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I am not going to sugarcoat it. Ever since Donald Trump entered the political scene people have underestimated how terrible he could be.

His racist smears of then-President Barack Obama gave way to racist smears against others, including a federal judge. His claims of impunity for shooting someone on Fifth Avenue transformed into judicial immunity for crimes committed on Jan. 6. His only rule is that when goes low, he will eventually go lower.

We know the contours of how bad Trump 2.0 will be. Tomorrow we will get our first glimpse of the details. Expect them to be worse, in every respect, than you think possible. They will be both grander and pettier, more bone chilling and more outlandish..

Expect a flood of executive orders, policy announcements and personnel appointments all pointing in the direction of chaos and revenge. There will be healthy doses of self-enrichment and spoils delivered to his friends old and new alike.

You're reading my monthly State of Democracy newsletter, where I share my thoughts and insights on the current trends and stories impacting voters and our democracy. With the incoming Republican trifecta, expect my analysis on Trump and his cronies’ anti-democratic actions — you won't find my thoughts on this anywhere else!

And, of course, there will be lies. Big lies, small lies, clever lies and obvious lies. As dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned in 1974 about the Soviet Union, “the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.” So too here, it will be a pillar of Donald Trump’s second term.

Most importantly, pay attention to democracy’s most important guardrails being dismantled individually and altogether. Expect attacks on the professional civil service in general and specific departments in particular. He will try to replace nonpartisan government employees with partisan operatives. I expect him to gut the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and turn it into a grotesque version of itself.

Among Trump’s first tasks will be the perversion of our criminal justice system. He will pardon his loyalists for their crimes on Jan. 6 while directing the power of his government to pursue his political opponents who stood for democracy.

As John Rawls observed:

The bad man desires arbitrary power. What moves the evil man is the love of injustice.

Trump’s evil will soon be fully revealed. It is not only Trump who will be…

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