'Autocrat-proofing' Democratic leaders work to protect cities if Trump is elected"

Senior Democrats in US cities are preparing to defend their communities in the event of Donald Trump's return to the White House after the former president has repeated threats that he would use presidential powers to seize control of major urban centres.

- Ed Pilkington

Trump has proposed deploying the military inside major cities largely run by Democrats to deal with protesters or to crush criminal gangs. He has threatened to dispatch large numbers of federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations of undocumented people in so-called "sanctuary" cities.

He has also vowed to obliterate the progressive criminal justice policies of left-leaning prosecutors. "In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of law and order ... I will not hesitate to send in federal assets including the national guard until safety is restored," Trump says in Agenda47, the manifesto for his campaign to become the 47th US president.

Trump provoked uproar at the weekend when he called for US armed forces to be deployed against his political rivals – “the enemy within" - on election day next month. But his plans to use national guard troops and military personnel as a means to attack those he sees as his opponents go much wider than that, spanning entire cities with Democratic leadership.

Mayors and prosecutors in several US cities are collaborating over strategies to minimise the fallout. Levar Stoney, the Democratic mayor of Richmond, Virginia, a city of more than 220,000, said he was aware how difficult it would be to resist Trump given the enormous powers at a president's disposal.

"It's very difficult to autocrat-proof your city,” he said. “But you have to have backstops, and mayors are working in coalition to ensure they can be a backstop against these divisive policies.”

Gillian Feiner, the senior counsel at the States United Democracy Center, a non-partisan group working to advance democracy and fair and secure elections, said that many organisations were evaluating the legal landscape and preparing for practical challenges should Trump win.