What To Know About Trump’s Policy Agenda After Election Win
Alison Durkee
Forbes Staff
Alison is a senior news reporter covering US politics and legal news.Follow
Nov 6, 2024
.jpg)
Former President Donald Trump has won the presidential election and will take office in January, and while his final policy choices remain to be seen, he could push plans from a years-old platform that includes stricter rules for schools, more hardline immigration policies, scrapping climate regulations and creating entirely new “freedom cities.”
Key Facts
Trump’s “Agenda47” consists of proposals his campaign issued on its website during the primary election season, from December 2022 to December 2023, many of which may require congressional action but some of which could be enacted through executive orders—and are separate to the Project 2025 proposals developed by third-party organizations.
While Trump’s Agenda47 proposals and videos were long linked on his campaign website, his website’s homepage now only links to a shorter set of proposals and includes a separate link to the Republican National Committee’s broader platform—but the links to his more detailed Agenda47 proposals remain active, offering more insight about the ex-president’s priorities than what’s listed on his website now.
Education: Trump’s proposals for K-12 schools include having parents elect school principals, cutting federal funding to any school teaching “critical race theory,” ending teacher tenure, creating a new credentialing body to only certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values,” encouraging prayer in schools, making it easier to kick “out-of-control troublemakers” out of school, supporting school districts that allow teachers to carry concealed firearms and pushing “school choice” policies.
Universities: Trump has proposed getting rid of existing accreditors for colleges and universities and creating new ones who impose his party’s values on institutions, along with levying significant fines on colleges and universities that he believes “discriminate” against students—with a plan to use those fines to create a free online “American Academy” that “cover[s] the full spectrum of human knowledge and skills.”
Climate Change: The U.S. would again leave the Paris Climate Accord, and the ex-president has proposed getting rid of President Joe Biden’s policies restricting emissions and targeting 67% of new vehicles to be electric by 2032 and massively scaling up oil and gas production.
Justice Department: Trump has pledged to appoint 100 U.S. attorneys who would be aligned with his policies and investigate some left-leaning local district attorneys, also pledging to establish a DOJ task force on “protecting the right to self-defense” and fight purported anti-conservative bias at law schools and law firms.
Crime: Trump has vowed to invest in hiring and retaining police officers (and increase their protections from legal liability), push policies like “stop and frisk,” direct the DOJ “to dismantle every gang, street crew, and drug network in America,” deploy federal troops including the National Guard “to restore law and order” when local officers “refuse to act” and impose the death penalty for drug dealers, drug cartels and human traffickers.
Immigration: Trump plans to prohibit undocumented immigrants from receiving any benefits, end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, reinstitute a “travel ban” from certain countries, pause refugee admissions, mandate “extreme vetting of foreign nationals,” block federal grants to sanctuary cities, end the “catch-and-release” practice of releasing migrants while they await immigration hearings, close the southern border to asylum seekers and suspend visa programs including the visa lottery and family visas.
Economy: Trump proposes cutting taxes and slashing federal regulations, also proposing baseline tariffs on foreign goods in hopes of spurring American manufacturing, which will go up for countries who have “unfair trade practices.”
Healthcare: Trump has proposed requiring federal agencies to buy medicines and medical devices manufactured in the U.S. and barring federal agencies from other countries from purchasing “essential” drugs; he also has plans for an executive order saying the government will only pay pharmaceutical companies the “best price they offer to foreign nations.”
Foreign Policy and Defense: Trump wants European allies to pay back the U.S. for depleting its military stockpiles sending weapons to Ukraine; he has also taken a hardline stance on China, calling for new restrictions on Chinese-owned infrastructure in the U.S., and wants to build a missile defense shield.
Social Security: In a shift from some pre-Trump GOP politicians’ views, Trump has said there should be no cuts to Social Security or Medicare “under any circumstances.”
Homelessness: Trump plans to work with states to ban “public camping” by homeless people and instead give them the choice of receiving treatment or being arrested, and calls for creating large “tent cities” where homeless people would be relocated, which would have doctors and social workers on site, along with expanding mental institutions.
Transgender Rights: Trump takes a hard stance against transgender rights, calling for any healthcare provider providing gender-affirming care for youth to be terminated from Medicare and Medicaid, stripping federal funding from any school where an official or teacher suggests a child could be “trapped in the wrong body,” and encouraging Congress to pass legislation saying “the only genders recognized by the U.S. government are male and female—and they are assigned at birth.”
