If you don’t show up, I know what happens after Election Day.
In January I posted a scorecard of the major warnings I’d made about a second Trump term. Ninety percent had already come true. The handful that hadn’t are getting close.
I’ve spent the better part of a decade predicting Donald Trump’s next moves, sounding the alarm about his abuses of power, and crisscrossing the country to get people to defect from his movement (and now to defy it). Hell, my first book was even called A WARNING. Candidly, this isn’t how I wanted to spend these years. But the warnings were necessary, and too many have come true.
Before the 2024 election I wrote BLOWBACK, built on interviews with roughly a hundred Republicans and former colleagues who served alongside me in the first Trump administration. I asked them what Trump wanted to do the first time that he would do the second time around. The list will feel very familiar: revenge investigations into his critics… a sweeping purge of the civil service… yes-men running the most powerful agencies… Congress’s spending power ignored… troops sent to American cities… intelligence politicized… self-enrichment and corruption… abandonment of our allies and cozying up to dictators… disaster aid and federal money used as leverage over Blue States… political opponents branded as terrorists… and so on.
Every one of those is now in the green column. But I’m no Nostradamus. I merely saw what Trump wanted from the inside, listened to him from the outside, and understood the downside of letting him get near power again.
So I implore you to consider one more warning, from a guy who has a pretty good track record.
This one is about what happens if you — and the rest of us in the pro-democracy movement — don’t vote on Tuesday and don’t drag everyone we know to the polls. Trump knows he will have unchecked power if his movement wins on November 3. And if the margins are tight or if we fall short, here’s how the back half of this term plays out.
Donald Trump will contest the results he doesn’t like. It’s already underway. His Justice Department has launched legal actions in states with competitive races and appears to have more on the way. In recent days, DOJ issued grand jury subpoenas to California and Washington election officials and tried to set aside 20,000 mail ballots from voters it calls noncitizens, a request a judge tossed. This could get much uglier, with the FBI sent to seize ballots, chaos in the streets, and the use of emergency powers and legislative maneuvers to suppress the political opposition.
Then he will keep his grip on the legislative branch. A Congress that stays MAGA-aligned stays silent. That’s it. Don’t expect any sudden political courage. There will be no subpoenas, no hearings on the retribution campaign, no re-opening of the Epstein investigation, no check on a president who already ignores spending directives. And what does that mean? It means he’s taking billions and billions of federal dollars and spending them how he wants — the most sweeping and under-reported power abuse of his presidency.
He will take over the Federal Reserve. He’s most of the way there. Jerome Powell is no longer in the chair, and Trump’s replacement cleared the Senate on a party-line vote. The Supreme Court blocked his firing of Governor Lisa Cook by a single vote while backing his power over other independent agencies, and he promptly warned there was more coming. Unchecked, he will finish the job in 2027. That means he will effectively control your interest rates… effectively control the printing of money… and could detonate the economy in ways you’ve never imagined in your worst nightmares.
He will prosecute and jail his critics. Trump’s already indicted a former FBI director who investigated him, a sitting state attorney general who prosecuted him, and his own former national security adviser who spoke out against him. The career prosecutors who resigned rather than bring those cases are mostly gone, and the next targets won’t just be former officials. They’ll be governors, members of Congress, donors, organizers, protesters, and more. He’s said he doesn’t need convictions. For the intimidation to work, he just needs to ruin more lives along the way.
He will seek to finish off the free press. His FCC chairman has threatened to revoke broadcast licenses over Iran war coverage and ordered ABC stations to reapply early. Journalists have been indicted for covering a protest in a church. And he’s kicked outlets he doesn’t like out of federal buildings. The next wave will be far worse and will include real federal action against news networks, more reporters monitored and arrested, DOJ and Trump lawsuits against individual reporters in independent media, and a wholesale ejection of the free press from the halls of power, including the White House.
He will flout the courts. Last year, Trump menacingly warned reporters that he has a way to evade judicial scrutiny: by taking over. Specifically, as I’ve warned about for years, he’s fantasized about invoking the Insurrection Act and taking us close to martial law; if that happens, in his words, there will be “no more court cases, there is no more anything.” If Trump has no Congressional check on his power, he’ll be much more willing to defy the last check — the courts — including unfavorable decisions from the Supreme Court.
He will put troops on American streets and keep them there. The Court blocked his National Guard deployments last December, so he pulled most of the troops while reminding everyone that he could still invoke emergency powers to do it again and at scale. If he has shirked the remaining constitutional checks on his power, by the summer of 2027, I expect soldiers policing major American cities (at least Democrat-run cities) on his orders, and the bloody peril of social unrest.
He will rewrite the rules of who gets to vote. The House has already passed the SAVE Act, which would end online and mail registration for millions. Though it stalled in the Senate, Trump will manage to secure its passage if power doesn’t change hands in Congress. The Supreme Court has already let DHS hand states an expanded citizenship database to scrub their voter rolls, and his blocked mail-ballot orders become law the moment a compliant Congress passes them. Make no mistake: this will result in the president having the de facto ability to create voting “blacklists” and wielding extraordinary power over federal elections.
He will refuse to leave. Trump has said himself that he’d “love” a third term, he’s explored it, and Steve Bannon says that “there is a plan.” The Trump Organization already sells the hats. He won’t surrender power unless he has a path to an office that shields him from accountability, whether it’s continuation in the presidency, the vice presidency behind a placeholder, the Speaker’s gavel (second in the line of succession, and the Constitution is silent on whether he can hold it), or something invented. If he controls Congress, he can steer his way toward any of these outcomes.
The 2028 election will not be certifiable. With the aforementioned crackdown, Trump will be able to make sure the voter rolls are favorably purged, mail-in voting is gutted, election officials are afraid of prosecution, troops are ready to suppress the vote in opposition cities, a compliant Fed is goosing the economy, and a threatened press is more docile. Whatever happens in that vote, there will be no legitimate way to certify it, and no independent institution left with the ability to review it. Accordingly, the constitutional order will face the prospect of total collapse; indeed, a democracy whose processes are no longer democratic stops being one.
That’s what happens if you don’t vote.
Forestalling such a dystopian future depends on a Congress willing to act. An overwhelming election result will tell Trump that the multitudes have turned against him. He and his officials will be made to fear the prospect of investigations, accountability, and justice, and while this won’t stop the man entirely, it will rein in his power considerably.
Maybe you think this is hyperbolic. If so, I bet you thought my second-term predictions were overstated. Well, now you’re living in them. I’ve been right about this man often enough that it haunts me. But you can make me wrong on Tuesday. I hope you’ll make the time to vote. It’s not a lot to ask.
Your friend, in defiance,
P.S. DEFIANCE.org is a nonprofit “club for the courageous.” We literally exist to FIGHT the corruption you just read about. We announce a new effort every week to counter Trump’s abuses of power. That’s what your membership funds. If you haven’t yet, become a member today.
CORRUPTIONLAND
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