President Donald Trump is making clear to the people of the United States and the world that he is transforming the world’s most powerful military state into a one-party and one-person ruled country.

He has succeeded in taking over the Republican Party, which has become a bulwark of authoritarianism and support of him as that ruler.

The Plan: Project 2025

The Trump plan for an authoritarian state is outlined in detail in Project 2025 written by the ultra-right Heritage Foundation. During the 2024 presidential campaign Trump said he never read the 922-page plan to dismantle the government and its institutions.

Trump then claimed he didn’t agree with the plan. Yet he picked contributors to the plan for his top advisers and many in his cabinet, including Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his vice president. Vance wrote the foreword to Project 2025.

Russell Vought, director of Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the agency that helps Trump implement his vision across the executive branch, was the chief architect of the project. He is front-and-center in the October 1 government shutdown, announcing the further federal funding freezes and cuts on top of what has been already done this year.

What Trump has done since retaking the presidency on January 20 fits into the authoritarian playbook.

He says “I alone” make all key decisions. He demands cult-like loyalty from all in the government and gets it from followers who praise his false proclamations as words of wisdom.

He has gutted civil liberties, civil rights, and free speech.

He declared all the “radical left” as his “opponents” and “enemies.” That includes neoliberal Democrats. He says he wants to suppress them.

With the endorsement of the reactionary majority of the ultra-right Supreme Court, he has succeeded in imposing presidential authority over Congress, including control over government finances (“the purse”), and all agencies of the federal government.

This includes independent agencies, not under the control of the departments headed by members of the Cabinet. There are many such agencies, like the Security and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and more. These had been exempted from presidential control, but the Supreme Court has overturned that, “subject to consideration” next January.

This has been a way the Court has allowed many of Trump’s dictates to go into effect until then, virtually installing them.

One exemption has been the Federal Reserve Central Bank.

Trump fired one of the Bank’s five-person Board of Governors, Lisa Cook, the first Black woman on the Board, but the Court has allowed her to stay on until January, when the issue will be again taken up.

Trump has said he will take over the Board, on which he already has one loyalist. The Board’s chair, Jerome Powell’s term is up next May and Trump will get to nominate his successor, subject to the Republican-controlled Senate’s approval. If the Supreme Court allows Cook’s firing to stand, Trump will take control.

The Court may be considering the dire economic consequences if the Fed, which sets basic interest rates, is no longer seen as independent and its rulings open to question domestically and by other countries.

Trump has made big strides toward imposing his will on colleges and universities, with fines and threats to adhere to his positions, including prohibiting anything “negative” about America, including the real history of slavery, racial segregation, oppression of women, exploitation of workers by capitalism or climate change.

He dictated that their curriculums must eliminate any references to diversity, equity or inclusion (DEI) of Blacks, women, or LTGBTI people. And DEI must be similarly eliminated from the makeup of their administrations or faculty.

Black people must be subordinated to the white majority in his view. He sees all qualified Blacks and Latinos as without merit. The attempt to abolish DEI is fundamentally a racist assault.

The attack on DEI is the club against the fight for equality and is meant to strike fear into anyone who speaks for it. DEI goals have been killed across the society, from businesses to high school education.

The same is true about the mass big business owned media; either bend to his dictates or be destroyed.

Trump has unleashed the White House controlled Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol against Latinos to enforce his deportation agenda of fear and intimidation. In the process those armed bodies have become the country’s largest police force, complete with masked men seizing people, including children in the streets, at workplaces, while sleeping in their homes and even at immigration centres when Latinos show up to comply with procedures to renew work permits or advance their road to citizenship.

Trump’s fake “war on crime” is his excuse for sending military troops into cities with large Black and Latino populations and Black mayors to intimidate and arrest citizens, immigrants, and others. This is to soften up the U.S. people in general but particularly whites, to accept military occupations.

Trump’s goons use racial profiling in immigration raids, which has been approved by the Supreme Court. The atmosphere is being created where white-skinned people can feel immune but all Brown skinned people are targets.

He has also pledged to send National Guard troops to other states with Democratic governors and mayors. It includes Portland, Oregon, and Chicago. Since June he has stationed the National Guard, FBI and ICE on the streets of Los Angeles against the authority of the governor and city officials.

Trump is denying funding of social programs including against poverty, health care and job training that helps people to live and thrive.

He has also taken away funds approved by Congress for transportation and other infrastructure projects for states run by Democrats.

These are not typical politics of a ruling class party that didn’t like policies of the other ruling class party. Even bourgeois critics note this change.

The ruling class, so far, has supported Trump’s accelerated transformation of the government and the state. The complaints from the Democratic Party come across as whining with no strategy to defeat the drive toward an imperial dictatorship. They don’t even say what Trump’s actions represent, or what they would change.

Trumpism versus the world

On the international scene Trump has told the world in his UN speech in September that the only rules and laws he follows are his own.

He declared drug cartels as “enemies” and “terrorists” giving the military the right to kill them at sea in international waters or even in sovereign countries without declaring war. His first target is to overthrow the Venezuelan government under the false accusation it is a narco state and then others who don’t follow his demands.

His threats are also directed at traditional imperialist allies from Europe to Japan and Australia. He’s imposed massive tariffs on most countries.

Lessons of history

The challenge facing the working class and opposition to his actions is understanding the dynamics of this authoritarian drive. It can’t be defeated by electoralism or waiting for the ruling class to reject his authoritarian drive.

History teaches an important lesson. There is a parallel to the period prior to the Civil War of 1861-65 when the country faced permanent breakup over the issue of slavery. It could only be settled by war, not talks.

Major changes to the Constitution were enacted after the Civil War to end slavery. The changes led to freedom for the former slaves who became citizens.

It also created birthright citizenship, the right of all children born in the U.S. to citizenship. It has also included newborn children to immigrants and eventually Indigenous peoples ever since.

One of Trump first executive orders was to overturn that right, which the Supreme Court has agreed to consider.

Trump’s chosen path is the establishment of a totalitarian state led by himself. He cannot be defeated by half measures. He must be countered by mass mobilisation and the creation of a new working class-led political party to head this struggle.

If he wins, he will have to be opposed for some time by clandestine organisation, leading to his revolutionary overthrow.