The first 100 days of President Donald Trump's second term have been a crazy whirlwind of activity, with Trump signing a flurry of executive orders aimed at pushing forward his agenda without Congress followed by a series of court decisions hampering his efforts with injunctions. The Trump administration has tried to slash the federal workforce, while targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and initiatives in both the public and private sector.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been busy rounding up illegal immigrants and deporting them back to their home countries, Guantanamo Bay, or the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador. The administration has even targeted people here legally with student visas, canceling them over their participation and help leading campus protests against Israel's actions in Gaza.

What will the next six months look like? Robert Evans lays out some possible scenarios in a recent episode of the It Could Happen Here podcast.

Evans warns that cracks will begin develop within the Trump administration as efforts to move his agenda forward stall.

"It cannot stay at its current level of power, which is too high to sustain but too low to succeed. It has to keep doing things that have never been done before. As soon as it stops accelerating, it stalls and explodes," he says.

However, the Trump administration is not going to just give up, Evans warns, saying that he expects the "Empire's gonna strike back."

"We are in for a hot summer, my friends, and there's no way around that. I mean this in the literal sense that it will probably be the hottest summer on record, although that fact will be true of every subsequent summer in our lives. But I also mean this in the sense that things are going to cook off in the streets very soon."

Evans expects to see protests in the streets as laid off workers, tired of high prices due to Trump's tariffs, will take to the streets to voice their anger and displeasure.

"I expect protests around the country in the coming months for several reasons, but the likeliest event to provoke severe civil disruption is a right and food prices in the rise of everything else in price, as well as a collapsing economy courtesy of the president's tariffs."

Evans says that is exactly what the Trump administration wants, so they can justify using the Insurrection Act to "to send US troops into US cities to crush riots and punish leftist demonstrators."

Evans says that after writing ten pages about what the next six months may hold, he was unable to come up with a "sexy ending."

"I didn't come up with a smooth, sexy ending for this like a writer should, because I'm tired and thinking about this isn't fun."

Mike McConnell