https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/opin ... =url-share
Aug. 3, 2022
By Thomas B. Edsall
Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.
As he contemplates a third straight run for the presidency, Donald Trump has a multimillion-dollar political machine and a network of tax-exempt advocacy groups at his disposal. He also has a plan. The plan is to wrest control of the federal government from what he sees as a policy apparatus dominated by “radical left-wing Democrats.”
While many in Washington were arguing (or hoping) that Trump was fading, Trump himself outlined his agenda for a second term in a speech at the America First Policy Institute last week:
In the same speech, Trump announced his intention to enact legislation granting the president authority to send in the National Guard in the case of violent protests by Black Lives Matter or other groups:To drain the swamp and root out the deep state, we need to make it much easier to fire rogue bureaucrats who are deliberately undermining democracy, or at a minimum just want to keep their jobs. They want to hold on to their jobs. Congress should pass historic reforms, empowering the president to ensure that any bureaucrat who is corrupt, incompetent or unnecessary for the job can be told — did you ever hear this? — “You’re fired? Get out. You’re fired.”
Where there is a true and total breakdown of law and order where citizens’ most basic rights have been violated, then the federal government can and should send the National Guard to restore order and secure the peace without having to wait for the approval of some governor that thinks it’s politically incorrect to call them in. When governors refuse to protect their people, we need to bring in what’s necessary anyway. We have to go beyond the governor.