Big Tech: In line with conservatives’ claims that social media platforms are biased against them, Trump said he’ll pass an executive order barring any federal department from working with other entities to “censor” Americans and prohibit federal money being used to combat misinformation, also announcing steps like altering Section 230 to open up social media platforms to more legal liability.
What Does Trump’s Website Say Now?
The “platform” section of Trump’s campaign website now lists a set of 20 vague priorities, which are the same as those in the Republican National Committee’s formal platform and often overlap with his previous Agenda47 proposals. The proposals now outlined on the website include “seal[ing] the border;” “carry[ing] out the largest deportation operation in American history;” ending inflation, increased manufacturing and energy production; “large tax cuts for workers;” preserving Social Security and Medicare; enacting transgender sports bans; stripping federal funding for schools that teach what he describes as “critical race theory” or “radical gender ideology;” imposing stricter requirements for voting and keeping “the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.”
What Is Project 2025—and Is It Similar?
Trump’s Agenda47 is distinct from Project 2025, a potential policy blueprint for the next conservative administration—namely Trump’s—developed by the Heritage Foundation along with other third-party groups. While Agenda47 was released directly by the Trump campaign, the ex-president has said he doesn’t have any involvement with Project 2025 and has attempted to distance himself from it, even as the 900-page policy guidebook was created with help from more than 100 people who served in his administration. Trump has also praised the Heritage Foundation’s policy work in the past. The two policy proposals do have many commonalities—like calling to leave the Paris Climate Agreement, kicking out career bureaucrats, pushing “school choice” policies and railing against transgender rights—and it’s unclear how much of Project 2025 Trump could choose to implement if he’s elected.
What To Watch For
Many of the items in Agenda47 and Project 2025 would probably require acts of Congress—which could be doable, as Republicans have gained control of the Senate and it’s still unclear which party will retake the House—but both agendas have proposed expanding the president’s control over the executive branch. Trump’s Agenda47 proposes reviving Trump’s 2020 executive order (which Biden rescinded) that makes it significantly easier to replace career civil servants with political appointees. He also wants to “overhaul federal departments and agencies” to get rid of “corrupt actors,” crack down on government leakers and implement a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to fight what the GOP calls the “Deep State.”
Tangent
Since the last Agenda47 video was released in December 2023, Trump has announced other policy proposals separate from those released under the Agenda47 heading. On abortion, Trump has said he believes the issue should be left to the states—though many abortion rights advocates still believe he’d restrict abortion. He and the GOP have also vowed mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, which is not mentioned in Agenda47’s immigration plans. He’s additionally pushed to eliminate the federal income tax on tips for service workers, as well as eliminate taxes for Social Security and edouble taxation for Americans living abroad and make interest on car loans tax deductible. Trump has also called for mass arrests and prosecutions of people who oppose his claims on voter fraud, which he claims would include “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters & Corrupt Election Officials.”
What We Don’t Know
What Trump will do once he takes office. Trump’s initial Agenda47 was released during the primary election and with the proposals on his website during the general election offering much less detail, it’s still unclear what policies Trump will actually impose now that he’s been elected. The ex-president has tacked slightly more to the center in the general election on issues like abortion, but it remains to be seen what policies he will adopt once he’s back in the White House.
Surprising Fact
In addition to proposals around more expected issues like immigration, education and defense, Trump’s Agenda47 also includes a proposal for “freedom cities,” as the ex-president has called for using federal land to create up to 10 new cities, which would be roughly the size of Washington, D.C. Plans for the cities would be chosen via a nationwide contest, and Politico reported in March 2023 Trump’s proposal includes investing in “vertical takeoff-and-landing vehicles” akin to human-sized drones and “baby bonuses” in hopes of staving off a declining birth rate.
Key Background
The Associated Press projected Trump as the winner of the presidential election early Wednesday morning, after he won key battleground states including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The ex-president released his Agenda47 videos as he faced what was initially a crowded field of Republican primary candidates, though Trump ultimately proved to be the clear frontrunner, clinching the nomination in March. The policy proposals have come under increased scrutiny in recent months—particularly as Democrats used the controversial Project 2025 to oppose Trump’s candidacy while President Joe Biden faced criticism over his age—though Project 2025 and Agenda47 have both been published since last year.
