Presumably, every president in this nation has at some point chafed at certain limitations to his power, constraints on his ability to pursue his agenda, but to date none have gone so far as to dictatorially remove those constraints.  If the people of the United States throw caution to the wind in November 2024 and foolishly elect a former president who attempted to overturn the 2020 election, that could change.  Donald Trump is a ‘man’ without a conscience, a ‘man’ who does not believe in democracy and does not care about the nation – he cares only about his own lust for power, wealth, and adoration.  A story in the New York Times this morning literally chilled my blood.

Remember back in 2019 when, frustrated with the Mueller investigation into the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia during the 2016 election, Trump said …

“Then, I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Obviously, his ignorance knew no boundaries for him to spout such nonsense, but today as he makes his bid to once again be elected, he has a whole team working tirelessly to turn his nonsense into reality, into our worst nightmare.  That team includes the anti-democratic group, The Heritage Foundation, an anti-democratic, ultra-conservative think tank who had outsized influence on Trump during his four years in office.  They are, according to the NYT article, “planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.”  If that doesn’t chill your blood, then I don’t know what will.  Handing nearly unlimited power to a megalomaniac with very little intelligence and a huge ego … what could possibly go wrong?

In the interest of time and space, I won’t copy the entire article here, but here are a few key excerpts …

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.

“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Its legal underpinning is a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory.

The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control [emphasis added] of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read the article in its entirety.  While it’s true that there are safeguards in place that should prevent much of what is being plotted, we have to ask just how secure those safeguards are if Trump is elected and immediately slides his own people into positions of power?  What’s at stake?  Well, the planet for one … Trump and The Heritage Foundation are climate change deniers and part of the ‘plan’ is to roll back environmental regulations that cut into the profits of large corporations.  They also plan to roll back regulations that were put in place to protect employees in the workplace.  And more.

There are numerous valid reasons that Donald Trump should never again set foot in the Oval Office, including his theft of classified documents, his role in the January 6^th attempted coup, and his multiple attempts to overturn the 2020 election.  But perhaps the biggest reason of all lies in the plans being formed already, 16 months before the election, to literally shred the U.S. Constitution, taking us from a democratic republic to a full-on authoritarian government wholly dependent on the whims of one ‘man’ with no conscience, no integrity or values, and very little intelligence, but an oversized ego.