Preserve, Protect, & Defend

[brucejoel99]

PRESERVE, PROTECT, & DEFEND
A Designated Survival Timeline
Coming Soon


Deb Haaland, official portrait, 116th Congress - U.S. House Office of Photography-Franmarie Metzler [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


The names, characters, places, & incidents depicted in this story are the entirely fictitious products of the author's imagination. Any similarity &/or resemblance to actual events, locales, &/or persons, living or dead, as well as any names thereof is entirely coincidental.

[BigVic]

I’m interested.

[NewYorkExpress]

Out of curiosity, why'd you chose Deb Haaland? You could have chosen Granholm (just kill everyone else off, and then no one complains about the fact Granholm's constitutionally ineligible to be President. It would make for a great TV drama.)

[brucejoel99]

I’m interested.

Thanks! I hope I can - & will do my best to - deliver something worth your interest! Watch this space!

Out of curiosity, why'd you chose Deb Haaland? You could have chosen Granholm (just kill everyone else off, and then no one complains about the fact Granholm's constitutionally ineligible to be President. It would make for a great TV drama.)

I chose Haaland because she's actually eligible to be selected as the designated survivor. Granholm obviously could & would never be selected as such in the first place for the very obvious reason that you yourself have already pointed out.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

I’m interested.

Thanks! I hope I can - & will do my best to - deliver something worth your interest! Watch this space!

Out of curiosity, why'd you chose Deb Haaland? You could have chosen Granholm (just kill everyone else off, and then no one complains about the fact Granholm's constitutionally ineligible to be President. It would make for a great TV drama.)

I chose Haaland because she's actually eligible to be selected as the designated survivor. Granholm obviously could & would never be selected as such in the first place for the very obvious reason that you yourself have already pointed out.

What he might mean is why Haaland? not Austin, Garland, etc?

[brucejoel99]

I’m interested.

Thanks! I hope I can - & will do my best to - deliver something worth your interest! Watch this space!

Out of curiosity, why'd you chose Deb Haaland? You could have chosen Granholm (just kill everyone else off, and then no one complains about the fact Granholm's constitutionally ineligible to be President. It would make for a great TV drama.)

I chose Haaland because she's actually eligible to be selected as the designated survivor. Granholm obviously could & would never be selected as such in the first place for the very obvious reason that you yourself have already pointed out.

What he might mean is why Haaland? not Austin, Garland, etc?

Oh, well I picked Haaland in particular because the Interior Secretary is the most commonly selected designated survivor in the practice's history. Compare that to the high-profile Cabinet members - like the Big 4 & Homeland - whose high-profiles mean that they actually have to attend the high-profile events that all-but-one in the line of succession have to attend.

Plus, who doesn't love Deb Haaland?!

[Utah Neolib]

ooooooooo sounds like a interesting timeline

[Chips]

Nice! Keep going.

[brucejoel99]

President Biden

Tuesday, January 24th, 2023:

9:18pm, The Capital

Biden Congress-1 - CloudFront [Public domain], via U.S. Embassy in El Salvador

For once, the President was on time - 3 minutes early, to be precise - & it was impressive. After all, there's a reason that some inside-the-Beltway folks like to invoke an eponymous phrase - "Bidin' his time" - whenever he's late to a function, as he so often chronically is. In any event, nobody would be invoking it tonight. The networks would surely be grateful, as they wanted to be assured - above all else - that tonight wouldn't end up being a repeat of last year, when POTUS' State of the Union address ate well into many of their affiliates' local news timeslots. No, not this time. Promptly at 9:00pm, House Sergeant-at-Arms William J. Walker announced POTUS' arrival: "Madam Speaker, the President of the United States!"

That's right: Madam Speaker. Despite what some may have you believe & would themselves like to be true, getting rid of Nancy Pelosi is, always has been, & always will be easier said than done. In spite of her public remarks that she would've retired in 2016 had Hillary Clinton been elected President then & her 2018 "commitment" to serving a maximum of 2 more terms as House Democratic Leader, she truly felt that she was just getting started. Soon after deciding that she'd seek another term as Speaker, she'd easily managed to secure the support of 218 members of her caucus that'd be necessary for her to remain in her post, an action that in & of itself served to remind everybody that - whether they liked it or not - she was still the most effective legislative mastermind & political tactician in modern history. Indeed, the midterms & the run-up to them had done nothing to render such a claim inaccurate. It had been an arduous midterm campaign, of course, but when all was said & done, the House Democrats had expanded their majority by 8, making it the 2nd time in as many decades that an incumbent 1st-term President's party didn't lose the House 2 years in. Everything required to make it so had gone just right: the pandemic was long over, the economy was roaring, former President Trump was still in the news so often that the Democratic-leaning voters who'd been motivated to end his presidency had actually remained engaged enough to turn-out once again (& for a midterm during which they'd already held the White House, no less!), & S. 1's independent redistricting commission requirement - injunctions on which had been stayed 'til the Court upheld it 5-4 in June, a ruling which also got to stand as the final hallmark of the now-retired Justice Breyer's legal legacy - had seen to it once & for all that partisan gerrymandering wouldn't be able to screw the Democrats over as it had the prior decade.

