What these proposals have in frequent: They’d go effectively past steps Trump took — or in lots of circumstances even tried — from 2017 to 2021.
Trump’s marketing campaign has repeatedly dismissed media reviews about his potential second-term agenda, saying in a
assertion in November that coverage suggestions from his conservative allies “are actually appreciated and may be enormously useful” however “are simply that — suggestions.”
“Except a second time period precedence is articulated by President Trump himself, or is formally communicated by the marketing campaign, it isn’t approved in any means,” the assertion from marketing campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita mentioned.
However each supporters and critics of the ex-president predict {that a} reelected Trump would wage a extra targeted and aggressive assault on the established order. This time, they are saying, he could be way more educated in regards to the mechanics of wielding govt energy. Having positioned so many conservatives in federal judgeships, he would face much less resistance from the courts. And he could be extra decided to position loyalists, not rules-obsessed traditionalists, in senior roles.
Trump’s second time period could be “dramatically extra complete and extra aggressive and extra decided to profoundly change the institution,” mentioned former Republican Home Speaker Newt Gingrich, who wrote a 2017 ebook referred to as “Understanding Trump.” The surface proposals drawing a lot consideration “are value being conscious of,” he mentioned, “as a result of they offer you a way of what it will imply to place Trumpism into impact.”
President Joe Biden’s marketing campaign mentioned voters must be knowledgeable about proposals that may “undermine democracy, rip away rights and freedoms, and make People’ lives as depressing as humanly potential if Trump is reelected.”
“People ought to know the stakes of this election,” Biden marketing campaign spokesperson Seth Schuster mentioned in a press release to POLITICO, “and Trump has made them as clear as day.”
These are among the many coverage adjustments that each followers and foes of the previous president say individuals can count on if Trump wins in November:
Banning abortions in pink and blue states
As a candidate, Trump has each claimed credit score for the demise of Roe v. Wade and forged himself as a average on abortion rights — and he has
annoyed anti-abortion teams by refusing to brazenly embrace or rule out a nationwide ban.
But those self same teams, in collaboration with veterans of Trump’s earlier administration,
are drafting plans for a sprawling anti-abortion agenda that may all however outlaw the process from coast to coast, together with in states whose legal guidelines or constitutions assure reproductive rights. The proposals would go far past his first-term anti-abortion insurance policies — which Biden has since lifted — and would lean closely on govt department actions, bypassing a stymied Congress.
The prospect terrifies abortion rights supporters, who see a second Trump administration as a menace to all of the work they’ve accomplished over the past two years to
restore and defend abortion entry on the state stage. Their causes for fear grew after The New York Occasions
reported this month that Trump has privately advised aides and supporters that he may assist a nationwide abortion ban after the sixteenth week of being pregnant.
“We can’t poll initiative our means out of this basic disaster of rights,” mentioned Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer for the American Civil Liberties Union, one among many teams bracing for Trump and a Republican Congress to aim to override state abortion protections. “I’ve little doubt that they’d attempt to impose a federal abortion ban, prohibit contraception, and do numerous issues which are means out of step with what individuals on this nation need.”
Anti-abortion activists say they’re assured Trump would no less than rescind
all of the Biden insurance policies that expanded entry to each abortion capsules and surgical abortions. These embody funding for army members who should journey throughout state strains for an abortion, the supply of abortions at Division of Veterans Affairs clinics, the
growth of HIPAA privateness guidelines to cowl abortions, and the power to
obtain abortion capsules by mail and at retail pharmacies.
Reversing Biden’s selections “ought to occur instantly,” Jamie Risks of the group Susan B. Anthony Professional-Life America advised reporters throughout a January name. Risks added that she and her fellow conservative advocates additionally count on Trump to reinstate a swath of insurance policies from his first time period, together with restrictions on home and worldwide clinics that present contraception and exams for sexually transmitted ailments, curbs on abortion capsules and cuts to
medical analysis that makes use of fetal tissue obtained from abortions.
However the Supreme Courtroom’s 2022 ruling that
eradicated federal protections for abortion has cleared the way in which for Trump to go a lot additional.
