Sam Popkin, a UC San Diego political science professor emeritus who has written extensively on the American presidency, pauses briefly when asked to plumb U.S. history for a comparable political time to the present.
“Possibly Andrew Jackson,” Popkin said.
Jackson, America’s seventh president who served from 1829 to 1837, was known for rejecting legislation based on his likes and dislikes, rather than constitutionality. Political opponents claimed he breached the Constitution and called him King Andrew. Jackson hired political cronies to replace government workers and brutally ejected Native Americans from the South.
“Incidents of what today would even be called if not ethnic cleansing, ethnic clearing,” Popkin said.
Popkin did not suggest President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to use the military to deport millions of undocumented people, possibly including between 150,000 to 300,000 in San Diego, is the same as Jackson’s “ethnic clearing.”
But moments in U.S. history do partly echo the political circumstances as Trump heads into a second presidential term next month. However, even though the past holds similarities, political scientists say the country’s future is without parallel.
Both Jackson and former President Richard Nixon sought vengeance against political enemies. Trump has long said publicly he wanted his political adversaries to be prosecuted, jailed and even executed. He famously called for Hillary Clinton to be locked up in 2016.
Jackson also purged the federal government of high-level officials, including lawyers, land and customs officers and federal marshals. He explained the purge was needed to rid the government of corruption. Trump has vowed to fire thousands of civil servants and put in their place people loyal to him.
Another example: Soon after Andrew Johnson was sworn in as president in 1865, he ordered his cabinet to express loyalty to him. During his first term, Trump reportedly demanded a loyalty pledge from former FBI Director James Comey.
But the era that best informs Trump’s next four years as president is his first four in office that began eight years ago, when he wiped out numerous environmental rules, signed into law large corporate tax cuts and revamped the federal judiciary.
“He made some important changes in his first administration,” said UC San Diego political scientist Thad Kousser. “He's taking bigger swings now.”
Take Trump’s notion of a deep state — that a web of bureaucrats across the federal government’s agencies and institutions are actually the enemy within. This time, Trump has nominated people who have expressed deep disdain for the agencies he wants them to run:
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who wants to pause disease research, to head Health and Human Services;
- Tulsi Gabbard, described as a Russian sympathizer, as director of National Intelligence;
- FOX news host Pete Hegseth, who has been accused of sexual assault, financial mismanagement and public drunkenness, and been described as an “extreme, anti-establishment crusader,” for secretary of defense;
- Kash Patel, who has said the Justice Department needs a “comprehensive house cleaning,” FBI headquarters should be dismantled and turned into a museum honoring the deep state and promised the White House would “come after” the media, as director of the FBI
“He's not going for Washington establishment figures, but people who are picked almost because they oppose the national establishment, the Washington establishment,” Kousser said. “They want to change the institution, or even tear them down rather than just re-steer the ship of state.”
Neoconservative writer Bill Kristol said Trump is out for total control, which requires destroying institutional norms first, or at least weakening them.
“Trump wants to call over to the Justice Department and say, ‘You need to look at investigating this person. I want to see the files on that person,’” Kristol said. “He wants to call over to the EPA and say, ‘Hey, lay off this guy I know who's being investigated for possible environmental problems with his companies.’”
Kristol contends the result will be a less effective government and a brain drain. He said he knows people who are already planning to leave the Justice Department and the National Institutes for Health because of what might happen. He added that much of the government's work and funding could slow down and cause real damage.
Despite statements to the contrary, Kristol also believes Trump will carry out Project 2025, a conservative plan to reshape the federal government in a way that consolidates the president-elect’s power. Trump has already chosen key people linked to the conservative policy agenda to serve in the White House, including one of the designers of the plan, Russell Vought.
The blueprint includes giving the president more say in federal and state prosecutions, implementing mass deportations and undoing certain civil rights protections, such as barring discrimination in the workplace. Kristol predicts justice will be less blind, liberties fewer.
“Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, political freedoms, freedoms can be curtailed, and it can happen gradually, and it doesn't all happen everywhere all at once,” Kristol said. “But I think after two or three years of Trump, we could really see an erosion of some of these things we take for granted.”
And that erosion, he said, represents “steps” toward autocracy. The central question is, will it be reversible?
“I'm pretty worried,” Kristol said. “I'm pretty alarmed. We haven't really seen anything like this, at least in my lifetime.”