Of course, S. 1 wouldn't have even been possible to begin with without what was undeniably the most important political development here in the Capital since the President took office: Schumer going nuclear. But he didn't do it alone, of course. By September 2021, after President Biden's "American Jobs & Families Plans" had to be combined into a single reconciliation package so that they could become law in spite of the Senate Republican opposition, the 2 Senate Democrats who are perhaps more important than any other - Manchin & Sinema - had finally had enough with the minority's obstructionism. After McConnell said that 100% of his focus was on stopping the administration, he started to prove that he meant it, filibustering everything imaginable: S. 1, the John Lewis VRA re-authorization, D.C. statehood, immigration reform, etc. You name it, they blocked it, & Manchin & Sinema were finally done with it. It barely even took any nudging to finally get them there in the end: they'd simply had enough & just wanted to get some stuff done for once. And so it came to pass that on September 20th, 2021, with Vice President Harris brought in to preside at the dais after yet another Schumer-filed cloture motion with regards to the reconsideration of S. 1 had failed, the Majority Leader finally got to say the magic words: "Madam President, I raise a point of order that the vote on cloture under rule XXII for all legislation is by majority vote." Although the Senate's rules forced the Vice President to deny the Majority Leader's point-of-order at first, he immediately appealed the ruling as necessary & asked for a roll-call vote to that effect, & when it produced the perpetually-expected 50-50 tie, the Vice President obviously cast her tie-breaking vote in favor of overturning her own aforementioned ruling &, in doing so, had finally managed to bring an end to the 215-year-life of the Senate's filibuster.

With that, everything changed. Soon enough, Democratic legislation could fly through Congress to the Resolute Desk, from where the President signed S. 1 & the John Lewis V.R.A. re-authorization into law on September 27th, just 3 days before the deadline by which many states would've been able to proceed with partisan gerrymandering & without facing federal preclearance had the aforementioned pieces of legislation not become law. In December 2021, a federal minimum-wage hike to $15 was tacked onto the FY2022 NDAA, & as with all other pieces of legislation, Senate Republicans could do nothing to stop it. In the new year, the Senate was finally able to raise the long-frozen Biden comprehensive immigration reform & House gun-control bills from the dead, passing both in the manner now required to pass seemingly every piece of legislation: on a party-line vote with the aid of the Vice President's tie-breaking authority. Although the 117th Congress did manage to see a few bipartisan bills - such as the China-focused Endless Frontier Act - sent to Resolute Desk, they were most certainly the exception to the party-line rule. In any event, though, perhaps the most surprising bipartisan bills of all had already been passed in November 2021, when Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined all Democrats in support of statehood for Washington, D.C. & Puerto Rico, which would take effect on the 4th of July in 2022 (prior to which Eleanor Holmes Norton would be re-elected to the House as its congresswoman - finally being granted the ability to cast votes in the body which she'd served as a member of for more than 30 years - & Karl Racine & Susan Rice would be elected to serve as the new state's first-ever Senators). Although a few self-proclaimed "constitutional conservatives" - with the full support of the national Republican Party, of course - would immediately seek to challenge the admission of Washington, D.C. into the Union, the federal courts - including the Supreme Court itself, with nothing but a simple denial of certiorari in May 2022 from which only Justices Thomas & Alito publicly dissented - would see to it soon enough that the massive stretches that were being offered by the plaintiffs as their so-called "arguments" were summarily disposed of.

And all the while, neither congressional Democrats nor the President were being hurt by any of it. On the contrary, their actions were popular with the American people. Indeed, following Congress' passage of the $15 minimum-wage increase, Gallup began recording net-positive approval ratings for Congress for the first time since January 2004, when it emerged that no evidence had been found of an Iraqi WMD program, the purported existence of which had previously served as the basis for Congress' approval of the invasion & resultant occupation thereof. Given an absolutely booming economy having been spurred by enough vaccinations seeing to it that pandemic-like conditions were all but a memory by September 2021, a majority of the American people were simply being given no reason to be angry with Congress at the moment. And although the Republicans certainly tried to put up a fight in the midterm election campaign, they just weren't able to fearmonger enough of the American people into as significantly a sustained opposition as they had a decade prior; the GOP attacked the Democratic agenda in every way that they possibly could, to (seemingly) no avail: like Teflon Don before him, the President was seemingly Teflon Joe. At the same time, they were unable to - as former House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney had warned them to - cut the detrimental weight of former President Trump that remained hanging around their necks loose: on August 2nd, 2021, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance had announced that a grand jury was indicting the former President on charges of insurance, tax, & bank fraud in connection to his activities & dealings as Chairman & President of the Trump Organization. Though most Republicans referred to the prosecution of the case as yet another politically motivated witch-hunt, Trump's name was kept in the news day after day, simply serving to remind the people who'd voted him out of office that they'd done so for a reason, & that 1 of the 2 major political parties still remained - &, indeed, had actively sought to remain - all-but-his.

