The Week Ahead April 20, 2025 Joyce Vance Apr 21 Saturday marked the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution. As we approach the celebration of creating a country free of kings, we struggle with the modern-day existence of a man who wants to be one. Time Magazine Cover, June 18, 2018 This is Time magazine, in its June 18, 2018, edition. It’s not like America wasn’t on notice before voters reelected Trump. Cover artist Tim O’Brien explained, “This portrait of Trump gazing into a mirror and seeing a king gets to the heart of how he and his legal team have approached this past week and the past 500 days, actually.” That was just his first term. Now, on multiple fronts, we see the man who would drain American democracy of its vitality before we get to our 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026. We are the counterbalance. We must make sure we maintain democracy so we can celebrate that important day. There were rumors, and then a denial by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that a major overhaul at the State Department is underway. Rubio posted early Sunday morning from his personal account that The New York Times had fallen victim to a “hoax.” The Times reported that a draft executive order that could be signed by President Trump “would eliminate Africa operations and shut down bureaus working on democracy, human rights and refugee issues.” The effect on U.S. standing in the world, let alone on the substantive work we do around the globe, would be difficult to undo. Countries such as China would step into the vacuum our absence would create. If even a portion of this plan were to go into effect, the result would undermine our global position. Trump’s “America First” policies are anything but. In March of 2016, Rubio told CNN, “For years to come, there are many people on the right, in the media and voters at large, that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump.” No kidding. While deportee Kilmar Abrego Garcia remains in a harsh Salvadoran prison that the Trump government illegally sent him to, ongoing legal proceedings designed to get him the due process he is entitled to are taking place. Last Tuesday, Judge Paula Xinis granted his lawyers’ motion for expedited discovery, writing that although the government has an ongoing obligation to facilitate his release from custody in El Salvador, “the record reflects that Defendants have done nothing at all.” The Fourth Circuit rejected the government’s appeal, in an opinion written by conservative Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson that we discussed here. He warned against reducing “the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish[ing] the very values for which Americans of diverse views and persuasions have always stood.” Last Wednesday, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers sent the government their discovery requests. The government must respond by this Monday, April 21, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. It is not clear whether some or all of those responses will be made public. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers can also take the depositions of four specified government employees, to be completed by Wednesday, and they may ask the court for permission to take two additional ones based on what the earlier discovery reveals. How high into the government might those requests reach? Noem? Bondi? Stephen Miller? Permission and deadlines for those additional depositions are up to the court. Following the conclusion of this quick two weeks of discovery, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers can add any new evidence they obtain in support of their motion to return him to the United States and hold the government in contempt (for failing to follow the court’s order to facilitate it) a week from this Monday. The government’s response falls due that Wednesday, ironically, the 100th day of Trump’s second administration. The first 100 days of his earlier administration were characterized by political and legal battles over his Muslim ban. Some things stay the same. We are far from done with these issues involving Trump’s promised mass deportations of violent criminals, which have turned out to be nothing of the sort. But to what purpose? Trump is a lame duck. Lurking in the background are his “jokes” about seeking a third term. All of it is about Donald Trump seizing power—from Congress, from the courts, from government agencies. On Friday, he tweeted his plans to pursue turning the career civil service into a Trump loyalty corps. Protected civil service would be replaced with loyalty oaths. This would come on top of the closures, the firings, the end of the commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in government and in our communities. And it fulfills the promise in Project 2025. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) followed up on Trump’s order, proposing a rule that would reclassify tens of thousands of career civil servants as “at-will” employees. Without civil service protections, the administration is free to fire those who don’t fall into line, the ones who refuse to advance Trump’s interests and treat government like a business. Of course, this isn’t new. In October of 2020, before the last election, Trump signed an executive order that permitted him to fire employees in policy positions “at will”—for no reason at all. Then he lost the election and got distracted. Civil service regulations are full of “schedules” for different types of personnel and classifications such as “exempted service” that don’t mean much unless you’ve lived in the arcane world of federal employment. But the move was characterized by federal employment experts as a “‘stunning’” attempt to “politicize the civil service and undermine more than a century of laws aimed at preventing corruption and cronyism in the federal government.” The point of having a protected cadre of career civil service employees is to preserve expertise within government. It’s clear that doesn’t matter to this administration. Trump’s reinstatement of this policy (one of the first steps Joe Biden took after being sworn in was to rescind Trump’s executive order, underlining just how harmful this change is) means that employees who have survived the firings and resisted the buyout offers will be increasingly vulnerable. Take the Justice Department, where positions held by line prosecutors could be characterized as policymaking, since they decide which cases do and don’t get prosecuted. Anything goes when Donald Trump is making the rules with no oversight. Back in November of 2023, I wrote to you about Project 2025: Project 2025 is the official name for the plan, which is reportedly being run out of the conservative Heritage Foundation. The basic idea is to seat executive branch power firmly in the hands of the president. Among the goals are defunding the Justice Department and dismantling the FBI, breaking up Homeland Security, and doing away with Education and Commerce. The president would take complete control of agencies that currently operate with a great deal of independence, like the Federal Communications Commission—all the rules for television and internet that Trump has publicly objected to would be his to change. In many ways, the plan runs in parallel to efforts to demolish the “administrative nanny state” in the Supreme Court this term. And, here we are. In 2023, a year out from the election that returned Trump to power, I concluded that “Donald Trump plainly wants to end democracy. That’s not being alarmist, it’s just the truth…it’s essential for people to be aware of what he intends to do if reelected. He is a malignant threat to democracy, and that has to be taken seriously. The singular challenge of the next election will be keeping the Republic in the face of Trump’s plans to take hold of power in a way that suggests he will never relinquish it.” With reports that new executive orders and plans, ranging from the one Rubio challenged the veracity of about the State Department, to Trump’s threat to the civil service, to new reports that he may attack environmental groups and other civil society organizations and government watchdogs, the coming week promises to be a critical one, especially as the risk that the administration will bust democracy wide open by directly disobeying a court order remains a serious prospect. Before we close tonight, a reminder. Beginning May 7, 2025, you will need a state-issued REAL ID-compliant license or identification card to fly within the United States, unless you have a passport or passport card available. Since the Trump administration is pushing proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, now is a good time to go ahead and get your documentation in order ahead of the deadline. Your state-issued ID will have one of these markings if it’s REAL ID compliant. We’re in this together, Joyce