🧵 via Joyce Vance: 1/...

There's a story about Ben Franklin emerging from the Constitutional Convention & telling a woman who asked what type of government they’d created, “a Republic, if you can keep it.” The #2024election is the moment where we find out if we can.

If #Trump wins in 2024, we lose the Republic. That’s not drama, and that’s not overstatement. That’s what Trump is promising. It's what he's been working on since at least October of 2020.

2/ WaPo reported on Trump’s plans for 2nd term... It starts like this:

"Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations."

3/ It sounds positively Stalinist. most frightening thing about this, to my mind, is that it’s not new. People simply aren’t paying attention. In Oct 2020, before the last election, Trump was already taking steps in this direction.

Trump signed executive order making a change in civil service rules that made it possible to fire employees in policy positions “at will”—for no reason at all. It was too far in the weeds to resonate with folks, when everyone was focused on the upcoming election.

4/ The order undid the pesky civil service protections that made it impossible to fire FBI agents who were investigating Trump or government lawyers who insisted he play be the rules. It was a harbinger of Trump’s plans for 2025. One of Biden's 1st steps was rescinding it.

5/ By summer of 2022, there was reporting top Trump allies were working on plans to radically reshape the executive branch of the federal government if Trump won in 2024. They were preparing to purge career federal civil servants and lining up Trump loyalists to replace them.

6/ Also mentioned, a plan for putting down any protests against Trump using the military. It’s the stuff of banana republics. It’s a menu for the end of democracy.
'Draft an executive order to permit the military to be deployed in the United States pursuant to the Insurrection Act. That would permit soldiers to be used against the protests that would be certain to break out if Trump were reelected ... (more...)

7/ '...-Jeffrey Clark, who is reported to be leading this work, was warned in the last days of the Trump administration by a deputy White House counsel that if Trump refused to leave office there would be "riots in every major city." Clark replied, according to the Special Counsel's indictment, "That's why there's an Insurrection Act."'.

8/ Trump’s campaign spokesman declined to respond to the Post story: “Trump is focused on crushing his opponents in the primary election & then going on to beat Crooked Joe Biden,” & “Trump has always stood for law & order & protecting the Constitution.” It reminds me of Judge Engoron’s courtroom: if a witness refuses to answer a direct question, the judge can draw a negative inference from that failure & conclude the witness isn’t answering because the answer would be damaging to him.

9/ Donald Trump plainly wants to end democracy. That’s not being alarmist, it’s just the truth. as we head into the election, I hope you'll sign up for my Newsletter, Civil Discourse. Let's work together to keep the Republic.