The Heritage Basis’s 2025 Presidential Transition Challenge — a coalition led by former Trump administration officers that features teams equivalent to College students for Life and Susan B. Anthony Professional-Life America — is brainstorming methods to make use of govt energy to chop off entry to each abortion capsules and the surgical process. In addition they wish to funnel taxpayer {dollars} to organizations that work to discourage individuals from terminating a being pregnant.
The
Challenge 2025 manifesto contains plans, for instance, for Trump to revoke the Meals and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of mifepristone — a drug utilized in most abortions. The teams are additionally relying on Trump implementing a
long-dormant regulation from the 1870s to punish anybody who sends or receives both mifepristone or medical gear used for abortions by way of the mail. Taken collectively, these two insurance policies may quantity to a de facto nationwide abortion ban.
“Of the assorted proposals, FDA revocation of mifepristone approval could be the heaviest carry,” acknowledged Roger Severino, a former Trump administration official on the Division of Well being and Human Providers and a pacesetter of Challenge 2025. Severino added that narrower however nonetheless sweeping restrictions on the drug, equivalent to reinstating the requirement that folks obtain it solely in-person from a physician, are “the extra possible consequence.”
Challenge 2025 and different conservative teams are additionally pushing for a future Trump administration to rescind Biden Justice Division steering that
requires hospitals to supply abortions to sufferers experiencing medical emergencies no matter state bans on the process — a problem the Supreme Courtroom is
set to contemplate this 12 months.
These regulatory and coverage adjustments would virtually actually face authorized challenges, although the Trump administration’s earlier appointments of a whole bunch of conservative judges may imply a extra pleasant reception and fewer restraints on the White Home than courts gave his first administration. Such coverage strikes additionally would be sure to exacerbate the political backlash Republicans have confronted because the fall of Roe and will increase Democratic turnout in future races.
— Alice Miranda Ollstein
Neutering local weather science
Trump spent his first time period shredding the Obama administration’s environmental rules, put fossil gas lobbyists accountable for key companies and withdrew from the Paris Local weather Settlement — making the U.S. the one nation on the planet to reject the landmark pact.
For the sequel, his supporters need Trump to go after federal local weather science itself — and guarantee it could’t be used to information authorities insurance policies.
Trump not solely
declined to go to date throughout his first time period, however his companies continued to place out local weather assessments that
declared warming temperatures a menace to the nation’s future. Eight days earlier than his time period ended, his White Home science workplace even fired partisan researchers who had tried to inject cherry-picked local weather science into the federal government file.
Now, as he assaults Biden’s environmental insurance policies as a
“Inexperienced New Rip-off” and escalates his
assaults on wind generators, Trump’s supporters count on him to take the struggle in opposition to federal local weather insurance policies a notch greater.
Challenge 2025
lays out proposals for the subsequent conservative administration to reject the a long time of analysis that present the more and more dire penalties of rising carbon dioxide ranges. It could flip key authorities companies such because the EPA towards rising fossil gas manufacturing relatively than public well being protections.
The Heritage undertaking even proposes eliminating one of many world’s main science our bodies, the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, calling it “one of many principal drivers of the local weather change alarm {industry}.”
That might have a big ripple impact and alter the way in which the federal government prepares the nation for lethal warmth waves, wildfires and flooding. NOAA’s companies, together with the Nationwide Climate Service, may discover themselves “eradicated, despatched to different companies, privatized or positioned below the management of states and territories,” the plan says.
As well as, the plan would block the Pentagon from utilizing local weather analysis to form its operations and readiness — a longtime goal of complaints from GOP lawmakers, who preserve that such efforts shift the army away from its important mission. The army has lengthy included local weather science,
together with throughout Trump’s first time period, to
harden its services and bases in opposition to rising sea ranges and extra excessive storms.
Will Happer, a former adviser on Trump’s Nationwide Safety Council, advised POLITICO earlier this 12 months that the ex-president had expressed hopes of reviving a never-accomplished proposal from his first time period — one that may have broadly restructured federal local weather science and embedded like-minded researchers into the staffs writing local weather research.
Happer mentioned that earlier than leaving workplace, Trump advised him: “Let’s do that in my second time period.”
