Trump’s Strategy to Damage the Supreme Court

Despite my fears for the coming four years of the reign of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer, the nation may nevertheless manage to weather four years of corruption and authoritarianism at levels never before seen in America. What is more frightening is the likelihood that Trump may so damage the United States Supreme Court that the harm to the nation may last for a generation or more. If Trump keeps his promise to appoint justices that meet the standards of the Christofascists, expect gay rights, women's rights and minority right's (including voting rights) to be pushed backward in time towards an ugly past.  A piece in Politico looks at Trump's so-called strategy to turn the Court into a bastion of right wing ideology that would rubber stamp the worse excesses of Trump/Pence and the GOP's war on a majority of Americans.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump has narrowed his short list for his first Supreme Court pick down to roughly a half-dozen finalists but the president-elect and his top advisers are already thinking about a second selection, as they seek to quickly remodel the high court with a reliably conservative bent.

Trump’s team wants to make filling the seat held by the late Justice Antonin Scalia one of the earliest acts of his presidency, according to multiple transition officials, in hopes of scoring an energizing and unifying victory for the conservative movement.

And as Trump weighs perhaps the most enduring personnel decision he’ll make as president-elect — filing one of only nine lifetime seats on the high court — he has sought input from an array of friends, former rivals, and legal and TV personalities.

“He clearly understands he may have a chance to define the court for a generation or more and he is taking it very seriously,” said former Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump confidante.

While Scalia’s seat is the only current opening, Trump’s advisers are plotting how to fill that vacancy in tandem with the next one — a slot if vacated by a liberal justice like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83, or swing-vote Justice Anthony Kennedy, 80, could far more dramatically move the court’s political center of gravity to the right.

The thinking inside the transition, according to multiple people involved in the internal deliberations, is that Scalia’s replacement offers Trump and the conservative movement the best chance for an unabashedly rock-ribbed replacement because it would not fundamentally shift the court’s balance of power.

“You’re basically dealing with a situation where no matter what conservative you put on the court you’re establishing the same parity that existed,” said a transition official involved in the selection process. “That is first and foremost in everybody’s minds.”

But in the current search process, Trump’s team is also hoping to identify a conservative candidate — possibly a woman — who could be more politically palatable, or at least harder for Senate Democrats to oppose, if Kennedy or Ginsburg leave the court.

Trump, besides promising to appoint justices in the mold of Scalia, is looking for some distinctly Trumpian qualities. He has repeatedly told his advisers, for instance, “I want someone who is not weak.”

That is especially appealing to legal conservative hardliners who are still scarred by former Justices David Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor, two Republican appointees who often sided with the court’s liberal bloc, and to a lesser extent Chief Justice John Roberts, an appointee of President George W. Bush, who upheld the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law.

“With each passing disappointment, people want to make sure this is not just someone who looks conservative, but is virtually guaranteed to be conservative on the bench,” said one veteran of past GOP Supreme Court confirmation fights, Curt Levey of Freedomworks and the Committee for Justice.

Leo said on “Fox News Sunday” that Trump’s team wants the Scalia vacancy filled in time for the new justice to be seated for the final sitting of this term in late April. That could allow the new justice to weigh in on important pending cases, including the detention of immigrants and transgender rights.

“Ideally, you would have someone who could be seated on the court at least by then to hear those final round of cases, perhaps even have some of the 4-4 decisions, if there are any, reheard by the court,” Leo said.

Whatever happens with the high court, Trump has a chance to quickly reshape the judiciary with more than 100 openings to fill in federal district and appeals courts. Some of those vacancies were the product of stalemate between the Obama White House and Republican senators who have an effective veto over judicial picks in their state.

For now, Trump’s team is girding for the higher-profile Supreme Court nomination to be one of the bigger battles of his early presidency.

“The court is 4 to 4,” noted another senior Trump adviser, “And whoever he puts there it’s 5 to 4.”

Be very afraid.  We are likely to see yet another nightmare become reality.  Identifying emigration destinations might not be amiss.  