In short, the totality of everything had simply combined perfectly for the Democrats & horribly for the Republicans in the run-up to the midterms, & the results that came in on November 8th, 2022, showed it: in addition to the hitherto aforementioned 230-205 House Democratic majority, the Democrats gained 2 seats in the Senate, with outgoing PA Lt. Gov. John Fetterman picking up his state's open Senate seat & Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson successfully ousting Ron Johnson, helping to expand the Senate's Democratic majority to 56-48 in the 118th Congress. The possibilities therein could very well be endless now, with a whole new 2 years of a House majority & filibuster-less Senate to work with.

And so it was that the sky was the limit when the President entered the House chamber to deliver his State of the Union address on this January night in the Capital district. He did so giddily, with something of an energized pep in his step, & who could blame him? Just 4 days past the halfway point of his 1st term (of hopefully 2, despite being 80 years old now), he was riding high; given the mandate which the nation had chosen to hand him for 2 consecutive elections in a row now, he may as well have been on top of the world, & although he hadn't announced it yet, he & his political team were preparing to launch the re-elect in just a few months' time. It didn't matter that he'd be 86 by the time at which a potential 2nd term would end: he'd proven capable enough - &, crucially, was popular enough - that he was set to be the first President to comfortably cruise to re-election since Bill Clinton more than 25 years prior. Once upon a time, he'd just been Scranton Joe; now, he was shaping up to be the Democratic Reagan (in terms of policy implementation, at least, if not in terms of an impending 49-state sweep that modern polarization would never allow for), & nobody understood that better than the President himself as he proceeded to the podium, albeit slowly, of course, so that he could greet as many of the attendees as possible - & as his time-crunch would allow for - before he got there, having greatly missed being able to do so during the pandemic: he joined the entire D.C. delegation for a group-bearhug, greetingly nodded at the assembled Supreme Court justices as he passed by them (a near-record of 7 were present: Chief Justice Roberts, & Justices Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Kruger, & Jackson, of whom the latter 2 had been appointed by Biden to replace Sotomayor & Breyer upon their respective retirements over the previous 2 summers), & notably shook hands & held a short conversation with Liz Cheney, who'd triumphed from the backbenches to come-from-behind & win her Wyoming primary the year prior. Somewhere along the way, he finally reached the podium; after merrily greeting the Vice President & Speaker up on the dais allowing the applause to diminish to the point that the Speaker could finally introduce the President: "Members of Congress, I have the high privilege & distinct honor of presenting to you the President of the United States." Cue more applause. It was already 9:18pm before it finally died down enough to give the President the room to speak: "My fellow Americans, I stand before you tonight to report to you - the American people - that not only is the state of our Union the strongest that it has ever been, but that that is only the case thanks to you, the American people."

Little did anybody know that everything - truly, everything - about the state of our Union was about to change... forever.

[brucejoel99]

Captain Jonah Noland

Tuesday, January 24th, 2023:

9:23pm, Reagan National Airport

Alaska SkyWest E75 in Fresno - RickyCourtney [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 file], via Wikimedia Commons

Alaska Airlines Flight 1002 provided nonstop service from D.C. to San Francisco. On January 24th, 2023, Captain Jonah Noland was set to pilot the Boeing 737, carrying on board its full capacity: Captain Noland, First Officer Garret Manns, their 4 flight attendants, & 189 passengers. An unmarried 35-year-old at the time of the flight, Captain Noland - originally from Oklahoma City - began training to become a commercial pilot in 2009, joined Alaska Airlines after receiving his commercial pilot's license in 2011, & had been promoted to captain of Boeing 737-800 airliners in 2018. Having logged more than 13,500 hours of flight time over his career, this regular night flight was surely primed to be just like every other flight that Noland had flown before it. There was just one problem: Noland wasn't planning on this flight turning out like the others.

Noland had spent the day leading up to the flight in his hotel room, simply having felt like he had nothing to do after having gone everywhere, seen everything, & done everything that D.C. has to offer over the years. After waking up & realizing that he was gonna be bored out of his mind with nothing to do all day before he had to head over to the airport, he decided to turn on the TV & switch through the channels 'til he came across his favorite network: OANN. Although his local cable package up in Anchorage didn't offer OANN, he'd loved the network - &, in particular, the commentary which they had to offer - ever since he found the channel on some hotel-room TV on one of his stopovers a few years back. His watching it was actually a bit weird at first: he'd never even been all that political before he discovered the network (once upon a time, he'd even been an Obama voter, albeit a pretty unengaged one), but everything which the personalities on the network had to say just made perfect sense to him. After just a few months of tuning in every now & then here & there, he truly believed that former President Trump had been the victim of deep-state scheming & persecution, & that everything that had ever been thrown his way was a hoax, most especially the "big lie" - as Noland saw it - that former President Trump had lost the 2020 election. Noland just didn't understand how that could happen, given what he saw as the former President's greatness; the only way that such a "steal" could possibly be happening was with "Democrat election fraud" & "widespread voter fraud."