— Scott Waldman
Increasing commerce fights in opposition to rivals — and allies
Trump has made no secret that he intends to pursue a dramatic escalation of his “America First” commerce agenda if reelected, ratcheting up tariffs and different commerce boundaries in opposition to each U.S. enemies and allies — far greater than the degrees he enacted throughout his first time period.
As earlier than, one among his principal targets could be China.
Trump imposed tariffs on greater than $300 billion value of Chinese language items after successful the White Home in 2016, duties the Biden administration has largely left in place. However the former president has vowed to go a lot additional by eliminating China’s “most favored nation” commerce standing, which might result in stiff tariffs on a variety of business items, equivalent to smartphones, and certain set off huge retaliation.
“Financial safety is nationwide safety,”
Trump mentioned in a coverage video in January 2023. “China doesn’t enable American corporations to take over their crucial infrastructure — and America shouldn’t enable China to take over our crucial infrastructure.”
“If we don’t do that, the USA will probably be owned by China, which might make them very comfortable,” he added.
Trump has additionally mentioned he would impose a “four-year plan to
part out all Chinese language imports of important items — every little thing from electronics to metal to prescribed drugs,” and create new guidelines to dam U.S. corporations from making investments in China.
The proposals, which might possible violate international buying and selling guidelines, face fierce pushback from {industry} and would result in greater costs for customers on a variety of products, financial specialists warn. However supporters argue that the hawkish positions are vital to answer nationwide safety threats posed by China, in addition to its coercive regional affect.
The Republican front-runner can be contemplating levying a flat 60 % tariff on all Chinese language imports,
The Washington Publish reported final month. When Fox Enterprise requested him in regards to the reviews,
Trump declined to decide to particular figures however mentioned tariffs on China may even be greater.
Trump has additionally floated the thought of setting a ten % “common baseline” tariff, telling Fox Enterprise Information in August that it will apply “robotically” for all nations. (He didn’t rule out together with U.S. buying and selling companions in these penalties.) That might dramatically increase the prices of imports coming into the U.S., which may promote home {industry} however would additionally signify a big burden to American customers and corporations that depend on overseas items and supplies.
— Ari Hawkins
Waging classroom tradition wars
Efforts by Republican governors and college boards to limit instructing on topics like race, sexuality and gender identification have mushroomed since Trump left the White Home, as have GOP makes an attempt to roll again protections for transgender college students. And Trump is promising that he and his Training Division would broaden that struggle.
His
newest training plan requires chopping federal funding for any faculty or program that features “crucial race principle, gender ideology, or different inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content material onto our youngsters.” He additionally desires to open civil rights investigations into faculties “engaged in race-based discrimination” and has promised to “maintain males out of girls’s sports activities.”
“If any trainer or faculty official suggests to a baby that they could possibly be trapped within the flawed physique, they are going to be confronted with extreme penalties,” Trump mentioned in a
video assertion posted final 12 months. As an alternative, he mentioned his training officers would “promote constructive training … celebrating relatively than erasing the issues that make women and men completely different and distinctive.”
The Training Division’s Workplace for Civil Rights may additionally dismantle discrimination protections for transgender college students and reinstate its regulation on how faculties should reply to sexual misconduct — which might be the third regulatory change to Title IX in three administrations.
The primary Trump administration equally rolled again Obama-era steering defending transgender college students and launched investigations into faculties that allowed transgender athletes to play on girls’s sports activities groups — nevertheless it didn’t codify a ban on transgender college students from services nor sports activities. Whereas the Training Division threatened to drag federal funding from faculties that ran afoul of its transgender insurance policies, it by no means did.
Civil rights teams have mentioned they’re deeply involved about Trump rolling again protections for among the nation’s most weak college students.
Trump’s training officers would have a more durable time implementing this agenda if the Biden administration finishes a regulation codifying protections for gender identification this 12 months. In that case, it will most likely take years for a second Trump administration to overtake Biden’s rules, reinstate previous Trump-era insurance policies and add new ones.
— Bianca Quilantan
Making an attempt to kill the electrical automobile
Electrical automobiles didn’t get a lot consideration from Trump throughout his first time period. This time he’s making no secret of his disdain for the expertise, even issuing a
Christmas greeting on social media that referred to as for supporters of the “All Electrical Automobile Lunacy” to “ROT IN HELL.”
