TRUMP’S RADICAL SECOND-TERM AGENDA

As he seeks a return to the Oval Office, former President Donald Trump and his allies have promised a sweeping transformation of the federal government that would wield the executive branch’s power in radical and unprecedented ways. The agenda they are crafting would put into practice Trump’s hardline views that he has publicly expressed during his latest campaign for president and will almost certainly face a series of legal and political challenges. Behind the scenes, Trump-aligned outside groups have been working on crafting executive orders, studying the Constitution in anticipation of legal challenges, and looking for work arounds to give Trump the power to invoke some of these policies on day one should he regain power. These outside loyalists are keenly aware of the chaos and disorganization of Trump’s first term. Now at the helm of a number of conservative groups in Washington, they are waiting in the wings, helping structure a plan that would have the wheels in motion on implementing the sweeping agenda.

Trump’s plan includes asserting more White House control over the Justice Department, an institution the former president has said he would utilize to seek revenge on his critics, including former allies. “I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.” Despite the long-standing tradition of DOJ and several other smaller government agencies operating independently, those in Trump’s orbit have referred to these agencies as an “administrative deep state” and “rogue fourth branch of government” that they believe should answer to the president as part of the executive branch. In videos and speeches, Trump has laid out his plans to gut the current Justice system by firing “radical Marxist prosecutors that are destroying America.” It’s part of a broader effort that would break down legal restrictions and traditional protections against political interference and give the White House more authority to install ideological allies throughout the federal government.

If Trump is elected next year and pursues the blueprint his campaign and allies are now developing, legal experts say it would lead to years of legal battles and political clashes with Congress over the limits of presidential authority.

Part of Trump’s plans would reclassify tens of thousands of civil service workers — who typically remain on the job as presidents and their administrations change — as at-will employees, a move that would make it much easier to fire them. Trump said he would sign an executive order doing so, which he said would allow him “to remove rogue bureaucrats.” He vowed to “wield that power very aggressively. “We will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them,” Trump said. “The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled so that faceless bureaucrats will never again be able to target and persecute conservatives, Christians, or the left’s political enemies.” Privately, Trump has blamed some of these career government employees as the reason some of his policy proposals were not enacted quickly during his first term and called for loyalists with similar ideology to be installed in every area of government.

Trump is also planning a widespread expansion of his former administration’s hardline immigration policies if elected in 2024 that would restrict both legal and illegal immigration. “Stopping the invasion at our southern border is an urgent national security necessity and one of President Trump’s top priorities. For that reason, he has laid out – in his own speeches and Agenda 47 platform – by far the most detailed program for securing the border, stopping illegal immigration, and removing those who should never have been allowed into the U.S. in the first place,” The plans would include rounding up undocumented immigrants already in the US and placing them in detention camps to await deportation. The proposals would necessitate the building of large camps to house migrants waiting for deportation and the tapping of federal and local law enforcement to assist with large-scale arrests of undocumented immigrants across the country. Should Congress refuse to fund the operation, Trump could turn to a tactic used in his first term to secure more funding for a border wall – redirecting funds from the Pentagon. Trump has publicly said he wants to revive many of his first-term immigration policies to restrict both legal and illegal immigration — including reinstating and expanding a travel ban on predominantly-Muslim countries and bringing back a Covid-era policy, known as Title 42, to further restrict immigration into the country, though this time it would be based on the assertion that migrants carry other infectious diseases.Trump also pledged to “terminate all work permits for illegal aliens and demand that Congress send him a bill outlawing all welfare payments to illegal migrants of any kind.”

The former president also warned of caravans coming from Mexico to the US border, and vowed to prosecute groups and charities that he claimed facilitated the large-scale unlawful immigration.

In a second term, Trump also has designs on drastically reshaping the lives of Americans when it comes to policies affecting law enforcement, trade and the social safety net. The former president has said he would require local law enforcement agencies to use the controversial police practice of stop-and-frisk in order to receive some Justice Department funding. He’s also suggested he would deploy the National Guard to cities dealing with high levels of crime.

Another policy aimed at combating homelessness calls for the creation of “tent cities” on “inexpensive land” that would be staffed by health care workers, giving people a choice between relocating or facing jail time.

When it comes to the economy, Trump has floated across-the-board tariffs on all imported goods, signaling an aggressive approach to trade policy, with a focus on China. “When companies come in and they dump their products in the United States, they should pay, automatically, let’s say a 10 percent tax

Summary

1. Give the president unchecked power over federal agencies  
2. Restore the president’s authority to bypass Congress
3. Appoint a special prosecutor to ‘go after’ Biden
4. Use the Justice Department to get revenge on all of his enemies
5. Purge the civil service.
6. Install thousands of loyalists throughout the federal government
7. Fill his Cabinet and other high-profile positions  with his most loyal and most notorious supporters
8. Round up, detain, and deport millions of undocumented immigrants
9. Construct ‘Freedom Cities’
10. Put flying cars in Americans’ driveways