Russell Vought and Trump: pulling the Project 2025 schedule F trigger

Trump administration plans to reclassify 50,000 federal workers, making them easier to fire | CNN Politics

Russell Vought and Trump are pulling the Project 2025 schedule F trigger

 Trump tried it before and failed. He is trying it again. In the name of ending the deep state, Project 2025, the blueprint for the authoritarian takeover of the federal government, proposed once again to eliminate civil service protection from political pressure, and instead, to make civil service employees subject to loyalty tests to the President in the Oval Office by reclassifying their positions. Vought was one of the authors of Project 2025, and Trump appointed him to manage the federal government personnel office known as the Office of Management and Budget.

That is the most destabilizing, power-grabbing, corruption-spawning act one can imagine.  Since early in the last century, when the good government reform movement gained steam,  state and local governments have tried to reform corrupt practices of big bosses by removing government bureaucrats from judgment call pressures based on political control. It makes them subject to appointment and removal actions that do not consider job performance and qualifications for their positions.  Appointment to government positions has always been a power play tool for the mayor, the government, and now the presidency, to have as many political positions to fill as they can. It subverts 50 years' worth of good government reforms, and some see it at the Trumpist level, a threat to democracy itself.The Schedule F Threat to Democracy: A Project 2025 Explainer - Kettering Foundation

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Chainsaw 1 and Chainsaw 2 : Fulfilling Russell Vought's Project 2025 dreams

What Trump may try in November 2026 midterms even fascists and communists did not do

 Edited and updated  Feb 5,2026 post.Also published on Substack Feb. 7, 2026 

Senior Trump advisor Steve Bannon announced on right-wing network Real America’s Voice on Wednesday that ICE agents will be present at polling locations for the 2026 midterm elections. Bannon said the purpose of ICE’s presence is to ensure that everyone voting is a citizen. I can’t recall any fascist or communist dictatorships even trying this armed force vote control. They at least try to look like they are democratic, and the guaranteed 80% of the vote for their dear leader is legitimate. Appearances still mean something, even if the fox is guarding the henhouse door.

In Colorado, we have mail-in ballots ...but also a small number of ballots are cast in polling places on election day. This attempt to frighten voters away from a polling place will not work very well in my state. But for others, imagine you have darker skin or look like you are not a white Anglo-Saxon type, and you are confronted by one of these ICE paramilitary masked men in front of your polling place. This is one fear of how the ICE private militia of Trump will try to suppress votes.. eyes appearing over a mask, garbed for war, armed to the teeth, are demanding to see your papers. That is what the GOP is trying to set up today in Congress. (Got a certified birth certificate, a tribal card membership, a passport in your back pocket?No papers? Aww, too bad. Better luck next time proving you are a citizen.) All driver’s licenses do is verify it is you, but it is not proof that you are a citizen. We have no national ID card for citizens. The other way Trumpists tried in the past and are trying now is to let the GOP give the codes to the ballots and tabulating machines to a political buddy, just like Tina Peters did in Colorado. She is still sitting in a state penitentiary after losing in jury trials and appeals.

Now, Trump would like only the GOP to run elections. We are supposed to trust Trumpists to be fair? Oh, wait, Peters was a Republican, wasn’t she? What? No evidence blue voters did anything like that in 2020 either? The only violent perpetrators were followers of Donald Trump on January 6 (oh, wait, he was a Republican, too, and they were waving Trump banners as they peacefully injured 150 police, broke a lot glass, and broke into the sacred halls hunting for Nancy and Pence for the noose waiting outside?) Who is going to protect the rest of us from this kind of partisan behavior?

What we can expect is for the Trumpists to try once again what failed in 2020: to challenge every swing county and state-by-state vote in the US in the courts to keep the results up in the air for as long as he can keep his party in power in the House or tie that body up in knots. He will fabricate every pretext and pretense he can, and like 2020, lose in court when courts in every instance demanded actual evidence. His fake elector scheme also failed in 2020. Pence didn’t play along. Of course, when the Trumpists win, as they did in 2024, then, yes indeed, the elections were fair. Right? That November 2026 would be fair to him, and if his partisans did pull off a win and still control Congress, of course, that would be due to his extreme measures of keeping those phantom migrants still on the voter lists from voting. Wait, in 2024, both the White House turned red, and all of those phantom migrants voted anyway then?” Now that was a fair election”. Could it be that only fair elections are when Trump and MAGA win?. Oh, for heaven’s sake. Give me a break. Obviously, evidence and logic have little meaning to his true believers.

So why begin now, 8 months ahead, to use this unconstitutional display of force and raid Fulton County, GA., to hone his tactics and see how much Trump can get away with? States, per the Constitution control the vote and it is the power of each of their separate states. It is really hard to control who can vote, and how the vote is counted if there are over 51 states/DC, and thousands of county clerks. It would be so much easier for a dictator to hack and control all of vote if the feds were in charge of elections across the entire ballot everywhere, from the lowest position to the highest.

Why is Trump trying to federalize the vote, and even using the threats of armed force? Changing the Constitution will not happen in time for either Nov. 2026 or Nov. 2028. Using the threat of ICE and the fabricated lie that those brown and black voting is a pretext is a to destroy a democracy de facto by destroying the faith that elections are free and fair.

