“If it means inaugurating Biden and Harris in a re-enforced underground bunker, I would be in favor of that,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss said on MSNBC Thursday. “Not even during the Civil War did we feel we needed this kind of mobilization to protect Lincoln during his inauguration or other elected lawmakers,” he added.

And while significant preparations have been put in place around the U.S. Capitol by the agencies still under the ultimate control of Trump, there is growing fear that state capitol buildings around the country will be targeted. The fears are not unfounded, since many of them have already been attacked by armed Trump supporters. Of particular note is the situation in Michigan, where the state capitol was recently breached by Trump supporters brandishing guns at legislators as they were in session.

Advertisements of pro-Trump “rallies” at these locations are already posted and circulating online. One such ad bears the headline “Refuse to be Silenced.”

The FBI has urged police chiefs across the country to be on alert for right-wing terror attacks. Christopher Ray, FBI director, is warning police to be alert to possible attacks on the homes of members of Congress as well.

His alerts to police come a week after FBI warnings about the potential for the attacks on the Capitol in Washington were ignored. The government is well able to secure the Capitol in D.C., but no explanation has been given of why, given FBI advance notice, that was not done last week.

One thing Trump has clearly been successful with is instilling fear in anyone thinking of coming out against him. People with anti-Trump t-shirts and bumper stickers and those with Biden-Harris signs in windows or on cars are removing them, also out of fear for themselves or their property. A young couple with a reputation in the Hyde Park section of Chicago for driving a car with no less than 30 bumper stickers promoting liberal causes said they spent time Thursday soaking and removing them.

The FBI reportedly sent a memo to law enforcement agencies across the country warning of possible armed protests at all 50 state capitols starting next week, citing in part what it says is “chatter” on social media.

Many social media platforms say they are working to prevent use of their platforms to incite right-wing violence. Facebook has been tracking many of the advertisements for the planned Trump terror activity on pages frequented by militia groups and QAnon followers and has been blocking them. Incredibly, the Facebook spokesperson who reported this to NBC asked not to be identified because he feared retaliation and attacks against him personally by right-wingers connected with the pages.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms have suspended all of Donald Trump’s accounts. Those moves, however, have not stopped right-wing extremists from communicating on alternate apps, including Signal and Telegram. Their first-choice alternative, Parler, has been disabled by Amazon Web Services.

While the moves by social media platforms and the tracking down and arresting of people who participated in the attack on the Capitol may have the effect of mitigating possible attacks in Washington, there are serious concerns that may not dampen the plans to mount attacks in the states.

The District of Columbia already looks like an occupied city, with troops sleeping overnight all over the floors of the Capitol building itself. It is possible that elected reps in Washington will don bulletproof vests during public events surrounding the inauguration, but the prospect of this being necessary for lawmakers all across the country is a horrifying one indeed for any democracy.

Experts on terrorism note that an infrastructure for right-wing terrorists has been in place in the states and localities around the country for much longer than it has in Washington. For years now, the right wing has been openly organizing online to draw support to their groups in the offline world, where they operate cells that regularly meet and make plans.

Proof of this functioning right-wing infrastructure on the local level is the operation they mounted recently to capture and kill the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmore, last year. It was an operation stopped in its late stages by the FBI and local Justice Department teams.

The busting of that operation has not ended the activity of right-wing cells even in Michigan, much less everywhere else across the country.

Even more indicative of the ongoing right-wing threat is that police and National Guard troops have remained posted and recently made arrests at statehouses in Washington and Idaho. Likewise, officials have not boarded up the windows at the state capitol in Wisconsin because they simply felt like doing so. Such action normally follows tangible threats.

Ironically, a few years ago, when the Republican governor of Wisconsin launched his attack on the state’s labor movement, the unions and their allies marched on the state capitol and literally occupied it for weeks.

Police and firemen joined them. No one was killed or injured in one of the largest ever mobilizations of progressive organizations in U.S. history. In contrast, a six-hour occupation of the Capitol in Washington by Trump supporters was organized not for preserving the rights of people but for taking away their right to vote and ended up with massive destruction and five deaths.

The groups of Trump terrorists around the country are closely connected to one another, at least ideologically if not organizationally. Widely available for viewing now is video of Trump supporters outside state capitols cheering as they watched videos of the invasion in Washington on January 6. (IPA Service)