His conviction of this reality deepened to the extent that he'd even participated in the storming of the Capitol Building 2 years prior while in town on yet another stopover, intent on aiding former President Trump in his attempt to overturn his defeat by stopping the joint session of Congress from formalizing President Biden's victory. He was thankful everyday thereafter that the FBI never came knocking on his door; he'd never publicly posted or even so much as talked about his involvement on January 6th, 2021, so he seemingly ended up being just another face lost amongst the sea of faces in the background of blurry, shaky-cam phone footage of that day. But in the 2 years since, he'd never been able to get over the loss that he & his fellow insurrectionists felt that they had experienced on that day, a loss which he continued to be reminded of as he watched OANN commentating on how President Biden's State of the Union address later that night would consist of nothing more than the President pushing "the radical Democrats' socialist agenda that was solely bent on destroying America." Watching the broadcast, Noland couldn't take it anymore, so angered by a President & Democrats that he saw as destroying the country, & even moreso by the fact that he felt that he couldn't do anything about it... or could he?

"No, no. It's a stupid idea," he thought to himself, shaking his head. He'd only thought about it before in the sense of fantasizing about it. He could never possibly go through with it. But why couldn't he? In the near blink of an eye, he'd be able to get the ultimate payback for the steal which he felt had been perpetrated upon America. Sure, he'd be taking down those he considered to be true patriots like him, such as Senator Hawley & Representatives Greene, Boebert, & Cawthorn, if he did so, but wouldn't it be worth it for what he felt was their shared cause? After all, sacrifice - even, or rather, especially a significant amount of it - is sometimes required to achieve that which is worth doing: that which is ultimately the right thing to do, at least as Noland saw it. And Noland understood this too, in that he'd surely go down as a monster if he successfully managed to do what he was considering doing, but maybe he'd go down as a martyr among those who were "true patriots" like him. And maybe - just maybe - even former President Trump would be proud of what his followers were willing to do in his name, even if he surely wouldn't be able to say so publicly. And what of his plane's passengers? Noland didn't think much of them. A few less San Franciscans would probably be nothing but good for America, he thought.

Besides, the President's State of the Union address happening right as he'd be in the air overhead provided him with just too good of an opportunity to pass up. So, with that, he made his decision: later that night, shortly after take-off, he'd take full control of the plane & turn it into a large guided missile, loaded with 6,400 gallons of jet fuel & aimed directly at the packed House chamber in the Capitol. He spent the next few hours writing up a farewell suicide note explaining his actions in the form of a pre-scheduled email set to be sent to OANN's news email-hotline at 10:00pm that night, & then readied himself to check out of his hotel & grab an Uber to the airport. By 9:23pm on the night of January 24th, shortly after the President had just begun delivering his speech, with just a minute left to go before take-off, Captain Noland was ready to execute on his plan. He'd already made sure that the cockpit door was locked shortly before taxiing away from the gate, & now all that there was left to do was take care of his co-pilot. That wouldn't be too difficult for Noland, thanks to the post-9/11 Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act. Courtesy of the federal government themselves, Noland was authorized to carry on-board, & just a short moment after they were in the air, First Officer Manns didn't even see the shot coming. The sound of the gunshot triggered panic in the passengers behind him, which only intensified once they realized that they were approaching the Capital & losing altitude. One of the flight attendants kept knocking on the door, trying to figure out what was going on & asking the pilots if they were okay, completely unware of what'd just transpired on the other side. Captain Noland didn't care. He was a man on a mission - the mission of his life - & he was intent on seeing his mission through to its end.

[Utah Neolib]

Captain Jonah Noland

Tuesday, January 24th, 2023:

9:23pm, Reagan National Airport

Alaska SkyWest E75 in Fresno - RickyCourtney [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 file], via Wikimedia Commons

Alaska Airlines Flight 1002 provided nonstop service from D.C. to San Francisco. On January 24th, 2023, Captain Jonah Noland was set to pilot the Boeing 737, carrying on board its full capacity: Captain Noland, First Officer Garret Manns, their 4 flight attendants, & 189 passengers. Just 35 years old at the time of the flight, Captain Noland - originally from Oklahoma City - began training to become a commercial pilot in 2009, joined Alaska Airlines after receiving his commercial pilot's license in 2011, & had been promoted to captain of Boeing 737-800 airliners in 2018. Having logged more than 13,500 hours of flight time over his career, this regular night flight was surely primed to be just like every other flight that Noland had flown before it. There was just one problem: Noland wasn't planning on this flight turning out like the others.

