It’s darkly ironic that Donald Trump’s upcoming appearance at the Libertarian Party’s national convention was announced the same week his stunning interview with Time magazine was published, in which he indicated all the ways a potential second term would imperil our personal liberties.
Reading through the interview, I was struck by the scope of the surveillance state — and widespread intrusion into Americans’ personal lives — that will be required for Trump to accomplish his agenda.
Take immigration, for example. Trump said he would tap state police forces to aid a mass deportation plan that his advisers have said will involve rounding up most of the roughly 11 million undocumented people in the United States, holding them in camps along the southern border, and deporting them. Aside from the monumental resources that authorities would require to search for and apprehend that many people, it also stands to reason many of them, once apprehended, would be subjected to intense surveillance already deployed against people at risk for deportation, like ankle monitors and strict curfews.
Trump’s vow to crack down on “anti-white feeling” would almost certainly require new levels of surveillance, as well. It’s literal thought-policing, which could bolster Republicans’ push to put cameras in classrooms to catch teachers who discuss race or racism with their students. A second Trump administration could expand existing surveillance systems — which have already been weaponized against protesters in disturbing ways — that use tools like facial recognition technology to identify people in crowds, and social media monitoring to probe activists’ communications. Think COINTELPRO, but led by Kash Patel or Stephen Miller.
The Time interview also says Trump wants to “let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans.” Conservative activists behind Project 2025, the plan for far-right governance if Trump is elected, have complained the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s abortion surveillance is “woefully inadequate.” So a Trump administration could strengthen it by federalizing the use of high-tech abortion surveillance tools I’ve written about in the past — like warrants for geolocation data and internet search histories — to identify people who search the internet for abortion-related terms or enter facilities known to provide abortions.
These are just a few of the ways one can imagine a Trump administration peering into Americans’ everyday lives. Far from a picture of liberty, these examples taken together seem unmistakably authoritarian.