WHEN THEY TELL YOU WHO THEY ARE, BELIEVE THEM

“Satan arrives at Pandemonium, in full assembly relates with boasting his success against Man; instead of applause is entertained with a general hiss by all his audience, transform’d with himself also suddenly into Serpents, according to his doom giv’n in Paradise; then deluded with a shew of the forbidden Tree springing up before them, they greedily reaching to take of the Fruit, chew dust and bitter ashes.

– John Milton, “Paradise Lost,” Book Ten

Hours past midnight on Friday morning, ex-President Donald Trump took to his knock-off Truth social and posted an attack on Federal District Judge Tanya Chutkan, on the heels of a rant about the “corrupt system of INJUSTICE” he now faces.

Thursday, Trump had entered a plea of “Not Guilty” in the Georgia election crimes case that’s set for trial in Fulton County, which will be televised live according to the judge’s ruling. It’s not a TV show Trump looks forward to starring in.

Over the hours past the attack on Judge Chutkan, Trump was still awake and ranting on Truth Social about the cases against him. He weighed in at just after 3 a.m. to blast the trials and share his interview Thursday evening with Fox News host Mark Levin, writing:

“I am being “railroaded” by a highly partisan and corrupt system of INJUSTICE, headed up by an opponent who is losing in the polls and, simultaneously with all of this, destroying our once Great Country! This Mark Levin interview is a MUST WATCH!”

Minutes later, he added:

“Keep Indicting your Political Opponent, it makes no difference for what, or why. Keep him off the “campaign trail” and in the courthouse instead. Don’t think of his Rights, the Constitution, or Liberty. Sit back and WATCH AMERICA CRUMBLE!”

Several minutes later, Trump wrote:

“But their is no system of justice. Our Court System is rigged against me!”

Then, he re-posted a message from Levin that attacked Judge Chutkan as “Another judge from a Marxist family.” (The Right has discovered that Chutkin’s grandfather was Frank Hill, a member of the Jamaican Communist Party back in the 40s)

While Trump has been warned by all the judges he has appeared before in his four arraignments on felony charges in New York, Florida, Washington D.C. and Atlanta to be careful how he speaks about the charges against him in public, many veteran Trump observers say they expect he will continue to test the limits of these constraints in ways that would have already landed an ordinary defendant in jail.

Over this past week, despite risking violation of the terms of his pre-trial releases, the out-of-control Trump has continued to launch screeds against prosecutors, judges, witnesses, the FBI, DOJ, and the justice system.

It looks like a meltdown, decompensation, a psychic wound on public display.

Most importantly, this meltdown is a promise of what will happen if he’s re-elected. He is telling us, once again, exactly what he will do. This is what he famously called it his “retribution.”

On Tuesday, Glenn Beck asked him if he would use the presidency to imprison his political opponents if he were reelected. “If you’re president again, will you lock people up?”

Trump replied: “The answer is you have no choice because they’re doing it to us.”

Legal troubles have sparked an outpouring of violent talk from Trump in recent weeks, but it is simply an escalation of the theme he stated at his first campaign rally in March 2023, which he not so coincidentally held in Waco, Texas - the location is a rallying cry for the extreme nutcases who believe the government is oppressing them. It was there that Trump told his supporters: "I am your warrior, I am your justice…. For those who have been wronged and betrayed…I am your retribution."

Trump promises retribution and power for the MAGA lifetime losers who are now determined to impose their will on the majority of Americans.

All of this is Donald Trump playing The Big Bad Wolf, promising that “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.”

But despite being charged with 91 violations of the law in two federal and two state indictments, after being impeached twice, the most recent polling shows Trump and President Biden tied in support for election as president - 46-46.

While he doesn’t saying so explicitly, the implication is clear: Trump will use the presidency to get himself out of the criminal jam he is in. His campaign is his defense to the charges he faces.

The right wing threat is real, and it is real even if for some reason Trump is not the GOP nominee for president.

Today’s Republican Party has abandoned the Reagan-era Republican plan to gut the federal government. Instead they are determined to capture the government and replace nonpartisan civil servants with MAGA extremists who will carry out the ideals of Trump or any other Republican who defeats Biden in 2024. “Project 2025,” a nearly-1,000-page plan created by the Heritage Foundation - the leading far right think tank - calls for ending the independence of the Department of Justice, politicizing law enforcement officers and giving dictatorial power to the president.

Last week’s Republican “debate” showed us that all the leading candidates for the GOP nomination agree with this plan to gut American government and replace it with a presidential dictator and corporate rule. In other words, with a Fascist police state.

Trump is assuring us that he will weaponize the Justice Department, arrest and jail his opponents, and bring the full power of the office of the presidency to bear in order to inflict punishment on his foes.

The MAGA state governors are already taking steps to abandon modern ideas like prohibitions on child labor and the age of consent; worker and workplace protections; unions; quality public schools and colleges; civil rights for nonwhites; and the power of women to make their own healthcare decisions. It is part and parcel of the MAGA attack on America; MAGA Alabama attorney general Steve Marshall claimed in a court filing this past Monday that Alabama can prosecute people who help women travel out of the state to obtain an abortion as part of a “criminal conspiracy.”

These people are dedicated to what Steve Bannon described as, “deconstructing the administrative state.”