Noland had spent the day leading up to the flight in his hotel room, simply having felt like he had nothing to do after going everywhere, seen everything, & done everything that D.C. has to offer over the years. After waking up & realizing that he was gonna be bored out of his mind with nothing to do all day before he had to head over to the airport, he decided to turn on the TV & switch through the channels 'til he came across his favorite network: OANN. Although his local cable package up in Anchorage didn't offer OANN, he'd loved the network - &, in particular, the commentary which they had to offer - ever since he found the channel on some hotel-room TV on one of his stopovers a few years back. His watching it was actually a bid weird at first: he'd never even been all that political before he discovered the network (once upon a time, he'd even been an Obama voter, albeit a pretty unengaged one), but everything which the personalities on the network had to say just made perfect sense to him. After just a few months of tuning in every now & then here & there, he truly believed that former President Trump had been the victim of deep-state scheming & persecution, & that everything that had ever been thrown his way was a hoax, most especially the "lie" - as Noland saw it - that former President Trump had lost the 2020 election. Noland just didn't understand how that could happen, given what he saw as the former President's greatness; the only way that such a "steal" could possibly be happening was with "Democrat election fraud" & "widespread voter fraud."

His conviction of this reality deepened to the extent that he'd even participated in the storming of the Capitol Building 2 years prior while in town on yet another stopover, intent on aiding former President Trump in his attempt to overturn his defeat by stopping the joint session of Congress from formalizing President Biden's victory. He was thankful everyday thereafter that the FBI never came knocking on his door; he'd never publicly posted or even so much as talked about his involvement on January 6th, 2021, so he seemingly ended up being just another face lost amongst the sea of faces in the background of blurry, shaky-cam phone footage of that day. But in the 2 years since, he'd never been able to get over the loss that he & his fellow insurrectionists felt that they had experienced on that day, a loss which he continued to be reminded of as he watched OANN commentating on how President Biden's State of the Union address later that night would consist of nothing more than the President pushing "the radical Democrats' socialist agenda that was solely bent on destroying America." Watching the broadcast, Noland couldn't take it anymore, so angered by a President & Democrats he saw as destroying the country, & even moreso by the fact that he felt that he couldn't do anything about it... or could he?

"No, no. It's a stupid idea," he thought to himself, shaking his head. He'd only thought about it before in the sense of fantasizing about it. He could never possibly go through with it. But why couldn't he? In the near blink of an eye, he'd be able to get the ultimate payback for the steal which he felt had been perpetrated upon America. Sure, he'd be taking down those he considered to be true patriots like him, such as Senator Hawley & Representatives Greene, Boebert, & Cawthorn, if he did so, but wouldn't it be worth it for what he felt was their shared cause? After all, sacrifice - even, or rather, especially a significant amount of it - is sometimes required to achieve that which is worth doing: that which is ultimately the right thing to do, at least as Noland saw it. And Noland understood this too, in that he'd surely go down as a monster if he successfully managed to do what he was considering doing, but maybe he'd go down as a martyr among those who were "true patriots" like him. And maybe - just maybe - even former President Trump would be proud of what his followers were willing to do in his name, even if he surely wouldn't be able to say so publicly. And what of his plane's passengers? Noland didn't think much of them. A few less San Franciscans would probably be nothing but good for America, he thought.

Besides, the President's State of the Union address happening right as he'd be in the air overhead provided him with just too good of an opportunity to pass up. So, with that, he made his decision: later that night, shortly after take-off, he'd take full control of the plane & turn it into a large guided missile, loaded with 6,400 gallons of jet fuel & aimed directly at the packed House chamber in the Capitol. By 9:23pm on the night of January 24th, shortly after the President had just begun delivering his speech, with just a minute left to go before take-off, Captain Noland was ready to execute on his plan. He'd already made sure that the cockpit door was locked shortly before taxiing away from the gate, & now all that there was left to do was take care of was his co-pilot. That wouldn't be too difficult for Noland, thanks to the post-9/11 Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act. Courtesy of the federal government themselves, Noland was authorized to carry on-board, & just a short moment after they were in the air, First Officer Manns didn't even see the shot coming. The sound of the gunshot triggered panic in the passengers behind him, which only intensified once they realized that they were approaching the Capital & losing altitude. One of the flight attendants kept knocking on the door, trying to figure out what was going on & asking the pilots if they were okay, completely unware of what'd just transpired on the other side. Captain Noland didn't care. He was a man on a mission - the mission of his life - & he was intent on seeing his mission through to its end.

Little nitpick, but that’s a picture of a Embraer 175, which doesn’t have the range capabilities to fly from DCA to PDX. it would be a 737-900, or 737-800, and possibly an a321neo on that route for Alaska.
great timeline btw
I very much hope this never happens

[brucejoel99]

[snip]

Little nitpick, but that’s a picture of a Embraer 175, which doesn’t have the range capabilities to fly from DCA to PDX. it would be a 737-900, or 737-800, and possibly an a321neo on that route for Alaska.
great timeline btw
I very much hope this never happens

Thanks! And yeah, couldn't find an image in line with Atlas' copyright rules of an Alaska Airlines 737-800 at night

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

That’s pretty chilling and realistic writing.

