How America will change if Trump wins
Today, following both Vanceâs and Trumpâs speeches at the RNC, the future trajectory of America if theyâre elected is pretty clear.
First, itâs important to acknowledge that this is no longer your (or my) fatherâs GOP. Vance is the pre-packaged, well-massaged âproductâ of a group of Silicon Valley billionaires who are enamored of the writings of Ayn Rand and David Kochâs Libertarian movement. Trump has made it clear heâs happy to go along with the Galtâs Gulch crowd, particularly if it makes him more money.
These men (theyâre nearly all men) are revolutionaries with little regard for political history or norms. Think Mao, Lenin, Pol Pot, or Mussolini. They donât want to tweak government; they want to burn it down and start it over from scratch. Rebuild it as a completely different system of governance.
Theyâre convinced that the post-1933 New Deal America is a mistake and, along with their allies on the Supreme Court, are dedicated to âdeconstructing the administrative stateâ that came out of FDRâs reforms and the 20th century reinvention of the American system.
And they have a couple of models they seem committed to following. Viktor OrbĂĄnâs Hungary is probably the most prominent; heâs already done pretty much everything on the list below, and what he hasnât done heâs openly considered or will do to hang onto power.
If youâre not familiar with OrbĂĄn and how heâs transformed his nation into what he calls an âilliberal democracy,â Iâve written extensively about him here and here and here. And Trump rambled at length about him last night. Here is their plan, based in large part on OrbĂĄnâs model:
Donald Trump, on multiple occasions, has called for a reform of Americaâs libel laws along the lines of OrbĂĄnâs Hungary. Right now, as a result of both a long American tradition and the Supreme Courtâs 1964 NY Times v Sullivan decision, public figures who feel theyâve been attacked or insulted (like politicians) canât sue for libel unless they meet the really high bar of proving the person libeling them knew their comments were lies and pushed those lies in a ârecklessâ way.
When Peter Thiel was outed as gay by Gawker, the online celebrity tabloid, he funded Hulk Hoganâs invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against that publication (they published one of his sex videos) and its senior people: the court action wiped them out.
Trump wants to put this sort of thing on steroids.
Once the libel laws are loosened and ratified by at least 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court, Trump and his colleagues will be free to sue every newspaper, magazine, Substack writer, television station or network, radio station or network, and individual politician/writer/host/commentator/reporter he thinks has ever libeled or defamed him.
OrbĂĄn did this in Hungary and, as the traditional media went broke, one after another of his oligarch buddies bought them out of bankruptcy and continued to operate them.
As a result, the entire Hungarian media landscape, from the nationâs newspapers to radio, TV, and online publications, are today almost entirely like Fox âNewsâ: full-time propaganda channels proclaiming the wonders and marvels of OrbĂĄn and his Fidesz party all day, every day.
Dissent has been silenced.
OrbĂĄn told the American CPAC conference in Budapest last year they should do the same in America when Republicans next seize control of the US government:
âHave your own media,â he said. âItâs the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left. The problem is that the western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles.â
He added:
âOf course, the GOP has its media allies but they canât compete with the mainstream liberal media. My friend Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there. His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or, as you say, 24/7.â
Once the media is under control, Trump has already told us that he intends to use the Department of Justice and the FBI to harass or imprison the people he feels have wronged him, ranging from the Biden family to Merrick Garland and the head of the FBI to individual politicians and journalists. His hit list reportedly includes publications like the New York Times and Raw Story.
As he told Sean Hannity on Fox ânews:
âLook, when this election is over, based on what theyâve done, I would have every right to go after themâŚâ
Those he doesnât succeed in imprisoning, heâll drive into bankruptcy by charging them repeatedly with crimes, launching IRS and other investigations, or stripping them of the professional licenses and credentials necessary to do their jobs: all that will require Trumpâs victims to hire attorneys, which, Peter Navarro and Rudy Giuliani will tell you, can wipe you out if youâre not a billionaire.
Just this month, the six Republicans on the Supreme Court largely ruled in Trump v US that heâd be entirely within his rights to do such things, even if they clearly violate the current laws, so long as he calls them âofficial acts.â
In the last month of his presidency, then-President Trump issued an executive order (âSchedule Fâ) that essentially undid the traditional civil service and replaced career bureaucrats with political appointees singularly loyal to the president himself rather than their agencies, the law, or the country. (Biden reversed it.)
The Civil Service was a reform undoing the corrupt âspoils systemâ that President Andrew Jackson had put into place in the 1830s. Under the spoils system, the way to get a job with the federal government was to give the president or his friends a gift, do them a favor, or provide them with some other of the âspoilsâ of their position.
The spoils system led a frustrated speechwriter, Charles Guiteau, to assassinate President James Garfield in 1881 after Guiteau wrote a speech for him that Garfield not only refused to use but also refused to give Guiteau the speechwriting job he was seeking. As a result, in 1883 President Chester Arthur oversaw the implementation of the Pendleton Civil Service Act, which required government jobs be based on merit instead of political loyalty or bribes to the president and his friends.