If he defeats Biden, Trump would have important leeway to place authorized pressure behind his assaults.
Trump pledged throughout
a rally in January that “on day one” he would halt an upcoming EPA auto-pollution rule that’s
aimed toward driving EV adoption, falsely calling it an “electrical car mandate.” He has additionally
vowed to undo Biden’s aggressive proposal to extend federal gas economic system requirements. Even earlier than Trump takes workplace, the Supreme Courtroom may ease his path to reversing these guidelines by
overturning the authorized doctrine underpinning them.
Heritage’s 2025 Challenge additionally encourages Trump to as soon as once more go after the federal waiver authority that
permits California to set its personal car requirements, which it and different states have used to set guidelines ordering the phaseout of gasoline-powered vehicles. Trump
blocked the state’s waiver in 2019, however the Biden administration quickly restored it.
The prospect of one other Trump presidency may have an effect even earlier than the election by chilling corporations’ investments in electrical automobiles, mentioned Levi Tillemann, a former Obama-era Vitality Division official and writer of “The Nice Race: The International Quest for the Automobile of the Future.” Tillemann famous that automakers usually function on 10-year horizons.
Already, automakers and suppliers are throttling again some EV funding as
demand for the battery-powered vehicles slows.
Supporters of the EV transition vow to be prepared for the struggle.
“If President Trump turns into president once more, we’re going to see the identical sorts of actions the place they’ll attempt to roll again and take away California’s authority, however we’re not giving up,” Patty Monahan, lead commissioner on transportation for the California Vitality Fee, mentioned at a latest convention.
Trump
has additionally promised to “cease the circulation of American tax {dollars} which are subsidizing Chinese language electrical car battery corporations” by additional limiting the patron tax credit score that
gives as much as $7,500 to EV patrons. Trump may concern stricter interpretations of guidelines that
tie the credit score to the home sourcing of minerals, sharply limiting the variety of automobiles that qualify, Tillemann mentioned.
One other space the place Trump may unilaterally sluggish EV deployment is within the federal authorities’s personal fleet, which Biden has moved to quickly electrify. “The worst factor is that they wish to make our Military tanks all electrical,” Trump mentioned at a rally in December.
What could possibly be more durable for Trump to claw again — each legally and politically — are Biden’s federal subsidies which have
spurred billions of {dollars} in funding within the battery provide chain and charging infrastructure throughout the nation. A lot of the funds in 2021’s bipartisan infrastructure regulation can have flowed out by 2025, and far of that funding — and the roles that include it — goes to states that again Trump, which have
welcomed EV producers with open arms.
Nonetheless-unspent cash from 2022’s Inflation Discount Act, which offered no less than $369 billion in clear power subsidies, could possibly be extra weak to Trump, who may use rules to closely prohibit the place the funds can circulation.
Tim Echols, a Republican who serves as vice chair of Georgia’s elected Public Service Fee, mentioned repealing the IRA may “finish the surge of progress in EV-related companies” in his state. “It’s actually our hope that we’re in a position to end what we have now began and that President Trump will place a excessive worth on manufacturing stateside,” he mentioned.
— James Bikales
Neutering the federal election hacking watchdog
Trump’s false claims that Biden-aligned hackers had stolen the 2020 election acquired a vigorous debunking from a supply near house — the cyber company in Trump’s personal Division of Homeland Safety.
In a second time period, Trump would have the chance to pack DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company with loyalists bent on giving up the struggle in opposition to on-line disinformation.
The roughly five-year-old company, charged with defending delicate U.S. networks from hacks and bodily threats, has grown quickly since Trump first set it up in 2018. However he and different conservative critics on and off Capitol Hill soured on CISA ever since its then-director, Chris Krebs, publicly rebutted the previous president’s allegations of widespread electoral fraud in 2020.
Trump
fired Krebs in mid-November 2020, objecting to a CISA-issued assertion wherein a number of prime election officers declared that month’s election to be “probably the most safe in American historical past.”
