On the eve of the presidential election, the race appears to be a dead heat. Most pollsters and prognosticators give both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris an even chance of winning the presidency. While polling has been the object of a great deal of scrutiny in recent years, all evidence points to an incredibly tight race. This means that there is a very real possibility that Trump will win the election and, in January 2025, become only the second person to serve two nonconsecutive terms as president.
What Trump might do in his second term in office now bears serious consideration, not just because his reelection is a real possibility but also because of his unpredictable and chaotic behavior as both a candidate and during his first term as president. Presidential historians and political journalists both use a president’s first 100 days as a benchmark by which to assess the unfurling of both an administration’s policy goals and its modus operandi for the four years to come. What then, might Trump’s first 100 days in office look like should he win this year’s presidential election?
A good place to look for hints about how Trump’s first 100 days in office might unfold is his last first 100 days. Those days were a blur of activity, with much of the political establishment still reeling from Trump’s shock victory over Hillary Clinton and the Trump administration eager to log splashy, signature policy wins.
Trump issued executive orders and signed bills at a rapid clip in his first 100 days in office, outpaced by only two presidents in the modern era. Some observers noted that many of these bills and executive orders were “cosmetic.” An executive order touted as prioritizing U.S.-born workers over those who entered the country with work visas amounted to little more than a directive to review existing law around those visas, for example. Meanwhile, an executive order aiming to deliver on Trump’s signature campaign promise — to build a massive wall along the southern U.S. border — only resulted in the construction of a series of prototypes. When Trump tried to compel Congress to give him the funding he would need to build the wall as envisioned, it resulted in the longest government shutdown to date.
Some of these executive orders did have lasting effects, though. For example, on his first full day in office, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement between the U.S. and 12 countries in Asia and Oceania that President Barack Obama negotiated late in his second term. Another executive order rolled back protections that the Obama administration had instituted for LGBTQ Americans. In Trump’s repealing of that order, critics said at the time, he opened the door for federal contractors to discriminate on the basis of sexuality and gender identity.
And then there was the notorious Executive Order 13769, the so-called “Muslim Travel Ban.” That executive order, which banned all noncitizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for a period of time, was met immediately with vociferous opposition. Mass protests were held at airports around the country and a slew of civil liberties groups filed suit to block the order from taking effect. The ban was eventually blocked by courts and tied up in legal deliberations until it was superseded by more narrow presidential proclamations by Trump and, ultimately, revoked by Joe Biden when he assumed the presidency. Nonetheless, it illustrated the extent to which Trump and his administration were willing to wield executive power to deliver on his campaign promises.
Trump’s first 100 days were also punctuated by actions that would have been at home in any Republican administration. He oversaw the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who, along with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, would help Trump cement the court’s conservative supermajority. Trump and his cabinet also spent his first 100 days laying the groundwork for tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
If Trump is reelected, then, we might expect the first 100 days of his second term to look similar: a flurry of executive orders that reinforce the Trumpist brand oriented around red meat issues that speak directly to Trump’s base. Meanwhile, we would be likely to see Trump’s cabinet devote more time to building a coalition within the Republican Party that can help deliver on longer-term policy goals that are likely to unfold over the course of his term.
So, what, then are the red meat issues Trump could speak directly to in his first 100 days in office? This is a difficult question to answer; the official Republican Party platform and the pronouncements that Trump makes on the campaign trail can diverge significantly. Most notably, Trump tends to take themes already present in the party platform and extend them to grotesque extremes. For example, where the platform promises to “secure the Border, deport Illegal Aliens, and reverse the Democrats’ Open Borders Policies,” Trump has taken anti-immigrant rhetoric much further. In a recent rally, he referred to the “migrant invasion” and called the U.S. an “occupied country.” In December of last year, he sparked an outcry when he said that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” a direct echo of Nazi rhetoric.
Elsewhere, Trump makes promises that stretch plausibility and, sometimes, the bounds of material reality. While his 2024 campaign has lacked the pithy, ultranationalist sloganeering that “Build the Wall” embodied, immigration remains his signature issue. In that vein, he has said that a priority if he is reelected would be to deport the millions of undocumented people currently living in the U.S., using the National Guard and U.S. military to help carry out the deportation operation. Critics of this proposal have pointed to the complexity and scope of such an effort, not to mention the legal barriers to using the U.S. military on domestic soil. Beyond that, deporting a population of people equivalent to that of Ohio, experts also point out, would likely have devastating consequences for the U.S. economy.
