Challenging Trump’s anti-democratic vision

Bob Sheak, May 8, 2024

The anti-democratic thrust of Trump’s views, widely endorsed by Republicans, is continuously being modified. However, it is clear that if he is elected in November 2024, he wants to institute reforms that will end American liberal democracy, replace it with an illiberal political order, with the president in command, all the while looking for ways to diminish or eliminate the influence of his critics and Democrats.

Robert Kagan analyzes this threat in his book, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism IS Tearing America Apart – Again. In effect, Trump wants the Republican Party to win absolute control, which would mean control by a “minority” of the voting population, particularly by the rich and powerful. Ari  Berman delves into this issue in his new book titled “Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People – and the Fight to Resist It.”

Autocratic confirmation

Trump also looks abroad for confirmations of his views, for example from authoritarian leaders in Russia and Hungary. His friendly relations with Putin are well known. Kate Sullivan gives some examples of the relationship (https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/10/politics/trump-russia-nato/index.html).

“As president, Trump privately threatened multiple times to withdraw the United States from NATO, according to The New York Times. Trump has described NATO as ‘obsolete’ and has aligned himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who wants to weaken the alliance. Trump has long praised Putin and went as far as to side with the Russian leader over the US intelligence community over Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.”

Trump as messiah

Trump welcomes support for his power bid from wherever it comes. For example, he seems to welcome being thought of as a messiah, however outlandish the notion, because it helps to boost his ego and because it reflects support for him among Christian Nationalists, his most numerous constituency. (See Tim Alberta’s book, The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism).

David French analyzes this fabrication and contends obviously that Trump is no savior and that a “significant part of American Christianity is spiraling out of control” (https://nytimes.com/2024/03/31/opinion/donald-trump-dune-savior.html). Here’s some of what he writes.

“The signs are everywhere. First, there’s the behavior of the savior himself, Donald Trump. On Monday of Holy Week, he compared himself to Jesus Christ, posting on Truth Social that he received a ‘beautiful’ note from a supporter saying that it was ironic’ that ‘Christ walked through his greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you.’

“On Tuesday, he took to Truth Social to sell a $60 ‘God Bless the USA Bible’ (the ‘only Bible endorsed by President Trump’), an edition of the King James Bible that also includes America’s founding documents. ‘Christians are under siege,’ he said. The Judeo-Christian foundation of America is ‘under attack,’ Trump claimed, before declaring a new variant on an old theme: ‘We must make America pray again.’

“Two weeks ago, Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, told a Christian gathering that Democrats ‘want full and complete destruction of the United States of America.’ Kirk is a powerful Trump ally. He has millions of followers on social media and is hoping to raise more than $100 million in 2024 to help mobilize voters for Trump.

“‘I do not think you can be a Christian and vote Democrat,’ Kirk said, and ‘if you vote Democrat as a Christian, you can no longer call yourself a Christian.’”

French continues.

“All of this is unfolding against the backdrop of so-called prophetic utterances that place Trump at the center of God’s plan to save America. According to these prophecies, Trump is God’s choice to lead America out of spiritual darkness, to save it from decline and despair. In this formulation, to oppose Trump is to stand against the will of God.

“There are Trump prophecy books and a Trump prophecy movie. The prophecies can be very strange. The prophet will speak as though God talked to him or her directly. In this widely watched video, for example, the prophet says, ‘Donald Trump will be in power once more’ and ‘he will reign again; it’s only a matter of time.’ In this prophecy, the prophet says there is ‘actually a scripture appointed for the day’ that Trump was born. As he explains the prophecy, the crowd applauds; its belief is palpable.”

There is a “method” underlying this belief in Trump’s spiritual lordship. French writes: “The MAGA method is clear. First, it whips up its people into a religious frenzy. It lies to convince them that the Democrats are an existential threat to the country and the church. It tells worried Christians that the fate of the nation is at stake. Then, just as it builds up the danger from the Democrats, it constructs an idol of Trump, declaring his divine purpose and spreading the prophecies of his coming return. He is to be the instrument of divine vengeance against his foes, and his frenzied foot soldiers are eager to carry out his will. They march eagerly to culture war, flying the flag of the House of Trump.”

