It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt who worked feverishly to pull the nation out of a depression during his first 100 days in office that started the timestamp which has been used by Presidents since then to establish and to implement their agenda. It has now been one full week since Donald Trump was elected President for a second time. Inauguration day is January 20, 2025 when Trump will be sworn in as the nation’s 37th President and his 100 day agenda is already emerging.
For months, Trumps allies have been working to prepare a series of executive orders that will help Trump carry out his aggressive conservative Republican agenda. Trump’s allies in Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson have promised to act quickly and “aggressively” to advance Trump’s political agenda once he is sworn in. Republicans will control the Senate and its more likely than not that they will also control the House once all the races are called.
THE TRUMP AGENDA
Donald Trump has said he would not be a dictator “except for Day 1.” His closest advisors, supporters and congressional Republicans are already gearing up making plans, drafting legislation and preparing Presidential Executive Orders to accomplish his agenda within the first 100 days of taking office. According to his own statements, Trump will do a lot on his first day in the White House. His list includes starting up with the mass deportation of migrants, rolling back Biden administration policies on education, reshaping the federal government by firing potentially thousands of federal employees he believes are secretly working against him, and pardoning people who were arrested for their role in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
This article is an in depth discussion on what Trump has said he will do on his first day in office and during his second term. This article has been gleaned from various news sources which are edited, consolidated and quoted for the sake of brevity. The links to all the articles relied upon and quoted with authorships are listed at the end of the article and before final Analysis and Commentary.
THE DAY ONE AGENDA
President Trump has already announced an aggressive day one agenda. That agenda can be summarized as follows:
TRUMPS PENDING CRIMINAL CASES
Trump has said that “within two seconds” of taking office that he would fire Special Counsel Jack Smith who has been prosecuting two federal cases against him. Smith is already evaluating how to wind down the cases because of long-standing Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted. Smith charged Trump last year with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Trump cannot pardon himself when it comes to his state conviction in New York in a hush money case, but he could seek to leverage his status as president-elect in an effort to set aside or expunge his felony conviction and stave off a potential prison sentence. The Georgia case, where Trump was charged with election interference, will likely be the only criminal case left standing. It would probably be put on hold until at least 2029, at the end of his presidential term. The Georgia prosecutor on the case just won reelection.
PARDONING JANUARY 6 INSURRECTIONISTS
More than 1,500 people have been charged since the mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and where at least 5 people were killed. Trump launched his general election campaign in March by not merely trying to rewrite the history of that riot, but positioning the violent siege and failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election as a cornerstone of his bid to return to the White House. As part of that, he called the rioters “unbelievable patriots” and promised to help them “the first day we get into office.”
As president, Trump can pardon anyone convicted in federal court, District of Columbia Superior Court or in a military court-martial. He can stop the continued prosecution of rioters by telling his attorney general to stand down. Trump said on his social media platform:
“I am inclined to pardon many of them. … I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control.”
DISMANTLE THE ‘DEEP STATE’ OF GOVERNMENT WORKERS
Trump is fully expected on his first day in office to begin the process of stripping tens of thousands of career employees of their civil service protections, so they could be more easily fired. Trump wants to do two things:
- Drastically reduce the federal workforce, which he has long said is an unnecessary drain.
- “Totally obliterate the deep state” who Trumps perceives as the “enemies from within” and who he believes are hiding in government jobs.
The federal government bureaucracy has thousands of political appointed professionals who come and go with administrations. There are tens of thousands of “career” officials, who work under Democratic and Republican presidents. They are considered “apolitical” workers whose expertise and experience help keep the government functioning, particularly through transitions.
Trump wants the ability to convert some of those career people into political appointment jobs, making them easier to dismiss and replace with loyalists. He would try to accomplish that by reviving a 2020 executive order known as “Schedule F.” The purpose of the order is to strip job protections from federal workers and create a new class of political employees. It could affect roughly 50,000 of 2.2 million civilian federal employees.
President Joe Biden rescinded the order when he took office in January 2021, but Congress failed to pass a bill protecting federal employees. The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s chief human resources agency, finalized a rule last spring against reclassifying workers, so Trump will likely have to spend several months or even years unwinding it.
Trump has said he has a particular focus on “corrupt bureaucrats who have weaponized our justice system” and “corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus.” Beyond the firings, Trump wants to crack down on government officials who leak to reporters. He also wants to require that federal employees pass a new civil service test.
