Between the U.S. Supreme Court's immunity ruling on Monday, Project 2025 (Donald Trump allies' detailed blueprint for a second Trump Administration), and President Joe Biden's widely criticized debate performance during his first 2024 head-to-head with Donald Trump, many Democrats — along with some Never Trump conservatives — have been sounding the alarm about what may await the United States in 2025 if Biden is voted out of office.
In an article published Tuesday and headlined "Behind the Curtain: The Imperial Presidency In Waiting," Axios reporters Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen detail the amount of power Trump could have if he returns to the White House next year.
"Hillbilly Elegy" author and far-right Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), a former Trump critic turned loyalist who is reportedly on the short list for a vice presidential running mate, emphasized that while Trump was "very much a newcomer to politics" in 2017, he now "understands how to pull the levers of power much better, because he's coming at this as a subject matter expert."
Vance told Axios, "You have to ask yourself: How many true allies of the agenda existed in the United States Capitol in January 2017, and how many will exist in January of 2025? You have a Republican Party that, in some ways, was divided against itself in January of 2017."
The MAGA senator added, "I think now it recognizes that Trump is effectively leader of the party. And you'll see that in governing style and certainly in agenda."
VandeHei and Allen lay out the ways in which, according to "Trump and his allies," events "would unfold" in early 2025 "if he wins."
Those events, the Axios reporters explain, include: "A reelected Trump would quickly set up vast camps and deport millions of people in the U.S. illegally," "In Washington, Trump would move to fire potentially tens of thousands of civil servants using a controversial interpretation of law and procedure" and would "replace many of them with pre-vetted loyalists," and "He'd centralize power over the Justice Department, historically an independent check on presidential power."
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The journalists add some more: "Many of the January 6 convicts could be pardoned," "Trump says he'd slap 10 percent tariffs on most imported goods, igniting a possible trade war and risking short-term inflation," and, "Conversation would intensify about when Justices Clarence Thomas, 76, and Sam Alito, 74, would retire."
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Read Axios' full report at this link.