Braxton Taylor
Former President Donald Trump’s election victory Tuesday and upcoming return to the White House next year means he will have the opportunity to enact plans to use the military against what he calls domestic “enemies from within” and reshape policies and personnel in his image.
While Trump has been vague on exactly how he would carry out his plans, he spoke repeatedly on the campaign trail about using the military for domestic purposes, including to help carry out mass deportations, target political rivals, and quell any protests while he’s in office.
He, like other Republicans, has also railed against so-called “woke” military policies — such as those aimed at making the military more welcoming to minorities, LGBTQ+ people and women — and vowed to fire generals and others whom he considers “woke.”
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Trump’s first four years in office could provide a preview of how he will use the military in his upcoming term.
In summer 2020, during the height of mass racial justice protests across the country, Trump considered deploying active-duty troops against protesters. But he was stymied by opposition from his own officials, including then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, whom Trump later fired, in part because of Esper’s opposition to invoking a law called the Insurrection Act to deploy troops against protesters.
With Trump expected to pick only loyalists to fill his administration this time, the roadblocks that prevented him from acting on his desires last time aren’t likely to be there. And while service members are compelled by their oaths not to follow unlawful orders, few safeguards exist to actually prevent an unlawful order from being carried out.
Among those whom Trump has talked about targeting with the military are “the enemy within,” including “the fascists, the Marxists, the communists, the people that we have that are actually running the country.”
“Those people are more dangerous — the enemy from within — than Russia and China and other people,” Trump said at an October rally. Specific people he’s named as enemies include Democratic politicians such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who was elected to the Senate on Tuesday night.
Trump has also talked about using the military to help carry out his plan for deporting tens of millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. In an interview with Time magazine earlier this year, Trump said he would largely tap the National Guard, though he left open the possibility of using other elements of the military.
A spokesperson for Trump told Fox News on Wednesday that Trump will launch his deportation operations on his first day in office.
Meanwhile, Trump has said he will revive a plan he first enacted at the end of his first term that would allow him to easily fire nonpolitical civil servants and replace them with political appointees. Civilians working at the Pentagon would be among the bureaucrats at risk, with Trump’s campaign platform vowing to “overhaul federal departments and agencies, firing all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus.”
The 2024 GOP platform also promised that Republicans would “get woke Left-wing Democrats fired” from the military “as soon as possible” if they won the election. And when asked at a rally in October about creating a commission to root out “woke” generals and policies, Trump backed the idea. The rallygoer who asked Trump about the commission was former Space Force officer Matthew Lohmeier, who was fired after claiming on a podcast that Marxist ideologies were infiltrating the military, and Trump at the rally also agreed to appoint Lohmeier to the commission.
Republicans have often struggled to name specific, Biden administration-initiated diversity policies and training when claiming those are distracting from warfighting preparations. But some previous Republican targets that Trump could go after include shuttering diversity offices and ending the long-standing practice of affirmative action at military academies.
Trump has also said he’d revive former names of bases that honored Confederate generals, particularly Fort Bragg, which was renamed Fort Liberty. The renaming was done at Congress’ direction, on a bipartisan basis, to stop glorifying traitors who fought against the U.S. during the Civil War.
Another policy Republicans consider woke that could be axed by Trump is open transgender service. Trump banned transgender troops in his first term, but President Joe Biden lifted the ban quickly after taking office.
Republicans have also been itching to revoke a policy implemented by the Biden administration that allows service members to take leave and get reimbursed if they need to travel to seek an abortion.
Other big changes at the Pentagon expected to come under Trump include U.S. support for Ukraine. The United States has supplied Ukraine with billions of dollars of weapons since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
But Trump has expressed skepticism of continuing that, praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and called for Ukraine to make a deal with Russia that gives “up a little bit.”
Trump and Republicans have also vowed to bulk up the defense budget, something he did in his first term.
The 2024 GOP platform pledges to “invest in cutting-edge research and advanced technologies, including an Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield,” referring to the Israeli missile defense system that is designed for short-range missiles from Israel’s neighbors and so would be impractical to defend the U.S. from the threats it faces from long-range missiles from its adversaries.
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