Donald Trump appears to dream of being an American authoritarian should he return to office.
The former US president, who on Tuesday secured enough delegates to win the 2024 Republican nomination, plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and house scores of them in large camps.
He wants to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military in cities across the nation to quell civil unrest.
There's an organized and well-funded effort to replace career civil servants in the federal government with Trump loyalists who will do his bidding and help him consolidate power.
What's also concerning to legal experts are the special powers that would be available to him that have been available to all recent presidents but have not typically been used.
Utilizing laws like the National Emergencies Act, the Communications Act of 1934, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, he would be able to wield power in ways this country has never seen.
America's vast surveillance state, which has regularly been abused, could theoretically be abused even further to surveil his perceived political enemies.
Goitein says she worries most about what a president could do with the emergency powers available to them when she considers whether a president might decide to behave like an authoritarian.
She says the laws surrounding these powers offer few opportunities for another branch of government to stop a president from doing as they please.
Under the National Emergencies Act, for example, the president simply has to declare a national emergency of some kind to activate powers that are contained in more than 130 different provisions of law.
What constitutes an actual emergency is not defined by these laws, so Trump could come up with any number of reasons for declaring one, and he couldn't easily be stopped from abusing this power.
This Cyber News was published on www.wired.com. Publication date: Wed, 13 Mar 2024 18:28:06 +0000