Senior Democrats in US cities are preparing to defend their communities in the event of Donald Trump’s return to the White House after the former president has repeated threats that he would use presidential powers to seize control of major urban centers.

Trump has proposed deploying the military inside major cities largely run by Democrats to deal with protesters or to crush criminal gangs. He has threatened to dispatch large numbers of federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations of undocumented people in so-called “sanctuary” cities.

He also aims to obliterate the progressive criminal justice policies of left-leaning prosecutors.

“In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of law and order … I will not hesitate to send in federal assets including the national guard until safety is restored,” Trump says in the campaign platform for his bid to become the 47th US president, Agenda47.

Trump provoked uproar earlier this week when he called for US armed forces to be deployed against his political rivals – “the enemy within” – on election day next month. But his plans to use national guard troops and military personnel as a means to attack those he sees as his opponents go much wider than that, spanning entire cities with Democratic leadership.

  • @sorval_the_eeter
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    13 hours ago

    Presidents do care about votes during an election. They dont care about sit ins and student protests. You’re asking everyone to abandon any pushback of an active genocide. You are asking them to actively support it in fact. Why not pressure Harris to get her to pledge to stop it instead.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      32 hours ago

      My one concern about her openly opposing the genocide in Gaza is that it would likely cause the electoral college to just hand the vote to Trump. That will be way worse for Palestinians overall. Don’t forget Trump didn’t win the popular vote in 2016.

      Unfortunately there are too many people in the US government who are invested in supporting Israel, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the electoral college is compromised like our supreme court is. Israel could be the make it or break it on that front.