How Trump and his allies want to exercise power in 2025
Former President Donald J. Trump declared at the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign: “I am your retribution.” He later vowed to use the Justice Department to go after his political opponents, starting with President Biden and his family.
Behind these public threats lies a series of plans by Mr. Trump and his allies that would upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he were to regain the White House.
Some of these themes date back to the latter part of Trump’s term. By then, his top advisers had learned how to wield power more effectively and Trump had fired officials who opposed some of his impulses and replaced them with loyalists. He subsequently lost the 2020 elections and was removed from power.
Since leaving office, Trump’s advisers and allies at a network of well-funded groups have advanced policies, drawn up lists of potential personnel, and begun shaping new legal scaffolding—laying the groundwork for a second Trump presidency which they hope will begin on January 20th. , 2025.
In a vague statement, two top officials from Mr. Trump’s campaign sought to distance his campaign team from some of the plans being developed by Mr. Trump’s outside allies, groups led by former senior Trump administration officials who are in direct contact with him to stand still. The statement called news reports about the campaign’s personnel and policy intentions “purely speculative and theoretical.”
The plans described here generally stem from what Mr. Trump has said during his campaign, what has appeared on his campaign website and on interviews with Trump advisers, including one who spoke to The New York Times at the campaign’s request .
Trump wants to use the Justice Department to take revenge on his political opponents.
If he wins another term, Trump has said he would use the Justice Department to have his opponents investigated and charged with crimes. He said in June, among other things, that he would appoint “a real special prosecutor to go after President Biden and his family.” Him later stated in an interview with Univision that if anyone challenged him politically, he could have that person indicted.
Allies of Mr. Trump have also developed an intellectual blueprint to overturn the post-Watergate norm of the Justice Department’s investigation’s independence from White House political leadership.
In a precursor to such a move, Trump had already violated norms in his 2016 campaign by promising to “lock up” his opponent, Hillary Clinton, over her use of a private email server. While president, he repeatedly told aides that he wanted the Justice Department to indict his political enemies, including officials he fired such as James B. Comey, the former FBI director. The Justice Department has opened several such investigations but filed no charges — infuriating Mr. Trump and leading to a rift with his attorney general, William P. Barr, in 2020.
He plans an extreme crackdown on immigration.
Mr. Trump is planning an attack on immigration on a scale unprecedented in modern American history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be denied entry or uprooted years or even decades after settling here.
Backed by agents transferred from other federal law enforcement agencies, state police, and the National Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials conducted large-scale raids to deport millions of people annually. Military funds would be used to establish sprawling camps for undocumented prisoners. An emergency public health law would be invoked to cut off asylum applications from people arriving at the border. And the government would try to end the birthright rights of babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents.
Trump has plans to use American military force closer to home.
During his time in office, Mr. Trump mused about using the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico, an idea that would violate international law unless Mexico agreed. That idea has since gained broader Republican support, and Trump plans to make the idea a reality when he returns to the Oval Office.
While the Posse Comitatus Act generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for domestic law enforcement purposes, another law, the Insurrection Act, creates an exception. Mr. Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act to use troops to crack down on protesters after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd but was thwarted, and the idea remains salient among his advisers. His top immigration adviser has said, among other things, that they would invoke the Insurrection Act at the southern border to use soldiers to intercept and detain undocumented migrants.
Trump and his allies want more control over the federal bureaucracy and the workforce.
Mr. Trump and his supporters want to increase presidential power over federal agencies by centralizing greater control over the entire government apparatus in the White House.
They have adopted a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory, which says that the president can directly direct the entire federal bureaucracy and that it is unconstitutional for Congress to create areas of independent decision-making authority.
As part of that plan, Mr. Trump also plans to revive an effort from the end of his presidency to change civil service rules that protect career professionals in government, allowing him to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replaced by loyalists. After Congress failed to enact legislation to block such a change, the Biden administration is developing a regulation to essentially Trump-proof the federal workforce. However, because this is just an executive action, the next Republican president could simply undo it in the same way.
Trump allies want lawyers who won’t restrain him.
Politically appointed lawyers sometimes frustrated Trump’s wishes by raising legal objections to the ideas of him and his top advisers. This dynamic has created a quiet division on the right, as Trump loyalists have come to view the quintessential Federalist Society lawyer — essentially a mainstream Republican conservative — with disdain.
In a potential new term, Mr. Trump’s allies plan to systematically install more aggressive and ideologically aligned legal gatekeepers, who will be more likely to bless controversial actions. Mr. Trump and his 2024 campaign declined to answer a series of detailed questions about what limits, if any, he would recognize on his powers over war, secrecy and law enforcement issues — many of which were imposed during his first term have been raised – in a new York Times 2024 investigation into presidential candidates.