Trump’s mass purge of state department likely to sow chaos, US diplomats say

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 307 points – Trump win could see mass purge of state department, US diplomats fear
theguardian.com

Project 2025 blueprint for second Trump term envisages replacing thousands of career staff with political loyalists

America’s career diplomats are braced for the threat of a mass purge if Donald Trump wins the November election and for the potential flooding of the state department with loyalty-tested political appointees.

Rather than leading to a seamless change of course in a rightward Trumpist direction, the diplomats’ union and former ambassadors argue, such an attempted takeover would be much more likely to end in legal challenges, gridlock and chaos.

If elected, Trump has threatened to reinstate a policy he unsuccessfully attempted in his first term with the creation of “Schedule F”, a new category of federal employees which would be applied to tens of thousands of civil servants in “policy-related” jobs, robbing them of legal protections and making them liable to be fired at will.

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Unless they plan on repealing the Posse Comitatus Act, the military cannot be ordered to serve as law enforcement on US soil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

  1. That's why they reference the Insurrection Act. Whether the current situation meets the criteria laid out does not matter to them.
  2. It should be obvious by now that words on the books do not stop fascists. They intend to stack public institution far and deep with party loyalists so that nobody can say "no" to their will...legally, anyway.

I looked the Insurrection Act up. This kind of vague, old law is just the kind of thing that fascists love to leverage to install a brutal dictatorship. The GOP learned that they can do pretty much whatever they want and will get no meaningful resistance, so it would be pathetically easy for them to get rid of democracy once they have the Executive and Legislative branches again. The only saving grace is that they're pretty incompetent at actually getting things done, but we can't rely on that to save us again.

Generally the military and police lean into fascism so at that point I'm not sure current rules and law would stop them

It's adorable that people think piddling things like laws will stop fascists

"Adorable" is not the right word for it!

They can do anything they want if the Supreme Court rules 5-4 and says they can.

Well that'll never happen... because they have a 6-3 majority so it'll be a 6-3 ruling.

My theory is they'll do 5-4 rulings with one of the fascists dissenting in some bizarre and really technical way over their pet issue.

Well it's a good thing trump didn't stack the courts then.......