Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is has been full of ominous developments. Just as an authoritarian leader would, he is abusing the legal process to punish his opponents. If Democrats win the midterms, he might bring the hammer down.
Not one to keep a secret, Trump made what he would like to do very clear during a Feb. 3 bill signing ceremony at the White House:
Look at the facts that are coming out. Rigged, crooked elections. Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Pennsylvania. Take a look at Philadelphia. You go take a look at Atlanta. Look at some of the places that … horrible corruption on elections, and the federal government should not allow that.The states, Trump claimed, “are agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”
The federal government should get involved.
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The threat posed by Trump has rattled experts at the Brennan Center and Keep Our Republic, along with scholars who study Trump’s real and claimed powers.
Two of the foremost students of these powers are Joel McCleary, a founder of Keep Our Republic, and Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center. Some, but not all, of their attention has been focused on the secretive creation of presidential emergency action documents, which have come to be known as “PEADs.”
McCleary described his findings and his concerns in a series of emails, many including reports he has written. In an April 23 report, “Continuity of Government, Presidential Emergency Action Documents and the Evolution of Executive Emergency Powers,” McCleary wrote that the president “possesses emergency powers that are virtually unknown to the public, to most members of Congress and to much of the federal judiciary. These powers — codified in classified presidential emergency action documents” — allowa single individual to suspend fundamental constitutional rights, detain civilians, seize property, impose martial law and censor communications.
They require only a presidential signature. No prior congressional approval is needed. No court reviews them before activation. No statutory mechanism exists for Congress to restrict or terminate these powers once invoked.
