This is part two of a three-part series. If you missed part one, you can find it here
Often, we make the mistake of thinking Trump has no idea what he’s doing. While this is true in a literal sense, the reality is that this is a carefully crafted plan with a clear purpose and intent. There is a clear vision among those who have financed this attempted bloodless coup to redefine America. They want us to be in a permanent state of distraction with ‘breaking news’, because the one thing they can rely upon is our outrage. Liberal outrage has long been their vehicle to propagate their talking points because no news is bad news when it comes to dominating the narrative.
What we need to ensure is that we focus on the points of stress that can cause the most damage. Now, you might say it’s everything, we need to focus on everything, because they are destroying everything we hold dear. In an ideal world, that would be great, but we don’t live in a perfect world, so we have to prioritise. You will recall that back in April, everyone was up in arms about the possibility of Trump declaring martial law. Russell Vought knew he didn’t need to, because he could write a carefully worded executive order that would allow him to do what he was doing in LA in any city he chose.
You have to understand that Trump is not the brains of the outfit; Vought and his coalition of malign actors have an intimate understanding of the law and the Constitution. They are experts in bastardising the rules, to the point that even when they know they have gone too far, they know the judicial branch is playing catch-up and they have the ultimate backstop of a bought and paid-for majority on the Supreme Court. Before they scaled the walls of the castle, they had already disrupted the government to the point where it could not function as it should. Trump has removed inspectors general and replaced all the top military lawyers and generals with those more friendly to their agenda.
At a time when measles is raging following its eradication in 2000, they are replacing leading scientists and doctors with quacks and acolytes whose sole loyalty is not to the American people but to Trump. The same applies to their attacks on elite universities. For autocracy to take hold, you must undermine all the central pillars of society and install revisionist agencies answerable only to the executive.
There was a naive belief by the Democrats that the judicial branch would hold the line. How did that go? Trump has brushed off every attempt by Democrats to hurt him. This happened because Vought and his team had already war-gamed the Democratic response and already had plans in place to deal with it. They are aware of all the weak points, and every step they have taken to date demonstrates that they are consistently one step ahead. In a way, I have a grudging admiration for their attention to detail and forward planning. They need look no further than public polling, which sees Democrats at an all-time favourability low, even among their own supporters.
They didn’t mind record-breaking floor speeches from Hakeem Jeffries and Cory Booker; they’ll take that every day, because it has no impact on their planning. They simply remained focused on selling lies and disinformation long enough to get the budget bill into law. After that, little else matters because they are then truly in control and hurting them just becomes more difficult for Democrats who, because of their inaction between election day and inauguration day, simply became the frog in the pan of slowly boiling water.
I’m not quite sure if people don’t understand because Trump is so far outside the box that they have no lived experience on which to formulate a response, or because the sole focus of Democratic lawmakers is self-preservation. I suspect it’s a little of both, but I have to tell you that those in the latter category are not fit for purpose against this existential threat.
When Trump federalised the National Guard and sent them with the support of Marines into LA, this was a game changer. Vought and the planners deliberately chose that fight because it put their strategy up against a notoriously strong governor and Democratic state legislature. This was a rehearsal for what’s to come. It allows them to make adjustments to the plan to achieve maximum impact. To be very clear, Trump’s executive order to green light his so-called ‘liberation of LA’ is carefully written in a way to allow it to be rolled out in any part of the country. He has already side-stepped the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which generally prohibits the use of the Army and Air Force for domestic law enforcement, without the express permission of Congress. So there are currently no obstacles in their way. Congressional Republicans remain cowering in the corner, saying ‘Please don’t hurt us’
The threat extends much deeper than the ability to deploy troops and Stryker vehicles on city streets as a clear warning of who is in charge. This is about refining a state-controlled internal security service modelled on the Stasi in East Germany during the Cold War. The new budget for ICE is unprecedented, and this is a very deliberate calculation.
PBS White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López confirmed on 8th July that:
More than $160 billion is going to immigration enforcement and the deportation operation. So when you break it down, that means $46.5 billion goes to building the rest of the border wall, $45 billion to immigration detention centres, nearly $30 billion to hiring and training ICE staff, and $3.3 billion to immigration court judges and attorneys.
Some of those pots of money can be moved around. If they don't want to spend that much on the border wall, they don't have to. They can transfer it to other parts of ICE. But ICE plans to hire an additional 10,000 new agents to the tens of thousands they already have. And also they want to have at least 80,000 new detention beds.
The key takeaway is that they have retained the flexibility to adjust the allocation of funds as needed to meet their evolving needs as the plan unfolds. The reality is that the estimated annual average of $37.5 billion on ICE is higher than the military expenditure of all but 15 countries worldwide. So any suggestion that this is not a militarised operation is a lie. Evidence from current operations suggests that the expansion of ICE recruitment is aimed at recruiting staff who display little regard for the rule of law or the need to identify themselves. Asked about this yesterday, Trump said he sees no need for them to do so, which tells you everything you need to know.
There’s little doubt in my mind that ICE is now a federal enforcement service. It is currently used for immigration enforcement. Still, it’s not a big stretch to shift their attention to any target demographic perceived as a ‘national security risk’, which they can invent to suit. This is the standard on which they will base their wider enforcement policies to target any perceived political threat. My friends, we are witnessing the birth of the American Brown Shirts, and it’s all part of the plan.
