Part One: Packing the government with henchmen
“Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat… replace them with our people"
Since Donald Trump was voted out of office in 2020, he and his allies have spent their time out of power carefully planning what they would do in a second term. Long story short: They’ve coalesced around ideas to consolidate and expand executive power and to gut our checks and balances to enact an authoritarian “retribution” agenda against their perceived enemies and further entrench themselves in office.
These are more than threats; they’re promises.
And, yes, these plans could succeed.
Donald Trump has made six explicit promises that, if enacted, would radically transform our government from democracy to autocracy. It can happen here. Don’t assume that mechanisms meant to restrain the president — Congress, the courts, the non-partisan civil service, and our ability to vote in free and fair elections — will hold the second time around.
This series will explore what would happen in practice if The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025 were implemented.
This week, Step 1: How the president could pack the federal government with vindictive henchmen. Next, Step 2: How those henchmen could silence critics, spread fear, and coerce Americans to submit to their political agenda. Then, Step 3: How they could further entrench themselves in power, specifically by subverting elections.
Packing the government with henchmen
“Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat… replace them with our people.”
That was Trump’s vice presidential pick, JD Vance, speaking on a podcast in 2021, voicing a key objective for those hoping to staff a second Trump Administration.
Vance was likely referring to Schedule F, Trump’s plan to purge the civil service that he attempted in October 2020 and plans to try again if he wins a second term.
The plan did not go through the first time because Trump lost the 2020 election, and President Biden rescinded the Schedule F executive order when he took office. But, if resurrected as one of Trump’s Day One promises, Schedule F could jumpstart the replacement of 50,000 or more nonpartisan federal employees with Trump loyalists — and make it clear to any remaining civil servants that their jobs are on the line if they don’t exhibit a similar degree of loyalty to Trump as his appointees.
Read more on Schedule F here.
Beyond Schedule F, Trump plans to install his henchmen across the federal government to perform critical functions, many of which have long been understood to require insulation from political interference. Some illustrative examples:
During his first term, Trump asserted an “absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department” and sought “loyalty” from high-ranking officials. Going forward, veterans from his first administration have developed specific plans to intervene and direct prosecutorial decisions.
Trump has said he should “have a say” on Federal Reserve interest rate decisions, an escalation from previous threats he made to fire or demote Fed Chairman Jerome Powell as U.S. markets suffered over the COVID-19 pandemic. (Read more here.)
As reported by The New York Times, Trump also seeks direct control over the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, which would allow him to heavily influence our major media and trade markets.
Adding to these concerns is the fact that Trump has promised to continue and expand upon his first-term abuses of the pardon power by granting pardons to January 6 rioters, which sends the signal that those who break the law to advance his goals — whether in the course of their jobs or by committing political violence — will be protected.
How they get away with it: checks and balances less likely to hold
Although institutional guardrails were severely tested and weakened in his first term, some of Trump’s officials did resist his unlawful requests in pivotal ways, such as when it came to certifying the election results on January 6, refusing to endorse the use of the Insurrection Act to tamp down on Black Lives Matter protests or tamper with Department of Justice investigations. However, people like Mike Pence, Mark Esper, and Jeff Sessions will not be there the next time. (Many of those former appointees have become staunch critics or are withholding support for him.)
What will also be different in a second Trump term is that the current Supreme Court has shown a remarkable deference to Trump’s sweeping views of executive power.
The 6-3 Supreme Court Trump immunity decision, decided on ideological lines, not only means, as my colleagues Kristy Parker and Conor Gaffey wrote, that Trump “may very well get a pass on the whole [January 6] prosecution” but more broadly, as Bloomberg Law reported, the decision “may have further emboldened him to leverage the Justice Department to exact revenge.”
And if you think Trump may face accountability from other courts, that’s not a sure thing, either. Trump also has friendly counsel from other perches in the federal judiciary — judges like Judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed his classified documents case.
Additionally, while Congress should ultimately act as a meaningful check on executive power abuses, the reality is that the Republican caucus is more subservient to Trump than it’s ever been. Republicans who have spoken out against him, most notably those who supported his impeachment and investigations into the January 6 insurrection, by and large, have been purged from the party or opted to resign. The leadership of the party has made it clear those who object will be targeted for retaliation. As long as Trump’s allies in Congress are able to block oversight over Trump’s executive branch, Congress will not be in a place to act as a check on it.
What it would look like: chaos and endless politicization
So, what would happen when these plans turn into action?
A lot of chaos, for starters. Any attempt to fire and replace tens (or hundreds) of thousands of federal employees is going to be a messy project. (Even if Project 2025 has legions of people vetted and trained ready to go on Day One.) With such an abrupt staffing break, many government services will likely be disrupted. Critical functions, including national security, could be badly interrupted, leaving our systems needlessly vulnerable.
And, remember, the planned end-game for Trump and his allies is a federal government rife with politicization. That’s the goal. The purpose of funneling so many new loyalists into positions of power is to do what Trump has promised.
What does this look like? Some scenarios:
Interest rates are slashed or hiked for maximum political advantage. Think: rate cuts before elections even if harmful to the economy, or increased blame on political opponents.
FDA approvals and regulations are approved or denied based on conspiracy theories and niche, unscientifically-proven ideas. (Remember hydroxychloroquine?)
Natural disaster funding is approved only for states and cities that voted to support the president. (Flashback.)
Schools and universities are defunded for vaccination policies.
Colleges and universities are investigated and fined because, according to Trump’s official campaign, they are controlled by “radical Left and Marxist maniacs.”
In short, every policy decision made by the federal government becomes subject to abuse and becomes a means to a political end.
This is how autocracy starts: by taking over the federal government and installing loyalists who are ready, willing, and eager to use all government levers to maximize political power.
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Next they plan to use their positions to silence critics, spread fear, and make Americans submit to an authoritarian agenda.
Read Part Two: The governing tools autocratic henchmen want to turn against us →
What else we’re tracking:
You might be following the certification issue with the Georgia State Election Board. Catherine Chen and Alicia Menendez explain exactly what’s happening and why it matters.
One of the most common questions we hear about proportional representation — is it legal under the Voting Rights Act? In a new paper, Harvard Law School professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos answers: Not only is implementing PR “very unlikely to violate the Voting Rights Act,” the reform can actually be a helpful remedy to vote dilution in voting rights litigation, particularly bolstered by a wave of powerful new state-level voting rights acts.
Former USA Today politics editor, reporter, and columnist Jill Lawrence says Schedule F would put a “Trump sequel on steroids.”
We use the term “authoritarianism” a lot — but what does it really mean? Joe Allen summarizes the research: Authoritarianism, explained.
The Guardian has a comprehensive story on how Trump’s groundwork to overturn the 2024 election is taking shape: “A different level than 2020.”
Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, one of the very best journalists covering democratic decline, has a must-read story on how “JD Vance and like-minded conservatives are theorizing a kind of ‘neopatriarchy.’”
I was on The Bulwark pod with Tim Miller this week talking about Trump’s traumatic month. Would love your feedback!
Excellent, Amanda.
Keep up the great and important work - thank you