I think it's a safe bet that Thomas and Alito will step down in the next two years and be replaced by similarly right-wing justices, just much younger. The court will be majority hard-right for the rest of my life.

> literally nothing is different this time

This time he and his supporters are prepared. If you look at Trump in 2016, he seemed genuinely surprised he won. His transition team was ad-hoc and clumsy. His cabinet and advisory picks ended up being sub-optimal for him, as he kept appointing people who wouldn't go as far as he wanted to. Project 2025 is a thing now, and is a playbook for weakening and subverting the US federal government -- except in areas where conservatives want to keep power so they can impose it on states that don't share their ideology.

And any time states complain, SCOTUS will tell them to stuff it.