With few practical avenues to achieving his mass deportation, Trump may resume the practice of issuing executive orders that pay lip service to his platform more than they effectuate actual policy. In this particular instance, Trump’s approach to building his vaunted border wall during his first term can be illustrative: He could push the boundaries of what he can possibly direct from the executive branch, but the question of whether he can realize his more ambitious goals will ultimately turn on whether Congress cooperates with his funding needs.
Beyond funding needs, the makeup of the U.S. Congress would undoubtedly shape the contours of Trump’s first 100 days in office. In 2017, when he began his first term, Republicans had trifecta control of the federal government. Despite that, Trump’s legislative successes during the 115th Congress have been viewed as comparatively modest. One of Trump’s prominent campaign promises — to roll back the Affordable Care Act — flamed out spectacularly in the Senate when three members of Trump’s own party voted against its repeal. Trump’s ignorance of congressional arcana and unfamiliarity with decorum on the Hill hindered his ability to leverage the Republican trifecta to achieve major policy wins. With both the House and, more distantly, the Senate still in play, the terrain that Trump could be operating on in his second term is completely uncertain.
The Senate could play another crucial role in the early days of Trump’s potential second term, too: confirming Trump’s cabinet nominees. Much of the consternation from those opposing Trump’s third run for the White House has to do with the perceived lack of “guardrails,” by which they often mean seasoned Washington operators who can exert a moderating influence on Trump. In 2017, Trump built a presidential cabinet that drew in about equal measure from the private sector and a pool of right-wing Washington insiders. While there were questions about individual cabinet members’ qualifications to head the agencies to which they were appointed, Trump’s cabinet was more notable for being heavily biased towards corporate America, and less so for its complement of anti-democratic demagogues.
Should Trump win in 2024, though, we may see many more cabinet appointees from outside the D.C. insider orbit. In the first place, Trump’s pool of traditional candidates is smaller — after four years of tumult and heavy turnover in his first term, many former administration officials have since denounced Trump’s political inclinations and personal style while in office. So, he and his team would have to stray farther afield simply to find candidates who are willing to serve in his administration. While Trump hasn’t committed to any names for top cabinet posts, it is likely that he will lean on the private sector more heavily than other presidents have, as he did in his first term. Once again, names being floated for some of the top cabinet positions are culled from both the rightmost end of the political spectrum in Congress — Sen. Tom Cotton, for example, is reportedly in the running for several positions — and from the corporate world.
What remains to be seen though, is if any of the more left-field names currently popping up in the media actually make it to a Senate confirmation hearing. These could include figures like Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democrat who recently switched her party affiliation and has since dabbled in anti-trans legislation and has been accused of spreading Russian propaganda. Another notable name being floated for potential cabinet appointments is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of Trump’s most visible surrogates since he suspended his own presidential campaign this summer. Beyond his famous family, Kennedy is well known for his anti-vaccine stances and bizarre personal anecdotes. This hasn’t stopped Trump from publicly entertaining the idea that Kennedy could play a prominent role in his administration, with the Department of Health and Human Services a likely intended destination should Kennedy get the nomination from Trump.
In a closely divided Senate, or one that Democrats control, Trump’s nominees could face a bruising confirmation process, and those whose bona fides are less certain, or downright dubious, may even witness defections from the Republican caucus. If, however, Republicans end up with a best-case scenario in the Senate, Trump may try to push through some of the more heterodox nominees on his shortlists. That, in turn, might augur a second Trump presidency bent on smashing Washington norms.
Many of the above considerations about checks and limits on Trump’s power, however, go out the window if Trump and his close allies are truly as determined to dismantle U.S. democracy as they often claim to be. Trump has repeatedly said that he could, in a return to the presidency, find reasons and ways to ignore the U.S. Constitution. This year, he has said that he might turn the military against political opponents and the “enemy from within.” These are some of the potential outcomes on the table, but it remains to be seen whether any of them will come to fruition.
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Trump has made it no secret that he is planning a demolition-style attack on both specific communities and democracy as a whole, beginning on his first day in office. With over 25 executive orders and directives queued up for January 20, he’s promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and implement a “drill, drill, drill” approach to ramp up oil and gas extraction.
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