PURGING THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
On November 11, an attorney helping President-elect Donald Trump assemble his new administration warned career employees at the U.S. Justice Department that they could be fired if they tried to resist the Trump’s agenda. Mark Paoletta, an attorney at Schaerr Jaffe who is leading Trump’s Justice Department transition team, in a post on X said this:
“If these career DOJ employees won’t implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they should leave. Those employees who engage in so-called ‘resistance’ against the duly-elected President’s lawful agenda would be subverting American democracy. … Those that take such actions would be subject to disciplinary measures, including termination.”
The post on X came in response to a Politico news article which reported that many Justice Department career attorneys, civil servants who typically remain in their posts from administration to administration regardless of which party holds the White House, are alarmed by what a second Trump presidency will mean.
It’s likely the purge of the Department of Justice will begin with Trump issuing blanket terminations of every single United States Attorney in the United States, which is a common practice of any new President and which Trump did 8 years ago. The Difference is Trump will likely reach out and appoint like minded private attorneys willing to do his bidding without question and who will give him 100% loyalty to his agenda including prosecuting political opponents.
PURGING THE PENTAGON
Trump is expected to have a far darker view of his military leaders in his second term, after facing Pentagon resistance over everything from his skepticism toward NATO to his readiness to deploy troops to quell protests on U.S. streets. Trump’s former U.S. generals and defense secretaries are among his fiercest critics. Many branded him a fascist and declared him unfit for office and supported Vice President Kamala Harris. Angered, Trump has suggested that his former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, could be executed for treason after he labeled Trump a fascist.
Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff John Kelly, who is a retired Marine general, warned that Trump meets the very definition of a fascist and that while in office, Trump suggested that Natzi leader Adolf Hitler “did some good things.” Kelly made the remarks in interviews with both The New York Times and The Atlantic. Kelly said in his interview with The New York Times that Trump met the very definition of a fascist. After reading the definition aloud, including that fascism was “a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader,” Kelly concluded Trump “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Current and former U.S. officials say Trump will prioritize loyalty in his second term and root out military officers and career civil servants he perceives to be disloyal. Culture war issues could be one trigger for firings. Trump was asked by Fox News in June whether he would fire generals described as “woke,” a term for those focused on racial and social justice but which is used by conservatives to disparage progressive policies. “I would fire them. You can’t have (a) woke military,” Trump said.
Some current and former officials fear Trump’s team could target the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, a widely respected former fighter pilot and military commander who steers clear of politics. The four-star general, who is Black, issued a video message about discrimination in the ranks in the days after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, and has been a voice in favor of diversity in the U.S. military.
Asked for comment, Brown’s spokesperson, Navy Captain Jereal Dorsey, said: “The chairman along with all of the service members in our armed forces remain focused on the security and defense of our nation and will continue to do so, ensuring a smooth transition to the new administration of President-elect Trump.”
Trump’s vice president-elect, J.D. Vance, voted as a senator last year against confirming Brown to become the top U.S. military officer, and has been a critic of perceived resistance to Trump’s orders within the Pentagon. “If the people in your own government aren’t obeying you, you have got to get rid of them and replace them with people who are responsive to what the president’s trying to do,” Vance said in an interview with Tucker Carlson before the election.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-trump-presidency-could-lead-purge-pentagon-2024-11-10/
IMPOSE TARIFFS ON IMPORTED GOODS
Trump promised throughout the campaign to impose tariffs on imported goods, particularly those from China. He argued that such import taxes would keep manufacturing jobs in the United States, shrink the federal deficit and help lower food prices. He also cast them as central to his national security agenda. The size of his pledged tariffs vary greatly.
Trump says he will impose between a 10% and 20% across-the-board tariff on all $3 trillion worth of U.S. goods imports and a 60% tariff on all Chinese goods. That would dramatically expand the duties he imposed during his first term on tens of billions of dollars worth of steel and aluminum and more than $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.
Trump will not need Congress to impose these tariffs, as was clear in 2018, when he imposed them on steel and aluminum imports without going through lawmakers by citing Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. That law, according to the Congressional Research Service, gives a president the power to adjust tariffs on imports that could affect U.S. national security, an argument Trump has made. Regardless, Congress will be controlled by Republicans and he could just as easily get their approval.