French points out that Trump’s religiosity is hardly in the authentic Christian tradition. “Jesus was emphatic. In Matthew 25, Jesus said he would know his followers as people who served: ‘I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me.’ And how do we serve Jesus in that way? Christ’s answer was clear: ‘Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

The fuller agenda

Certainly, there is much more to Trump’s anti-democratic and politically and existentially threatening agenda. Here are eleven examples.

• believes he cannot be defeated in upcoming 2024 presidential election, unless the election is “rigged”
• encourages the maximum production and consumption of fossil fuels, despite the steady rise of global warming
• claims to be a job creator, though his record here is weak
• appoints sycophants to his cabinet and staff, and eliminate civil service protections for thousands of executive-branch workers
• pursues a draconian migration policy, including the detention and removal of millions of undocumented migrants living in the U.S. carried out with military troops – and extends the wall on the southern border
• facilitates efforts to make voting more difficult, especially for lower-income and black and Latino Americans
• keeps taxes low for corporations and the super-wealthy and support a regime of deregulation and privatization
• diminishes the already fragile social safety net
• supports efforts by the states to virtually end legal access to reproductive health care and abortion
• encourages easy access to gun ownership
• will promote violence against opponents when necessary to maintain social order

—————

#1 – The Big Lie

Trump has claimed over and over again that Biden’s presidential victory in 2020 was based on massive election fraud. 

Trump remains the leader of the Republican Party. He unceasingly claims that he won the 2020 presidential election, despite the overwhelming evidence that he did not (e.g., The January 6 Report by the House January 6th Committee). The evidence. “In total, the Trump Campaign and allies of President Trump filed 62 separate lawsuits between November 4, 2020, and January 6, 2021, calling into question or seeking to overturn the election results. Out of 62 cases, only one case results in a victory for the President Trump or his allies, which affected relatively few votes, did not vindicate any underlying claims of fraud, and would not have changed the outcome in Pennsylvania.” Indeed, “In every state in which claims were brought, one or more judges specifically explained as part of the dismissal orders that they had evaluated the plaintiffs’ allegations or supposed proof of widespread election fraud or other irregularities, and found the claims to be entirely unconvincing” (p. 210).

The Big Lie is widely accepted by Republicans

Most Republicans in the U.S. Congress accept or go along with this false claim, as reflected in the vote on choosing a Speaker taken by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. The litmus test for House Republicans was that a Speaker should be someone who accepts Trump’s lies about winning the 2020 presidential election and his right-wing agenda. Marc Elias provides some information on the new Speaker Mike Johnson’s views and record (https://democracydocket.com/opinion/a-big-lie-ring-leader-becomes-speaker-of-the-house). The article was published on Oct. 30, 2023.

“The newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (La.) is no ordinary Republican election denier. He was a ringleader in one of the most dangerous efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He used his position as a lawyer and member of Congress to legitimize the fringe legal theory underpinning the ‘Big Lie.’ Other than former President Donald Trump, he is arguably the most culpable federal elected official in what transpired on Jan. 6, 2021.

Johnson “combines MAGA Republicanism with Christian nationalism. Shortly after becoming speaker, Johnson told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that anyone looking to understand his world view should ‘go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it.’ 

“When it comes to issues of democracy, Johnson is an avid vote suppressor and an accomplished election denier. He is best thought of as a cross between Jim Jordan and John Eastman.”

#2 – A retrograde climate/environmental policy

One of the most disturbing aspects of Trump’s discourse is his dismissal of the indisputable evidence on the climate crisis.

Lisa Friedman identifies “Five Major Climate Policies Trump Would Probably Reverse if Elected” (https://nytimes.com/2024/04/26/climate/climate-politics-trump-would-reverse.html).

1. Coal and Gas Power Plants

“The fossil-fuel-burning plants that keep our lights on or power our heat and air conditioning are responsible for a quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the United States. Reducing them is key to Mr. Biden’s plan to tackle climate change.” For example, “Environmental Protection Agency regulations finalized on Thursday would force coal plants to either deploy technology to capture virtually all their emissions, or shut down. New gas plants constructed in the U.S. also would have to meet strict emissions standards.”