Over the years, the GOP has used a series of plans as the party has worked for the past 50 years to reach their goal of a billionaire- and-corporate-owned-and-run America.

In 1971, it was Virginia tobacco lawyer Lewis Powell’s “Powell Memo,” delivered to the US Chamber of Commerce. This called for a right wing takeover of America’s schools and colleges; building out a corporate-friendly media infrastructure; packing the courts with pro-corporate conservatives; and the wholesale purchase of Republican politicians at the state and federal level. In 1972, Richard Nixon put Powell on the Supreme Court, where he spent the next 25 years useing that office to put many of his own suggestions into law. Powell’s major achievement was authoring the 1978 Boston v Bellotti decision, which struck down state and federal anti-corruption laws, explicitly allowing corporations and their senior officers to bribe politicians for the first time in American history.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan cut a treasonous deal with the Ayatollah Khomenei to hold the hostages in Iran long enough to destroy Jimmy Carter’s chances in the 1980 election. At the same time, the Heritage Foundation presented the “Mandate for Leadership,” a plan to further gut the rights and powers of working people and elevate corporate and billionaire power. The Washington Post called it “an action plan for turning the government toward the right as fast as possible.”

During his administration, Reagan adopted over half of Heritage’s suggestions, cutting enforcement of anti-trust laws; ending the Fairness Doctrine, which allowed the creation of Conservatism Inc.; slashing the top income tax rate on the rich from 74 percent to 27 percent; declaring all-out war on unions when he went after PATCO; gutting the EPA, Education, and Labor Departments; selling off federal lands for pennies on the dollar to mining and drilling operations.

There is no other developed country in the world that tolerates a situation like this; outside of the United States, such things are only found in countries that have been taken over by corrupt autocrats.

“Project 2025" is the final plan to fully seize control of and transform America.

No one - not even Trump - expected him to win the 2016 election. Trump and Roger Stone had already registered the URLs and put together a “Stop the Steal” campaign claiming “election fraud” to distract and kneecap incoming President Hillary Clinton.

When Trump was declared the winner he didn’t have a victory speech; he was totally unprepared to govern. It took most of the first three years for Trump and the clown car to get their act together. This time the right isn’t taking any chances.

First up, they want to deconstruct the Civil Service, taking much of the federal workforce back the 19th Century before President Chester Arthur oversaw the writing and passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, that separated government jobs from the administration in power, turning federal workers from patrons of the president into permanent bureaucrats whose first loyalty was to the nation instead of whoever was in the White House.

In 2020, Trump wanted to replace the top levels of the nation’s 2.7 million federal workers with people loyal exclusively to himself with an October 21, 2020 executive order, Schedule F, which reclassified those senior people out of their Civil Service jobs and made them into political appointee positions.

A second Trump Administration - or any Republican administration - will put Schedule F back into force. As former Trump administration official Paul Dans, now director of Project 2025’s “Presidential Transition Project” told the Associated Press: “We need to flood the zone with conservatives.”

That’s not all. As Scott Waldman wrote in Politico:

“Called Project 2025, it would block the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy; slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice office; shutter the Energy Department’s renewable energy offices; prevent states from adopting California’s car pollution standards; and delegate more regulation of polluting industries to Republican state officials.

“If enacted, it could decimate the federal government’s climate work, stymie the transition to clean energy, and shift agencies toward nurturing the fossil fuel industry rather than regulating it. It’s designed to be implemented on the first day of a Republican presidency.”

Project 2025 would dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency and end all clean energy rules. It would end the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, and the Office of Public Engagement and Environmental Education. It would moving offices out of Washington and cut the EPA workforce by “terminating the newest hires in low-value programs.”

It would block states from advancing any agenda that may prevent the further expansion of carbon pollutants that are driving global warming by “ensuring that other states can adopt California’s standards only for traditional/criteria pollutants, not greenhouse gasses.”

The Federal Reserve also be controlled by the White House. The Federal Communications Commission, which has the power to not only regulate but even shut down over-the-air radio and TV broadcasts that displease it, as well as wielding a largely today-unused power of censorship over cable TV and the internet would be controlled by the White House.

And the Federal Trade Commission, which has the power to grant billion-dollar favors or inflict severe punishments on companies, would lose their independence and be used to reward or destroy companies that have earned the favor or opposition of the president.

Russell Vought, a member of the Project 2025 advisory board, told The New York Times: “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them.”

Project 2025 should be a five-alarm fire bell for our republic. It has been explicitly embraced by both Trump and DeSantis - who sent senior advisor David Dewhirst to work on it. The contents of the plan are regularly invoked by Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley.

The plan says the new administration should “reexamine” the tradition of providing work space for the press corps and ensure the White House counsel is “deeply committed” to the president's agenda.

To push past senators who try to block presidential Cabinet nominees, Project 2025 proposes installing top allies in acting administrative roles, as was done during the Trump administration to bypass the Senate confirmation process.

The Heritage coalition is taking its recruitment efforts on the road, crisscrossing America to fill the federal jobs. They staffed the Iowa State Fair this month and signed up hundreds of people, and they’re building out a database of potential employees, inviting them to be trained in government operations.

When they tell you who they are, believe them.

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