THE BACKDOOR OPTION THAT COULD KEEP THE GOP IN CONTROL OF CONGRESSCOGCON—a set of classified protocols for national emergencies to ensure the continuity of government—might be part of Trump’s secret plan to fend off the Democrats
Two months ago I wrote here about Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs) that have afforded President Donald Trump, and every president in the last seven decades, extraordinary secret powers to suspend the basic rights of citizens in a domestic crisis with no Congressional or judicial oversight. Those powers essentially give any president the power to upend the Constitution if deemed necessary. I was helped in my reporting on PEADs by Joel McCleary, a former aide on security issues to President Jimmy Carter who has now focused my attention on another top secret codicil to PEADs known as COGCON, which stands for Continuity of Government Readiness Condition. “This is the layer the public has never been told to worry about,” McCleary explained to me. He said the warning system was modeled after DEFCON, the early Cold War military warning system that ranged from 1 to 5, with DEFCON 5 indicating ordinary peacetime and DEFCON 1 meaning that a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union had begun or was imminent. McCleary’s notion is that many of the secret military and intelligence powers initially aimed at warning about a nuclear attack or other extraordinary national security threats are now being turned on political issues: namely the prospect that the Republican Party might lose control of both chambers of Congress, as polls are saying may happen in November’s election. “Note who works the switch,” McCleary said. “Formally, the secretary of homeland security is the president’s lead agent for continuity. In practice, the homeland security apparatus now runs through Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy in the White House who now sits atop an elevated office far above its old standing. “The working hypothesis,” McCleary added, “is that Miller is the de facto head of the continuity machinery, which means that the on-off switch for the Constitution that COGCON entrusts to the president is, day to day, in the hands of an unconfirmed White House aide. “The problem is that no legal framework distinguishes between a nuclear attack and a border dispute, between a civilization-ending pandemic and a political protest, between a genuine cyberattack on national infrastructure and a manufactured pretext for invoking extraordinary authority. The president alone defines the emergency. The president alone activates the response. The president alone signs the pre-draft orders. And no institution—not Congress, not the courts, not the military chain of command—has been given the legal tools to determine, in real time, whether the emergency is genuine and whether the response is proportionate. “This is not a partisan observation,” McCleary said. “It is a structural deficiency that endangers the republic regardless of which party holds the White House. McCleary noted that last September Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum entitled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” that created no new authorities but repurposed post-9/11 counterterrorism authorities and aimed them instead at domestic political targets. More than three thousand nongovernmental organizations signed an open letter against it, as did some prominent Washington law firms, including Arnold & Porter and DLA Piper. More than thirty members of Congress warned that such dicta could be used to stifle legitimate dissent. “This is the layer,” McCleary told me, that “converts a category of political opponent into a category of terrorism suspect.” The president has so far ignored many requests from Republican and MAGA election deniers, who continue to believe he actually defeated Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, to, it’s been reported, declare a “national emergency” and give himself “king-like powers” over the midterm elections. Last September, some eight hundred generals and admirals were summoned to the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, to watch the president give what seemed to be an unscripted address. He claimed at one point that America was facing “the enemy from within”—an apparent reference to domestic political opposition—and warned that “we have to handle it before it gets out of control.” He did not explain what he meant by “handle it.” It just could be that the president is aware that the Democrats—despite his rhetoric about an enemy from within—are the least of his problems. He remains entrenched in a conflict with Iran that has turned out to be far more complicated and obdurate than he expected. The Iranian leadership is as entrenched as ever, though Iran remains desperately in need of sanctioned billions controlled by the West that could alleviate widespread poverty and economic despair. Trump’s administration is losing the support and respect of many longtime regional allies in the Middle East who have been stung by Iran’s ability to accurately target them with missiles and drones while playing hard-to-get during the on-and-off in peace talks. The Strait of Hormuz may be lost to Washington, at least in the short term, diminishing the prospect of lower gasoline prices and making a Republican victory in the midterms even less likely. On the other hand, all of these issues may be a sideshow to the worry that many in America—and the world—have about this president. They were best articulated by the droll words of William G. Miller, a brilliant Republican diplomat who was also the staff director of the Senate committee that investigated the CIA’s domestic spying and other abuses in the 1970s: “The president has two existential powers: One, to blow up the planet with the push of a button. And two, to end the Constitution with a stroke of the pen.” We will have to wait and see while the president, who has the power to end the world, plays hide and seek on his official trips. Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Seymour Hersh, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. © 2026 Seymour Hersh |