“Mr. Trump has deployed a mixture of truth and falsehoods when describing this policy. He has said it will force coal plants to shut down, which is likely accurate. He also said it will force gas plants to close, which is not true. And he has said that renewable energy cannot keep the lights on, also untrue.

“If elected, Mr. Trump said he will reverse the regulation on coal-burning electricity and ‘green-light the construction of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of brand-new, beautiful power plants that actually work.’”

2. Automobile Emissions Standards

“Mr. Biden has imposed limits on pollution from automobile tailpipes, rules designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032.

“Mr. Trump has said those regulations will lead to a ‘blood bath’ in the U.S. economy, ‘kill” the auto industry and trigger an ‘assassination’ of jobs. He has pledged to reverse them.”

3. The Inflation Reduction Act

President Biden signed into law in 2022 the nation’s largest investment in fighting climate change. “It contains more than $370 billion in tax credits over 10 years to help shift the U.S. toward cleaner forms of energy, offering incentives to companies to make electric vehicles, batteries and to consumers to buy those vehicles, switch to solar energy and buy things like electric heat pumps to heat and cool their homes.

“Mr. Trump, who has called the I.R.A. ‘the biggest tax hike in history,’ is widely expected to try to gut much of the law.

“Incentives for people to buy electric vehicles, which Mr. Trump has called ‘one of the dumbest’ decisions he’s heard, would certainly be on the chopping block, Republicans said. So would measures to support businesses that install electric-vehicle charging stations.

“Tax credits for solar- and wind-power, could be in the cross hairs of his administration, as could incentives for consumers to buy heat pumps or make their homes more energy efficient.”

4. Oil and Gas Drilling

“If he wins a second term, Mr. Trump has promised to ‘unleash domestic energy production like never before.’ Primarily he is talking about coal, oil and gas, the three main fossil fuels.”

“Mr. Trump has promised to immediately lift that pause and greenlight pipelines and other energy projects.

“‘We’re going to drill, baby, drill, right away,’ Mr. Trump told supporters in January.” As president, Trump is expected to “revive drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the country’s premiere wildlife sanctuary. Mr. Biden canceled seven oil leases in the refuge last year.”

5. Global Climate Negotiations

“As president, Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris agreement, a 2015 accord in which all nations agreed to cut their greenhouse gases to keep global warming within relatively safe limits.

“Mr. Biden returned the U.S. to the global deal on his first day in office and has pledged to cut U.S. emissions roughly in half this decade, and to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere before 2050.

“Mr. Trump’s likely policies would add four billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, according to a study by Carbon Brief, a climate analysis site.

“Many foreign leaders felt that the four-year absence of the world’s superpower during the Trump administration was a setback. They fear another American withdrawal would delay progress at a time when time is running short to avert the most catastrophic impacts from global warming.”

#3 – Hardly a big job creator

Lawrence Wittner analyzes Trump’s “empty promises on jobs” (https://counterpunch.org/2024/05/02/donald-trumps-empty-promises-on-jobs).

Wittner reminds us that in mid-2015, Trump announced his candidacy for president of the United States and declared that he would “be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”

“With Trump’s election, however, just the opposite occurred.  During the four years of Trump’s presidency, the United States lost 2.7 million jobs.  As a result, he was the only president since 1939, when the U.S. government began compiling such employment statistics, to preside over a net loss of jobs.

“Indeed, when it came to job creation, Trump was vastly outperformed by the other presidents.  Bill Clinton oversaw the biggest gain, 23 million additional jobs, followed by Ronald Reagan (16 million), Joe Biden (14 million), and Lyndon Johnson (12 million)―all the way down to George W. Bush (1.4 million).  During the presidency of Barack Obama, Trump’s much-reviled predecessor, the United States added 11.6 million jobs.

Trump’s defenders point to the disruptive effect the Covid-19 pandemic had on the American economy.  Although the disease crisis certainly undermined employment during his presidency, it’s also true that his denial and mismanagement of the public health emergency deepened its human and economic impact in the United States.  Furthermore, even before the pandemic hit, job creation during the Trump presidency was relatively weak.  During Trump’s first 31 months in office, employment growth in the United States averaged 176,000 jobs per month.  During Biden’s first 31 months in office, employment growth averaged 433,000 jobs per month.”