Trump is expected to take an aggressive stance in the six-year-review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which his first administration negotiated to replace NAFTA. That review officially begins in 2026, but the countries are already preparing for it. Trump will likely threaten tariffs to pressure Mexico on immigration, as he did in 2019 using IEEPA.
Other possible actions, like revoking permanent normal trade relations with China or imposing a carbon-border adjustment tax, would require congressional approval. Congress could also take up trade and tariff issues as part of legislation to renew Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which expire next year. Trump has talked about using the import tax both as a way to raise revenue and to reduce the U.S. trade deficit.
DRILL, BABY, DRILL
On Day 1 when he gets into office, Trump has pledged to increase production of U.S. fossil fuels, promising to “drill, drill, drill” and seeking to open the Arctic wilderness to oil drilling, which he claims would lower energy costs. With an executive order on Day 1, Trump can roll back environmental protections, halt wind projects, scuttle the Biden administration’s targets that encourage the switch to electric cars and abolish standards for companies to become more environmentally friendly. Trump wants to reverse climate policies aimed at reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
REVERSAL OF BIDEN’S CLIMATE CHANGE AGENDA
As soon as he takes office on January 20, Trump is expected to reverse work on President Joe Biden’s aggressive climate change agenda that aimed to reduce fossil fuel use and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Trump has vowed to save the nation’s aging fleet of coal-fired power plants and boost production of oil and natural gas, although the U.S. is already producing those fuels at record levels, especially in New Mexico.
The process of repealing and replacing Biden’s rules will likely be difficult and lengthy. There are some added twists this time around on key climate rules. Trump’s power plant climate rule was struck down in 2021. Trump’s rule would have required coal-fired power plants make minor adjustments to improve their efficiency. A federal appeals court said the Environmental Protection Agency should have at least considered other regulatory possibilities such as carbon capture, the technology that now forms the basis of Biden’s replacement rule. That 2021 court ruling has technically been vacated, but it’s something his legal team may keep in mind moving forward. Trump also can not completely repeal Biden’s big methane rule that requires the oil and gas sector to crack down on its leaks of the potent greenhouse gas. Trump did a full repeal in his first term, but Congress since then has essentially required EPA to regulate.
FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA
There is little doubt that Trump will be forced immediately to deal with foreign policy and Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Iran and China. Trumps approach is far from certain to be successful and poses the real risk of making things even worse, especially in the Ukraine and Israeli wars.
STOPPING THE RUSSIAN AND UKRAINE WAR ON DAY ONE
Russia invaded Ukraine nearly 3 years ago. Trump, who makes no secret of his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, has criticized the Biden administration for giving money to Ukraine to fight the war. Trump was impeached the first time when he was accused of threatening to withhold funding from Ukraine in exchange for concessions and information on Hunter Biden. There is a stark possibility that he will ask congress to cease all funding to Ukraine. Trump when asked if he wanted Ukraine to win the war, he wouldn’t answer. He’s blamed Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for the war and threatened to stop investment in the country, despite the fact that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who invaded Ukraine and annex portions of the country.
Trump has repeatedly said he will end the war between Russia and Ukraine on one day. At a CNN town hall in May 2023, Trump said this: “They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done. I’ll have that done in 24 hours.” Trump has boldly proclaimed he will end of the war will after he mets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Putin, simply presuming they will meet wit him and make concessions. Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, when asked to respond to Trump’s boast said “the Ukrainian crisis cannot be solved in one day.”
ISRAEL
Trump has said that he wants Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza by January before he returns to office. Trump’s views on Gaza and the West Bank diverge significantly from those of President Biden. Where Biden has pushed for Israeli troops to ultimately leave Gaza and for Netanyahu to agree to a two-state solution, Trump has previously pushed a plan that would allow Israel to gain greater control over the Palestinians. In that plan, Trump vowed to help guide $50 billion in international investment toward the Palestinian people, helping it prop up their economy. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was heavily involved in Trump’s Middle East policy under the last administration, helping formulate the plan for Israel and the Palestinians and brokering the Abraham Accords, a deal in which Bahrain and the UAE recognized Israel’s sovereignty. Kushner has shown no signs that he will be actively involved in a second administration, at least not publicly.