CISA stays beset by assaults from conservatives. These embody a pending lawsuit from Republican attorneys common alleging that CISA and different authorities companies had silenced conservative voices on-line within the run-up to that election and through the Covid-19 pandemic — accusations CISA denies.
Already, the Republican stress has prompted CISA to curtail its disinformation work.
As an indication of the place Trump could go in a second time period, far-right lawmakers within the Home launched a failed bid to chop CISA’s $2 billion finances by 1 / 4 final fall, although solely a tiny fraction of that cash goes to preventing on-line hoaxes. (The remaining goes to duties equivalent to providing cybersecurity help to hacking targets equivalent to faculties, pipelines and hospitals. ) In 2022, The Heritage Basis launched a street map calling on the subsequent GOP president to radically restrict CISA’s mandate.
— John Sakellariadis
Bombing Mexico?
Trump is vowing to assault Mexican drug cartels as a part of his efforts to maintain the lethal opioid fentanyl in another country — putting him squarely in tune with a
rising refrain of Republican lawmakers who’ve expressed openness to army motion on the territory of the USA’ southern neighbor.
Such a transfer may destabilize U.S.-Mexico relations and result in a spike in asylum claims on the border. Folks making an attempt to enter the U.S. would have stronger asylum claims in the event that they’re fleeing violence.
GOP lawmakers have more and more pushed to label drug cartels as overseas terrorist organizations and warmed to the thought of utilizing army pressure in opposition to them. Trump is open to it, too. He has
mentioned sending “particular forces” and utilizing “cyber warfare” to focus on cartel leaders, “simply as we took down ISIS and the ISIS caliphate,” and in line with a narrative in Rolling Stone has requested for “battle plans”
to strike Mexico.
When he was president, Trump
thought-about utilizing missiles to take out drug labs in Mexico, former Protection Secretary Mark Esper wrote in a ebook in 2022. Esper later referred to as the thought “absurd.”
— Alex Ward
Deploying U.S. troops in opposition to People
4 years in the past, Trump held again from invoking the Rebellion Act to deploy federal troops to interior cities the place protesters took to the streets after the police killing of George Floyd.
He has mentioned he gained’t maintain again once more.
“And one of many different issues I’ll do — since you’re speculated to not be concerned in that — you simply should be requested by the governor or the mayor to return in,” Trump
advised an Iowa viewers in November. “The following time, I’m not ready.”
He didn’t provide particulars or how precisely he would possibly use the troops, however within the Iowa look he referred to as the Democratically run cities New York and Chicago “crime dens.”
Civil rights activists and Democratic lawmakers name his remarks alarming as a result of it’s usually unlawful to make use of the army for home regulation enforcement. However the 1792 regulation permits an exception for the president to take action to suppress a riot or violence.
Critics say the statute is overbroad, and a few are attempting to rein it in earlier than Trump would have an opportunity to make use of it.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a senior member of the Homeland, Armed Providers and Judiciary committees, has been looking for Republicans and Democrats to hitch his newest effort to overtake the Rebellion Act. He mentioned he’s working with the Brennan Heart for Justice, which has additionally proposed narrowing the regulation amid fears Trump may use it to quash any public protests in opposition to him.
Not less than one among Trump’s allies in Congress has voiced sympathy for deploying the army this fashion: Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) created a stir in 2020 with
an opinion piece for The New York Occasions that referred to as for Trump to make use of the army to again up native police and put down the unrest.
“One factor above all else will restore order to our streets: an amazing present of pressure to disperse, detain and finally deter lawbreakers,” wrote Cotton, a member of the Senate Armed Providers Committee.
Cotton extra lately declined to remark to POLITICO.
— Joe Gould
Abandoning NATO
Trump stirred up a transatlantic storm this month when he mentioned he would
“encourage” Russian assaults on NATO allies that fail to spend sufficient on protection.
However it was removed from the primary time that he had expressed derision for one of many alliance’s most solemn obligations — that its nations come to assistance from one other member going through army assault.