#4 – Plans to appoint sycophants and radical right experts to his cabinet and staff, and eliminate civil service protections for thousands of executive-branch workers

Bob Ortega, Kyung Lah, Allison Gordon and Nelli Black, report in-depth on Trump’s plan in a second term to purge the executive branch of workers who are not expressly committed to him (https://cnn.com/2024/04/27/politics/trump-federal-workers-2nd-term-invs/index.html). Here’s some of what they write.

“At one campaign rally after another, former President Donald Trump whips his supporters into raucous cheers with a promise of what’s to come if he’s given another term in office: ‘We will demolish the deep state.’

“In essence, it’s a declaration of war on the federal government—a vow to transform its size and scope and make it more beholden to Trump’s whims and worldview.

“The former president’s statements, policy blueprints laid out by top officials in his first administration and interviews with allies show that Trump is poised to double down in a second term on executive orders that faltered, or those he was blocked from carrying out the first time around.

“Trump seeks to sweep away civil service protections that have been in place for more than 140 years. He has said he’d make ‘every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States’ at will. Even though more than 85 percent of federal employees already work outside the DC area, Trump says he would ‘drain the swamp’ and move as many as 100,000 positions out of Washington. His plans would eliminate or dismantle entire departments.”

“While Trump’s plans are embraced by his supporters, policy experts warn that they would hollow out and politicize the federal workforce, force out many of the most experienced and knowledgeable employees, and open the door to corruption and a spoils system of political patronage.”

“But if, as promised, Trump were to change thousands of civil service jobs into politically appointed positions at the start of a second term, huge numbers of federal workers could face being fired unless they put loyalty to Trump ahead of serving the public interest, warn policy experts.”

Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, told CNN making vast numbers of jobs subject to appointment based on political affiliation would amount to ‘absolutely the biggest change in the American public sector’ since a merit-based civil service was created in 1883.

“One of the architects of that plan for a Trump second term said as much in a video last year for the Heritage Foundation. ‘It’s going to be groundbreaking,’ said Russell Vought, who served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump. He declined interview requests from CNN.”

“Vought focused on a plan he drafted to reissue Trump’s 2020 executive order, known as Schedule F. It would reclassify as political appointees any federal workers deemed to have influence on policy. Reissuing Schedule F is part of a roadmap, known as Project 2025, drafted for a second Trump term by scores of conservative groups and published by the Heritage Foundation.”

“Ostensibly, a reissued Schedule F would affect only policy-making positions. But documents obtained by the National Treasury Employees Union and shared with CNN show that when Vought ran OMB under Trump, his list of positions to be reclassified under Schedule F included administrative assistants, office managers, IT workers and many other less senior positions.

NTEU President Doreen Greenwald told reporters at the union’s annual legislative conference that it estimated more than 50,000 workers would have been affected across all federal agencies. She said the OMB documents ‘stretched the definition of confidential or policy positions to the point of absurdity.’”

“‘We will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them,’ Trump said in a video last year. ‘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.’

Project 2025’s blueprint envisions dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI; disarming the Environmental Protection Agency by loosening or eliminating emissions and climate-change regulations; eliminating the Departments of Education and Commerce in their entirety; and eliminating the independence of various commissions, including the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.”

#5 – Trump Again Vows Mass Deportations and Won’t Rule Out Political Violence

Michael Gold writes on this issue

(https://nytimes.com/2024/04/30/us/politics/trump-time-migrants-election.html).

“Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Former President Donald J. Trump told Time magazine in an interview published Tuesday morning that if elected in November, he would deploy the U.S. military to detain and deport migrants, hedged on the possibility of political violence after the 2024 election and said he would permit states to decide whether to prosecute those who violate abortion bans.”

“At one point, Mr. Trump told Time that he would be willing to deploy the military as part of an extreme deportation operation he has said he plans to conduct if elected, and that he would be willing to bypass a law that prohibits using American troops against civilians.

“‘Well, these aren’t civilians,’ Mr. Trump said. ‘These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country.”

Unlike Democratic leaders in Washington, D.C., “Republicans want to cut benefits despite overwhelming opposition from the American people,” Altman said of federal lawmakers and the former president. Additionally, “Trump plans to sharply restrict immigration. This would harm Social Security by reducing the number of workers paying in.”

