After having successfully muscled a Muslim travel ban into existence by including North Korea and Venezuela in it, Trump now has his sights set on his big, beautiful wall along the border with Mexico. To accomplish this Trump has floated two ideas I have previously suggested he would eventually use: a national emergency and borderland eminent domain.
Of Course Trump Is a Fascist
Like many right wing dictators before him, Trump is considering using extraordinary executive powers to seal his authoritarian regime. It's certainly novel to do so for the sake of a real estate project. Personally, I had expected him to do so to arrest Democratic Party congressional leaders and send them to Guantanamo without charge (thanks Obama) on the basis of allegations of the party's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood as is the vogue with the conspiracy theorists Trump has sewn himself among. I still haven't found the origin of his Chinese theory of climate change, so who knows what tattered ace he has up his sleeve on this one.
This move toward unchecked executive authority is unsurprising if you have believed all along, based on the actual things he says, that he is a fascist. It is probably surprising if you believe that "checks and balances" is anything more than aspirational. Indeed, congress does have some oversight on the matter. They'd have to renew Trump's state of emergency.
Annually.
Fascism has historically demonstrated that liberal republics are the best vehicle for anti-democratic insurrections. Founded on a creed of egoistic domination for its own sake, fascism takes various forms depending on who holds the reins. Trump's fascism seems to resemble that of neoreactionaries, albeit with a real estate corporation taking over the government rather than a tech company. Which bring us to the next fascist idea: eminent domain.
I had also suggested this possibility last year. Trump would use eminent domain to sell borderlands to his own company to build a privately managed border wall. Not sure why the eminent domain has to involve the military, but different strokes I guess.
Unfortunately, and mostly to the chagrin of shitlibs and lesser socdems, Trump absolutely has the power that far leftists said he does and that his followers want him to. The only power he doesn't seem to have is the power to make federal workers stop calling out sick.