Trump’s second term promises a lot of deportations, tariffs, and cuts to government spending.
In Tuesday’s election, voters decisively chose former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. This sets the stage for a second administration, which he calls a “golden age,” in which he plans to deport a lot of migrants, tax foreign goods heavily, and put wealthy supporters in key positions.
Several news outlets say that the former president will not be charged with any federal crimes when he takes office. This is because the U.S. Justice Department is planning to end its cases involving classified documents and election interference in 2020 before the inauguration.
There were more cultural grievances in Trump’s populist campaign than specific policy proposals, but he always said he would do something about immigration and the economy.
Since he first ran for president in 2015, Trump has been very strict on immigration. During the campaign this year, he promised to deport more than 13 million people who are in the country illegally.
It might be hard to pull off because of the costs and difficulties of running such a business, which could include temporary detention centers and a huge increase in funding for immigration enforcement.
A wide range of fiscal policy experts have also said that Trump’s plan to put tariffs on all foreign goods will make prices go up for consumers and could start a trade war.
The former president kept saying that he would raise tariffs on all Chinese goods by as much as 60% and on goods coming into the U.S. from Mexico by anywhere from 25% to 200%.
Trump teased a Cabinet and staff that would include billionaire Elon Musk, who gave Trump a lot of money and helped him win the election. Musk told thousands of Trump supporters that he could cut $2 trillion in federal spending.
Trump also said that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would have a top health position. Kennedy is known for spreading false information about vaccines and leaving a dead bear cub in Central Park, New York.
On social media on Saturday, the son of the late Sen. and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy said that on the first day in office, the Trump administration would “advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.”
In his early Wednesday morning victory speech, the former president thanked Musk and Kennedy, Jr. He also promised that Kennedy, Jr. would “make America healthy again” while the crowd chanted “Bobby, Bobby, Bobby.”
Trump said, “He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him go to it.”
A senior campaign aide said that Harris called the former president on Wednesday to congratulate him on his win. The aide said that during the conversation, she stressed a peaceful transfer of power. This was different from how Trump acted in 2020, when he refused to give up power to President Joe Biden, who won the election.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign, said that the former president “acknowledged Vice President Harris on her strength, professionalism, and tenacity throughout the campaign, and both leaders agreed on how important it was to bring the country together.”
Trump is likely to be the first convicted felon to be elected to the White House. He now has to fill the positions of thousands of political appointees during the presidential transition period. A Republican-led Senate should make this process go smoothly.
During his second run for president, Trump was charged with federal crimes, and the former president made it clear on the campaign trail that he was angry at political opponents, calling them the “enemy from within.”
This year, the U.S. Supreme Court made a decision that gave presidents a lot of freedom to do illegal things as long as they said they were doing them in the course of their job. This could give Trump a chance to use the department against political opponents.
When he takes office, Trump, who is 78 years old, will be the oldest person ever to be elected to the U.S. presidency. His running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who is 40 years old, will be one of the youngest people to be second in command.
Effects on geopolitics
World leaders started congratulating Trump on his win before the AP called it.
“Congratulations on the biggest comeback in history!” In a post on X, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote to Melania Trump, who is now first lady and will be president-elect. “Your historic return to the White House is a fresh start for America and a strong promise to keep the strong bond between the US and Israel.”
Around the same time as Netanyahu, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the leader of Qatar, sent his best wishes for X. He said that Qatar is looking forward to “working together again to strengthen our strategic relationship and partnership, and to advancing our shared efforts in promoting security and stability both in the region and around the world.”
A ceasefire and hostage deal to end the war between Israel and Gaza are being worked out with the help of Qatar.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, also quickly praised Trump’s “impressive election victory.”
Zelenskyy wrote on X early Wednesday, “I remember our great meeting with President Trump back in September, when we talked in depth about the Ukraine-U.S. strategic partnership, the Victory Plan, and ways to stop Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.”
“I like that President Trump is committed to the “peace through strength” approach to dealing with problems around the world.” In practice, this is the exact idea that can bring about fair peace in Ukraine. It’s my hope that we can make it happen together, Zelenskyy said.
In their fights with Hamas and Russia, Israel and Ukraine both need help from the United States.
Trump has often said bad things about U.S. support for Ukraine, but he probably won’t make big changes to U.S. policy toward Israel.
Trump has legal issues
Since his term ended in January 2021, the former president has been charged with many crimes and sued in civil court.
During his long campaign for president, Trump had a busy legal schedule that included two federal cases that are still going on and cases in Georgia and New York.