CNN —
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to completely remake the US government and wield new power as president.
The ambitious promises, if enacted, would transform society. Some of his most-repeated promises on the campaign trail include:
Mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants
Closing the southern border and ending birthright citizenship
Unprecedented tariffs on foreign goods from all countries, but especially China
Expansive tax cuts to benefit corporations, tipped workers, seniors on Social Security, property owners in the Northeast and many others
Trillions in cuts in government spending with help from Elon Musk
Reforming the country’s health and food systems with help from vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Reversing regulations aimed at addressing climate change
Building a new missile defense shield with help from former NFL player Herschel Walker
And so much more
Now Americans will find out what was hyperbole and what was real – what is achievable and what he will be able to push through by himself, with help from Congress and without interference by the courts.
His pledge to end Russia’s war on Ukraine “in 24 hours,” for example, seems overwrought, to say the least.
His pledge for a mass deportation effort, on the other hand, is very serious. It seems to be backed up by some clear planning but there’s a lack of public details.
Is there a master plan?
During the campaign, Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025, the controversial and detailed blueprint for a newly reimagined federal government published by conservatives at the Heritage Foundation in anticipation of a second Trump term.
While Trump may not want to associate with that plan, it was formulated by his allies – at least 140 people associated with Project 2025 worked in Trump’s administration, according to a review by CNN’s Steve Contorno. Certainly there is some overlap between much of what the 900-page Project 2025 proposes and what Trump has said he will do in a series of very simple “Agenda47” videos on his website laying out his plans for a second term.
In one Agenda47 video, for instance, Trump promises to have an executive order prepared to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. The 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, so expect court fights if this happens.
One of the policy maestros of Protect 2025, Russell Vought – who served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term – was captured on hidden camera by undercover journalists over the summer talking about an aggressive agenda he was writing to get Trump’s new administration off to an active start in its first 180 days.
On mass deportations
Trump’s most aggressive promise is the rounding up and deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. Expect Trump to come into office with a series of executive orders already written to reinstate border policies unwound by the Biden administration.
Such is the yo-yoing of US immigration policy given that Congress has been unable to pass meaningful reform for decades. What’s not clear is how exactly Trump will go about closing the US border and whether it will include the US military, the National Guard or local law enforcement agencies.
Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox News to expect deportations to begin the moment Trump is again president on January 20, 2025.
“They begin on Inauguration Day, as soon as he takes the oath of office,” he said.
But it’s still not clear exactly how deportations will work. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican, told CNN’s Pamela Brown on Thursday that he expects every undocumented immigrant will continue to get a hearing before he or she is deported, something that will require the hiring of a large number of additional government workers if deportations are amplified to a massive scale. The current process is lengthy.
“I agree; it’s going to be a very, very big task,” Gimenez said. “And my hope is, and I expect, that we’ll just simply follow the law.”
CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez reported there have already been discussions among Trump allies and some in the private sector to detain and deport migrants at a large scale – though any operation would come with a big price tag.
She noted that Tom Homan, who was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term, has said a deportation effort would start with anyone accused of a crime. It’s not clear what would happen to so-called Dreamers, people brought to the US as children who have lived most of their lives here. Some of them are protected by an Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that Trump tried unsuccessfully to end during his first term.
Plans to ‘aggressively’ fire government workers and move agencies out of DC
At the end of his first term, Trump planned to reclassify a large portion of the federal civilian workforce to make it easier to fire federal workers. Commonly referred to as “Schedule F,” Trump’s plan was to undo long-standing protections for nonpartisan civil servants.
The Biden administration has put some roadblocks in place to ward against such reclassification, but Trump promises in an Agenda47 video to immediately begin working to reinstate it so that he can “remove rogue bureaucrats.” He says he will also “clean out all of the corrupt actors” in the national security and intelligence apparatus and “immediately” move federal agencies out of the nation’s capital.
John McEntee, who was director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office during Trump’s first administration, worked on Project 2025, building a list of Trump loyalists suitable for administration roles. He remains close to Trump, according to CNN’s report on Trump’s transition.
McEntee said recently he wasn’t involved with the policy recommendations in Project 2025, even though he said, “I agree with probably most of it.” Instead, he’s interested in “staffing the president with good people … I think he deserves that.”
What about Trump’s Cabinet?