Has Ego Thrown Uncertainty Into Virginia's Gubernatorial Race?

Lt. Gov. Northam

Seemingly out of nowhere a possible wrench has been thrown into Virginia Democrats' plan for an orderly, uncontested race for the party's 2017 gubernatorial nomination.  One term Congressman Tom Perriello, who only served from 2009 to 2011 before losing to a right wing ideologue due to his ultra-liberal voting record and less than effective campaign, is posed to jump into the race for the Democrat nomination.  It is difficult to adequately stress just how critical it is for a Democrat to succeed Terry McAuliffe as Virginia's next governor so that there is at least somewhat of the firewall against the most egregious initiatives of the Republican Party of Virginia  such as Del. Bob Marshall's horrific HB 1612 that seeks to out do North Carolina's infamous HB2.  None of this seemingly matters to Perriello who is basically unknown outside of his former district and certain liberal organization circles and could throw the Governor's mansion to the Republicans if he creates a contentious and money wasting contested primary.  The husband and I - and most LGBT activists we know - are firmly behind Lt. Governor Ralph Northam's candidacy as are leading Democrats in Virginia.  The New York Times looks at Perriello's apparently ego driven move to harm Democrats in 2017.  Here are highlights:

Tom Perriello, the former congressman from Virginia, is making a surprise entry into his state’s governor’s race, disrupting Democrats’ well-laid plans in what promises to be the most-watched election in the country this year.

Mr. Perriello on Wednesday telephoned Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam, who had been widely presumed to be the party’s nominee, to tell him he was entering the race, according to three Democrats directly familiar with the conversation.

Mr. Perriello, a State Department official who is close to President Obama, is expected to announce his intention on Thursday to compete in the June 13 Democratic primary. He did not respond to a voice mail and text message. Mr. Northam could not be reached, either.

By entering the race to succeed Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who is limited to a single term, Mr. Perriello will hinder Mr. McAuliffe’s effort to avert a contentious primary. Leading Democrats have sought to clear the field for Mr. Northam, hoping to give him a head start in fund-raising and organization, while at least three Republicans vie for the nomination.

A run by Mr. Perriello will expose the tensions between the moderate and progressive wings of the Democratic Party in Virginia, which is increasingly dominant in a once-conservative state. Much of the state’s Democratic leadership is already lined up for Mr. Northam, and Mr. Perriello’s unexpected move made them to scramble to respond.

A senior Virginia Democrat, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Wednesday evening that Mr. McAuliffe would emphatically reaffirm his support for the lieutenant governor. Aides to Virginia’s two United States senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, said they would not reconsider their support for Mr. Northam.

For decades, Virginia Democrats have taken care to distinguish themselves from their more liberal national party and present themselves as prudent centrists. But having carried Virginia in the last three presidential elections and controlling every statewide office, some Democrats are hungry to elevate progressives.

“Tom is a very capable and popular person who served in Congress very well,” said former Representative L. F. Payne Jr., who once represented the same district as Mr. Perriello and now backs Mr. Northam. “I think that Ralph, though, is well-prepared for the job, and Democrats feel good about him as our candidate. It’s awfully late for anybody else to think about getting in.”

Neither Mr. Perriello nor Mr. Northam is well known to Virginia voters. Mr. Northam would enjoy a substantial financial advantage and the support of Mr. McAuliffe, who is popular with Democrats. The governor, in fact, is hosting a fund-raiser at his Northern Virginia home this weekend for Mr. Northam.

But Mr. Perriello is well liked among some liberal activists and could gain support with the sort of highly engaged voters who show up in low-turnout summer primaries. To do so, though, he will have to fend off questions from the left about some of his stances on cultural issues. He was endorsed by the National Rifle Association in his 2010 campaign and cast some votes against abortion.

Republicans, meanwhile, have their own primary battle. Ed Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman; President-elect Donald J. Trump’s onetime state campaign chairman, Corey Stewart; and State Senator Frank Wagner, from the Tidewater region.