IRAN
Trump’s first administration took a strong stance against Iran. He implemented what was then dubbed a “maximum pressure” campaign to heavily sanction Tehran and deprive its economy of the ability to grow. The sanctions also targeted top commanders of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corp and other high-ranking officials. Trump gave the orders for killing former IRGC Commander Qassem Soleimani in a strike in January 2020. Angered by Soleimani’s death, Iran and its proxies have since vowed revenge and have even made threats to assassinate the president-elect. Three individuals connected to Iran have been indicted over plotting to assassinate Trump. Trump’s stance toward Iran is likely to influence how he approaches the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as his broader Middle East policy. While Trump and Netanyahu have not been on the best of terms, it’s likely that whatever policy Trump implements to deal with Tehran and its proxies will include a significant bump in support for Israel.
CHINA
Trump’s China policy was largely built on his broader “America First” stance. His first administration sought to reign in Chinese aggression in the trade sector, implementing harsh penalties for intellectual property theft. During his first term, Washington sought to reduce America’s alliance on Beijing and to blunt the country’s technological advancements. Trump is likely to reinstate the policy to continue it. The trickiest part for Trump will likely be how to manage an aggressive U.S. stance toward China without provoking Beijing and jeopardizing Taiwan.
MASS DEPORTATIONS OF MIGRANTS
Speaking at his Madison Square Garden rally in New York and making his closing statements of his campaign, Trump said this:
“On Day 1, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out. I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail, then kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.”
Trump has vowed to build detention camps, implement mass deportations at a scale never seen, hire thousands more border agents, funnel military spending toward border security and invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expel suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without a court hearing. Trump has said he would end “catch-and-release”, which is the release of migrants into a U.S. community while they await their immigration court hearings, and restore his Remain in Mexico policy from his first term that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases were processed.
Trump has sidestepped questions about whether or not he would try to bring back his controversial zero-tolerance policy, the family separation policy that placed roughly 5,000 children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and sent them to shelters and foster homes across the country while their parents were criminally prosecuted for crossing the border illegally. Trump announced the appointment of Tom Homan, his former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, “in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” a central part of his agenda.
There are nearly 15 million people who are believed to be in the United States illegally. Trump can direct his administration to begin the effort to deport them the minute he arrives in office, but it’s much more complicated to actually deport. That will require a huge, trained law enforcement force, massive detention facilities, airplanes to move people and then there is the matter if nations will be willing to cooperate and accept them back.
The Wall Street Journal has put a cost on that process: Citing the American Immigration Council, the Journal reported the cost $88 billion a year, totaling around $968 billion over the next decade, partially due to the estimated numbers, which range from 10 million to 20 million people. According to the Wall Street Journal
“Any deportation effort requires enormous resources to hire more federal agents to identify and arrest immigrants, contract out space to detain them and procure airplanes to fly them to other countries.”
Trump has said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act. That rarely used 1798 law allows the president to deport anyone who is not an American citizen and is from a country with which there is a “declared war” or a threatened or attempted “invasion or predatory incursion.” Trump He has spoken about deploying the National Guard, which can be activated on orders from a governor. Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser, said sympathetic Republican governors could send troops to nearby states that refuse to participate.
Asked about the cost of his plan, Trump told NBC News this:
“It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not — really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”
RELATIONS WITH MEXICO
During his first presidential campaign in 2015, Trump blamed Mexico for taking US jobs while exporting drug traffickers, rapists and murders. Mexico’s business leaders felt they weathered the first Trump storm relatively well. Some believe President Claudia Sheinbaum can follow the playbook that worked for her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador which was don’t criticize Trump and give him what he wants on migration.
A second Trump administration poses far more serious challenges for Mexico, the biggest trading partner of the US. Business leaders and experts on the bilateral relationship fear that the fledgling Sheinbaum government is not well placed to navigate them. Trump will be a more powerful president this time around, with majorities in both houses of Congress. He will be determined to press a harder bargain with his weaker southern neighbor, which is suffering from drug-related violence and sluggish growth.
Andrés Rozental, a former Mexican deputy foreign minister said this:
“Trump redoubled is much more difficult to deal with . . . he is a bully, and [Sheinbaum] is an inexperienced national politician. … I get the impression that it’s going to be a lopsided relationship, with the Americans demanding constantly more from Mexico, and Mexico being unable to commit or even to make a major difference.”
