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A double New Year’s Day terrorist attack in New Orleans and Las Vegas will play right into the hands of Donald Trump and his like-minded team, who intend to carry out the largest purge of «outsiders» in the entire history of America.
Conspiracy theorists may suspect that the behind-the-scenes organizer of these nearly synchronized acts of terror is the so-called deep state. They claim it is trying to scare Trump with the potential mass awakening of «sleeper cells» of militants who have infiltrated the United States in recent years. It’s no coincidence, they say, that 42-year-old Shamsuddin Jabbar raised a black jihadist flag on the pickup truck he rented.
This theory is dubious. Pragmatists will more likely point to the unstable mental health of both suicide bombers and link their propensity for violence to the overall atmosphere of mutual hatred and growing rejection of «newcomers» by native-born Americans.
No one denies that in four years of Democratic rule, 650,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records have entered the United States. This criminal cohort readily joins street gangs or crime syndicates that are fueling a surge in criminal activity in cities run by Democratic appointees — from New York to Los Angeles.
Political analyst Malek Dudakov reasonably notes that both terrorist attacks «will make Trump’s plans to purge the intelligence services — which are failing to fight extremism — and to deport dangerous migrants more popular. These migrants will, of course, respond with violence».
Will staunch Trump supporters back down? At a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, a re-elected and understandably angry Trump promised, «On my first day in the Oval Office, I will sign a historic list of executive orders to close our border to illegal foreigners and stop the invasion of our country».
Trump added that «on that very day, we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history, larger than under President Dwight Eisenhower». This is a reference to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of mostly undocumented Mexican workers in the 1950s.
Tom Homan, Trump’s appointee for «cleaning up the mess», whom the New York Post calls the «czar of border and immigration control», describes illegal immigration as «the greatest national security vulnerability». Homan argues that the operation will require $86 billion in funding.
These substantial funds, Homan tells the U.S. Congress in advance, are needed to provide additional beds so that illegal immigrants can be held in detention centers, to pay for «deportation» planes and/or other transportation to take them to their historic homelands, and to cover medical care during this essentially coercive operation.
So far, everything looks fine in theory and on paper. But Democrats in California have already begun to set up a «Migrant Support Network» to prevent deportations. Their plan is to open secret shelters for undocumented immigrants.
As a coercive measure, Trump could cut off federal grants to the states. It’s also possible he’ll revive an idea from his first term: limiting the number of green cards (the identification document that confirms permanent resident status in the U.S.) to 500,000. Currently, annual legal immigration is twice that number.
It’s not that simple. This proposal will face opposition from prominent figures on Trump’s own team, such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Both businessmen, who are active in politics, argue for the importance of maintaining the influx of foreign brains and skilled workers, since U.S. higher education no longer produces enough such specialists. Taiwanese semiconductor monopoly TSMC, for example, was unable to find enough qualified local workers to open its U.S. plant on schedule in 2024.
Whether the Musk-Ramaswamy duo will form an internal opposition in the Republican camp on this issue remains unclear. What is guaranteed are fiery debates under the Capitol dome, where the «sect of believers in anthropogenic climate destruction» will fight tooth and nail to defend the «green agenda» and the worship of renewable energy sources (which only survive thanks to government handouts and subsidies).
For Trump, the battles with these greenhorn dogmatists are crucial. His «3–3–3 Plan» — named, as he says, in the Chinese style — calls for a dramatic increase in oil production by 3 million barrels per day (currently around 13 million). Trump wants to make the fossil fuel energy sector the engine of economic growth.
Will it work? During the Obama-Clinton-Biden administration, oil and gas drilling was banned on 5 million acres in northern Alaska. More recently, Democrats — apparently in an effort to kill the «Three Threes Plan» — imposed restrictions on oil production off the coast of California and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico near Florida. Overturning Biden’s executive orders would require going through the courts, a long and arduous process given the rigidity of the U.S. judicial system.
There is no convincing argument that a 10%, 25% or even 60% tariff on imported goods would allow Trump to achieve his ambitious plan of ensuring stable 3% GDP growth. For context, if last year’s growth was 2.8%, this year’s forecast is 2.2%.
Moreover, an obsession with tariff barriers is risky. According to Ben Norton, a columnist for the Resistance Report, «The U.S. could use protectionism to rebuild some manufacturing capacity in more advanced, higher value-added sectors such as automobiles and machinery».
However, as the author points out, «Unless Trump plans for American companies to compete with exporting countries in the Global South — where low-wage labor is used to produce basic, low-value-added consumer goods such as clothing and appliances — his proposed tariffs will only exacerbate inflation». For the Democrats, this would be a gift: they could exploit the claim that «life has become harder and sadder under Trump».
In this context, it is surprising that the elephant and donkey parties are united in the view that defense contractors and their Washington lobbyists are reaping massive profits by inflating costs, accompanied by «kickbacks» and «skimming». Raytheon/RTX, for example, is already under investigation for fraud.
When Elon Musk introduces his bill to cut federal spending by a trillion dollars, it looks like the part that targets the heretofore untouchable military-industrial complex might have bipartisan support.
Trump’s planned «restructuring» — that is, his program to restore order at home — is vast and inherently conflict-ridden, as it touches on the interests of powerful business clans and political factions. Will Trump become the American Gorbachev…?