Bracing for Trump
Terry H. Schwadron
April 5, 2024
It’s noticeable that there are a steady number of reports now about defenses being erected to halt or slow policy changes being planned for a possible Donald Trump victory in November.
Over the last months, the Trump campaign has embraced the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, work that started a couple of years ago towards providing a returned Trump with actionable plans to impose an ideological framework on governing, should he be elected. Elements include specific anti-immigration proposals, links between the White House and the Justice Department, replacement of many federal Civil Service employees to unseat “the deep state,” and legitimize use of rules to use military troops in law enforcement, among others.
It’s not hidden. Trump and his advisers talk about it, Republican candidates embrace it, there are a ton of website articles about Project 2025’s different aspects.
What’s new is that the Joe Biden administration is moving prophylactically to block various elements from taking effect, an effort based largely on administrative rule changes that may be futile, since they can be overridden by any incoming administration. Efforts by Democratic lawmakers to address protections have gone nowhere in a split Congress.
Targeting Civil Service Employees
Just yesterday, for example, the administration was creating final procedural rules that would restrict presidents from unilaterally eliminating Civil Service protections from large swaths of the federal workforce, Project 2025 recommends for Trump. An elected Trump seeks to seed the workforce with political loyalists by changing the employment status of layers of federal workers to “exempt,” leaving them vulnerable to replacement.
The new rule changes establish procedural hurdles for any incoming president from doing that easily or without challenge.
But more widely, there is effort underway to block Project 2025 recommendations and Trump policy changes altogether.
In Congress, members of the now-disbanded House Select Jan. 6 Committee were reported to be lawyering up and moving to protect staff work in anticipation that a Trump Justice Department will target their questioning of election undercutting work.
The efforts to forestall implementation of Trump policies over abortion and immigration are getting wide coverage, as is the constant repetition of a lack of a health plan should Trump follow through on eliminating the Affordable Care Act.
Project 2025 insists that Democrats are overreacting to climate change reports and advise gutting any number of projects and policies being pursued, while Biden is busily addressing technical aspects of truck emissions to speed acceptance of electric vehicles.
European nations are preparing for a Trump presidency that may require rethinking the NATO alliance over Trump’s repeated threats to withdraw enthusiasm or support.
Undermining Civil Rights
The most recent such pullback is descrived in an Axios.com report about recommendations to a Trump administration on upending Civil Rights policies to focus on “anti-white racism” rather than discrimination against people of color.
Trump allies want to dramatically change the government’s interpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to eliminate or upend programs in government and corporate America in the name of “race neutrality,” in effect dropping enforcement of rules to help people of color. According to Axios, targets would range from policies aimed at giving minorities economic opportunities, to policing and justice programs that began in response to the pandemic and the police killing of George Floyd.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told Axios: “As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to Biden’s un-American policy will be immediately terminated.”
America First Legal, founded by former Trump aide Stephen Miller, has been filing lawsuits using a flipped version of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to promote the argument that the point should be to protect white, straight hiring or advancement. These include a case against CBS and Paramount Global over hiring of a writer, against the NFL’s rule to require interviews with at least two minority candidates for vacant general manager, head coach and coordinator positions, and a successful suit to block implementation of a project for women- and minority-owned restaurants, saying it discriminated against white-owned businesses.
Project 2025 advocates ending what it calls “affirmative discrimination,” arguing that advancing the interest of women and minorities “comes at the expense of other Americans — and in nearly all cases violates longstanding federal law.”
Changing Legal Environment
Of course, these recommended policy changes come as the Supreme Court has shifted more conservative with appointment of three justices by Trump. That court has overturned precedent by rejecting affirmative action in college admissions and by blocking a federal program that would benefit Black farmers,
Last month, a federal judge ruled that the Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency was discriminating against white people and that the program had to be open to everyone.
Trump has been vocal in asserting that “Every institution in America is under attack from this Marxist concept of ‘equity.’ I will get this extremism out of the White House, out of the military, out of the Justice Department, and out of our government.” Personally, Trump has attacked prosecutors in his various court cases, calling women like Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and New York Attorney General Letitia James “racist.”
Axios noted that a CBS poll last November found that 58% of Trump voters believe that people of color were advantaged over white people — just 9% of Biden voters said the same. Polls also show Trump gaining support among Black and Latino voters, mostly out of belief that Trump would do better with economic issues.
Through groups like Heritage Foundation and America First Legal, Trump is making clear his has an ideological agenda. The news is that Democrats are starting to build administrative defenses.
Except for the election, it’s all playing out beyond open discussions we would expect in a democracy.
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