Perriello needs to withdraw from the contest.  Meanwhile, our home is available to Ralph Northam any time he needs it for a fundraiser. 

Thursday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Love the shirt!

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 2

The Women’s March: the Largest Inauguration Demonstration?

Other than evangelical Christian women whose "faith" seemingly tells them they are to be subordinate to and ruled by men and perhaps very wealthy women seeking tax cuts, one of the most baffling aspects of the 2016 presidential election is the number of women who voted against their own best interest and supported a sexual predator who bragged about assaulting women.  We may never know if it was Trump's appeals to racism and anti-immigrant bigotry that won the day with these women, but thankfully, many women are shocked by and opposed to Der Fuhrer.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing effort to have a Women's March on Washington the day after inauguration day. Over the next four years, we will need much more of such wide scale activism and opposition to Herr Trump.  Here are story highlights:

Teresa Shook never considered herself much of an activist, or someone particularly versed in feminist theory. But when the results of the presidential election became clear, the retired attorney in Hawaii turned to Facebook and asked: What if women marched on Washington around Inauguration Day en masse?

She asked her online friends how to create an event page, and then started one for the march she was hoping would happen. . . . Now, more than 100,000 people have registered their plans to attend the Women’s March on Washington in what is expected to be the largest demonstration linked to Donald Trump’s inauguration and a focal point for activists on the left who have been energized in opposing his agenda.

Organizers say plans are on track, after securing a permit from D.C. police to gather 200,000 people near the Capitol at Independence Avenue and Third Street SW on the morning after Inauguration Day. Exactly how big the march will be has yet to be determined, with organizers scrambling to pull together the rest of the necessary permits and raise the $1 million to $2 million necessary to pull off a march triggered by Shook’s Facebook venting.

The march has become a catch-all for a host of liberal causes, from immigrant rights to police killings of African Americans. But at its heart is the demand for equal rights for women after an election that saw the defeat of Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first female presidential nominee of a major party.

“We plan to make a bold and clear statement to this country on the national and local level that we will not be silent and we will not let anyone roll back the rights we have fought and struggled to get,” said Tamika Mallory, a veteran organizer and gun-control advocate who is one of the march’s main organizers.

More than 150,000 women and men have responded on the march’s Facebook page that they plan on attending. At least 1,000 buses are headed to Washington for the march through Rally, a website that organizes buses to protests. Dozens of groups, including Planned Parenthood and the antiwar CodePink, have signed on as partners.
Organizers insist the march is not anti-Trump, even as many of the groups that have latched on to it fiercely oppose his agenda.

Shook said her aim was not to co-opt any other movement. It was just an idea that took hold after the victory of a president-elect caught on tape boasting of grabbing women’s private parts and the defeat of a woman who seemed to her much more qualified for the job.

People traveling to attend the march seem less concerned with behind-the-scenes politics than the chance to call for more family-friendly government policies, equal pay for women or reproductive rights. Some say they simply want to stand against the crass way Trump has spoken about women.

Feminist scholars say the march reflects an emerging view of feminism: one that is less defined by reproductive issues, such as birth control and abortion, and more by how the challenges faced by women intersect with those encountered by African Americans, the LGBT community and immigrants.

A Frightening Warning to Gays and Women Out of Texas

Wonder what things might look like if the Republican controlled Congress and Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer pass the First Amendment Defense Act ("FADA")?  Look no farther tan a ruling out of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas where a right wing federal judge during the waning days of 2016 that doctors and medical personnel had the right to refuse to treat women who had had abortions and transgender patients.  Indeed, the judge ruled that to require them to do so would violate the medical providers' rights of "religious freedom."  Never mind that the Founders' concept of freedom of religion never contemplated such a twisting of their concept of freedom of religion: the right to worship as one chose and freedom from supporting an established church. This ruling and the language of FADA indicate that LGBT citizens, women who have had an abortion and cohabitating heterosexual couples - and perhaps others - could find themselves facing unprecedented discrimination in the near future.  It is also a reminder that other than Der Fuhrer, no one is more selfish and self-centered than the "godly folk" who hate the majority of their fellow citizens.  A piece in Slate looks at this grim warning:

In the waning hours of 2016, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor unleashed a bizarre ruling that fundamentally alters the balance between medical treatment and religious freedom in the United States. O’Connor’s decision blocked a critical regulation enacted pursuant to the Affordable Care Act, which forbade doctors from discriminating against transgender patients or women who’ve previously had abortions. Most disturbingly, O’Connor found that such a nondiscrimination rule violated the “religious freedom” of doctors and insurance companies that consider gender transition and abortion to be “evil.” The ruling marks an extreme extension of the dubious logic behind the Supreme Court’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision—and indicates that conservative courts believe the purported right of health care professionals to discriminate against patients trumps patients’ right to sound medical treatment.

O’Connor recognizes only one kind of sex discrimination: hostility against a man or woman for being a man or a woman. This belief directly contradicts Supreme Court authority; it also doesn’t make much sense, since it only raises the key question of who decides whether an individual is a man or a woman.

O’Connor got away with this blinkered understanding of sex in blocking federal guidelines on bathroom access for transgender students. And naturally he pulled the same trick here, holding that the HHS rule does not build upon “sex discrimination” and is therefore unlawful.

So far, so predictable. Texas, which brought this suit along with four other states and several Christian medical associations, chose O’Connor’s court specifically because of his clear opposition to federal rules protecting transgender people. A simple ruling on sex discrimination, coupled with a nationwide injunction forbidding the HHS regulation from taking effect, could’ve ended the matter. But O’Connor—despite having already resolved the dispute—decided to go much further, analyzing the case under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA.

Ever since the Hobby Lobby decision, progressives have warned that RFRA poses a grave threat to LGBTQ rights, fearing that businesses can use it to circumvent nondiscrimination laws shielding LGBTQ people.

That fear is now an undeniable reality. O’Connor held that treating transgender patients—and even insuring transgender patients—“substantially burdens” insurance companies and hospitals’ “exercise of religion.”

And what about those abortion-related protections? O’Connor blocked those too, holding that RFRA also protects doctors and insurance companies from providing or covering “abortion-related services.” The judge may be right about that, but it really doesn’t matter, because the rule in question does not require anybody to perform or insure abortions. As Timothy Jost explains in Health Affairs, “Judge O’Connor is simply wrong in believing that [the rule] requires anyone to pay for or perform abortions.” In reality, the rule prohibits doctors and insurance companies from discriminating against women who have had abortions in the past. With his decision, then, O’Connor provides a neat template for future judges irritated by nondiscrimination statutes: Make up a version of the law that isn’t real, then strike down the real law based on your made-up version of it.

The Christian medical associations and insurance companies behind this lawsuit argued that treating transgender patients and women who’ve had abortions constituted “material cooperation with evil.” O’Connor agreed, and he decided that the law should value these beliefs over everyone else’s right to receive medical treatment. The ramifications of this reasoning are chilling, especially for women and LGBTQ people. Does RFRA bar the government from protecting gay people against medical discrimination? What about women who don’t wish to become pregnant?

This system would completely upend medical practice in the United States, legalizing prejudice-based refusal of service and placing the burden on patients to find a doctor and insurance company who will provide the treatment they need. There is no clear limit to the damage that O’Connor’s ruling could do. It appears that in our post–Hobby Lobby world, patients who draw ire from conservative Christians must get used to being deprived of insurance and denied medical treatment solely on account of their identities.

With Trump in a position to load the Supreme Court with right wing ideologues, there is a strong chance that this ruling might ultimately be upheld.  Be very afraid.  Religion is a pervasive evil.

