Behind the Curtain: Trump's dream regime
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Photo illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios; Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Republicans long fantasized about a very different government: one run by a strong president indifferent to media pressure, empowered by a Republican Congress, backed by a conservative Supreme Court and lower court system, and free of administrative state handcuffs and hostile federal employees.
Why it matters: This dream — a true decades-long, unfolding nightmare for Democrats — is closer to reality than at any point in our lifetimes.
- If you're a Republican, you probably love this. If you're a Democrat, you probably loathe it. Either way, readers should be clear-eyed about the totality of sweeping change in governing power.
The big picture: We're not arguing former President Trump will win, or that Republicans will hold control of the House, or flip the Senate. But all are plausible.
- If Trump wins and congressional Republicans run the table, the other components for the most powerful White House in history are set firmly in place, and increasingly in law.
So let's dig into each component of the Republican fantasy:
- A strong president indifferent to pressure. Well, that's Trump. He has long held that his power in office is virtually unchecked. The Supreme Court just added another layer of protection. The Justices ruled in Trump v. U.S. that presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within their core constitutional duties, and presumptive immunity for other official acts. It'll take years to sort out the elasticity of immunity — but it's wide.
- A compliant, Republican-controlled Congress. It's a coin toss who wins the House and Senate this year — much like it has been throughout this era of a 50-50 America. The Senate looks promising for the GOP, thanks to a favorable map that has Democrats playing defense in deep-red West Virginia, Montana and Ohio, plus five swing states. The House is harder, mainly because there are lots more Republicans in Biden-won districts than vice versa.
- A conservative Supreme Court. A 6-3 majority is significant, as the most recent decisions showed. It was the six Republican-appointed justices who expanded presidential power. The three Democrats warned of a looming monarchy.
- A weakened administrative state. The Court, in a series of rulings but most notably the reversal of the Chevron decision, handed Republicans a massive triumph in a 40-year war to weaken independent agencies. It basically ruled that individual bureaucrats and independent agencies can no longer set the rules for business regulation.
- Purge hostile federal employees. Right now, a lot of the nitty-gritty of governing is handled by full-time civil servants who aren't political appointees and often operate outside the full control of the president. But Trump has threatened to fire tens of thousands of these civil servants and replace them with pre-vetted loyalists.
The intrigue: Trump last week tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which is recruiting loyalists to help carry out radical plans to transform the U.S. government.
- He claimed to "know nothing about Project 2025." Truth is, Project 2025 was largely written by his allies and encapsulates a lot of what he hopes to do — and how he might do it, longtime Trump officials tell us.
Between the lines: We've written extensively about Trump's plans to stretch the power of the presidency on everything from punishing critics to using the U.S. military for domestic action.
- But the biggest long-term victory for the conservative agenda (although not necessarily presidential power) is the Supreme Court's end to independent agencies or officials dictating everything from securities laws to toxin levels in food or water.
- It's not hyperbole to say this Supreme Court did more to weaken agencies and federal bureaucrats in a few days than previous courts did in decades.
Reality check: Yuval Levin of American Enterprise Institute (AEI) — a leading thinker on the right who worked in President George W. Bush's White House and contributes to National Review — told us that if Republicans win it all in November, "the left in America will find itself in a weaker position at the national level than at any time in the past century or so."
- "And yet it's far from clear that the right will be in any place to meaningfully capitalize on that fact, or that it's likely to persist and bring an end to the back and forth of the partisan seesaw that has characterized the 21st century," he added. "Since the beginning of this century, both parties have interpreted each of their narrow and ephemeral election wins as ushering in a sustainable new era they will dominate. They have been wrong to think so every time ... An election between two 80-year-olds feels more like an ending than a beginning."
Democratic brakes: Ultimately, it's the president who decides how to use the power of government — whether to stretch or contain it.
- A big reason many Democrats are in a full panic is they worry a weakened President Biden could make this Republican fantasy come true by costing them the presidency, the Senate and the House — and any chance of changing the courts.