A little more than a month before the election, a federal judge released new information from U.S. special counsel Jack Smith that supposedly showed Trump’s part in the plan to change the results of the 2020 presidential election, which led to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The public case was put on hold for most of 2024 while Trump fought the charges, saying that former presidents can’t be tried criminally for things they did while they were in office.
The case was sent back to the lower court by the U.S. Supreme Court in July after ruling that former presidents are not guilty of any crimes related to core constitutional powers and are presumed to be immune from prosecution for duties outside of the office, but not for personal actions.
In hundreds of pages of new court documents, Smith has argued that Trump tampered with the results of the 2020 presidential election while he was running for office and working with private lawyers.
Trump has said many times that he would fire Smith from the U.S. Justice Department if he were elected president again.
The only criminal case against Trump that went to trial took place in a Manhattan courtroom in April and May. On 34 counts of felony business record fraud, Trump was found guilty by a jury. The former president hid the fact that he paid a porn star money to keep quiet before the 2016 election.
Trump was supposed to be sentenced in his home city in July, but now it has been moved to November 26. It’s not clear how New York Judge Juan Merchan will handle the case now that Trump is on his second path to the White House. The case was already behind schedule because both sides were arguing about how the Supreme Court’s decision on Trump’s immunity affected the evidence that was being used against him.
In June 2023, Trump became the first former president to be charged with a federal crime for allegedly keeping secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and refusing to give them back to the National Archives. At the end of July, a federal judge threw out the case. Smith has since filed an appeal.
How the states backed Trump
The Associated Press predicted Trump would win when Wisconsin added 277 more Electoral College votes for him on Wednesday morning, which was more than the 270 needed to win the presidency. Harris had 248.
By Wednesday noon, Trump had won Michigan, giving him 292 electoral votes and securing five of the crucial seven swing states where he and the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, spent most of their time campaigning until 2024.
States like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina all voted for Trump. Nevada and Arizona were still without a winner being declared.
GOP Senate
The U.S. Senate was also taken over by Republicans, which gave Trump a pretty easy time confirming his picks for the courts and the Cabinet in the coming months.
Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky who is leaving his leadership job at the end of the year, said it was “a hell of a good day.”
The Associated Press (AP) reported that Republicans had 52 Senate seats and Democrats had 43 as of Wednesday afternoon.
In a high-profile race called by the AP on Wednesday morning, Republican Tim Sheehy beat longtime centrist Democrat Jon Tester to become Montana’s senator. Tester was seen as his party’s most vulnerable senator in 2024.
Even though the U.S. House hadn’t been called yet, Republicans were in charge on Wednesday afternoon, 201–186.
If they were to keep the chamber, it would create an amazing Republican trio in Washington, D.C., that could likely speed up legislation on taxes, the debt, reproductive rights, and immigration, among other things.
The results are not official until they are checked and approved by local election officials across the country in the next few days and weeks.
Democracy doesn’t work as an issue.
Trump’s refusal to accept that he lost the 2020 election and was found guilty on 34 felony counts was used by Harris’ campaign to show how dangerous Trump is to democratic norms.
But voters didn’t seem to get that message. They told exit pollsters they were more worried about things like high inflation in the economy.
Common Cause was an advocacy group that tried to get people to care about democracy issues. On Wednesday, they accepted the results but continued to warn about the “grave threat” that Trump posed to the country’s democratic norms.
“We respect the democratic process, but we now have to face the fact that Trump’s actions and words are a grave threat to the core principles of our democracy,” Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause, told reporters on a call. “His return to office poses a unique threat to our country’s core values because he has been removed from office twice and is facing multiple felony charges.”
A race on a roller coaster
For most of his reelection campaign, Trump ran against Biden. Biden dropped out of the race in the summer after a terrible debate performance.
That meant that Trump’s team had to start a new campaign with Harris, a candidate Trump had never run against before.
Harris, who called herself the underdog, tried to show that she was the leader of the next generation and that her plans for housing, health care, and the economy would start a new era for Americans.
She ran on a platform of supporting reproductive rights and warning of the dangers to democracy that a second Trump presidency would pose, citing the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity.
In the end, Trump’s main campaign issues—immigration and criticisms of the economy—seemed to have swayed voters, and she failed to get any of the votes in swing states that would have given her a chance to win.
Late Tuesday night, it became clear that she was losing ground in key states that helped Biden win the presidency in 2020. As a result, thousands of her supporters who had come to Howard University for a watch party left in waves as her chances of winning kept getting worse.