#6 – Facilitate efforts to make voting more difficult, especially for lower-income and black and Latino Americans

Trump and his allies and followers want to advance the interests of white Christian supremacists. Ari Berman refers to the rationale in his book Minority Rule. He writes:

“To entrench and hold onto power, shrinking conservative white minority is relentlessly exploiting the undemocratic feature of America’s political institutions while doubling down on a wide variety of antidemocratic tactics, such as voter suppression, election subversion, dark money, legislative power grabs, immigration restrictions, census manipulation, and the whitewashing of history” (p. 9).

#7 – Tax policy for the rich

Jake Johnson, writes on how tax rates for big corporations fell by nearly half after Trump cuts and, if re-elected, Trump plans to extend the cuts (https://commondreams.org/news/itep-trump-tax-law).

Johnson writes: “Large, profitable U.S. corporations have seen their effective tax rates fall by more than 40% since Republicans and their presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, Donald Trump, rammed through an unpopular law that they want to preserve and extend.

“According to a new report published Thursday by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), the tax rates paid by big and consistently profitable corporations dropped from 22% to 12.8% after the enactment of Trump’s tax law, which slashed the statutory corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.”

“ITEP’s analysis examines 296 Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies that were consistently profitable between 2013 and 2021. Even as the companies’ combined profits surged by 44%, they ‘paid $240 billion less in taxes from 2018 to 2021 than they would have paid under the effective rates they paid before the Trump law,’ according to ITEP.”

#8 – Diminish the already fragile social safety net

Trump and the Republicans want to limit the reach of Social Security and Medicare. Jessica Corbett writes that these programs must be defended. (https://commondreams.org/news/social-security-medicare). The article was published on May 6, 2024.

Corbett points out that these programs are financially viable for another 10 years at least due to the robust economy and high rates of employment. But Trump and the Republicans are attacking them and want to reduce benefits and access.

Corbett refers to the annual trustee reports that show that, contrary to right-wing criticisms, “Social Security is projected to be fully funded until 2035, a year later than previously thought, while Medicare is expected to be fully funded until 2036, five years beyond the earlier projection.” Nevertheless, “Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden in November, ‘proposed cutting Social Security and Medicare every year he was in office, he’s said repeatedly he would cut them, his allies openly plan to target them, and just this weekend he dismissed them as bribes,’ noted James Singer, a spokesperson for the Democrat’s campaign.

“‘Let’s be clear, Donald Trump will steal the hard-earned Social Security and Medicare benefits Americans have been paying into their entire lives and he’ll use it to fund tax cuts for rich people like him,’ Singer warned. ‘President Biden keeps his promises. He has and will continue to protect Social Security and Medicare from MAGA Republican efforts to cut them—Donald Trump won’t.’”

Corbett continues.

“Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said Monday that ‘current and future American retirees should feel confident about both Medicare and Social Security, which [are] stronger due to the robust economy under President Biden. But the future of these earned benefit programs depends on who is elected this fall—both as president and to Congress.’

“Fiesta highlighted that Biden’s latest budget ‘calls for strengthening’ the programs whereas Trump recently said that ‘there is a lot you can do… in terms of cutting’ them and ‘the Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes around 80% of House Republicans, stands ready to make cuts as well.’”

Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare, also asserted that “Congress must act NOW to strengthen Social Security for the 67 million Americans who depend on it. We cannot afford to wait to take action until the trust fund is mere months from insolvency, as Congress did in 1983.”

According to Richtman:

Democrats in Congress “strongly support revenue-side solutions that would bring more money into the trust fund by demanding that the wealthy pay their fair share. Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) has offered legislation that would do just that—by maintaining the current payroll wage cap (currently set at $168,600), but subjecting wages $400,000 and above to payroll taxes, as well—and dedicating some of high earners’ investment income to Social Security.”

“‘The Social Security 2100 Act is co-sponsored by nearly 200 House Democrats and would improve benefits across the board while extending solvency until 2066, while Donald Trump and House Republicans continue their calls to slash Americans’ hard-earned benefits!’ Larson said.”