[Utah Neolib]

[snip]

Little nitpick, but that’s a picture of a Embraer 175, which doesn’t have the range capabilities to fly from DCA to PDX. it would be a 737-900, or 737-800, and possibly an a321neo on that route for Alaska.
great timeline btw
I very much hope this never happens

Thanks! And yeah, couldn't find an image in line with Atlas' copyright rules of an Alaska Airlines 737-800 at night

That’s fine 

[brucejoel99]

Secretary Haaland

Tuesday, January 24th, 2023:

9:29pm, National Military Command Center

Deb Haaland with a laptop in 2019 - The Office of Representative Debra A. Haaland [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

"You think it's all so unrealistic, but once I got here, there was just this whole sense of realism that set in & it's all taken very seriously." With the State of the Union now underway, Secretary Haaland had finally been able to sit back & relax for the rest of her posting as the designated survivor. The President's chief of staff, Ron Klain, had asked her weeks ago to serve for the President's speech. Earlier that evening, a motorcade had taken her from Interior to the White House, where she had a quick meeting with Klain before being flown by marine helicopter to the Pentagon, where she was taken to the National Military Command Center & briefed on her duties in the event of the worst. Now that the rundown was done, all that there was left to do was sit & wait for the all-clear on the President's return to the White House. She considered just unmuting the TV of the conference room which she'd been given to use & watching the President's speech, but it'd been a long day, & she'd already been provided with an advance copy of his prepared remarks by Klain (she was immensely grateful for the inclusion of a whole section on Interior's protection of public lands & ongoing National Park infrastructure improvements, courtesy of the stimulus). Instead, she decided to just unwind, open her laptop up, & FaceTime her daughter back home in Albuquerque, Somáh, to whom she was now describing her long day, sans anything classified. "We even did a drill where we role-played a catastrophe. It was so surreal. They even called me 'Madam President' during it!"

She was serious about, well, the seriousness of it all. Once upon a time, the designated survivor had been the least of anybody's concerns. The designated survivor for former President Clinton's 1997 State of the Union, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, hadn't even been given a briefing on the nuclear codes & got to serve in the role from his daughter's apartment in lower Manhattan. To say the least, being the designated survivor used to be pretty uneventful, at least before 9/11 & all of the extensive contingency planning that became a paramount concern & went into effect as a result thereof. Of course, it was also such extensive post-9/11 planning that resulted in such functions as the State of the Union being designated as a National Special Security Event (NSSE), thus allowing for the enhanced establishment of as safe & secure an environment around such functions as is imaginably possible, which - in turn - substantially decreased the likelihood that a designated survivor would ever need to be called upon to serve in the first place. Thus, the designated survivor still felt like something of an anachronism to those few who knew of it: a literal example of the phrase, "better safe than sorry," more than anything else.

As she discussed her somewhat bewildering day with her daughter, the Secretary glanced up at the muted TV's closed captioning & interrupted herself. "Ooh, the President's about to talk about Interior! Let's watch for a sec!" Somáh happily agreed, & so the Secretary grabbed the remote & unmuted the TV to proudly watch the President discuss her department: "I'm proud of the more-than-$1 billion that the American Jobs Plan sent over to Interior Secretary Haaland & her department for the protection of our national parks & improvement of facilities on our public lands," the President declared, prompting the off-site Secretary - proud of the President's evidently ad-libbed name-dropping of her (had it been planned, her presence at the Capitol would've been required for any potentially resultant camera-panning shots to her) - to quip that his speechwriters had earned their salary tonight. "Were it not for the mere existence of these great natural assets, we'd literally be poorer off. Literally. It's no jok-"

The feed of the speech suddenly cut out. The network graphics & everything were still there on the TV screen, but they were just plastered on top of a black background behind them. "Huh, that's weird." She picked up the remote & flipped to one of the other networks. Same story: network graphics pasted over a black background. The Secretary calls out to Somáh on their FaceTime call, "Hey, did the speech just cut out for you over there?" Somáh responds in the affirmative, "yeah, you too? Is there some kind of satellite issue with the camera feed or something? You'd figure they'd have more than one camera on in the place." The Secretary nods her head in agreement, "yup," as she flips to yet another network, the feed of which is out too, but at least they're quickly re-directing to one of their anchors, who says that they seem to be experiencing some technical difficulties with the feed at the Capitol & will be working with their technicians to restore it ASAP.

