Since beginning his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump has said the “termination” of the Constitution would have been justified to overturn the 2020 election, told followers “I am your retribution” and vowed to use the Justice Department to prosecute his adversaries — starting with President Biden and his family.
Beneath these public threats is a series of plans by Mr. Trump and his allies that would upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he regains the White House.
Some of these themes trace back to the final period of Mr. Trump’s term in office. By that stage, his key advisers had learned how to more effectively wield power and Mr. Trump had fired officials who resisted some of his impulses and replaced them with loyalists. Then he lost the 2020 election and was cast out of power.
Since leaving office, Mr. Trump’s advisers and allies at a network of well-funded groups have advanced policies, created lists of potential personnel and started shaping new legal scaffolding — laying the groundwork for a second Trump presidency they hope will commence on Jan. 20, 2025.
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In a vague statement, two top officials on Mr. Trump’s campaign have sought to distance his campaign team from some of the plans being developed by Mr. Trump’s outside allies, groups led by former senior Trump administration officials who remain in direct contact with him. The statement called news reports about the campaign’s personnel and policy intentions “purely speculative and theoretical.”
The plans described here generally derive from what Mr. Trump has trumpeted on the campaign trail, what has appeared on his campaign website and interviews with Trump advisers, including some who spoke with The New York Times at the request of the campaign.
Allies of Mr. Trump have also been developing an intellectual blueprint to cast aside the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department investigatory independence from White House political direction.
Foreshadowing such a move, Mr. Trump had already violated norms in his 2016 campaign by promising to “lock up” his opponent, Hillary Clinton, over her use of a private email server. While president, he repeatedly told aides he wanted the Justice Department to indict his political enemies, including officials he had fired such as James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director. The Justice Department opened various such investigations but did not bring charges — infuriating Mr. Trump and leading to a split in 2020 with his attorney general, William P. Barr.
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Bolstered by agents reassigned from other law enforcement agencies, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement would carry out sweeping raids aimed at deporting millions of people each year — an order of magnitude more than previous administrations, including his own.
Under the plan, military funds would be used to erect sprawling camps to hold undocumented detainees. A public-health emergency law would be invoked to shut down asylum requests by people arriving at the border. And the government would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents.
To make domestically produced goods more competitive in the U.S. market, he is planning to impose a new so-called universal baseline tariff, meaning an import tax on “most imported goods.” That would raise costs for U.S. consumers and for manufacturers that buy foreign goods. It would also risk alienating allies and could ignite a global trade war if other countries respond with retaliatory tariffs targeting U.S. exports.
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Mr. Trump started a trade war with China in 2018. While the Biden administration has kept in place the tariffs Mr. Trump imposed then, Mr. Trump now wants to go much further in spurring an economic conflict between the world’s two largest economies, which exchanged $758 billion in goods and services last year. He plans to “enact aggressive new restrictions on Chinese ownership” of assets in the United States, bar Americans from investing in China and phase in a ban on importing key categories of Chinese-made goods like electronics, steel and pharmaceuticals.
Beneath these public threats is a series of plans by Mr. Trump and his allies that would upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he regains the White House.
Some of these themes trace back to the final period of Mr. Trump’s term in office. By that stage, his key advisers had learned how to more effectively wield power and Mr. Trump had fired officials who resisted some of his impulses and replaced them with loyalists. Then he lost the 2020 election and was cast out of power.
Since leaving office, Mr. Trump’s advisers and allies at a network of well-funded groups have advanced policies, created lists of potential personnel and started shaping new legal scaffolding — laying the groundwork for a second Trump presidency they hope will commence on Jan. 20, 2025.
Advertisement
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In a vague statement, two top officials on Mr. Trump’s campaign have sought to distance his campaign team from some of the plans being developed by Mr. Trump’s outside allies, groups led by former senior Trump administration officials who remain in direct contact with him. The statement called news reports about the campaign’s personnel and policy intentions “purely speculative and theoretical.”
The plans described here generally derive from what Mr. Trump has trumpeted on the campaign trail, what has appeared on his campaign website and interviews with Trump advisers, including some who spoke with The New York Times at the request of the campaign.
Trump wants to use the Justice Department to take vengeance on his political adversaries.
If he wins another term, Mr. Trump has said he would use the Justice Department to have his adversaries investigated and charged with crimes, including saying in June that he would appoint “a real special prosecutor to go after” President Biden and his family. He later declared in an interview with Univision that he could, if someone challenged him politically, have that person indicted.Allies of Mr. Trump have also been developing an intellectual blueprint to cast aside the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department investigatory independence from White House political direction.
Foreshadowing such a move, Mr. Trump had already violated norms in his 2016 campaign by promising to “lock up” his opponent, Hillary Clinton, over her use of a private email server. While president, he repeatedly told aides he wanted the Justice Department to indict his political enemies, including officials he had fired such as James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director. The Justice Department opened various such investigations but did not bring charges — infuriating Mr. Trump and leading to a split in 2020 with his attorney general, William P. Barr.
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Trump intends to carry out an extreme immigration crackdown.
Mr. Trump is planning to revive and ramp up his first-term attempt to tighten the border with an assault on immigration at a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.Bolstered by agents reassigned from other law enforcement agencies, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement would carry out sweeping raids aimed at deporting millions of people each year — an order of magnitude more than previous administrations, including his own.
Under the plan, military funds would be used to erect sprawling camps to hold undocumented detainees. A public-health emergency law would be invoked to shut down asylum requests by people arriving at the border. And the government would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents.
Trump plans to go far beyond his first-term trade wars.
Mr. Trump is also planning to significantly escalate his first-term efforts to upend America’s trade policies with new protectionist measures. While those measures would be aimed at eventually bolstering domestic manufacturing and factory jobs, they would also risk causing more immediate disruptions to the economy.To make domestically produced goods more competitive in the U.S. market, he is planning to impose a new so-called universal baseline tariff, meaning an import tax on “most imported goods.” That would raise costs for U.S. consumers and for manufacturers that buy foreign goods. It would also risk alienating allies and could ignite a global trade war if other countries respond with retaliatory tariffs targeting U.S. exports.
Advertisement
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Mr. Trump started a trade war with China in 2018. While the Biden administration has kept in place the tariffs Mr. Trump imposed then, Mr. Trump now wants to go much further in spurring an economic conflict between the world’s two largest economies, which exchanged $758 billion in goods and services last year. He plans to “enact aggressive new restrictions on Chinese ownership” of assets in the United States, bar Americans from investing in China and phase in a ban on importing key categories of Chinese-made goods like electronics, steel and pharmaceuticals.