Throughout his first marketing campaign in 2016, Trump
advised The New York Occasions that he’d defend fellow NATO nations provided that they’ve “fulfilled their obligations to us.” As president two years later, he
warned throughout a NATO summit in Brussels that allies would face “grave penalties” if they didn’t ramp up their spending, and that the U.S. may “go our personal means” — phrases some leaders interpreted as a menace to withdraw from the alliance. He’s additionally
dismissed NATO as “out of date.”
If reelected, he would possibly actually pull out this time, his former nationwide safety adviser John Bolton mentioned on MSNBC amid the
furor over Trump’s most up-to-date remarks.
“When he says he desires to get out of NATO, I feel it’s a really actual menace, and it’ll have dramatically unfavourable implications for the USA, not simply within the North Atlantic, however worldwide,” Bolton mentioned. A U.S. withdrawal would enhance Russian leverage in Europe, the place Vladimir Putin’s battle in Ukraine has introduced Moscow’s troops almost to NATO’s doorstep.
Trump has already put actual pressure behind his complaints.
In the summertime of 2020, he shocked Europe by
ordering the Pentagon to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany over his anger about Berlin’s protection spending. The order would have introduced 6,400 service members house and repositioned almost 5,600 to different nations in Europe, leaving 24,000 troops in Germany.
“They’re there to guard Europe. They’re there to guard Germany, proper?” Trump mentioned on the time. “And Germany is meant to pay for it. Germany’s not paying for it. We don’t wish to be the suckers anymore.”
Pentagon officers acknowledged that the strikes, which would come with having to construct new basing elsewhere in Europe and the U.S., would value billions and take years to implement.
The Biden administration
halted the troop drawdown, then killed it.
Trump’s complaints about NATO embody the truth that a few of its 31 members are failing to satisfy a goal of
spending no less than 2 % of their gross home product on protection, whereas the USA spends way more. (He has claimed which means that
nations equivalent to Germany owe the U.S. “huge sums of cash.”)
Germany nonetheless spends effectively beneath that threshold, although it has donated billions value of weapons and munitions to Ukraine. It’s not anticipated to succeed in that mark till 2025 on the earliest.
Lawmakers late final 12 months put up a guardrail when it accepted a provision within the Nationwide Protection Authorization Act that may bar any future president from pulling out of NATO with out Congress’ approval.
But Trump may nonetheless deeply weaken the NATO alliance just by refusing to take part, mentioned Jim Townsend, a former Pentagon and NATO official on the Heart for a New American Safety.
“He may simply downgrade our participation by not having an envoy go to NATO headquarters, and he gained’t go to summits and the secretary of protection gained’t go to protection ministerials” at NATO, Townsend mentioned. “U.S. management will drop out and also you simply gained’t see a number of American faces.”
— Paul McLeary
Loosening the reins on crypto
Trump was a cryptocurrency skeptic throughout his presidency. GOP lawmakers and conservative teams count on a second time period
may flip him right into a crypto savior.
They’ve drafted regulatory proposals and floated personnel strikes that may be a lot friendlier to the digital asset {industry} than Biden, whose appointees have sought to crack down on the {industry} over shopper safety considerations.
The proposals would additionally signify a departure for Trump, who disparaged the expertise when he was in workplace final time —
writing on X (then Twitter): “I’m not a fan of Bitcoin and different Cryptocurrencies, which aren’t cash, and whose worth is extremely risky and based mostly on skinny air.” His administration took a skeptical method to the then-nascent {industry}, with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
elevating considerations about crypto.
However since leaving workplace, Trump has
invested in crypto and
dabbled in non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. In the meantime, pro-crypto insurance policies have develop into a precedence for key Republicans on Capitol Hill who’ve pushed for industry-blessed regulatory adjustments that might assist legitimize digital belongings.
“If the second Trump administration takes place, [the] president will probably be much more pleasant to the crypto {industry},” Home Majority Whip Tom Emmer
(R-Minn.), a Trump backer who’s a number one crypto proponent in Congress, mentioned in an interview in January.
Business critics agree — however name it worrisome.
“The one affordable expectation is that Trump will convey his general monetary deregulation mindset to the crypto area,” mentioned Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of the monetary watchdog group Higher Markets. “It’s going to be to the intense drawback of traders and clients — and finally, in our view, for monetary stability.”
— Jasper Goodman