Agenda 47: Trump’s Plan to Dismantle the Deep State and Return Power to the American People

 

Donald J. Trump announced a bold plan to return power back to the American people by cleaning out the Deep State, firing rogue bureaucrats and career politicians, and targeting government corruption.

This plan will also end the ongoing weaponization of the justice system that targets its political enemies simply because of their political or religious beliefs.

TRUMP’S PLAN TO SHATTER THE DEEP STATE AND RETURN POWER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

“I will shatter the Deep State and restore government that is controlled by the People.” - Donald J. Trump

CLEAN OUT THE DEEP STATE: Trump has announced a ten-point plan to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption:

1. On Day One, re-issue 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to fire rogue bureaucrats.

2. Overhaul federal departments and agencies, firing all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus.

3. Fundamentally reform the FISA courts, ensuring that corruption is rooted out.

4. Establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to declassify and publish all documents on Deep State spying, censorship, and abuses of power.

5. Launch a major crackdown on government leakers who collude with the media to create false narratives, pressing criminal charges when appropriate.

6. Make every Inspector General’s Office independent from the departments they oversee, so that they do not become protectors of the deep state.

7. Establish an independent auditing system to continually monitor our intelligence agencies to ensure that they are not spying on our citizens or running disinformation campaigns against the American people.

8. Continue Trump administration effort to move parts of the federal bureaucracy outside of the Washington Swamp, just like Trump moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado.

Up to 100,000 government positions could be moved out of Washington.

9. Ban federal bureaucrats from taking jobs at the companies they deal with and regulate, such as Big Pharma.

10. Push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress.

FIRE ROGUE BUREAUCRATS AND CAREER POLITICIANS: Trump’s plan will ensure that federal bureaucrats and politicians are held accountable to the American people.

Currently, removing corrupt or poor-performing federal workers is time consuming and cumbersome. Firing underperforming employees takes a year or longer and is often completely impossible.

One study found that over a ten-year period, federal employees were fired at a rate of less than one in one thousand per year.

Additionally, Congressional term limits are necessary to curb the rise of career politicians—the reelection rate for House members is 94% and over the past half century has not fallen below 80%. The re-election rate for the Senate in 2022 was 100% and has not fallen below 75% since 1982.

TARGET GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION: Trump’s plan targets the corruption that has plagued our federal government and harmed Americans.

The Biden administration has weaponized the FBI and DOJ to target conservatives, Christians, and their political enemies.

A leaked and since-withdrawn FBI memo recently revealed that FBI agents were likening traditional Catholics to “domestic terrorists.”

Bureaucrats from the FBI and DHS directly colluded with social media companies during the 2020 election to censor Americans’ speech.

During the Russia collusion hoax, government officials routinely selectively leaked information to the media to further their anti-Trump narrative.

The FISA Court process was corrupted by the Obama-Biden administration. In the leadup to the 2016 election, the FISA court issued multiple warrants to spy on members of the Trump campaign that were later declared invalid by the Justice Department Inspector General because the FBI made “material misstatements” in obtaining them.

The Justice Department’s Inspector General found that in their applications for FISA warrants, the FBI made 17 significant “errors” and “omissions.”

The Justice Department’s Inspector General found that the “central” piece of evidence the FISA warrants relied on was opposition research from the Clinton campaign.

An FBI lawyer admitted that he forged an email in an attempt to ensure that the Obama-Biden administration’s spying on the Trump campaign through FISA warrants could continue.

TRANSCRIPT

Here's my plan to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption once and for all, and corruption it is.

First, I will immediately re-issue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the President's authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. And I will wield that power very aggressively.

Second, we will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them. The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled so that faceless bureaucrats will never again be able to target and persecute conservatives, Christians, or the left's political enemies, which they're doing now at a level that nobody can believe even possible.

Third, we will totally reform FISA courts which are so corrupt that the judges seemingly do not care when they are lied to in warrant applications. So many judges have seen so many applications that they know were wrong, or at least they must have known. They do nothing about it, they're lied to.

Fourth, to expose the hoaxes and abuses of power that have been tearing our country apart, we will establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to declassify and publish all documents on Deep State spying, censorship, and corruption, and there are plenty of them.

Fifth, we will launch a major crackdown on government leakers who collude with the fake news to deliberately weave false narratives and to subvert our government and our democracy. When possible, we will press criminal charges.

Sixth, we will make every Inspector General's Office independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee so they do not become the protectors of the Deep State.

Seventh, I will ask Congress to establish an independent auditing system to continually monitor our intelligence agencies to ensure they are not spying on our citizens or running disinformation campaigns against the American people, or that they are not spying on someone's campaign like they spied on my campaign.

Eighth, we will continue the effort launched by the Trump administration to move parts of the sprawling federal bureaucracy to new locations outside the Washington Swamp. Just as I moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado, as many as 100,000 government positions can be moved out. And I mean immediately out of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America, and they really do love America.

Ninth, I will work to ban federal bureaucrats from taking jobs at the companies they deal with and that they regulate. So, they deal with these companies, and they regulate these companies and then they want to take jobs from these companies. Doesn't work that way—such a public display cannot go on and it's taking place all the time, like with Big Pharma.

Finally, I will push a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress.

This is how I will shatter the deep state and restore government that is controlled by the people and for the people.

Thank you very much.

 

"It’s prosecutor versus felon, champion of people’s rights versus misogynist, believer in democracy versus a man who would end your right to vote."

 

It’s already started. Kamala Harris isn’t even a week into the race, and there is misogyny everywhere. There is the deliberate, intentional misogyny Trump and his followers spew like Tennesse Congressman Tim Burchett calling Harris a “DEI hire.” There is the casual misogyny that many people, especially men, but also some women, seem to accept as obvious truths when they are not. The kind of attacks that we saw directed towards Hillary— “she’s shrill,” “she’s not likable”—and that we now see being directed toward the Vice President.

Much of it is irresponsible, unthinking commentary that, when injected into the bloodstream of the body politic, gives people an excuse not to vote for Kamala Harris without saying it’s her gender or her race that makes them uncomfortable. 

Galloway is a noted entrepreneur, a clinical marketing professor at NYU, and a popular podcaster. The son of a single, working mom, he should know better than writing, “We should be open to the notion that someone who is a great Senator, great AG and mediocre VP is best suited for an executive role.” My #SistersInLaw podcast co-host Kim Atkins Stohr was quick to push back. She wrote on Threads, “A backhand is still a backhand when wrapped in a compliment.”

The truth is, Harris has been anything but mediocre. When have we ever seen a vice president shine? The whole job description is to support the president and stay in the background. Harris has quietly and capably (and perhaps some of that quiet is the fault of the media for not devoting more coverage to her accomplishments) taken her place on the world stage. She has been a strong voice on abortion rights and civil rights. She has never embarrassed the president. It’s so easy for men to overlook the accomplishments of women.

But the sort of provocative compliment/attack Galloway lobbed, perhaps designed to draw attention to himself, is too dangerous in this pivotal moment in our democracy for a responsible person to engage in. I suggested that Galloway take advantage of the opportunity to rethink what he posted and be “open to the notion” that he’d gotten it wrong, using that as a springboard for taking a stand against this sort of casual misogyny and helping others understand what he’d gotten wrong here and how to do better.

As of the time I sent the newsletter out tonight, he hadn’t responded.

Of course, I don’t expect he will. But thousands of people saw his comment, Kim’s response, and my response, along with the over 1,000 others who took a moment to write about it. That’s what we all must do now, not just on social media but in real life. That’s where voters form their ideas and make decisions about whether to vote and who to vote for.

Yesterday, Donald Trump said you won’t have to vote anymore if he’s reelected. I’m not sure how much starker the difference between the candidates could be. This video is too important to read the caption and keep going. Watch it. And then play it for all your friends who think you’re exaggerating when you say Trump is a threat to democracy.

Trump is speaking at an event for his “beautiful Christians.” He tells them they only have to vote this one time because it will be “fixed” in four years, and they won’t have to vote again.

You can’t make this stuff up, and Democrats aren’t, because the threat Trump poses to democracy is real. Prepare to hear the usual excuses from his team: that he doesn’t really mean what you just plainly heard him say. How many times has he gotten away with saying it was a joke or that he was misunderstood? If Americans don’t believe him, there is no one to blame but us. 

Remember when he told the country in no uncertain terms ahead of the 2020 election that he wouldn’t accept the results if he lost? This is how Trump operates. He wasn’t able to override the outcome when Americans voted against him. We should expect him to play dirty in the fall and believe him when he says Americans won’t need to vote again, ever, if he gets into office.

Too many Americans aren’t focused on the realities of this race yet. After the election is too late. This is the moment to do what you need to do: to inform, to converse, to relentlessly badger if necessary. No one, no one, should have an excuse for succumbing to misogyny or to racism given the choice in front of us. 

We each have a personal role to play in making sure that doesn’t happen, and the stakes are far too high to be polite, avoid making waves, or do the easiest thing and turn a blind eye. Be the voice that calls this out as the danger to democracy that it is.

It’s prosecutor versus felon, champion of people’s rights versus misogynist, believer in democracy versus a man who would end your right to vote. Will the country really going to give into the tropes about Black women and reelect Trump?

Justice Alito, in his majority opinion in the Dobbs, the case that ended abortion rights, wrote, “Women are not without electoral or political power.” He, of course, didn’t really mean it. He just wanted us to go fly our upside-down flags. But it’s time. It’s time for women and the men who care about them and for all of us to take advantage of our power to make sure that the Donald Trumps and the Samuel Alitos of the world know that we are not going back.

Thanks for being here at Civil Discourse and for being part of a larger community that is committed to keeping the Republic. I truly appreciate those of you whose subscriptions make it possible for me to commit the time and resources it takes to do this work. We have lots more to understand about Project 2025. There are important legal and practical issues around registering to vote, staying registered, voting, and making sure your vote counts. We’re going to take them all on.

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

 

Dear West: Your "Age of Monsters" Has Begun

 

Antonio Gramsci was not a professional philosopher. His intellect was refreshingly situated within an inherent bias towards the common people, the ‘subaltern’ classes, particularly the working class.

He argued that all people are essentially intellectuals, in the sense that all people possess the intellectual faculties for rational thinking and deduction, though “not all men have in society the function of intellectuals”.

Thus, intellectualism should not exist for its own sake, but as a direct response to the collective needs of society. In the same way that change in society is driven by class struggles, intellectuals are also involved in similar struggles, which are intrinsically linked to the cultural, ideological or political spheres.

There are two kinds of intellectuals who define each period of human history, according to the anti-fascist Italian intellectual: traditional intellectuals – often agents of bygone eras who continue to command some kind of influence over society; and organic intellectuals, who are the natural yield of the collective experiences of their own classes.

The latter group matters most. Quite often Gramsci’s ‘organic intellectual’ is misconstrued to reflect a positive connotation. In fact, any class, even domineering, powerful classes that represent the interests of the few, can have their own ‘organic intellectuals’, as do the oppressed classes.

Theoretically, each group of intellectuals is on a mission to achieve a degree of cultural hegemony – ‘predominance by consent’. When a specific class commands a dominant intellectual and moral leadership over society, in parallel, it also achieves a form of political, economic and cultural hegemony, which naturally leads to popular consent.

Consent, over time, becomes ‘common sense’, popular attitudes over long periods of time that render them to be permanent, uncontested truths. This ‘philosophy of the popular masses’ is, on its own, neither good nor bad. It is a predictable outcome of the protracted influence of hegemonic cultural forces, in addition to folklore, superstitions and the like.

Instead of dismissing ‘common sense’ as an irrelevant social construct, Gramsci believes that it can be rehabilitated into ‘good sense’, because every common sense embodies its own ‘healthy nucleus’.

Though principled to the core, Gramsci believed in exploiting all venues that would allow organic intellectuals, those who represent the oppressed, marginalized and the working class, to achieve the required cultural hegemony needed for lasting change in society.

He believed in critical engagement within all groups that may possess that healthy nucleus, which would convert common sense into ‘good sense,’ through a process of ‘contradictory consciousness’.

Yet, the process towards a fundamental change in society should never be expected to be an easy one. Monumental changes often occur following periods of massive breakdowns – the Interregnum – where “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.”

Gramsci, a brilliant, working-class organic intellectual, died young, soon after his release from a fascist prison in Italy, in 1937.

His vision about society, culture and politics, however, will always remain relevant, because he developed his ideas through direct engagement with society and was himself involved in the struggle, which cost him nine years in prison.

I find it important to reflect on Gramsci’s understanding of the process of change in society due to the ongoing chaos underway in various western countries: the fragmentation of the so-called liberal order, the potential return of Donald Trump’s popular politics, the rise of the far right, the intensifying war on refugees, migrants and other marginalized groups, and more.

Though it is convenient to, once again, blame a single individual, political party or ideology for everything that is going wrong, the truth is far more complex.

True, Emmanuel Macron is a poor compromise in a highly polarized French society, which has been inching closer towards far-right fascism for years.

It is also true that Rishi Sunak and the Tories proved to be but a duplicate of other self-serving politicians who invested more in fortifying their power and influence than in achieving any degree of social justice in Britain.

It is particularly true that US Democrats have spent far more time smearing the Right’s bogeyman, Trump, than in confronting fundamental problems in their economy or truly fixing foreign policy blunders of the past.

There are many other such truths that may imply easy fixes to supposedly singular problems. But the crisis in the West is much deeper than the mistakes of an opportunistic politician or a senile candidate. It is rather a crisis of ‘good sense’.

The ‘common sense’, whether real or imaginary, which unified the west for decades, starting soon after WWII, no longer truly represents common, shared values.

Each side in the ongoing polarization has invested in its own ‘common sense’, making a claim to its own ‘cultural hegemony’ without ever achieving the required ‘predominance by consent’.

The vast lack of trust in the ‘system’ becomes the only result of intellectual polarization.

Meanwhile, the ‘subaltern’ groups remain marginalized and, in some cases, completely irrelevant. This leads to political breakdowns, cultural paralysis and, ultimately, outright conflict.

This potential all-out conflict is Gramsci’s Interregnum – the old’s final fight for relevance, and the lack of powerful new forces that could serve as alternatives. This is also known as the ‘age of monsters’.

The West has already entered this phase, the consequences of which are already felt, not just in the west, but all across the world, from Ukraine to Palestine and beyond.  

-CounterPunch

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

“[O]urs is a fight for the future, and it is a fight for freedom…." -Vice President Kamala Harris

 

Vice President Kamala Harris continues her momentum toward the 2024 presidential election since President Joe Biden’s surprise announcement on Sunday that he would not accept the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. 

Yesterday, more than 350 national security leaders endorsed Harris for president, noting that if elected president, “she would enter that office with more significant national security experience than the four Presidents prior to President Biden.” As vice president, she “has met with more than 150 world leaders and traveled to 21 countries,” the authors wrote, and they called out her work across the globe from her work strengthening partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region to her historic trip to Africa and her efforts to expand U.S. relationships with nations in the Caribbean and North Central America. In contrast to Harris, the letter said, “Trump is a threat to America’s national security.” 

Those signing the letter included former Central Intelligence Agency director Michael Hayden, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, national security advisors Susan Rice and Thomas Donilon, former secretaries of defense Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, and former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. 

In a New York Times op-ed yesterday, former secretary of state Clinton praised Biden for his “decision to end his campaign,” which she called “as pure an act of patriotism as I have seen in my lifetime.” She went on to say that Vice President Harris “represents a fresh start for American politics,” offering a vision of an America with its best days ahead of it and, rather than “old grievances,” “new solutions.”

Clinton noted that her own political campaigns had seen her burned in effigy, but said, “It is a trap to believe that progress is impossible” and that Americans cannot overcome sexism and racism. After all, she pointed out, voters elected Black American Barack Obama in 2008, and she herself won the popular vote in 2016. “[A]bortion bans and attacks on democracy are galvanizing women voters like never before,” Clinton wrote, and “[w]ith Ms. Harris at the top of the ticket leading the way, this movement may become an unstoppable wave.”

Yesterday, Harris held her first campaign rally, speaking to supporters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the Republicans held their national convention just last week. The energy from the 3000 people packed into the gym where she walked out to Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” was palpable. 

She began by thanking Biden and touting his record, then turned to noting that in her past as a prosecutor, California attorney general, U.S. senator from California, and vice president, she “took on perpetrators of all kinds—predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So,” she said, “hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.” She went on to remind the audience that Trump ran a for-profit college that scammed students, was found liable for committing sexual abuse, and “was just found guilty of fraud on 34 counts.” 

While Trump is relying on “billionaires and big corporations,” she said, “we are running a people-powered campaign” and “will be a people-first presidency.” The Democrats, she said, “believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by but to get ahead; a future where no child has to grow up in poverty; where every worker has the freedom to join a union; where every person has affordable health care, affordable childcare, and paid family leave. We believe in a future where every senior can retire with dignity.”

“[A]ll of this is to say,” she continued, “Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. Because…when our middle class is strong, America is strong.”

In contrast, she said, Trump wants to take the country backward. She warned that he and his Project 2025 will “weaken the middle class,” cutting Social Security and Medicare and giving “tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations,” while “working families foot the bill.” “They intend to end the Affordable Care Act,” she said, “and take us back…to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with preexisting conditions…. Remember what that was like? Children with asthma, women who survived breast cancer, grandparents with diabetes. America has tried these failed economic policies before, but we are not going back. We’re not going back.”  

“[O]urs is a fight for the future,” she said “And it is a fight for freedom…. Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom.  And now…the baton is in our hands.”   

Meanwhile, MAGA Republicans are still scrambling for a plan of attack against Harris. One of their first angles has been the sexism and racism Clinton predicted, calling her “a DEI hire.” House Republican leaders have told fellow lawmakers to dial back the sexist and racist attacks. 

MAGA Republican representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) has taken a different angle: he introduced an impeachment resolution against Harris, while others are demanding that the House should investigate Harris and demand the Cabinet remove President Biden under the 25th Amendment. The Republican National Committee has decided to make fun of Harris’s laugh.

But concern in the Trump camp showed today when Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio shared with reporters a “confidential memorandum” trying to get ahead of polls he says will show Harris leading Trump. He said he expects to see a “Harris Honeymoon” that will end quickly. 

Trump has continued to post angrily on his social media feed but is otherwise sticking close to home. His lack of visibility highlights that the Republicans are now on the receiving end of the same age and coherence concerns they had used against Biden, and there might be more attention paid to Trump’s lapses now that Biden has stepped aside. CNN’s Kate Sullivan noted today, for example, that “Trump said he’d consider Jamie Dimon for Treasury secretary, but now says he doesn’t know who said that.” 

As Tim Alberta noted Sunday in The Atlantic, the Trump campaign tapped J.D. Vance in an attempt to harden the Republican base, only to find now that he cannot bring to the ticket any of the new supporters they suddenly need. 

According to Harry Enten of CNN, Vance is the first vice presidential pick since 1980 who has entered the race with a negative favorability rating: in his case, –6 points. Since 2000, the usual average is +19 points. Vance won his Senate seat in 2022 by +6 points in an election Republican governor Mike DeWine won by +25 points. Vance “was the worst performing Republican candidate in 2022 up and down the ballot in the state of Ohio,” Enten said. “The J.D. Vance pick makes no sense from a statistical polling perspective.”

Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who specializes in focus groups, noted that swing voters groups “simply do not like” Vance. “Both his flip flopping on Trump and his extreme abortion position are what breaks through,” she wrote. 

The 2024 election is not consuming all of the political oxygen, even in this astonishing week. Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that eight large companies must turn over information about the data they collect about consumers, product sales, and how the surveillance the companies used affected consumer prices. 

“Firms that harvest Americans’ personal data can put people’s privacy at risk. Now firms could be exploiting this vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices,” FTC chair Lina M. Khan said. “Americans deserve to know whether businesses are using detailed consumer data to deploy surveillance pricing, and the FTC’s inquiry will shed light on this shadowy ecosystem of pricing middlemen.”

The eight companies are: Mastercard, Revionics, Bloomreach, JPMorgan Chase, Task Software, PROS, Accenture, and McKinsey & Co.

In the House, Republicans have been unable to pass the appropriations bills necessary to fund the 2025 U.S. budget, laced as they are with culture-wars poison pills the extremists demand. Today House members debated the appropriations bill for the Interior Department and the Environment which, among other things, bans the use of funds “to promote or advance critical race theory” or to require Covid-19 masks or vaccine mandates. 

According to the European climate service Copernicus, last Sunday was the hottest day in recorded history. The MAGA Republicans’ appropriations bill for Interior and the Environment calls for more oil drilling, fewer regulations on pollutants, no new regulations on vehicles, rejecting Biden’s climate change executive orders, and reducing the funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by 20%. 

-Heather Cox Richardson

Notes:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/07/23/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-at-a-political-event-10/

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/23/politics/kfile-jd-vance-believed-donald-trump-sexual-assault-allegations-2016/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/23/politics/video/jd-vance-data-ebof-digvid-enten

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/23/gop-race-comments-harris-00170735

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/07/23/kamala-harris-foreign-policy-endorsement/

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4788663-andy-ogles-impeachment-articles-kamala-harris/

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/republican-leaders-urge-colleagues-steer-clear-racist-sexist-112216267

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/23/opinion/kamala-harris-donald-trump.html

https://cdn.nucleusfiles.com/9f/9f5bada8-1641-4603-83ad-2e5ef9c481fb/7-23-24-harris-honeymoon.pdf

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4788574-trump-polls-harris-honeymoon-biden-2024/

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/07/ftc-issues-orders-eight-companies-seeking-information-surveillance-pricing

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/23/ftc-launches-probe-into-surveillance-pricing.html

https://apnews.com/article/hottest-day-climate-change-heat-wave-warming-71e3e9d1fbfdc8503ef36eabec9390bd

https://appropriations.house.gov/news/press-releases/committee-approves-fy25-interior-environment-and-related-agencies

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/kamala-harris-biden-trump-election-07-23-24

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/07/trump-campaign-biden-dropping-out/679183/

X:

SarahLongwell25/status/1815724143939084597

MacFarlaneNews/status/1815841590964892159

RNCResearch/status/1815818534200697037