A history of the U.S., 2024-2028
Following his 2020 re-election, Trump doubled down on his aggressive domestic and foreign policies.
Having taken over all of the executive functions of government, Trump set his sights on the military, which remained the one doubtful player in his effort to seize undisputed control of the country. The famous Dunford incident, in February 2022, set the stage.
Joe Dunford was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump had been invited to the wedding of his son, Joe, Jr., to a woman who held joint American and Jordanian citizenship. When it was revealed that the young woman had been close to several ISIS members, Trump fired Dunford. On March 2, he stated, via a tweet, that he would not be appointing a new Chairman. “Instead, I will assume the responsibility myself of running our great military.”
There then followed the so-called “Great Purge” of 2024, in which thousands of General Staff officers were fired or eased into early retirement. These were overwhelmingly men and women who were registered Democrats. It has never been established that Trump’s Justice Department revealed their party affiliation to the president, but Trump appeared to suggest this when he tweeted, “Some allegedly ‘great’ military staff seem to forget that I know everything. They work for ME and have taken a loyalty oath to ME not to the liberals trying to undermine our great country.”
His lock on the military now secure, Trump turned to other fronts. With the Domestic Policing and Anti-Terrorist Act (DPATA) of 2024, Trump assumed active leadership of all National Guards, removing that responsibility from state Governors. He also, for the first time in U.S. history, authorized the formation of “Citizens Brigades,” para-military formations “to secure, patrol, pacify and control the external borders of the U.S. and to combat crimes within the U.S. borders.” (These groups swore personal loyalty oaths to him.) One part of DPATA called for Citizens Brigades to replace local police agencies in “centers of resistance to the fundaments of law and morality within the U.S.” Included in these “centers of resistance” were such cities as San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago; their police forces were summarily fired and replaced by Brigades, who wore red, white and blue uniforms designed by Trump’s daughter, Ivanka.
In his famous July 2024 speech to the National Rifle Association, Trump announced he would “happily accept” the nomination of the Republican National Convention the next month “to run again to be your president.” Declaring the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution (limiting presidents to two four-year terms) “null and void,” Trump said, “The will of the people is more important than a stupid piece of paper.” Democrats in the Congress—outnumbered by Republicans—protested, but to no avail. Trump was dutifully nominated by the Republicans at their Atlanta convention. Democrats ran Pete Buttigieg, who was crushed at the polls, after one of the dirtiest smear campaigns in history. Trump was sworn in for his third term on Jan. 21, 2025.
The next three years saw the continued rightward lurch of the government. The Republican-led Congress abolished the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Education and the Commerce Department, with their functions absorbed into a new White House Domestic Council led by the Rev. Franklin Graham. All U.S. residents of Islamic faith were required to register with a new Internal Loyalty Registry. Civil rights acts were systematically overturned, with the help of a Supreme Court dominated by Trump appointees. The Pentagon re-instituted the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Clinton-era policy; thousands of gay men and women were summarily ousted from service. The Supreme Court, revisiting its Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, declared same-sex marriage unconstitutional. It also declared abortion to be “incompatible with the Constitution, with custom and morality” and outlawed it, even in cases where the life of the mother was at risk.
In foreign policy, Trump broke diplomatic relations with Mexico, withdrew from NATO and formed instead an alliance with the Putin-led Russian Federation, to which North Korea was admitted. The Iranian War (2025-2026) led to the near annihilation of Iran; when Tehran was bombed with a 10-megaton nuclear device, no one was sure which country had dropped it. In a tweet, Trump said, “Too bad for Tehran. Maby [sic] they’ll learn not to mess with us.”
In January 2028, while on a fund-raising appearance in Milwaukee, Trump joined his predecessors Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy in being assassinated. The killer was said to be a mentally-deranged Hasidic Jew who died under mysterious circumstances while in Secret Service custody. Vice President Mike Pence immediately assumed the oath of office. In March, 2028, he declared, “The United States of America is, always has been and always will be a Christian country”, and its name was changed to “The United Christian States of America Under God” (UCSAUG). The new American flag replaced the familiar stars with small crosses; and a gigantic crucifix was erected atop the U.S. Capitol. On the day following Trump’s burial (at Mar-a-Lago), Sen. Lindsay Graham introduced legislation making Trump’s birthday (June 14) a national holiday; and evangelical leaders announced they were convening a council to write a Book of Trump, to be formally incorporated into the New Testament.
In the late summer of 2028, President Pence announced the Democratic Party would be outlawed. “For far too long,” he told Congress, “Democrats have stood for unpatriotic anti-Americanism. They’re all atheists, Communists and terrorists. They hate America!” Democratic members of Congress were escorted out of the Capital by armed Citizens Brigades; no one knew where they were taken. Overnight, the U.S. had become a one-party state. Donald J. Trump’s legacy was now complete.