Trump likes to associate himself and his programs with boldface names. Musk will have a role in government efficiency but probably not a Cabinet position. Kennedy says he wants to give individuals more agency to reject vaccines for their children, but perhaps that does not mean he will have a Cabinet position. Does Trump’s promise at a rally in Georgia to put Walker in charge of a missile defense program mean an official government job for the failed Senate candidate?
Related articleTrump’s plan to radically remake government with RFK Jr. and Elon Musk is coming into view
There are 26 people in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet. Some, like CIA director or US ambassador to the United Nations, can be added or subtracted depending on the administration. Only two of the 26 potential positions in a Trump Cabinet are in place. Look for Trump to continue naming top officials in the coming days.
In addition to Vice President-elect JD Vance, Trump’s first key personnel news came Thursday night when he announced Susie Wiles, his campaign manager, would become his chief of staff. She’ll be the first woman to hold the position. Trump went through four such top aides during his previous administration. The longest-serving of those, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, had warned against Trump’s election.
Trump can simply hire a chief of staff, but most Cabinet positions, like secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, will require Senate confirmation. Trump will have a Republican majority in the Senate, which should ease the confirmation of key positions, but each of the ultimate Cabinet appointees will have a confirmation hearing before they get a vote.
Frustrated by the difficulty of getting Cabinet officials confirmed during his first administration, Trump frequently appointed people as “acting” secretaries, although those appointments can only be made on a temporary basis.
Trump’s oldest son, Donald Jr., said on Fox News that Trump will prize loyalty and look for “people who don’t think that they know better than the duly elected president of the United States.”
Taking power away from Congress
Trump won’t have the 60 votes he’ll need to shoot sweeping legislation quickly through Congress without bipartisan support in the Senate. It’s not yet clear if Republicans will hold control of the House, but any majority will be slim.
One of his big plans to challenge current governing norms that’s gotten less attention is his pledge to seize some power over government spending from Congress. In one Agenda47 video, Trump says he would try to reassert the principle of “impoundment,” by which a president can reject spending instructions from Congress and use taxpayer money in other ways.
Congress reined in presidents with a law after the Nixon administration, but Trump says he will challenge it and take more power for the president.
Alison Durkee
Forbes Staff
Alison is a senior news reporter covering US politics and legal news.Follow
Nov 6, 2024
.jpg)
Former President Donald Trump has won the presidential election and will take office in January, and while his final policy choices remain to be seen, he could push plans from a years-old platform that includes stricter rules for schools, more hardline immigration policies, scrapping climate regulations and creating entirely new “freedom cities.”
Key Facts
Trump’s “Agenda47” consists of proposals his campaign issued on its website during the primary election season, from December 2022 to December 2023, many of which may require congressional action but some of which could be enacted through executive orders—and are separate to the Project 2025 proposals developed by third-party organizations.
While Trump’s Agenda47 proposals and videos were long linked on his campaign website, his website’s homepage now only links to a shorter set of proposals and includes a separate link to the Republican National Committee’s broader platform—but the links to his more detailed Agenda47 proposals remain active, offering more insight about the ex-president’s priorities than what’s listed on his website now.
Education: Trump’s proposals for K-12 schools include having parents elect school principals, cutting federal funding to any school teaching “critical race theory,” ending teacher tenure, creating a new credentialing body to only certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values,” encouraging prayer in schools, making it easier to kick “out-of-control troublemakers” out of school, supporting school districts that allow teachers to carry concealed firearms and pushing “school choice” policies.
Universities: Trump has proposed getting rid of existing accreditors for colleges and universities and creating new ones who impose his party’s values on institutions, along with levying significant fines on colleges and universities that he believes “discriminate” against students—with a plan to use those fines to create a free online “American Academy” that “cover[s] the full spectrum of human knowledge and skills.”
Climate Change: The U.S. would again leave the Paris Climate Accord, and the ex-president has proposed getting rid of President Joe Biden’s policies restricting emissions and targeting 67% of new vehicles to be electric by 2032 and massively scaling up oil and gas production.
Justice Department: Trump has pledged to appoint 100 U.S. attorneys who would be aligned with his policies and investigate some left-leaning local district attorneys, also pledging to establish a DOJ task force on “protecting the right to self-defense” and fight purported anti-conservative bias at law schools and law firms.