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

The Battlegrounds for LGBT Rights Under Trump

As I have indicated in a number of posts, the inauguration of Donald Trump will set in play numerous assaults on the rights and dignity of LGBT Americans.  Without sufficient mobilization of LGBT individuals and our allies, we are likely to the enactment of license to discriminate laws at the state level and a broad reaching denigration of LGBT rights and protections at the federal level under the deliberately disingenuously named "First Amendment Defense Act" which would allow individuals, businesses and even government employees to discriminate at will against LGBT citizens merely by claiming that to do otherwise offends their religious beliefs.  Thankfully, the assault against LGBT citizens will dovetail with the larger Republican assault on women's reproductive rights and the social safety net, particularly in the realm of healthcare as the GOP moves to fulfill a long held dream of voucherizing Medicare and making draconian cuts to Medicaid.  These efforts will make LGBT citizens, women, the elderly and even health care providers and hospital systems allies in resisting the GOP onslaught.  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the coming battle grounds and what must be done in the Age of Trump.  Here are some article excerpts:

As Inauguration Day nears, and as our new, orange-tinted reality sets in, it behooves all Americans who believe in fairness and equality to take stock of what we’re up against — because that’s how we’ll be able to resist it.

On the campaign trail, Trump hurled insults at groups which, combined, represent a vast majority of Americans. He insulted women, Muslims, Mexicans and Latinos, African-Americans, people of color, members of the press, people with disabilities, and career politicians whom he denounced as “crooked.”

That means it’s not at all hyperbolic to issue a warning call to each of those groups who will, in all likelihood, have their freedom targeted by the incoming administration.

But even though the President-elect was relatively quiet on LGBT issues during the campaign trail (aside from a couple mangled acronyms he managed to spit out and a lukewarm response to marriage equality), his cabinet appointments make clear that we cannot afford to “wait and see” just how Trump’s team dismantles LGBT rights. Instead, we must use the resources at hand to anticipate the onslaught we are about to step into — giving us the best chance of emerging with dignity, sanity, and faith in this American experiment.

Prepare to Oppose the First Amendment (Defense Act)First and foremost, the so-called First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) is all but certain to become law. Although the precise language has yet to be seen in this year’s Congress, the text of the bill introduced in the 114th Congress sought to prohibit the federal government from taking “any discriminatory action” against a person (defined to include for-profit and nonprofit corporations) who “acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.” The bill offered no similar protections for other views about marriage or sexual relations.

FADA is arguably the clearest and most present danger for LGBT Americans, particularly because it exemplifies the ways in which the bedrock principle of “religious freedom” has been weaponized to block the advance of LGBT equality.

[B]arring some truly unexpected outbreak of empathy in the newly empowered Republican Party, it’s safe to assume the sweeping legislation will become law early on in Trump’s presidency. The president-elect has signaled his support for the bill, promising Catholics in a September statement that he will sign the bill into law. Once FADA becomes law (and perhaps before), it’s reasonable to assume similar “turn away the gays” bills will be introduced in state legislatures, likely under the guise of “religious freedom.”

Take Care of Our Health CareLike most of Trump’s cabinet nominees and advisers, the potential Secretary of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price, has a long history of opposing LGBT-inclusive policies. Price, specifically, is a staunch opponent of the Affordable Care Act, and is expected to be a key figure in the yet-to-be-announced plan to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. And Price is no friend to the gays. According to LGBT media watchdog GLAAD’s “Trump Accountability Project,” the Georgia Republican scored a zero (out of 100) on the Human Rights Campaign’s Congressional Equality Scorecard, voted against repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and in favor of amending the Constitution to ban marriage equality. More relevant to this discussion and Price’s potential tenure as the nation’s chief healthcare official, though, is the fact that he has defended false equivalencies between pedophilia and homosexuality as nothing more than harmless “Christian beliefs regarding proper sexual ethics.”

But what about the millions of Americans who aren’t transgender? Well, any of those citizens who have a uterus or plan to make their own decisions about when or if they want children need to pay attention, as the National LGBTQ Task Force’s executive director Rea Carey explained when Price’s nomination was announced. “Let’s be quite clear: if confirmed, Price’s decisions will impact the health and social services of millions of people — especially the most vulnerable populations who rely upon access to quality, affordable, culturally competent care. If confirmed, Tom Price would steer HHS in a dangerous direction that’s motivated by profit and the desire to control our bodies.”

