Put feelers out to see what people will tolerate. So what if he telegraphs the punch? Making the opposition flinch (and laughing at them when they do) is half the point. The other half is it gives him options. Nobody panics if things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying.
There won't be any Literally Hitler moment (i.e. broad suppression of civil liberties comparable to the Reichstag Fire Decree) because the media landscape is totally different today than it was 100 years ago. Today the playbook is individual opposition buried under a litany of accusations, reports, and kangaroo courts -- too many things to litigate for any Informed Citizen to keep up with, each with a sliver of truth behind them. It will look like a hollowing out of the Democratic party to the point where they run someone like AOC for president. You'll still have your first amendment, you'll still be able to say whatever you want online, and you'll vote for a 2028 Trump ticket of your own free will, never minding that the USA is more like Mexico than ever before.
Mexico is a specific place and as a country is a nearly unique phenomenon- it’s experienced extraordinary economic growth during state failure, it’s staggeringly racist, but like, in a lefty way, it poses a security challenge to its much wealthier neighbor entirely through organized crime, etc etc.
I’m not sure how Trump is going to turn us into Mexico. Brown Argentina(bankrupt, high inflation, incredibly bad populist economics) is a possibility.
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