Trump’s campaign threats of blanket tariffs, inducements to US companies to bring production back home, the mass deportation of around 11million illegal migrants and the designation of drug cartels as terrorist groups, will hit Mexico disproportionately hard. Around half the migrants living without papers in the US are Mexican, Mexico is home to two of the world’s biggest and most feared drug cartels, and the country depends on the US market for 83% of its exports.
Mexico’s first female president has said little so far about how she plans to deal with Trump, other than that there was “not a single reason to worry” about the countries’ “good relationship”. Sheinbaum spoke with Trump saying the call was “very cordial”. Sheinbaum said Trump brought up the border and that she told him there would be a time to discuss it. Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to the US and Washington-based consultant, said that while Mexican President Sheinbaum is confident that there is “not a single reason to worry” what’s important to understand is “how a profoundly misogynistic man like Donald Trump will interact with the first woman president of Mexico”.
TRUMP’S 100 DAY AGENDA
Trumps 100-day agenda is just as aggressive as what he has promised to do on day one. Following are the highlights of Trump’s agenda:
HEALTH CARE AND ABORTION
Simply put, Trump intends to turn the nation’s health policy upside down. He has promised to let vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” with health in his administration. A major health role for Kennedy would shift the Republican agenda away from policy debates over legislation and regulation toward a more fundamental one about the government’s role in medicine.
Kennedy has touted the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism, written a book accusing former NIH official Anthony Fauci of conspiring with tech mogul Bill Gates and drug makers to sell Covid vaccines, and launched a movement to “make America healthy again” by replacing officials at agencies he says are captives of the industries they regulate, eliminating “toxic additives and pesticide residues” in food, promoting alternative medicine and ending fluoridation of public water.
On abortion, Trump has tried to distance himself from his role in appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. He not only denied that he would seek federal legislation to ban or restrict abortion but also said he’d veto any ban that reached his desk. Regardless, Trump won’t move to codify abortion protections under Roe or otherwise seek to make the procedure more accessible in states that have restricted it.
On Obamacare, even conservative health policy analysts who’d like to repeal the Affordable Care Act are saying that will not happen. Instead, Trump will focus on loosening regulations on insurers and targeting specific elements of the law for repeal or reform. Vice President-elect JD Vance wants to cut costs for healthy, younger people by allowing them to sign up for insurance based on the health risks they face. That could increase prices for older people and those with pre-existing conditions, who are shielded from risk-based pricing under Obamacare.
Trump supported allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices in his 2016 campaign but later backed away. Now he’s in charge of ongoing negotiations Congress mandated in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which are supposed to include dozens of new drugs during his term. Every Republican lawmaker voted against that law. Trump’s Justice Department is now tasked with defending it against pharmaceutical company challenges in court.
RACE AND GENDER IN SCHOOLS
The 2024 Republican platform vowed to cut federal funds for schools that teach about race and gender and bar transgender women from women’s sports teams. Trump during the campaign made outlandish and false claim that schools were engaged gender reassignment surgery of children without parental consent and that parents sent their kids to school as one gender, and they would return home as another gender. Republican ads ran all over the country in hotly contested congressional races, including the New Mexico Second Congressional District race between Gabe Vasquez and Yvette Harrel, where Democrat incumbents were accused of favoring transgender women playing in women’s sports teams.
Trump could accomplish many of his promises to cut federal funds for schools that teach about race and gender in his next administration, even without Congress. He has threatened to pull federal money for schools that teach certain race-related curriculum, which he could do by directing his Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to launch investigations into schools with these classes and yank their funding.
His previous administration followed a similar playbook. Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ civil rights office determined that letting transgender women play on women’s teams violated a federal anti-discrimination law known as Title IX. She used the policy to threaten a local school board with legal action or a loss of funding.
Trump has promised to overhaul Title IX and to restore a 2020 rule that guided how schools respond to reports of sexual misconduct. The Biden administration rescinded the rule, a move that’s been tied up in court. A new rule could go much further to include clarifications on what “sex” means and determine whether transgender students can play on sports teams or use facilities that align with their gender identity.
Trump has also promised civil rights investigations into schools that use race in admissions and vowed to reinstate his 1776 Commission, which seeks to “promote fair and patriotic civics education.”