Get Ready to Fight the Department of JusticeIn his excellent piece for the Winter 2017 issue of The American Prospect, former Justice Department attorney and current University of Michigan law professor Samuel R. Bagenstos raised a terrifying possibility: President Trump’s Department of Justice may use the muscle that agency developed under Obama to suppress voting rights, privatize education, and strip away existing civil rights protections.

If Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, is confirmed, the fate of American civil rights law is effectively sealed, given that Sessions was considered too racist to be a federal judge in the ‘80s. Naturally, Sessions has also consistently opposed LGBT rights, and could even use his sway as Attorney General to try to convince the Supreme Court to reconsider marriage equality.

[A] generous, inclusive interpretation of civil rights law is unlikely to continue in a Trump administration. In fact, Bagenstos warns, where LGBT people have found an ally in the DOJ for the past eight years, we may now find a powerful foe. Bagenstos aptly points to G.G. v. Glouchester County School Board, the case out of Virginia where a transgender boy sued his school for the right to use the boy’s bathroom, after the school barred him from using the appropriate facilities on campus. . . . That case is currently pending before the Supreme Court, and could be heard by a full panel of justices — including a Trump appointee.

But the battle is just beginning, Bagenstos writes: . . . there is a substantial prospect that the Civil Rights Division will take an affirmatively anti-LGBT-rights position and intervene to make religious-freedom or free-speech arguments on behalf of the defendants in LGBT discrimination cases brought under state laws.

Which brings us to the final and overarching point of how to agitate for equality in Trump’s America:

Get to Your StatehousesWhile it may seem counter-intuitive to focus a national resistance on regional or state offices, the truth is that local elections matter, and local politicians are often easier to access than high-ranking administration officials. So yes, participate in the Women’s March on Washington if you feel called to, and phone-bank the hell out of every preposterous nominee Trump and the Republicans riding his coattails offer. But also participate in Lobby Days organized by your favorite local advocacy group, and make it a priority to meet your elected officials. If you feel comfortable doing so, introduce them to your family, and force them to look into the faces of the real people their decisions will impact. And when lawmakers try to pull a fast one, take a page from the good people of North Carolina and shout and yell and disrupt and sit-in until uniformed officers drag you away. And then go back again the next day.

It takes dedication, persistence, and a stubborn refusal to ever back down. It seems only fair that those of us feeling targeted by Trump and the GOP in general return the favor they offered to President Obama, and aim to make Trump a one-term president.

Congressional Republicans essentially wrote the playbook on how to be the most obstructionist, least productive legislative body in American history, so I say we borrow that book and use the tactics right-wingers perfected to defend the messy, complicated, frustrating glory of this country.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 2

Trump is More Paranoid and Dangerous than Nixon

A piece in the New Republic takes a frightening look at the lust for revenge and paranoia that will sweep into the White House on January 20, 2017, and the danger that Donald Trump poses to anyone that his warped and narcissistic mind may deem and "enemy."  Given Trump's pettiness, there could be few limits on his efforts to seek revenge and punish those who see him for what he is and the danger that he poses to the nation.  Add to Trump's dangerous personality the surveillance and other  powers that will be at his disposal, and all of us have cause to be very afraid.  Here are article excerpts:

Donald Trump and Richard Nixon have at least one thing in common: They are the two most paranoid and vindictive men ever to win the presidency. Both came to power armed with enemies lists, vowing to seek revenge against those who stood in their way. Both roamed the mansions of power late at night, raving against every perceived slight. Both were caught on tape describing the ways they enjoyed bending others to their will.

But Nixon, unlike Trump, was an introspective man. In one particularly fascinating moment of self-reflection following his resignation, he described to a former aide the habits that had enabled him to rise to the top of Washington’s greasy pole. When you’re on your way, he explained, it pays to be crazy.