Both Trump and Project 2025 call for dismantling the Pendleton Act and returning to Jacksonâs spoils system via a new Schedule F. The result will be that every regulatory agency in America â the principle protection system for average working class Americans, along with our air, food, water, drugs, etc. â will be run purely for the interests of Trumpâs and the GOPâs largest donors and their profits.
Trump and Vance have pulled a Reagan, falsely claiming they want to âreformâ rather than gut, kill, or privatize Medicare, Social Security, etc. While Reagan wanted to privatize both programs, it was George W. Bush in 2003 who got the Medicare Advantage privatized Medicare scam into law. Trumpâs Project 2025, however, is far more explicit.
Project 2025 calls for corporate for-profit insurance to replace Medicare as the default enrollment option when people turn 65 or otherwise qualify for the program and to voucherize Medicaid with work requirements and lifetime caps on the program (which will wipe out old peopleâs ability to use it for nursing homes).
Expect most federal âwelfareâ programs, from housing supports to food stamps to educational and tuition assistance for low-income people to be turned into block grants to the states, which will, over time, wither to nothing through repeated budget cuts and âreforms.â
If Republicans can take control of the Senate as well as the White House next year, expect a massive effort to encourage sitting judges to retire (including financial incentives) so they can further pack the entire federal court system with rightwingers in the mold of Aileen Cannon and Clarence Thomas.
The 1873 Comstock Act, also known as âAn Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, obscene Literature and Articles of immoral Use,â is, as Clarence Thomas, Josh Hawley, and Sam Alito have recently pointed out, still on the books.
It criminalizes transporting, via the mail or private carrier (UPS, FedEx, etc.), any drug, instrument, or device that can be used to produce an abortion, as well as all forms of pornography. A strict interpretation could read it to also outlaw birth control. (It was used for half a century to outlaw condoms).
While it hasnât been enforced for decades, both Project 2025 and multiple Republicans â including JD Vance â have demanded that the department of Justice enforce it, as The Washington Post documented in their article this week titled, âVance urged DOJ to enforce Comstock Act, crack down on abortion pills.â
The Obergefell decision, which legalized gay marriage, and the Lawrence decision, which decriminalized intimacy between same-sex couples, were both grounded in the same read of the Constitutionâs protections for individual privacy as the one that animated Roe v Wade.
Sam Alito wrote the decision in Dobbs that overturned that interpretation altogether, leading Clarence Thomas to suggest in his concurring opinion that the Courtâs next targets should include gay marriage and the right to possess birth control.
In 1947, overriding the veto of President Harry Truman, a Republican congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act which gave individual states the authority to override union protections in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (aka The Wagner Act). Republicans claimed gutting union protections was a way of protecting âthe right to workâ and that label has stuck over the years.
Those states that have adopted right to work laws are almost exclusively GOP controlled, and rarely have fewer than 4-5 percent of their workers in unions (and most of those are federal government unionized workers or teachers). A top priority of the billionaires who own the Republican Party has been, for decades, the imposition of the right to work for fewer laws at the national level, a new-and-improved version of Taft Hartley to finally destroy the union movement altogether.
Donald Trump has promised to assemble a national police force of sorts that will go door-to-door across the country to hunt down an estimated 11 million âillegalsâ who are in the United States without documentation. For-profit prison companies will build massive detention facilities, and anybody who looks Black, Asian, or Hispanic but was born at home or lost their birth certificate and so canât prove citizenship can expect to quickly end up in one of Trumpâs new concentration camps.
After the 2025 version of Eisenhowerâs Operation Wetback (which deported about 1.3 million people, including an estimated tens of thousands of Latino American citizens who couldnât immediately find their documentation) is finished, Trump will have a massive armed police force which, like his friend and mentorVladimir Putin, that he can turn on Americans who he says are âunpatriotic.â
All heâll need do is tweak our sedition laws to expand the definitions of actions that are âintended to overthrow the government of the United States,â which he has also already proposed, to begin throwing politicians and reporters in prison. Easy peasy.
The Libertarian tech billionaires who sponsor Trump and Vance believe these and other âfree marketâ and âindividual responsibilityâ changes to a newly-gutted American system will encourage âlazyâ people to get off their butts and off to work while it gets âgovernment interferenceâ out of their businesses.
And if the government no longer has to pay âwelfare benefits,â including Medicare and Social Security, then billionairesâ taxes can be further reduced (as Trump has already promised) as an extra bonus.
For a more comprehensive view of Trumpâs and Vanceâs plans for our country check out the many great summaries, including Project 2025 Takedown, How Project 2025 Will Ruin Your Life, and Project 2025: A Trump Dictatorship.
These people are dead serious. Get ready!