At that moment, the door to her conference room exploded open, practically flying off of its hinges in the process as her Secret Service detail for the night quickly dashed in. "Madam Secretary, you need to get off of your video call right now!," the detail head ordered at the top of his voice. "Oh sh*t," the Secretary thought... "another drill? A damn good one too, if a bit freaky, in that they even managed to mess with the feed on Somáh's TV. I'm sure the anchor was just a Pentagon guy in an on-site studio too." But she was tired, & she'd felt she gleaned everything which she'd needed to know from the earlier drills. "Hey, guys, it's been a long day, so if this is just another drill.." The detail head had to cut her off, "Madam Secretary, off of the video call right now!" She didn't expect that strong of a response, but she didn't feel like putting up with the headache of questioning it. "Okay, Somáh, I've gotta go. I'll call you later.." She didn't even have a chance to blurt out "I love you" before the detail head was forced to slam the laptop shut. She glared up at the detail head, who could finally speak in more depth now that the unsecured communication channel - her laptop - was out of the picture. "Madam Secretary, I'm sorry for that, but this is not a drill. We've lost contact with the Capitol &, more worryingly, the members of our detail on-site over there. We're waiting for more information, but we've gotta follow through with our mandated procedures & so we're implementing lockdown protocols around you for the time being. We should know more soon."

The Secretary couldn't believe what she was hearing. The detail head quickly turned to one of his underlings, ordering him to request an armored motorcade that'd be ready to depart from their position for the White House immediately. But he was practically frozen in place, staring at the TV. That's when they all saw it. If nothing else, the looks on all of their faces surely gave away that the anchor hadn't been an on-site Pentagon actor after all. The networks had finally managed to put up a feed from the Capitol... or, rather, an outdoor feed of what was left of it. On-screen was live footage of a flaming carcass of a building. A destroyed Capitol. A guaranteed tomb.

"Oh sh*t," the Secretary managed to utter. It was for real this time, as her trembling in every nerve made more than clear.

[BigVic]

Good update. President Deb Harland in a designated survivor scenario

[Roll Roons]

Chilling, to say the least. Though it's very well-written.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

This is the best new timeline in a while. Can't wait for more.

[brucejoel99]

Thanks, y'all! Given its inherent strangeness, it's been intriguing to write, to say the least. May it hopefully never happen.

[Independents for Nihilism]

Very nice writing! Curious to see where you take this.

[brucejoel99]

Secretary Haaland

Tuesday, January 24th, 2023:

9:38pm, Constitution Avenue

Tim Keller and Deb Haaland in a car together - The Office of Representative Debra A. Haaland [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Secret Service's swift evacuation of Secretary Haaland had been a bit of a rush for her, to say nothing of the ongoing events which were still unfolding before her - & all of their - very eyes. In less than 3 minutes after they'd all seen the horrific news footage of the burning Capitol, they had her in the motorcade car & were en-route to the White House, for even in the worst-case scenario of this not only being a coordinated attack on the federal government, but of there still being more to come, the PEOC bunker located under the White House would be the safest location for the President - or, failing him, the sole member of the line-of-succession who was confirmed to still be alive - to be taken. As they proceeded there without delay, the Secretary - if that was even still her title - could hear her agents getting the latest intel from the Capitol over their comms, & could see the smoldering Capitol in the distance whenever they sailed through an intersection.

Knowing that she was gonna be in for a long night (& then some), she braced herself for the total whirlwind of what was about to come, but first things first, she had to make sure that her family was safe. "Is somebody taking care of Skip & Somáh?," she asked, referring to her partner, Lloyd Sayre, who was presumably still home at their D.C. apartment. "Yes, Madam Secretary, we have a detail en-route to transport Mr. Sayre to White House, & we're sending a unit out of the Albuquerque office to keep your daughter secure." The Secretary practically breathed a sigh of relief at that news, grateful that the Secret Service evidently knew how to do its job & fast. Now that she knew that her family would be safe, she knew it was time to get to work: "Is there any word from the Capitol? Anybody still alive?," she asked the head of her detail. "Emergency personnel are already on-site. It was a plane crash, based on the visible debris that's present as well as reports from those in the nearby area of a low-flying aircraft overhead in the seconds prior to the explosion. Based off of those reports, it appears to have been deliberate: the plane had apparently been aiming itself toward the House chamber. And as for survivors, we don't know yet for sure based on all of the rubble, but there's been no word yet from anybody on either the presidential or vice-presidential details, so we don't have much hope in that sense, but Madam Secretary..." He paused, unsure of how to say what needed to be said next. "Regardless of whether or not there are any survivors, it's gonna be a while before we know anything for sure, so as soon as we've put you inside the White House, continuity of government procedures will be enacted, & under the terms of the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, you'll need to take the oath-of-office & be imminently sworn-in as - at least for the time being - Acting President of the United States."