Crime: Trump has vowed to invest in hiring and retaining police officers (and increase their protections from legal liability), push policies like “stop and frisk,” direct the DOJ “to dismantle every gang, street crew, and drug network in America,” deploy federal troops including the National Guard “to restore law and order” when local officers “refuse to act” and impose the death penalty for drug dealers, drug cartels and human traffickers.
Immigration: Trump plans to prohibit undocumented immigrants from receiving any benefits, end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, reinstitute a “travel ban” from certain countries, pause refugee admissions, mandate “extreme vetting of foreign nationals,” block federal grants to sanctuary cities, end the “catch-and-release” practice of releasing migrants while they await immigration hearings, close the southern border to asylum seekers and suspend visa programs including the visa lottery and family visas.
Economy: Trump proposes cutting taxes and slashing federal regulations, also proposing baseline tariffs on foreign goods in hopes of spurring American manufacturing, which will go up for countries who have “unfair trade practices.”
Healthcare: Trump has proposed requiring federal agencies to buy medicines and medical devices manufactured in the U.S. and barring federal agencies from other countries from purchasing “essential” drugs; he also has plans for an executive order saying the government will only pay pharmaceutical companies the “best price they offer to foreign nations.”
Foreign Policy and Defense: Trump wants European allies to pay back the U.S. for depleting its military stockpiles sending weapons to Ukraine; he has also taken a hardline stance on China, calling for new restrictions on Chinese-owned infrastructure in the U.S., and wants to build a missile defense shield.
Social Security: In a shift from some pre-Trump GOP politicians’ views, Trump has said there should be no cuts to Social Security or Medicare “under any circumstances.”
Homelessness: Trump plans to work with states to ban “public camping” by homeless people and instead give them the choice of receiving treatment or being arrested, and calls for creating large “tent cities” where homeless people would be relocated, which would have doctors and social workers on site, along with expanding mental institutions.
Transgender Rights: Trump takes a hard stance against transgender rights, calling for any healthcare provider providing gender-affirming care for youth to be terminated from Medicare and Medicaid, stripping federal funding from any school where an official or teacher suggests a child could be “trapped in the wrong body,” and encouraging Congress to pass legislation saying “the only genders recognized by the U.S. government are male and female—and they are assigned at birth.”
Big Tech: In line with conservatives’ claims that social media platforms are biased against them, Trump said he’ll pass an executive order barring any federal department from working with other entities to “censor” Americans and prohibit federal money being used to combat misinformation, also announcing steps like altering Section 230 to open up social media platforms to more legal liability.
What Does Trump’s Website Say Now?
The “platform” section of Trump’s campaign website now lists a set of 20 vague priorities, which are the same as those in the Republican National Committee’s formal platform and often overlap with his previous Agenda47 proposals. The proposals now outlined on the website include “seal[ing] the border;” “carry[ing] out the largest deportation operation in American history;” ending inflation, increased manufacturing and energy production; “large tax cuts for workers;” preserving Social Security and Medicare; enacting transgender sports bans; stripping federal funding for schools that teach what he describes as “critical race theory” or “radical gender ideology;” imposing stricter requirements for voting and keeping “the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.”
What Is Project 2025—and Is It Similar?
Trump’s Agenda47 is distinct from Project 2025, a potential policy blueprint for the next conservative administration—namely Trump’s—developed by the Heritage Foundation along with other third-party groups. While Agenda47 was released directly by the Trump campaign, the ex-president has said he doesn’t have any involvement with Project 2025 and has attempted to distance himself from it, even as the 900-page policy guidebook was created with help from more than 100 people who served in his administration. Trump has also praised the Heritage Foundation’s policy work in the past. The two policy proposals do have many commonalities—like calling to leave the Paris Climate Agreement, kicking out career bureaucrats, pushing “school choice” policies and railing against transgender rights—and it’s unclear how much of Project 2025 Trump could choose to implement if he’s elected.
What To Watch For
Many of the items in Agenda47 and Project 2025 would probably require acts of Congress—which could be doable, as Republicans have gained control of the Senate and it’s still unclear which party will retake the House—but both agendas have proposed expanding the president’s control over the executive branch. Trump’s Agenda47 proposes reviving Trump’s 2020 executive order (which Biden rescinded) that makes it significantly easier to replace career civil servants with political appointees. He also wants to “overhaul federal departments and agencies” to get rid of “corrupt actors,” crack down on government leakers and implement a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to fight what the GOP calls the “Deep State.”