“Social Security is the greatest anti-poverty program in history, and ensuring its solvency for future generations has been one of my top priorities in Congress,” Boyle said Monday, promoting the Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act, his bill with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). “Unfortunately, while Democrats and President Biden want to protect Social Security and Medicare, Republicans have made clear they want to tear them down.”

#9 – Support efforts by the states to virtually end legal access to reproductive health care and abortion

The Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in June 2022, giving the anti-abortion movement added vigor and justification to fight for further restrictions on access to abortion. The ruling allows states decide on whether to outright ban abortion. Anti-abortion activists want more, a national ban on abortion. Trump wants the individual states to decide, or so he says. But he also wants to placate the right-wing evangelicals, a crucial constituency, who would like to eliminate or severely limit access to abortion and have Trump, if president, issue a ban on abortion.

Public opinion is opposed to abortion bans

The anti-abortion movement has momentum in many states, but public opinion today is on the other side, supporting “choice.” Steven Shepard looks at some of the evidence (https://politico.com/news/2023/04/08/republican-party-abortion-trap-00091088).

He refers to a 2022 national exit poll that found “29 percent of voters believed abortion should be ‘legal in all cases,’ while another 30 percent thought it should be ‘legal in most cases.’ That left 26 percent who thought it should be ‘illegal in most cases and only 10 percent who said it should be illegal in all cases.’” That is,

“roughly six-in-10 voters supporting legal abortion in most cases — with the median voter supporting some restrictions — and just over a third who want it to be entirely or mostly illegal.” Another 2022 midterm exit poll in Wisconsin found

“a combined 63 percent of Wisconsin voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while only 34 percent thought it should be illegal in all or most cases.”

Republicans want to portray “Democrats as too permissive, willing to support ‘abortion on demand, for virtually any reason, up until the moment of birth,’ according to a press release from the Republican National Committee on Thursday [April 6, 2023].

“‘But” Shepard points out, ‘those attacks are largely falling flat. President Joe Biden has said repeatedly he supports the Roe v. Wade framework, which allowed states to impose modest restrictions on abortion later in pregnancies. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 1 percent of abortions in 2020 occurred after 20 weeks of pregnancy,” that is, after 5 months of pregnancy.”

#10 – Encourage easy access to gun ownership

The argument for gun regulation rests most fundamentally on the premises that the ownership of guns should be regulated, and that gun ownership is not an absolute, unlimited right of citizenship. It is commonsense for most people who think about gun rights and control to exclude children, those with violent criminal records, the certified mentally ill who are a danger to others, from the right to gun ownership, and, more controversially, to limit the places at which people can have weapons.

However, for decades since the early 1970s, opponents of gun regulation, most prominently the National Rifle Association (NRA), have used their political influence to foster a one-sided interpretation of the Second Amendment to keep the federal government and many states and local governments from adequately regulating access to guns (gun ownership) by private citizens. Trump is an outspoken supporter of the NRA and of maximum gun rights.

Meredith McGraw reports on Trump’s remarks at a meeting of the NRA on February 9, 2024 (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/09/trump-promises-nra-that-if-elected-no-one-will-lay-a-finger-on-your-firearms-00140818). At the meeting, Trump promised that if elected “no one will lay a finger on your firearms” and he would roll back Biden-era gun restrictions. McGraw quotes Trump,

“‘Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated on my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day,’ Trump said at the NRA’s Presidential Forum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

“The former president specifically said he would roll back the Biden administration’s ‘Zero-Tolerance’ policy that revokes federal licenses from firearm dealers that violate gun laws. And he said he would undo regulations on pistol braces, or stabilization devices that have also been used in gun massacres.”

“In a statement released ahead of Trump’s speech, John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety said, ‘With Trump recently telling Americans to ‘get over’ school shootings, we know what a second term would be like: The NRA would once again treat the White House like its clubhouse, and the bipartisan, life-saving progress we’ve made on gun safety will be in grave danger.’”

#11 – Violence against opponents may be necessary

Kenny Stancil cites research that “12 Million US Adults Think Violence Is Justified to Put Trump Back in White House” (https://commondreams.org/news/12-million-us-adults-think-violence-justified-to-restore-trump-presidency). The article was published on June 9, 2023. He writes,

“More than two years after the deadly January 6 insurrection, 12 million people in the United States, or 4.4% of the adult population, believe the use of violence is justified to restore former President Donald Trump to power, The Guardian reported Friday.”

