CNN
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A large-scale operation to arrest and deport illegal immigrants.
Purging the federal workforce of anyone deemed disloyal.
Exercising federal law enforcement authority against political enemies.
As he seeks to return to the Oval Office, former President Donald Trump and his allies have promised a sweeping transformation of the federal government that would exercise the power of the executive branch in radical and unprecedented ways.
The agenda they are crafting would put into practice the hard-line views Trump expressed publicly during his final campaign for the presidency, and would certainly face a series of legal and political challenges.
Behind the scenes, outside groups aligned with Trump have been drafting executive orders, studying the Constitution in anticipation of legal challenges, and searching for solutions to give Trump the ability to enact some of these policies on Day One if he regains power.
These outside loyalists are keenly aware of the chaos and disorganization that Trump’s first term has witnessed. Now, at the head of a number of conservative groups in Washington, they are waiting in the wings, helping to formulate a plan that will set the wheels in motion to implement the comprehensive agenda.
Project 2025, a transition project run by the Conservation Heritage Foundation, has brought many of these groups together to “pave the way for effective conservation management.”
Efforts by outside groups to map out the legal and political details of Trump’s second term have met with some opposition from the official Trump campaign apparatus.
“The efforts of various nonprofit groups are certainly appreciated and can be very helpful. However, none of these groups or individuals speak for President Trump or his campaign.”
However, Trump’s agenda has been outlined by the former president himself while driving as well as in a series of videos and releases published by the campaign.
The Trump campaign recently brought on policy-focused staffers who will help craft his policy messaging and ultimately consider proposals from various conservative groups. The goal is to prepare executive orders — on everything from immigration to removing government protections for civil servants — for Trump to sign on the first day of a potential second administration.
Trump’s plan includes asserting more White House control over the Justice Department, an institution that the former president said he would exploit to retaliate against his critics, including former allies.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” the former president said in June after his trial in Florida. “I will completely wipe out the deep state.”
During a recent interview with Univision, Trump took it a step further.
“If I become president and I see someone doing a good job and he hits me hard, I tell him to go and charge him,” he said.
Despite the long-standing tradition of the Justice Department and many other smaller government agencies operating independently, those in Trump’s orbit have referred to these agencies as an “administrative deep state” and a “rogue fourth branch of government” that they believe should answer to the president. . Part of the executive authority.
In videos and speeches, he has laid out his plans to destroy the current justice system by firing “extremist Marxist prosecutors who are destroying America.”
It is part of a broader effort that would break legal restrictions and traditional protections against political interference and give the White House more power to install ideological allies throughout the federal government.
If Trump is elected next year and follows through with the plan his campaign and allies are now developing, legal experts say it will lead to years of legal battles and political clashes with Congress over the limits of presidential power.
“To some extent, we will be in uncharted territory,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law and a CNN legal analyst. “A lot of the relevant restrictions were standards rather than rules. These standards were not enforced by litigation, they were enforced politically. The reality of a second Trump administration will be a lot of new lawsuits over these kinds of violations of what has historically been a Criteria restricting executive authority.
Part of Trump’s plans is to reclassify tens of thousands of civil servants – who typically stay on as chiefs and change departments – as at-will employees, a move that would make firing them much easier.
Trump said in a video in March that he would sign an executive order to do so, which he said would allow him to “remove rogue bureaucrats.” He pledged to “use this power very forcefully.”
“We are going to purge all the corrupt elements in our national security and intelligence apparatus, and there are a lot of them,” Trump said. “The militarized departments and agencies will be completely reformed so that faceless bureaucrats can never again target and persecute conservatives, Christians, or political enemies of the left.”
In private, Trump has blamed some of these career civil servants for why some of his policy proposals did not take effect quickly during his first term, and has called for the installation of loyalists with a similar ideology in every area of government.
Part of the 2025 Project’s goal is to build a database of vetted potential conservative staffers who could be leveraged by an incoming Republican president, which one source referred to as the “Conservative LinkedIn.” The database, run by technology company Oracle, has seen thousands of applications and hopes to have thousands of future-screened prospects in place for potential transformation.
While a source familiar with the program said there is currently no FBI-level background check or loyalty test for applicants, resumes are flagged with potential “red flags” that allow the new administration to draw its own conclusions about potential hires.
Trump also plans to broadly expand his previous administration’s hard-line immigration policies if elected in 2024, which would restrict legal and illegal immigration.
Stopping the invasion on our southern border is a national security imperative and one of President Trump’s top priorities. That’s why, in his speeches and Agenda 47, he laid out the most detailed program ever to secure the border, stop illegal immigration, and keep out those who should never have been allowed into our country in the first place. A Trump campaign spokesman said in a statement to CNN.
The plans will include rounding up illegal immigrants already in the United States and placing them in detention camps awaiting deportation, a source familiar with the plans confirmed to CNN.
The proposals would entail building large camps to house immigrants awaiting deportation and utilizing federal and local law enforcement to assist in large-scale arrests of illegal immigrants across the country.
The source confirmed that if Congress refuses to fund the operation, Trump may resort to the tactic he used in his first term to secure more funding for the border wall, which is redirecting funds from the Pentagon.
Trump has said publicly that he wants to revive several of his first-term immigration policies to restrict legal and illegal immigration — including reimposing and expanding the travel ban on Muslim-majority countries and reinstating a Covid-era policy, known as Title 42. To further restrict immigration into the country, Although this time that will depend on confirmation that migrants carry other infectious diseases.
Trump also pledged to “end all work permits for illegal aliens and demand that Congress send me a bill that would ban all welfare payments of any kind to illegal immigrants.”
The former president also warned of caravans coming from Mexico to the US border, and vowed to prosecute groups and charities that he alleged facilitated large-scale illegal immigration.
In his second term, Trump also plans to radically reshape the lives of Americans when it comes to policies affecting law enforcement, trade and the social safety net.
The former president said he would require local law enforcement agencies to use the controversial police practice of stop-and-frisk in order to get some funding from the Justice Department. He also suggested deploying the National Guard in cities dealing with high levels of crime.
Another policy aimed at combating homelessness calls for the creation of “tent cities” on “cheap land” that would be occupied by health care workers, giving people a choice between moving elsewhere or facing imprisonment.
When it comes to the economy, Trump has introduced sweeping tariffs on all imported goods, signaling an aggressive approach to trade policy, with a focus on China.
“When companies come and dump their products in the United States, they automatically have to pay, let’s say a 10 percent tax,” Trump said during an interview with Larry Kudlow on Fox Business Channel.
