A former official from Donald Trump’s first term is sounding the alarm about a so-called “Doomsday Book” that could deliver the president unprecedented power if he acts upon it.

Miles Taylor, who resigned as Homeland Security’s chief of staff in 2019, writes that the White House has a secret catalog of pre-drafted executive orders that, if enacted, would allow Trump to do “extraordinary things” like effectively invoking martial law.

The book dates back to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, which developed so-called PEADs (Presidential Emergency Action Documents) and gathered them into a single instructional book—only to be opened in an extreme scenario such as a nuclear attack on Washington.

The manual was written amid the Cold War, with the understanding that it should be opened only in an emergency that threatened the future of the United States. However, Taylor writes for The i Paper that there is real fear in Washington that Trump may misuse these executive orders.

The Brennan Center for Justice revealed in 2024 that the secret PEADS would grant a president the power to detain civilians, suspend communications, censor the press, establish military areas, and freeze or seize property—all with the stroke of a pen.

Taylor said that Trump “did not fully understand the powers he possessed” in his first term, referring to the secret book. He added that “some of those who did understand were terrified he might use those authorities.”

“One such official, who once held the keys to the Doomsday Book, warned me back then that if Trump returned to office, he feared those powers being turned not outward at America’s enemies but inward at citizens,” Taylor said. “He imagined federal forces ringing polling places in opposition states, intimidation dressed up as election security, and the architecture of homeland defense aimed at the homeland itself.”

Now, Taylor writes that MAGA 2.0 has already laid the groundwork for the White House to use these emergency powers to oppose this year’s midterm elections, which are expected to be a GOP bloodbath.

“All the instruments required to execute it are now in place,” he said. “The detention capacity is being built. The legal framework exists. The targeting doctrine exists. The classified emergency orders still allegedly exist. The man who would sign them has told us, on the record, that nothing but his own morality stands in the way.”

Taylor is not the first to warn about Trump’s potential use of PEADS. Daily Beast columnist Eleanor Clift did the same last month, pointing out that Stephen Miller is the White House counsel overseeing the process by which PEADs could be instated.

“That alone should be sufficient warning of what’s possible,” she wrote.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has been the architect of President Donald Trump’s migrant crackdown in MAGA 2.0. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

The White House did not respond to an email seeking comment about the Doomsday Book and Taylor’s concerns.

Taylor says a civic organization he runs is now speaking with lawmakers in Washington to inform them about the emergency orders and how to combat a possible Trump power grab should he act on them.

“These are scenarios almost none of them have imagined, let alone planned for,” he writes. “Yet I consider them to be more plausible than ever. And they must be proactive in preparing to challenge—in court—abuses of power that might be designed to keep the president’s party in power and to keep him, in his mind, away from the threat of impeachment.”

The president’s obsession with the limits of his power has only made Taylor even more worried that he will abuse it through the executive orders in the Doomsday Book.

Trump said in January, “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”

A week prior, he said of the limits of his power: “There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s very good.”

Trump’s posts on Truth Social have grown particularly unhinged in recent months as he contends there should be fewer checks on his power. Perhaps the 79-year-old’s most chilling remark came in August.

“I have the right to do anything I want to do,” Trump said. “I’m the President of the United States of America.”

With executive orders already lined up, Taylor writes that it is time to take the threat of Trump abusing the pre-written, “doomsday” executive orders a reality.

“This is no longer the stuff of cheap fiction,” Taylor wrote. “But if we let it happen, American democracy would read like one.”