Trump has laid out a vision for a major all-sided crackdown on immigrants. An architect of this plan is the ultra-fascist white supremacist Stephen Miller, a major figure in Trump’s staff in his first term, who had said in November, “Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.”

Their plan includes ending birthright citizenship—meaning children with undocumented parents will themselves be undocumented, even if they were born in the U.S. This would end a social and legal norm that has existed for over 150 years, since the Civil War and the 14th Amendment, which over time granted citizenship to anyone born in this country.

Miller ominously said that they will employ hordes of hardcore MAGA fascist lawyers ready and willing to do Trump’s every bidding without any restraint to “overwhelm immigration attorneys” through a blitz of sweeping actions. Their plan involves indiscriminate home and workplace raids, mass deportations, large-scale concentration camps at the border in Texas and separating families at the border as formal policy. They are planning to organize “civilian” militias at the border with more freedom to target migrants, whom they viciously portray as “criminals, rapists, and pedophiles.”

Preparing for the “Big Takeover”

In his first term in office, Trump faced a big problem. With every extreme action, he was faced with officials who blocked him from within the federal bureaucracy, which is a vast apparatus of career government officials who execute the laws and carry on the operations of government. They stood in his way and said, “No, you can’t do that!” This time, the fascists are preparing for a complete takeover of the government with an army of loyalists behind Trump’s every move to take things “all the way.” For these fascists, they have to shred the “normal” government functions, in order to carry out their full agenda. A key part of enabling this is in Trump's plan called “Schedule F.” As of now, the U.S. president can replace up to 4,000 government officials who work in the different agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Agency, Department of Education, etc. Under “Schedule F,” Trump would be able to appoint up to 50,000 loyalists, replacing officials throughout the government and forcing career officials to quit. 

In his first term, Trump also faced opposition from some allies closest to him. Mike Pence, for example, Trump’s theocratic fascist vice president, was with Trump every step of the way. But when it came to stealing the election, Pence broke with Trump—and refused to block Congress’s certification of the election results going to Biden as the winner, despite an insurrection that threatened to hang him (which Trump in fact encouraged). Instead, Pence wanted to install fascism “the right way” through the legal channels (even if that meant perverting them), but not outright through stealing an election.

Mark Milley, the former general and head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that time, was someone who more publicly broke with Trump. Following the protests in Washington, DC, over the murder of George Floyd, Trump ordered the National Guard and police to keep the protesters at bay and brutalize them, so he could take a photo-op holding up the Bible in front of St. John’s Church. Milley apologized shortly afterward, stating he should not have been there. He reportedly opposed Trump when Trump raised the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act against the protesters.

Again, Trump was told, “No, you can’t do that!”

Learning from this, Project 2025 is aimed at screening thousands of potential candidates to fill the White House administration and staff for a complete takeover of the government—with people having to pledge ahead of time to loyally go all the way with this fascist agenda. These people will ensure there will be no restraints on Trump's presidential powers. 

This time Trump will not be stopped by people around him saying, “No, you can’t do that!” 

Dismantling the “Deep State”: Retribution Against Trump’s Enemies

“Either the deep state destroys America,” said Trump to his followers in Waco, Texas, “or we destroy the deep state.”

Trump argues that his supporters, as well as himself, are being gone after by this “deep state,” which supposedly includes the FBI, the Democratic Party and the government. If that deep state is not destroyed, according to Trump, if the “rules of the game” are not broken with, it will “destroy America.” Trump made his plan very clear to his supporters:

With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the war mongers. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country.... We will beat the Democrats. We will rout the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the RINOs [Republicans in name only]. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House. And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all.

Robert Kagan in the Washington Post wrote that Trump includes very specific people in this broad category:

Trump has already named some of those he intends to go after once he is elected: senior officials from his first term such as retired Gen. John F. Kelly, Gen. Mark A. Milley, former attorney general William P. Barr and others who spoke against him after the 2020 election; officials in the FBI and the CIA who investigated him in the Russia probe; Justice Department officials who refused his demands to overturn the 2020 election; members of the Jan. 6 committee; Democratic opponents including Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.); and Republicans who voted for or publicly supported his impeachment and conviction.

When Trump said to his followers “I am your retribution,” that was more than just a turn of phrase. As his former adviser and current champion Steve Bannon touted, these are code words that date back to “Come retribution,” which served as code words for the Confederate Secret Service’s plot to kidnap and assassinate Lincoln following the Civil War. “I am your retribution” are code words to go after Trump’s opponents as enemies to be destroyed and eliminated. Trump continued in his speech that the threat from other countries “is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.” Trump has vowed to wield the Department of Justice against Biden and his family, along with going after “the Communists, Marxists, fascists and radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country—that lie and steal and cheat on elections.” These “vermin” he referred to (a term which echoes fascists like Hitler who dehumanized whole sections of the people as part of unleashing genocidal terror) include his political opponents, liberals, communists, progressive people, as well as all of the people that these fascists hate: Black and Brown people, and other people of color, LGBTQ people, women, migrants at the border, and all those who oppose the unrestricted plunder of the planet that could destroy humanity.