Tangent
Since the last Agenda47 video was released in December 2023, Trump has announced other policy proposals separate from those released under the Agenda47 heading. On abortion, Trump has said he believes the issue should be left to the states—though many abortion rights advocates still believe he’d restrict abortion. He and the GOP have also vowed mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, which is not mentioned in Agenda47’s immigration plans. He’s additionally pushed to eliminate the federal income tax on tips for service workers, as well as eliminate taxes for Social Security and edouble taxation for Americans living abroad and make interest on car loans tax deductible. Trump has also called for mass arrests and prosecutions of people who oppose his claims on voter fraud, which he claims would include “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters & Corrupt Election Officials.”
What We Don’t Know
What Trump will do once he takes office. Trump’s initial Agenda47 was released during the primary election and with the proposals on his website during the general election offering much less detail, it’s still unclear what policies Trump will actually impose now that he’s been elected. The ex-president has tacked slightly more to the center in the general election on issues like abortion, but it remains to be seen what policies he will adopt once he’s back in the White House.
Surprising Fact
In addition to proposals around more expected issues like immigration, education and defense, Trump’s Agenda47 also includes a proposal for “freedom cities,” as the ex-president has called for using federal land to create up to 10 new cities, which would be roughly the size of Washington, D.C. Plans for the cities would be chosen via a nationwide contest, and Politico reported in March 2023 Trump’s proposal includes investing in “vertical takeoff-and-landing vehicles” akin to human-sized drones and “baby bonuses” in hopes of staving off a declining birth rate.
Key Background
The Associated Press projected Trump as the winner of the presidential election early Wednesday morning, after he won key battleground states including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The ex-president released his Agenda47 videos as he faced what was initially a crowded field of Republican primary candidates, though Trump ultimately proved to be the clear frontrunner, clinching the nomination in March. The policy proposals have come under increased scrutiny in recent months—particularly as Democrats used the controversial Project 2025 to oppose Trump’s candidacy while President Joe Biden faced criticism over his age—though Project 2025 and Agenda47 have both been published since last year.
Trump’s master plan for a radical reformation of the US government
Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN
Thu November 7, 2024
Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN
Thu November 7, 2024
CNN —
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to completely remake the US government and wield new power as president.
The ambitious promises, if enacted, would transform society. Some of his most-repeated promises on the campaign trail include:
Mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants
Closing the southern border and ending birthright citizenship
Unprecedented tariffs on foreign goods from all countries, but especially China
Expansive tax cuts to benefit corporations, tipped workers, seniors on Social Security, property owners in the Northeast and many others
Trillions in cuts in government spending with help from Elon Musk
Reforming the country’s health and food systems with help from vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Reversing regulations aimed at addressing climate change
Building a new missile defense shield with help from former NFL player Herschel Walker
And so much more
Now Americans will find out what was hyperbole and what was real – what is achievable and what he will be able to push through by himself, with help from Congress and without interference by the courts.
His pledge to end Russia’s war on Ukraine “in 24 hours,” for example, seems overwrought, to say the least.
His pledge for a mass deportation effort, on the other hand, is very serious. It seems to be backed up by some clear planning but there’s a lack of public details.
Is there a master plan?
During the campaign, Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025, the controversial and detailed blueprint for a newly reimagined federal government published by conservatives at the Heritage Foundation in anticipation of a second Trump term.
While Trump may not want to associate with that plan, it was formulated by his allies – at least 140 people associated with Project 2025 worked in Trump’s administration, according to a review by CNN’s Steve Contorno. Certainly there is some overlap between much of what the 900-page Project 2025 proposes and what Trump has said he will do in a series of very simple “Agenda47” videos on his website laying out his plans for a second term.
In one Agenda47 video, for instance, Trump promises to have an executive order prepared to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. The 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, so expect court fights if this happens.
One of the policy maestros of Protect 2025, Russell Vought – who served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term – was captured on hidden camera by undercover journalists over the summer talking about an aggressive agenda he was writing to get Trump’s new administration off to an active start in its first 180 days.
On mass deportations
Trump’s most aggressive promise is the rounding up and deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. Expect Trump to come into office with a series of executive orders already written to reinstate border policies unwound by the Biden administration.
Such is the yo-yoing of US immigration policy given that Congress has been unable to pass meaningful reform for decades. What’s not clear is how exactly Trump will go about closing the US border and whether it will include the US military, the National Guard or local law enforcement agencies.
Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox News to expect deportations to begin the moment Trump is again president on January 20, 2025.
“They begin on Inauguration Day, as soon as he takes the oath of office,” he said.
But it’s still not clear exactly how deportations will work. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican, told CNN’s Pamela Brown on Thursday that he expects every undocumented immigrant will continue to get a hearing before he or she is deported, something that will require the hiring of a large number of additional government workers if deportations are amplified to a massive scale. The current process is lengthy.
“I agree; it’s going to be a very, very big task,” Gimenez said. “And my hope is, and I expect, that we’ll just simply follow the law.”
CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez reported there have already been discussions among Trump allies and some in the private sector to detain and deport migrants at a large scale – though any operation would come with a big price tag.
She noted that Tom Homan, who was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term, has said a deportation effort would start with anyone accused of a crime. It’s not clear what would happen to so-called Dreamers, people brought to the US as children who have lived most of their lives here. Some of them are protected by an Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that Trump tried unsuccessfully to end during his first term.
Plans to ‘aggressively’ fire government workers and move agencies out of DC
At the end of his first term, Trump planned to reclassify a large portion of the federal civilian workforce to make it easier to fire federal workers. Commonly referred to as “Schedule F,” Trump’s plan was to undo long-standing protections for nonpartisan civil servants.
The Biden administration has put some roadblocks in place to ward against such reclassification, but Trump promises in an Agenda47 video to immediately begin working to reinstate it so that he can “remove rogue bureaucrats.” He says he will also “clean out all of the corrupt actors” in the national security and intelligence apparatus and “immediately” move federal agencies out of the nation’s capital.
John McEntee, who was director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office during Trump’s first administration, worked on Project 2025, building a list of Trump loyalists suitable for administration roles. He remains close to Trump, according to CNN’s report on Trump’s transition.
McEntee said recently he wasn’t involved with the policy recommendations in Project 2025, even though he said, “I agree with probably most of it.” Instead, he’s interested in “staffing the president with good people … I think he deserves that.”
What about Trump’s Cabinet?
Trump likes to associate himself and his programs with boldface names. Musk will have a role in government efficiency but probably not a Cabinet position. Kennedy says he wants to give individuals more agency to reject vaccines for their children, but perhaps that does not mean he will have a Cabinet position. Does Trump’s promise at a rally in Georgia to put Walker in charge of a missile defense program mean an official government job for the failed Senate candidate?
Related articleTrump’s plan to radically remake government with RFK Jr. and Elon Musk is coming into view
There are 26 people in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet. Some, like CIA director or US ambassador to the United Nations, can be added or subtracted depending on the administration. Only two of the 26 potential positions in a Trump Cabinet are in place. Look for Trump to continue naming top officials in the coming days.
In addition to Vice President-elect JD Vance, Trump’s first key personnel news came Thursday night when he announced Susie Wiles, his campaign manager, would become his chief of staff. She’ll be the first woman to hold the position. Trump went through four such top aides during his previous administration. The longest-serving of those, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, had warned against Trump’s election.
Trump can simply hire a chief of staff, but most Cabinet positions, like secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, will require Senate confirmation. Trump will have a Republican majority in the Senate, which should ease the confirmation of key positions, but each of the ultimate Cabinet appointees will have a confirmation hearing before they get a vote.
Frustrated by the difficulty of getting Cabinet officials confirmed during his first administration, Trump frequently appointed people as “acting” secretaries, although those appointments can only be made on a temporary basis.
Trump’s oldest son, Donald Jr., said on Fox News that Trump will prize loyalty and look for “people who don’t think that they know better than the duly elected president of the United States.”
Taking power away from Congress
Trump won’t have the 60 votes he’ll need to shoot sweeping legislation quickly through Congress without bipartisan support in the Senate. It’s not yet clear if Republicans will hold control of the House, but any majority will be slim.
One of his big plans to challenge current governing norms that’s gotten less attention is his pledge to seize some power over government spending from Congress. In one Agenda47 video, Trump says he would try to reassert the principle of “impoundment,” by which a president can reject spending instructions from Congress and use taxpayer money in other ways.
Congress reined in presidents with a law after the Nixon administration, but Trump says he will challenge it and take more power for the president.
No comments:
Post a Comment