DEREGULATING HOUSING INDUSTRY
Trump has pledged to ease regulations to help builders boost the supply of housing in a bid to bring down costs. The Republican National Committee also endorsed the idea of selling off federal lands for the construction of housing, which Utah Republicans have pushed in Congress. The first Trump administration worked to recapitalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-controlled companies backing roughly half of the nation’s residential mortgages. But the plan to eventually release and privatize the government-sponsored enterprises ran aground when the pandemic struck. Now, depending on who Trump picks to lead the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the administration Trump may have another shot.
TAXATION
Tax cuts worth $4.6 trillion from Trump’s first term are set to expire at the end of 2025. Trump has pledged to make those tax cuts permanent, while at the same time proposing wide-ranging new cuts. Those new tax cuts Trump promised include ending taxation of tips, allowing a deduction for auto-loan interest and no taxation of social security.
It will be Congress that will have to figure out which of Trumps proposals are doable. Congress will have to try to come up with the money to reup Trump’s expiring tax cuts. The blunt reality is that those breaks mostly affect individual taxpayers, and nearly everyone’s taxes would rise if they are allowed to lapse at the end of next year.
The Republican congress will have to determine how much in total they intend to spend on a tax bill. They are deeply divided over what to do about the government’s $2 trillion deficit. Trump wants to finance income tax cuts with tariff increases. It’s true that protectionist sentiment is on the rise in Congress, but many lawmakers are likely to balk at the steep tariffs Trump has proposed.
Republicans might also try to rescind Democrats’ green energy tax breaks, though some have become fans of the provisions, so that could be difficult as well. There are other, more gimmicky, ways Republicans could try to reduce costs, like a shorter extension of their tax cuts.
Links to all relied upon and quoted news sources with authorships provided are here:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/06/donald-trump-second-term-policies-00187157
https://time.com/7174809/donald-trump-second-term-day-one-agenda-executive-orders-policies/
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/06/nx-s1-5181800/2024-election-trump-first-100-days-agenda
https://www.audacy.com/krld/news/national/what-to-expect-from-trumps-first-100-days-in-office
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-first-100-days-1982833
https://www.ft.com/content/637b9511-6f16-460b-bc09-32e07c064f5a
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/06/politics/second-term-donald-trump/index.html
ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY
It was the economy that swept Trump to a decisive victory. Exit polls showed that the voting public were extremely disgruntled with the direction the country is going, with inflation out of the control and the economy. Voters were far more were concerned about making a decent living, angered over grocery and gas prices, as opposed to any threat Trump posed to democracy. Voters simply believed they were better off when Trump was President the first time. Voters chose to forget the 4 years of total chaos Trump brought upon the county and his failure to deal with the pandemic that had a strangle hold on the country and that destroyed the economy.
In the end, voters simply ignored Trumps flawed character, the multimillion dollar civil judgements against him for sexual assault, his criminal conduct while in office, his fraud in securing of loans, the multiple state criminal convictions and pending federal criminal charges, his two impeachments, his misogyny and racism, his threat to democracy, his attempt to overthrow the government with all his lies that the election was rigged and stolen from him, his attacks on woman’s rights and civil rights, his allegiance to racists groups such as the Proud Boys, his promotion of racist policies and his cult following of Christian fundamentalist who totally ignored his immorality, multiple marriages and affairs and praised him as the second coming.
Trump will be our President come January 20 and there will be a peaceful transfer of power, unlike 4 years ago when Trump promoted an insurrection. The country will get the President it has elected. It is more likely than not Trump and his Republican Party will overreach with all they want to do to dismantle government already declaring they have a mandate to do whatever they damn well want with no guard rails. There will be no checks and balances from congress. There will be no intervention from the Trump appointed Supreme Court of right-wing conservative disciples who have given him immunity from prosecution making him above the law.
Trumps agenda will go way beyond what people thought they were voting for which is a better economy and a better future. It’s not at all likely voters will be any better off financially than they are now in two years under a Trump second presidency let alone the 4 years to come. It may be the “economy stupid” but in reality a President can do little to bring down the cost of goods and services which is subject to the laws of supply and demand, and corporate profits and sure greed.
It’s only a matter of time before the general public turns on Trump as they did 4 years ago once they realize they have been had once again. They did the same to Republican President George W. Bush after he was elected by a popular vote as well and the Republicans lost congress. It will happen again.
Voters have now voted for the return of chaos. Based on Trump’s agenda, chaos is exactly what we will get with millions getting hurt in the process. This is what happens when the big lie replaces reality.
The link to a related article is here: