If you want something to alarm you even more than you already are about a Trump victory, Google “Project 2025” and read the various articles that are posted on the internet about this effort, which has been quietly going on behind the scenes for years. The Heritage Foundation and other right wing, so called “think tanks” have been working during most of Biden’s term on a playbook for Trump’s hoped-for reelection this year. This effort has produced a 900+ page manual listing all the actions that should happen when and if Trump gets reelected. Here is what we can expect to happen if a second term President Trump follows Project 2025:

• Trump will announce in his inaugural speech that he is invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807, which allows the president to deploy the military to act as police to arrest and jail “insurrectionists,” which Trump will define as any group or individual he does not like. If there are any protestors at the inauguration, expect them to be arrested and jailed. Anyone involved in college campus protests regarding Gaza can also expect the slammer. Trump has already said that any general or military commander who does not follow his orders will be executed.
• He will announce that he is reclassifying high level civil servants as political appointees and will fire the ones on the Project 2025 enemies list, to be replaced by right wing sycophants, which the Heritage Foundation has been screening and recruiting for months. All of Trump’s top level advisors will be sycophants this time around. The guardrails will disappear.
• He will announce that beginning immediately, he will order the military to round up all undocumented immigrants and deport them, beginning with the “Dreamers.” This will take some time since they are estimated to number over 10 million, the vast majority hard working and committed citizens. Huge, guarded tent encampments will be constructed in Texas and border states to imprison the immigrants while the deportation process is underway, and which could take years.
• Project 2025 spells out the process for slashing funding for the Department of Justice, dismantling the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security , gutting environmental and climate change regulations in favor of fossil fuel production, eliminating the departments of Education and Commerce, and ending the independence of various federal agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.
• The plan calls for making virtually all abortions illegal including the use of all abortion pills that are accessed through the mail.
• Project 2025 directs the government to recognize only heterosexual men and women, rescind anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ individuals, and eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion provisions from federal legislation.

And this is just the beginning. The goal is for Trump to have complete autocracy in all matters. The United States will become a dictatorship flying under the banner of Christian nationalism. Term limits for the president would likely disappear, and the only consolation is that Trump probably would not be alive or healthy enough to seek a third term. There is not much in the plan regarding foreign policy but surely one of Trump’s first acts would be to get out of NATO and abandon Ukraine, maybe even get out of the UN. Russia would likely become an ally.

Of course, he will never be able to get away with all this. Afterall, we have three branches of government and a constitution. Our resilient democracy will fight back and withstand the onslaught. There is no way that a wannabe dictator like Trump could possibly pull this off. It could never happen, never.

Or could it?

Check out all the stuff on the internet about Project 2025 and fix yourself a stiff drink. You will need it.