Trump Allies’ Horrifying Plan to Undo Democracy for Good

New details have emerged of plans by Trump allies to dismantle democracy under a second Trump administration by packing the Department of Justice with Trump loyalists and shrinking the independent scope of the FBI. The plans, as detailed by Reuters, seek to craft a DOJ to advance conservative agendas, heavily curtail civil liberties, and impede investigations into corruption by Trump and his allies.

The plans laid out by Trump allies to convert the FBI into a politically charged conservative attack dog come from the authoritarian aspirations of Project 2025, a sprawling network led by conservative think tanks that comb through existing law to find loopholes and precedent for Trump—or any conservative president—to enact extreme right-wing policies and consolidate power at a moment’s notice.

Trump allies plan to nuke consent decrees, a sort of contractual oversight agreement between the Department of Justice and local police departments, to curb civil rights abuses. They also want to downgrade the FBI’s access to the attorney general, instead making the FBI head report to two politically installed assistant attorneys general.

Steve Bradbury, who served as transportation secretary under Trump and who spoke with Reuters about these plans, claimed in backward fashion that the DOJ acting independently from the president’s wishes poses a “recipe for abuse of power.”

“Whenever you have power centers ... that have enormous resources, coercive power and investigative tools at their disposal, and they are presumed to be independent of any control down the chain of command from the president, that is a recipe for abuse of power,” Bradbury told Reuters.

Conservatives have long called to dismantle the FBI following investigations into Russian collusion with Trump’s 2016 campaign and indictments by the DOJ of participants in the January 6 Capitol riot. Trump allies want to reduce the scope of the FBI’s investigative authority, leaving the department to focus solely on “large-scale crimes and threats to national security,” from which insurrection and sedition by conservatives are, naturally, excluded. A January report by the National Institute of Justice found far-right extremism has continued to outpace all other forms of domestic terrorism since 1990.

Plans to dramatically alter the DOJ to act as an extension of conservative ambitions rather than an independent agency follow a similar pattern to Trump’s overhaul of the Supreme Court and packing conservative judges throughout the federal circuit as president—changes that led to the overturning of Roe after Trump left office and a continuation of attacks on LGBTQ+ freedoms and civil rights today. If reelected, Trump’s allies would replicate that process at the Department of Justice.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s ballot drive in Texas may have unintended consequences for a Lone Star politician seeking reelection: Senator Ted Cruz.

While Kennedy is still working to get his name on the ballot for the presidential race, pollsters predict that his mere presence will summon more voters to the booth come November—voters who won’t necessarily join Cruz’s camp when they see his name elsewhere on the ballot. Instead, experts predict that voters who turn out for Kennedy will more likely support Democratic Representative Colin Allred, Cruz’s opponent in the November race.

“This is definitely not good for Cruz,” Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, told The Hill. “Kennedy’s presence on the ballot could actually help Democrats.”

Kennedy’s campaign announced earlier this week that more than twice as many people as required—some 245,000 Texans—had provided signatures to get him onto the ballot.

“If you can get on in Texas, you can get on everywhere,” Kennedy said at a campaign rally.

The demographic likely to turn out for the 70-year-old independent candidate includes both Democratic and Republican voters, meaning Kennedy is expected to pull support from President Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But Kennedy’s camp also, surprisingly, includes a swath of young voters who historically don’t participate in elections—but their presence this year could reshape Texas politics.

“RFK Jr. is likely to mobilize a group of voters to turn out and vote in the presidential race who, absent his presidency, would not have participated,” Jones told The Hill. “Once those voters are through casting a vote in the first race as president, they’re going to start to go down the ballot.”

On Thursday night, a House Oversight Committee hearing on whether to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt quickly went off the rails, thanks to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene insulting Representative Jasmine Crockett’s appearance.

The hearing was taking place because Garland refused to turn over recordings between President Biden and special counsel Robert Hur. Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat and the committee’s ranking member, was making opening remarks, before being repeatedly interrupted by Greene. In one such interruption, Greene asked if any Democrats on the committee were employing the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over Donald Trump’s hush-money trial.

“Please tell me what that has to do with Merrick Garland,” Crockett said, and Raskin remarked, “Is she a porn star?” to Greene’s question, referencing adult film actress Stormy Daniels at the center of Trump’s case.

“You know what we’re here for,” Greene said, and, speaking over Crockett, added, “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” to loud groans and protests in the room.

“That’s beneath even you, Ms. Greene,” Raskin said, as Committee Chair James Comer tried and failed to call for order. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quickly moved to have Greene’s words stricken from the congressional record.

“That is absolutely unacceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez said loudly. “How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person!”

“Are your feelings hurt?” Greene retorted, to which Ocasio-Cortez replied, “Baby girl, don’t even play.”

Greene refused to apologize for her insult to Crockett, and in response, Greene’s words were not taken down. Greene continued to argue with Ocasio-Cortez, asking to debate her, before insulting the New York congresswoman’s intelligence. But then, Crockett asked for a point of order.

