For an alternate viewpoint, see “Point: Trump Delivered a Win for Common Sense.”
Trump 2.0 is coming. What can we expect in the first few months?
Let’s think about the likely early actions in a few buckets.
The first bucket, what serves Trump? More than any previous president, Trump thinks of himself first. Two early moves to watch will be the extent to which Trump unravels or outright blows apart the myriad legal issues he would otherwise be facing and, second, what level of personal and political grievance he will direct the Justice Department to undertake?
It’s hard to imagine Trump not using the innate power of the presidency and the newly acquired blank check that his carefully crafted Supreme Court has given him. On the retribution front, he’s repeatedly promised to go after or even “lock up” opponents. He has proven to be petty, so this will happen in some form.
The next bucket would be his culture war policy. Will he direct, through executive order, things affecting LGBTQ+ community members, further restrict women’s health choices like reproductive choice, or generally tick through anti-“woke” actions? Red meat menu alert.
Then, there’s the effect on foreign and other policies. Will we see more coddling of despots and dictators? Trump has made it clear that he prefers authoritarians around the globe over democratic leaders. How will that affect Ukraine-Russian relations throughout a nervous Europe, or policies and relations with countries like China and North Korea?
Blanket tariffs, tax-cut extensions favoring the wealthy, and immigration and border policy will be expedited.
It’s hard to know how much of these Trump changes will come quickly. How much resistance will come from the court system? How much pushback will he get from members of his own administration? How much opposition will elected Republicans in still narrow House and Senate majorities muster?
We can expect bucket one to get the first attention. In fact, in some ways, it’s already happening with Trump lawyers making filings and pleas in his various civil and criminal cases to have them thrown out because he won the election. In some federal cases, where the Department of Justice has a policy of not prosecuting sitting presidents, the beginnings of rollbacks are underway. “America First” translates to “Trump First,” after all.
The entire world will be watching to see what Trump 2.0 does concerning Ukraine. If the campaign rhetoric becomes reality and Ukraine is forced to make a deal to give up territory to Putin, the rest of the world will be wondering what’s next or if Putin’s ambitions will end there.
Given the early announcements on Cabinet and agency head nominees, additional variations of these agenda items could begin surfacing in the first half of 2025, pending Senate approval of those appointments. Trump looks likely to make “acting” appointments as he frequently did in Trump 1.0 to speed things along in concert with executive orders.
That being said, enactment will likely only come once legal challenges come through the courts. If the Supreme Court follows its recent pattern of deference to Trump, then many could have to wait for the process to play out. All indications are that Trump is set to have pliable or perhaps even sycophantically loyal agency heads, judges and congressional leaders to do his bidding. This is a change from his first term, when the guardrails were enough to hold back some of his darkest impulses.
The problem with this is that Trump’s record as a businessman and then president has largely been a dysfunction case. So, while things may seem to be lining up for a “successful” start for Trump 2.0, history says otherwise.
If that holds true, what we will see over the first few months will be nothing less than a MAGA mess.