"Yeah, it's definitely gonna be a long night," the Secretary thought to herself. Remembering the drill, she understandingly nodded. "Who can swear me in?," the Secretary asked. "Well, we obviously know that a Supreme Court justice can, but the Chief Justice & a number of his colleagues were present in the House chamber for the President's address. The only 2 justices who weren't on-site are Thomas & Alito, & we already have somebody trying to get in touch with them. Frankly, we're gonna bring whichever one of them picks up the phone first to the White House as expeditiously as possible, & if neither of them do, then we're gonna repeat the process with the D.C. Circuit judges 'til somebody finally picks up the phone & can be brought over to swear you in." Of course, it might take some time to get ahold of a judge, let alone one of the 2 unharmed justices, & not only was that time which they may not have in the event that the situation were to escalate further, but Haaland had read her Constitution: she knew that the oath had to be taken before she could exercise or carry out any of the presidency's powers or duties, & that fact in & of itself may as well open up a whole Pandora's box of nightmares. What happens if military action needs to be authorized or an executive order needs to be implemented before somebody who can swear her in has managed to show up? How is she supposed to run the risk of everything that she does for who knows how long being overturned by some prickly district court judge on a technicality? More broadly, how could she hope to even tenuously command the people's legitimacy at a time when the Commander-in-Chief arguably needed her people - perhaps moreso than ever before - to stand squarely behind & shoulder-to-shoulder with their President? And all of this was even assuming that she could take the reins as Acting President without there being a constituted Cabinet - let alone a Vice President - that, absent confirmed line-of-succession deaths, has to vote to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.

"Madam Secretary?!" With that, the head of the Secretary's detail brought her out of her introspective funk to deliver 2 important pieces of news to her: number 1, that Justice Thomas had thankfully picked up the phone on the first ring & was being transported to the White House as they spoke, both for the oath-of-office &, for the time being, his own protection as one of the 2 justices still confirmed to be alive & unharmed; & number 2, that word had just gotten back to them from the emergency personnel at the Capitol: "Celtic" & "Pioneer" - the President & the Vice President - were both confirmed to be DOA, as were the Speaker & President-pro-tempore Leahy. "Oh, Jesus," Secretary Haaland exclaimed, unable to say anything else as tears streamed down her face. At least any potential questions about the oath or the 25th Amendment were out of the window now. It was official: Secretary Haaland was about to assume the powers & duties of the presidency of the United States.

Perhaps it was apt that her & her detail pulled up to the White House at that very moment. She quickly put herself together, & they quickly rushed her into the indoor foyer, where she was greeted by the distraught members of the President's staff whose attendance at the State of the Union hadn't been required, as well as Justice Thomas. "Madam Secretary," he greetingly nodded, perhaps trying to hang onto some lone semblance of normality through all of this chaos. "I've just been informed of the situation. First off, I'd like to express my condolences to you for the immense loss of your colleagues." She thanked him, nearly choking up again in doing so, & exchanged condolences with him as well, given the presumed loss of 7 of his. With that, Justice Thomas bluntly got to the point, understanding the severity of the crisis at-hand: "Are you prepared to take the oath?" The Secretary had wanted to wait for her partner to arrive, but a member of her detail stepped up to inform her that a detail had only just arrived at their apartment, & that it could be nearly 25 minutes before he arrived. The news greatly upset the Secretary, but even she understood - & knew that Skip would too - that at a time like this, time spent waiting was unfortunately time wasted. She turned back to Justice Thomas, & nodded her head in agreement. "You understand that your taking of the oath will constitute your resignation as Secretary of the Interior?," Justice Thomas asked her as they waited for a staffer to retrieve a Bible from a nearby room. The Secretary nodded in confirmation, understanding that the Interior Department would have to be one of her least concerns now. With the staffer back, Justice Thomas promptly began the ceremony, such as it could even be described as one: "Then please place your left hand on the Bible, raise your right hand, & repeat after me:"

"'I, Debra Anne Haaland, do solemnly swear...'"

"I, Debra Anne Haaland, do solemnly swear..."

"'That I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States...'"

"That I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States..."

"'And will to the best of my ability...'"

"And will to the best of my ability..."

"'Preserve, protect, & defend the Constitution of the United States...'"

"Preserve, protect, & defend the Constitution of the United States..."

"So help you God?," Justice Thomas concludingly asked.

The Acting President nodded. "So help me God."

[NewYorkExpress]

Is the U.S Attorney for D.C still alive, because I think indicting former President Trump on hundreds of counts of murder, including that of President Biden and Vice President Harris just shot to the top of the to do list.

[brucejoel99]

Is the U.S Attorney for D.C still alive, because I think indicting former President Trump on hundreds of counts of murder, including that of President Biden and Vice President Harris just shot to the top of the to do list.

The U.S. Attorney for D.C. is still alive as they had no reason to be present at the Capitol for the State of the Union, but even the best prosecutor in the world wouldn't be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury that either Trump or OANN expressly intended on inciting somebody like Captain Noland into committing murder, let alone thousands thereof.

[BigVic]

Thought it would be Buttigieg being the DS ITTL.

[FairBol]

This is a little creepy for my taste...and oddly, somewhat realistic.  

On 9/11 (if you recall), the plane that eventually went down in Pennsylvania had either the Capitol Building or the White House as its intended target.  

That said, this is an interesting read.  Keep it comin'!