The Authoritarian Blueprint in Action: Quiet Moves, Massive Consequences

While public attention has focused on the spectacle of Trump’s birthday rally and the wave of protests that followed on No Kings Day, the White House has been executing a rapid sequence of policy shifts. Together, they paint a clear picture: an authoritarian administration quietly but effectively re-engineering state power to serve elite, nationalist, and extractive interests.

In just the last two weeks, we’ve seen new tariffs, aggressive executive orders, and moves to dismantle long-standing federal protections. These aren’t just bad policies—they’re systemic assaults on the idea of a democratic state accountable to the public.

🎯 Copper Tariffs and a Resurgent Protectionism

On July 8th, the administration imposed 50% tariffs on copper imports, joining a broader round of economic nationalism targeting Japan, the EU, and others. White House statements framed it as a move for “American resilience,” but this is the same strategy used in the first Trump term: weaponize trade as a culture war tool, punish foreign alliances, and reward domestic cronies.

The copper tariffs in particular are suspect. Many suspect it’s a favor to mining interests in Arizona, Nevada, and Alaska—states with increasingly authoritarian local governments.

Who benefits? Not workers. Not consumers. But a small elite of fossil fuel and resource extraction billionaires now directly tied to Project 2025’s agenda.

🌳 The “Make America Beautiful Again” Commission

Trump’s July 2nd executive order to establish the Make America Beautiful Again Commission might sound harmless—even positive. But read the fine print.

This isn’t about cleaning parks or planting trees. It’s about:

  • Privatizing public land under the guise of “beautification”
  • Rolling back environmental review processes
  • Redirecting federal conservation funds to politically loyal nonprofits
  • Replacing scientists and park managers with political appointees

The move aligns directly with Project 2025’s plans to eliminate federal independence and replace career civil servants with ideological enforcers. Even the commission’s language mimics far-right aesthetics—order, cleanliness, “strength through beauty.”

💼 Supreme Court Enables Mass Federal Layoffs

In the most direct assault on the administrative state yet, the Supreme Court last week lifted orders that had blocked Trump’s plan to mass-fire career federal workers across the DOJ, State Department, and more.

Framed as an “efficiency measure,” this is a calculated purge. Legal experts and whistleblowers have warned: it’s designed to install loyalists, gut institutional memory, and clear the path for policy by decree.

In combination with the earlier presidential immunity ruling, this creates an unprecedented situation: a president who can act with near-total impunity while dismantling all internal checks.

🔋 Fossil Fuel Interests Win Again: End of Renewable Subsidies

The administration also signed an executive order ending all subsidies for “unreliable, foreign-controlled energy sources.” In plain language: green energy is out, fossil fuels are in.

  • Solar and wind programs face collapse.
  • Pipeline construction has resumed on Indigenous land.
  • Coal and gas CEOs are back in the White House guest logs.

This isn’t about “freedom” or “energy independence.” It’s about rebuilding an economy of extraction and obedience—fueled by pollution, enforced by police, and justified with nationalism.

🧩 Connect the Dots: It’s All One Project

Individually, these actions might look like conservative policymaking. Together, they’re the incremental realization of a fascist blueprint.

  • Tariffs signal economic nationalism and international disengagement.
  • Environmental rollbacks consolidate control over land, water, and energy.
  • Federal staffing purges eliminate institutional resistance.
  • Public land commissions provide patronage networks.
  • Presidential immunity enables all of it to happen without legal consequence.

This is not governance—it’s regime-building.

💥 What Can Be Done

Resistance isn’t just about protesting the loudest events. It’s about watching the small moves—the commissions, the policy memos, the legal rulings that change how government works.

Organizing Responses:

  • Track the commissions: Demand transparency and watchdog reports on how the Make America Beautiful Again Commission allocates funds.
  • Support federal workers: Public sector unions must rally, organize, and strike to resist purges.
  • Expose fossil fuel ties: Identify which corporations benefit from the rollback of green subsidies and target them in boycotts or campaigns.
  • Community resiliency: Support mutual aid for those impacted by environmental deregulation and economic chaos from tariffs.

Final Word

The authoritarian state is not built in a day. It is built through small actions: tariffs here, layoffs there, executive orders that sound benign until they’re not.

Don’t let them bore us into silence. Don’t let them normalize dictatorship.

There is still time to resist—but only if we’re paying attention.