“We’re heading into an extremely tumultuous election season,” Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor and CPOST director, told The Guardian. “What’s happening in the United States is political violence is going from the fringe to the mainstream.” [CPOST is the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats.]

“The CPOST survey conducted in April found that 20% of U.S. adults still believe ‘the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president,’ down only slightly from the 26% who said so in 2021.

“‘What you’re seeing is really disturbing levels of distrust in American democracy, support for dangerous conspiracy theories, and support for political violence itself,’ Pape told The Guardian.”

“‘Once you have support for violence in the mainstream, those are the raw ingredients or the raw combustible material and then speeches, typically by politicians, can set them off,’ said Pape. ‘Or if they get going, speeches can encourage them to go further.’”

“Several right-wing candidates who echoed Trump’s relentless lies about President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory lost in last year’s midterms. But more than 210 others—including at least two who participated in the January 6 rally that escalated into an attack on the U.S. Capitol—won congressional seats and races for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, underscoring the extent to which election denialism is now entrenched in the GOP and jeopardizes U.S. democracy for the foreseeable future.”

“The research center’s most recent survey found that ‘almost 14%—a minority of Americans, but still a significant number—believe the use of force is justified to ‘achieve political goals that I support,’ the newspaper reported. More specifically, 12.4% believe it’s justified to restore the federal right to abortion, 8.4% believe it’s justified to ensure members of Congress and other government officials do the right thing, 6.3% think it’s justified to preserve the rights of white Americans, and 6.1% believe it’s justified to prevent the prosecution of Trump.’”

“More optimistically, the survey found that over 77% of U.S. adults want Republicans and Democrats in Congress to issue a joint statement condemning any political violence.

“‘There’s a tremendous amount of opposition to political violence in the United States,’ Pape remarked, ‘but it is not mobilized.’

Meanwhile, the country is awash with privately owned firearms, according to political scientists Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware in their book, God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America. They cite the research of American University scholar Cynthia Miller-Idriss, who estimates “at least 75,000 to 100,000 individuals are actively involved with white supremacist extremist groups, in addition to the 15,000 to 20,000 people who belong to militia organizations comprising some three hundred different groups….” (pp. 226-227).

Concluding thoughts

Trump wants power and, as the record indicates, will do anything to obtain it. The point is that to understand well what he and his supporters want and to reveal their anti-democratic intentions and subversive tactics. Such knowledge and understanding may not in the end by sufficient to prevent an illiberal and violence-tolerant movement from destroying American democracy, but they are absolutely necessary to help rouse citizens to become informed and active, and at least vote to  keep the anti-democrats out of government.

Katrina Vanden Heuvel calls for a “bold, populist, popular, and progressive domestic agenda” that is reflected in the 2025 Congressional Progressive Caucus’s “Progressive Proposition Agenda (https://thenation.com/article/politics/democrats-progressives-election-congress). The CPC platform “details reforms vital to our nation’s security. It lays out the next steps in addressing the climate crisis. It calls for reforms vital to democracy—including instituting same-day voter registration, ending partisan gerrymandering, and curbing the role of Big Money in our politics. It would eliminate the filibuster in the Senate, ban congressional stock ownership and trading, and strengthen judicial ethics, while boldly demanding expansion of the number of Supreme Court justices.

“It also lays out a populist agenda to counter the choke hold of wealth and entrenched interests on our political economy—expanded anti-trust measures, higher taxes on stock buybacks, a minimum tax for the rich, and a crackdown on private equity and hedge fund rapaciousness, particularly in healthcare and housing.”

In 2024, the stakes are far greater than saving the Republic from Trump and his reactionary agenda. If Democrats take back the House, expand their majority in the Senate and keep the White House, reforms that can make a fundamental difference in the lives of all, especially poor and working people, are possible. In 1944, amid a war abroad, Franklin Roosevelt called for an economic bill of rights as central to the postwar recovery. With the Proposition Agenda, the CPC offers bold steps towards fulfilling that goal. And the CPC’s growing power adds credibility to that promise.