I mentioned this this other day but it’s worth repeating. Stephen Miller has accumulated real power within the Trump inner circle and he’s going to use it. I quoted this from a NY Times article about his plans for the second term:
As he works out his priorities, Mr. Miller appears to have learned two key lessons from the first Trump term.
The first is to flood the zone. He believes that those he regards as Mr. Trump’s enemies — Democrats, the media, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and portions of the federal bureaucracy — are depleted and only have so much bandwidth for outrage and opposition. Mr. Miller has told people that the goal is to overwhelm them with a blitz of activity.
The second lesson has been to operate with as much secrecy as possible to prevent anyone from finding ways to obstruct the Trump agenda. As a congressional staffer, Mr. Miller was freewheeling in his digital communications. But since working for Mr. Trump, who doesn’t use email and regards people who take notes with suspicion, he puts almost nothing in writing. Instead, he works through emissaries.
The protectiveness around the executive orders is particularly notable. An incoming administration would usually send the drafts to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, where a career lawyer — walled off from the outgoing administration’s political appointees — reviews them for form and legality and suggests improvements. For the most part, Mr. Trump’s first transition is said to have followed that practice.
Punchbowl reports on specifically what that flood is going to look like. MIller gave a rundown to the House and Senate leadership on Sunday:
The scale of executive orders that Miller described to Republican lawmakers and aides was stunning, despite the fact that Trump had talked about many of them on the campaign trail for months. They cover immigration, energy policy and overhauling federal government operations.
Miller didn’t provide a tremendous amount of details to the 40-something lawmakers and aides on the call. Incoming Trump administration officials say many of these orders are “moving targets” and not finalized yet. But this is what Miller discussed:
Government reform. Trump wants to issue an executive order that provides a process for removing insubordinate employees; rewrite federal hiring rules; issue an executive order on the so-called Department of Government Efficiency; reform the rules for Schedule F federal employees; brush back on DEI in the private sector; and rescind DEI and gender-related orders from the Biden administration.
Energy. Halt spending on the “Green New Deal” and other climate-related priorities from the Biden administration; speed construction of pipelines; orders dealing with energy permitting, especially coal, natural gas and shale projects; open up offshore drilling; repeal rules on electric vehicles; open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and speed the development of energy production from Alaska; and declare a national emergency related to energy.
Immigration and the border. Trump will classify drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations,” a dramatic move he never took in his first term; declare an emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, which will allow Trump to deploy military forces to the border; stiffen interior enforcement; move toward reinstatement of the “Remain in Mexico” policy; end “catch and release”; and generally restrict entry into the United States.
I wish I had faith that the Democrats and their advocacy groups have gathered everything they have to resist and repel all this by any means they have at hand but I really don’t. Maybe they will surprise us. But it does appear that this is just going to be a full blown blitz of terror in the first hundred days and I honestly don’t know how much of it they can get away with.
The good news is that the Congress is paralyzed by idiocy so anything that needs money will at least be delayed. But there is an awful lot of damage that the Executive branches can do on its own and Miller and the Project 2025 folks have been thinking about how to do it for years now. Get ready.