Pentagon officials discussing how to respond if Trump issues controversial orders

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

49% : "After Trump issued Schedule F the first time, late into his last term, the Pentagon and other federal agencies were tasked with making lists of which employees would be moved into that category.
46% : Defense officials are also scrambling to identify civilian employees who might be impacted if Trump reinstates Schedule F, an executive order he first issued in 2020 that, if enacted, would have reclassified huge swaths of nonpolitical, career federal employees across the US government to make them more easily fireable.
46% : But the law has exceptions for rebellion and terrorism, which ultimately gives the president broad leeway in deciding if and when to invoke Insurrection Act.
45% : A former senior Defense Department official, who served under Trump, said he believes it is likely that additional active-duty forces will be tasked with assisting Customs and Border Protection at the southern border.
44% : Trump last month said the military should be used to handle what he called "the enemy from within" and "radical left lunatics.""I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can't let that happen," he added, referring to potential protests on Election Day.
42% : "'The enemy from within'Top of mind for many defense officials is how Trump plans to wield American military power at home.
34% : Trump in his last term had a fraught relationship with much of his senior military leadership, including now-retired Gen. Mark Milley who took steps to limit Trump's ability to use nuclear weapons while he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
30% : Trump has suggested he would be open to using active-duty forces for domestic law enforcement and mass deportations and has indicated he wants to stack the federal government with loyalists and "clean out corrupt actors" in the US national security establishment.
28% : Defense Department lawyers can and do make recommendations to military leaders on the legality of orders, but there is no real legal safeguard that would prevent Trump from deploying American soldiers to police US streets.
27% : Or would they view that as abandoning their people?"It's unclear at this point who Trump will choose to lead the Pentagon, though officials believe Trump and his team will try to avoid the kind of "hostile" relationship he had with the military during his last administration, said a former defense official with experience during the first Trump administration.
25% : Civilian employees at riskIn a video posted last year, Trump said if elected he would "immediately re-issue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the President's authority to remove rogue bureaucrats...we will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them.
24% : But it is also possible, the former official said, that forces could be sent into American cities if asked to help with the mass deportation plan Trump mentioned repeatedly on the trail.
22% : Trump reportedly considered invoking the Act in 2020 to quell protests after the death of George Floyd.
19% : Several former senior military officials who served under Trump have sounded the alarm in recent years about his authoritarian impulses, including Milley and retired Gen. John Kelly, Trump's former White House chief of staff.
15% : Kelly said before the election that Trump fits "into the general definition of fascist" and that he spoke of the loyalty of Hitler's Nazi generals.

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