“In your own mind you have nothing to lose, so you take plenty of chances,” Nixon said. “It is then you understand, for the first time, that you have the advantage—because your competitors can’t risk what they have already.” That’s an insight that Trump put to good use during the Republican primaries, when he was willing to place high-stakes bets that his more experienced rivals were unwilling or unable to match.

But then you win, and your problems begin. “It’s a piece of cake until you get to the top,” Nixon confessed. “You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you’ve always played it, because it is a part of you and you need it as much as an arm and a leg. You continue to walk on the edge of the precipice, because over the years you have become fascinated by how close to the edge you can walk without losing your balance.”

The ways Richard Nixon chased that high are now a matter of voluminous historical record. None is more harrowing than his exploitation of the vast powers of his office to spy on those he perceived as threats to his power, and then seek to use the results of that surveillance to neutralize or destroy them.

The first phone tap on one of his own officials came in the fourth month of his presidency. That same year, federal agents snared a gay, closeted antiwar organizer named David Mixner in a “honey trap,” and threatened to release photographs of his assignation unless he ratted out his comrades. By the second year, an entire unit of the Internal Revenue Service was chartered in a locked, soundproof room to harass a blacklist of antiwar activists.

His enforcer, Chuck Colson, drew up “enemies lists” that included such fearsome figures as actress Carol Channing and Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton. The IRS was deployed to audit their taxes or take away the nonprofit status of their organizations. 

Donald Trump assembles enemies lists, too; his organs of cognition appear to be structured around the idea of revenge. There are Republicans who voted against him, like Senator Lindsey Graham. (“It’s so great our enemies are making themselves clear,” Trump surrogate Omarosa Manigault exulted, “so that when we get to the White House, we know where we stand.”) There are media organizations he claims have covered him unfairly, like The Washington Post. . . . And it’s not hard to imagine that Trump’s list of targets will only grow longer as his power expands. Like Nixon, he has spent his entire life chasing the narcotic rush afforded by dominating others, the better to fill the void where a functioning soul ought to be.

But there are two key differences that set Trump apart from his predecessor in paranoia. First, his soul is sicker by miles than Nixon’s. And second, the surveillance apparatus he is about to inherit is far scarier than the one available to Nixon. . . . .  “Now we are about to hand over that entire apparatus to a paranoid, score-settling sociopath whose primary obsession seems to be with crushing his personal enemies.”

Today the government can monitor virtually every form of communication, including the contents of emails, phone calls, online searches, and a host of personal data.

It’s not hard to imagine the kind of damage Trump could do with the powers of the NSA at his disposal. “Let’s say you become part of the Trump opposition,” says Jon Stokes. “It probably won’t be long before Trump knows what kind of porn you like. Sure, that’s against the law—but the government has been breaking those laws for 20 years. We’ve just been doing it for noble, Jack Bauer reasons, not petty Donald Trump reasons.”

Consider, too, all the federal officials beyond the director of national intelligence who will serve at the pleasure of Trump. There’s the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, whom the president could illegally order to target enemies with tax audits, like Nixon did. The head of the Small Business Administration, which could cut off loans to Trump’s rivals. The entire Cabinet, which oversees billions of dollars in federal research grants and defense contracts and construction jobs. . . . And the head of military intelligence, who could use the Pentagon’s powers to spy on left-wing groups, as it did under Lyndon Johnson and to a vastly expanded degree under the paranoid auspices of Richard Nixon.

What will happen when President Trump orders some eyesore removed from his sight, only to discover the limits of presidential power? Revenge is a narcotic, and Trump of all people will be in need of a regular, ongoing fix. Ordering his people to abuse the surveillance state to harass and destroy his enemies will offer the quickest and most satisfying kick he can get. The tragedy, as James Madison could have told us, is that the good stuff is now lying around everywhere, just waiting for the next aspiring dictator to cop.

Be very, very afraid.