'Modern-Day Enemies Lists': The Peril Of Unchecked Power For Trump

Stephen Miller
Stephen Miller

The Harris-Walz campaign is warning if Donald Trump becomes president again, he will have “unchecked power,” thanks in part to plans made by his transition team that include “modern-day enemies lists.”

“Trump is literally preparing modern-day enemies lists, at the same time he’s under fire for calling other Americans ‘the enemy within’,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams wrote Wednesday. “It’s all making it very clear: Trump will have no one to restrain his worst instincts in another term. Unchecked power. No guardrails.”

Sams also pointed to a Politico report that says, “Trump team preps list of banned staffers.”

“The lists of undesirable staffers include people linked to the Project 2025 policy blueprint; officials who resigned in protest of Trump’s response to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol; and others perceived as disloyal to the former president, said two former Trump officials familiar with the discussions.”

The claim anyone linked to Project 2025 would be banned is questionable, given many of Trump’s White House top officials are deeply embedded in the operation.

CNN reported in July that “at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, a CNN review found, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to Mandate for Leadership, the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch.”

“Overall, CNN found nearly 240 people with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump, covering nearly every aspect of his time in politics and the White House – from day-to-day foot soldiers in Washington to the highest levels of his government. The number is likely higher because many individuals’ online résumés were not available.”

They include Stephen Miller, the chief architect of Trump’s “zero tolerance” anti-immigrant child separation policy that stripped over 5000 children from their parents “with no tracking process or records that would allow them to be reunited,” PBS News reported in 2022.

Miller has been a very active surrogate for Trump during this campaign, including speaking at his rallies. PBS News reported last week Miller “is expected to take a senior role in the White House if Trump wins.”

CNN said Miller is “a key player in forming Trump’s immigration agenda. Another is the Center for Renewing America, founded by Russ Vought, former acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, who wrote for Project 2025 a detailed blueprint for consolidating executive power.”

“Vought recently oversaw the Republican Party committee that drafted the new platform heavily influenced by Trump,” CNN adds. “In addition to Vought, two other former Trump Cabinet secretaries wrote chapters for ‘Mandate for Leadership’: Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller. Three more former department heads – National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe, acting Transportation Secretary Steven Bradbury and acting Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella – are listed as contributors.”

The Harris campaign on Wednesday posted video of several of those victims who spoke at a campaign event Wednesday:

Watch the video above or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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