It also has to do with keeping up appearances. It looks like to me it is the use of theater to make a political power play point and to justify eliminating fair and free elections, the other 70% of us once trusted. To give his unthinking base, a good portion who still believe 2020 was stolen, will feel soooo secure this time around because if Trumpists paramilitary act like this, it must be true that all of those illegals are trying to vote, so acting like it is true is proof it is true and “thank you, DJT, for protecting us. You are the greatest.”

The most extreme fear I have is still worth red flagging, because of Trump’s use of a violent coup attempt he either planned or invited others to do on his behalf on Jan. 6. It is even more likely he could use violence now with his newly minted ICE paramilitary loyal to him. It is not out of the question for Trump to use the pretext of unevidenced election fraud on election night and to declare a national emergency, suspend the Constitution, direct ICE strong arms or call out active and guard military, and take over the vote and the outcome, grabbing every ballot box they can and lord over its recount. That is how other wannabe dictators have done it, and they also destroyed democracy for future decades to keep themselves or their ideological successors in dictatorial control. It usually works.

Felicia Muftic is a former elections official for Denver, Colorado

https://www.msn.com/.../bannon-says-ice.../ar-AA1VJne1...

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Trump wants to GOP nationalize elections and control the vote count: that’s what dictators do

https://www.msn.com/.../bannon-says-ice.../ar-AA1VJne1...

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Trump wants to GOP nationalize elections and control the vote count: that's what dictators do

Trump wants to GOP nationalize elections and control the vote count: that's what dictators do

Trump wants to GOP nationalize elections and control the vote count: that's what fascists and communist dictators do. 

Trump urges Republicans to 'take over' and 'nationalize' voting - ABC News

Trump wants the GOP to take over the vote in blue states. It is very difficult for a dictator to control the vote when there are 51  different states and the District of Columbia. He tried something like that in 2020. His minions asked all local clerks to secure the voting and tabulating machines. One clerk in Colorado took the orders seriously, gave access codes to a Trump-loyal volunteer, and locked away the machinery. Tina Peters has become the poster child of the violation of state laws and rules to protect faith by the public in fair and free elections. The voter system, laws, and rules were set up by a Republican administration in Colorado years ago. Peters still sits in a state jail after conviction. Now Trump wants the GOP to become Tina Peters.

Trump's false pretense of such dirty tricks is that the 2020 election was stolen because all of those illegals voted and mail-in votes are all a fraud, their propagandists and a delusional Trump claim. In over 6 years, over 60 court decisions, such attempts to prove these claims have failed.

 Trumpists must think that if they can get voters' personal information, they can prove their pretext, the Constitution provisions delegating election controls to states be hanged. That strategy has met some speed bumps as many Secretaries of State have put up a vigorous pushback. There are methods in Trump's madness because controlling access to the details of voters also gives the holderthe ability to target voter suppression techniques to specific voters and voter blocks. The DOJ has demanded Colorado’s and more than 19 other states'voter rolls information, including driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, and is attempting to change the post office delivery terms for mail-in ballots so they are counted by local officials.  There may be hope as a federal judge blocked the DOJ request for Oregon on 1/27/26. Federal judge blocks Trump DOJ access to Oregon voter rolls    Trump Administration Has Sued More than 20 States for Refusing to Turn Over Voter Files | Brennan Center for Justice

 In six years, no evidence has emerged that had evidence of that or that the 2020 vote was stolen. Of course, the election in 2024 must have had all the integrity in the world when Trump won, and MAGA did, too, up and down the ballots. That pretext to seize ballots has not died, and just last week it was once again dredged up. This Trumpian raid and the snatching of Georgia 2020 ballots smells like a pretext to keep the House in GOP hands by throwing the 2026 midterms into chaos.  This could explain the strange raid last week and the presence of national security officials trying to reinvent that one state election to concoct a pretext for federal takeover of the vote in selected blue states..  If Trump and his administration can't win one way (the predictions are he will lose control of the House), they will find another way, and this one is ugly.  

There are suspicions, rumors, and theories circulating that Trump wants to call in the National Guard to "secure" the machines. He advocated that in his first term. Even more disquieting is the fear that he will use his personal paramilitary militia, ICE, to use the pretext that illegal migrants are voting. Of course, the election in 2024 must have had all the integrity in the world when Trump won, and MAGA did, too, up and down the ballots. 

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: If the Trump regime tries destroy Colorado's vote integrity in 2026 a buzz saw awaits

Voting in Authoritarian Elections | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Why does Trump seem not to care he facing plunging polls and a loss of the House in November?

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: What Trump may try in November 2026 midterms even fascists and communists did not do

Being an agitator is now a crime worthy of an ICE takedown with guns drawn?

 Being an agitator is now a crime worthy of an ICE takedown with guns drawn? Right up there with migrants with criminal records are new targets of ICE: They will take down those they call agitators with no evidence that a person was doing any more than surveying ICE activities from her car  and that was "interfering" with ICE .. She was driving around tracking ICE activity. DHS itself called her an agitator.  This is the kind of stuff that happens in dictatorships, communist or fascist. Those demonstrating or protesting peacefully are considered enemies of the state and often are just "disappeared" with no trace or put on the docket with judges appointed by the State. In this case, technology, a dashcam, was a citizen's record. So here we have similar actions by a government paramilitary whose job is not to take down "agitators", but who do it anyway..First Amendment be damned. .St. Peter police chief intervened and got federal agents to release resident, sources say | MPR News

Concerns grow over federal agencies' use of facial recognition technology on protesters | Watch