“I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling: If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blonde, bad built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?” Crockett asked aloud, drawing audible laughs, a smirk from Raskin, and visible confusion from Comer, who did not understand what was going on.

Watch the whole sequence below:

In a tweet later in the evening, Crockett called out Greene for refusing to apologize and Comer for allowing her remarks.

“This is what happens when mentally deficient people who can’t read and follow rules or just don’t give a damn … somehow end up in CONGRESS!” Crockett posted.

Procedural matters over interruptions would slow things down considerably, and at one point, Republican Representative Lauren Boebert, who has feuded with Greene, voted with Democrats against a motion to allow Greene to speak. The chaotic atmosphere even seemed to spill over just outside the hearing.

“We have some members in the room who are drinking inside the hearing room … who are not on this committee,” complained Representative Melanie Stansbury.

The hearing would eventually conclude, with the committee voting to hold Garland in contempt. For Greene, Thursday night’s events may have hurt standing with her fellow Republicans even further, as she has already drawn her colleagues’ ire for her failed attempt to oust Speaker Mike Johnson. For Republicans themselves, it’s the latest example of a party and caucus in poor health, ruled by chaos.

All rise for the honorable wife blamer: In cowardly fashion, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is blaming his wife for an upside-down American flag that flew outside the couple’s home in January 2021 ahead of Biden’s inauguration, a prominent symbol among the anti-government far-right and which experts say is a clear violation of ethics rules against bias.

In a story first reported by The New York Times on Thursday, the Alitos flew the inverted flag outside their home for “several days” in January 2021, with neighbors photographing it on January 17 and discussing its enduring presence on January 18. While the exact dates it was flown are unknown, the flag flew between the January 6 Capitol riot—where pro-Trump conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists waved that same flag—and the January 20 presidential inauguration of Joe Biden.

Long used as a naval distress symbol, the inverted flag has occasionally been used in anti-war and anti-fascist protests. Now, it most commonly appears among the anti-government far-right—a somewhat ironic choice for the home of a Supreme Court justice, whose work directly influences how the government operates. In January 2021, it was a prominent symbol during the “Stop the Steal” protests against the certification of the presidential election as Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol.

Justice Alito said the flag was part of a passive-aggressive dispute between his wife, in dire need of a hobby, and their neighbors, who had placed an “anti-Trump sign with an expletive” on their lawn. But that fails to justify what judicial experts say is a clear violation of SCOTUS’s ethics rules, which prohibit even a whiff of bias.

“It might be his spouse or someone else living in his home, but he shouldn’t have it in his yard as his message to the world,” said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, in an interview with the Times.

The conservative justice previously took an undisclosed luxury fishing trip in 2008 with a Republican billionaire donor who later presented cases to the Supreme Court, apparently in violation of federal law. The corruption-inclined Clarence Thomas and his election denialist wife must be so proud of their little protégés.

In the three years since the flag flew, the Alitos had plenty of time to come up with a better excuse. Claiming it was placed there by an outside agitator would be an easy fan favorite with conservatives. Or they could have claimed they just didn’t realize they put it upside-down because when they were affixing it to the pole a rabid squirrel jumped out of a bush and started attacking them and they were so they just put it up and ran away and were too afraid of the squirrel to leave their house for several days. Sky’s the limit when you’re a judge on the highest court in the land accountable to practically no one with a wife far too invested in wackadoo conspiracy theories.

Donald Trump basically did the prosecution’s work for them while ad libbing outside the courthouse of his New York hush-money trial, admitting that he did, actually, have an NDA with porn actress Stormy Daniels.

“Andrew McCarthy: NDAs are legal and common. Yet, Bragg alleges Trump’s was illegal,” Trump read off a sheet of paper Thursday, quoting Andrew McCarthy in the National Review before facetiously inserting a telling line: “I have the only illegal NDA.”

Trump then continued to react to lines from McCarthy’s online blog post.

“‘It seems that Trump’s crime by blue state lights was winning the election.’ That was my crime. I won an election that I wasn’t supposed to win against Hillary Clinton. And that’s not a crime,” Trump said.

Trump’s attorneys have attempted to argue that the funds to pay off Daniels came exclusively from his fixer, Michael Cohen, and that Trump had zero awareness of the actual payments. Cohen, for his part, has repeatedly outed Trump as a “micromanager” who was aware of his every move, telling the court on Monday that the pair spoke “every single day, and multiple times a day.” And, if they weren’t able to communicate one-on-one, Cohen said he would often communicate with Trump via one of his other close confidants, including his former assistant Rhona Graff, Trump Organization employee turned director of Oval Office operations Keith Schiller, Trump’s children, or Hope Hicks.

Other witnesses in the criminal trial have also pointed to Trump as the obvious and understood originator of the hush-money payments, even if it wasn’t explicitly mentioned to them at the time.

The Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.