You have to look no further than the DOJ being tasked in a memo issued by the DOJ on the 11th June to focus on denaturalising targeted naturalised American citizens.
Edward Helmore reported in the Guardian on 30th June:
The memo, published on 11 June, calls on attorneys in the department to institute civil proceedings to revoke a person’s United States citizenship if an individual either “illegally procured” naturalization or procured naturalization by “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation”.
It goes on to say:
According to the memo, those subjected to civil proceedings are not entitled to an attorney like they are in criminal cases. And the government has a lighter burden of proof in civil cases than they do in criminal ones.
There are an estimated 25 million naturalised citizens in the US. What you have to bear in mind here is that there is a clear objective once again to deny due process, just as we are seeing with street abductions of suspected 'undocumented citizens. They are trying to create a broad catch-all system that effectively enables them to use the threat of deportation against anyone not a citizen by birth. The explicit aim is to introduce a caste system in which the state is allowed to discriminate against people based on their level of Americanism, a nod to Adolf Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy.
How long will it be before a social media post criticising the president or the government becomes a crime? It’s not a big step to extend this to US citizens. We have already seen Trump’s suggestion that ‘homegrowns’ should be eligible for deportation, so this is by no means catastrophizing.
Be in no doubt, election integrity is his next target. I have to smile sometimes when I see statements like There will be a Republican bloodbath in 2026. Are people so deluded as to think that they intend there to be anything resembling free and fair elections in 2026? I’m here for it; I’m ready to create content and go all in, but every fibre of my being is screaming that they already have a plan for this, and it’s been in play from the very outset. Once he has all the pieces in place in terms of his internal state security apparatus, that’s when he will make his move. Currently, they are just doing exercises in California. They are fine-tuning the model, and once it’s ready, the claim will be made that elections won’t be safe because the American people need to be protected against Marxist Democrats who will steal the election.
Any Democrats who are thinking that if elections were to take place, they can stop Trump’s agenda, think again. At the very best, they might be able to slow him down. They certainly can’t repeal any of the budget bill legislation. Whichever way this goes, this is a massive uphill struggle against a well-prepared and dug-in foe. They can’t afford to lose in 2028 because Democrats would inherit the ability to remove Republicans from the political landscape. This is their one shot at absolute rule, and that makes them very dangerous. In any event, I'm yet to be convinced that Democrats have a viable plan, unless I’m missing something.
This week, we have seen the great leader do a TACO and defer the tariff deadline to August 1st as the markets roll their eyes and try to ignore the village idiot. Let’s be frank, the 90 deals in 90 days was utter piffle, as admitted by members of his team. The truth is that trading partners are starting to fear him less and less. He claims tariffs are an economic negotiating tool, then he threatens Brazil with 50% tariffs in response to legal action being taken against Jair Bolsonaro. He’s like a petulant child willing to smear shit on the wall if he doesn’y get what he wants.
It simply serves to reassert that he is running an international extortion gang from the Oval Office. He sent out a bunch of template extortion demands which didn’t even afford recipients the courtesy of using culturally appropriate language. Being forced to send out these letters is simply an admission of defeat. The recipients have already effectively called his bluff. He is merely kicking the can down the road while raking in his baseline 10% for goods from most countries. The world no longer trusts him, or for that matter, takes him seriously. He’s a source of derision on the international stage, and if he thinks he’ll get the Nobel Peace Prize, he’s an even bigger fool than I thought he was.
My other concern is that activism has become a profitable enterprise; should creating awareness of the facts or participating in a chat require a financial investment? I thought Democrats believed in inclusion, or is that for others? Whatever happened to having the confidence that if your work has value, people will volunteer to support your efforts? To me, that’s what makes Substack so special: as a passionate activist, readers can decide whether they want to become a stakeholder in your work. I am probably too much of an old-fashioned idealist, but I look upon my generous paid subscribers as a collective force for good. Their generosity enables those who can’t afford to contribute to receive free access to the same information they are supporting with their hard-earned cash.. It’s the very definition of political Philanthropy, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I pop in and out of the new best sellers list and the US politics list like a Trump tariff, but that’s the joy of writing what you think without fear or favour. One day, I’ll break the top 30. We all have to have dreams.
Tomorrow, in part three, we’ll explore the options for fighting back, because if you think it can wait until 2026, you are very misguided.
We are in the throes of a takeover. We’ve had a coup. Our institutions are under attack by a formidable enemy-and it is winning. We are marching headlong into autocracy. It probably has already arrived. Thank you for being completely honest with us. I agree we need options now. If we wait until 2026, it will too late.
I've come to realize that this existential threat is succeeding in large part because it is so threatening.
Those who don't like bad news are not listening, and those who are listening understand, but most or many are overwhelmed by their emotional response to what they see and hear, and either actively avoid discussing it, or are in such a state of arousal that violence is the only solution they can conceive of.
It takes a certain state of calm and acceptance to see clearly where we are, accept it, and build the resolve to take action. Like it or not, we are in a political war.
We have two critical tasks: 1) help people accept and truly see the current reality
2) form an organized resistance.
Violence would bring extreme suppression. We need to organize. We need real plans, leadership, and a shared vision of how to succeed. We need to evaluate risk and make decisions on public vs. private participation.
We wasted five months hoping that Congress, or failing that the Democratic Party, was our leadership. Those organizations have been corrupted from within and are not remotely capable of taking this on.
The next six months are critical. We need to begin meeting in person to work on plans for non-violent, organized resistance.