What these proposals have in common: They would go well beyond steps Trump took — or in many cases even attempted — from 2017 to 2021. Trump’s campaign has repeatedly dismissed media reports about his potential second-term agenda, saying in a statement in November that policy recommendations from his conservative allies “are certainly appreciated and can be enormously helpful” but “are just that — recommendations.”
“Unless a second term priority is articulated by President Trump himself, or is officially communicated by the campaign, it is not authorized in any way,” the statement from campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said. But both supporters and critics of the ex-president predict that a reelected Trump would wage a more focused and aggressive attack on the status quo. This time, they say, he would be far more knowledgeable about the mechanics of wielding executive power. Having placed so many conservatives in federal judgeships, he would face less resistance from the courts. And he would be more determined to place loyalists, not rules-obsessed traditionalists, in senior roles. Trump’s second term would be “dramatically more comprehensive and more aggressive and more determined to profoundly change the establishment,” said former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who wrote a 2017 book called “Understanding Trump.” The outside proposals drawing so much attention “are worth being aware of,” he said, “because they give you a sense of what it would mean to put Trumpism into effect.”
President Joe Biden’s campaign said voters need to be informed about proposals that would “undermine democracy, rip away rights and freedoms, and make Americans’ lives as miserable as humanly possible if Trump is reelected.”
“Americans should know the stakes of this election,” Biden campaign spokesperson Seth Schuster said in a statement to POLITICO, “and Trump has made them as clear as day.” These are among the policy changes that both fans and foes of the former president say people can expect if Trump wins in November: A woman holds an anti-abortion placard as supporters of then-President Donald Trump rally outside the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles in June 2019. | David McNew/Getty Images
Banning abortions in red and blue states As a candidate, Trump has both claimed credit for the demise of Roe v. Wade and cast himself as a moderate on abortion rights — and he has frustrated anti-abortion groups by refusing to openly embrace or rule out a national ban. Yet those same groups, in collaboration with veterans of Trump’s previous administration, are drafting plans for a sprawling anti-abortion agenda that would all but outlaw the procedure from coast to coast, including in states whose laws or constitutions guarantee reproductive rights. The proposals would go far beyond his first-term anti-abortion policies — which Biden has since lifted — and would lean heavily on executive branch actions, bypassing a stymied Congress. The prospect terrifies abortion rights supporters, who see a second Trump administration as a threat to all the work they’ve done during the last two years to restore and defend abortion access at the state level. Their reasons for worry grew after The New York Times reported this month that Trump has privately told aides and supporters that he could support a national abortion ban after the 16th week of pregnancy.
“We cannot ballot initiative our way out of this fundamental crisis of rights,” said Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer for the American Civil Liberties Union, one of many groups bracing for Trump and a Republican Congress to attempt to override state abortion protections. “I have no doubt that they would try to impose a federal abortion ban, restrict birth control, and do lots of things that are way out of step with what people in this country want.” Anti-abortion activists say they’re confident Trump would at least rescind all the Biden policies that expanded access to both abortion pills and surgical abortions. Those include funding for military members who must travel across state lines for an abortion, the provision of abortions at Department of Veterans Affairs clinics, the expansion of HIPAA privacy rules to cover abortions, and the ability to receive abortion pills by mail and at retail pharmacies. Reversing Biden’s decisions “should happen immediately,” Jamie Dangers of the group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America told reporters during a January call. Dangers added that she and her fellow conservative advocates also expect Trump to reinstate a swath of policies from his first term, including restrictions on domestic and international clinics that provide contraception and tests for sexually transmitted diseases, curbs on abortion pills and cuts to medical research that uses fetal tissue obtained from abortions. But the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that eliminated federal protections for abortion has cleared the way for Trump to go much further. The Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project — a coalition led by former Trump administration officials that includes groups such as Students for Life and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America — is brainstorming ways to use executive power to cut off access to both abortion pills and the surgical procedure. They also want to funnel taxpayer dollars to organizations that work to deter people from terminating a pregnancy. The Project 2025 manifesto includes plans, for example, for Trump to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of mifepristone — a drug used in most abortions. The groups are also counting on Trump enforcing a long-dormant law from the 1870s to punish anyone who sends or receives either mifepristone or medical equipment used for abortions through the mail. Taken together, those two policies could amount to a de facto national abortion ban. “Of the various proposals, FDA revocation of mifepristone approval would be the heaviest lift,” acknowledged Roger Severino, a former Trump administration official at the Department of Health and Human Services and a leader of Project 2025. Severino added that narrower but still sweeping restrictions on the drug, such as reinstating the requirement that people receive it only in-person from a doctor, are “the more likely result.” Project 2025 and other conservative groups are also pushing for a future Trump administration to rescind Biden Justice Department guidance that requires hospitals to offer abortions to patients experiencing medical emergencies regardless of state bans on the procedure — an issue the Supreme Court is set to consider this year. These regulatory and policy changes would almost certainly face legal challenges, though the Trump administration’s previous appointments of hundreds of conservative judges could mean a more friendly reception and fewer restraints on the White House than courts gave his first administration. Such policy moves also would be certain to exacerbate the political backlash Republicans have faced since the fall of Roe and could boost Democratic turnout in future races. — Alice Miranda Ollstein President Donald Trump\’s Oval Office display of a crudely altered hurricane map turned into \”Sharpiegate\” — a 2019 flap that some saw as typifying his approach to science and disinformation. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo
Neutering climate science Trump spent his first term shredding the Obama administration’s environmental regulations, put fossil fuel lobbyists in charge of key agencies and withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement — making the U.S. the only nation in the world to reject the landmark pact. For the sequel, his supporters want Trump to go after federal climate science itself — and ensure it can’t be used to guide government policies. Trump not only declined to go so far during his first term, but his agencies continued to put out climate assessments that declared warming temperatures a threat to the nation’s future. Eight days before his term ended, his White House science office even fired partisan researchers who had attempted to inject cherry-picked climate science into the government record. Now, as he attacks Biden’s environmental policies as a “Green New Scam” and escalates his attacks on wind turbines, Trump’s supporters expect him to take the fight against federal climate policies a notch higher. Project 2025 lays out proposals for the next conservative administration to reject the decades of research that show the increasingly dire consequences of rising carbon dioxide levels. It would turn key government agencies such as the EPA toward increasing fossil fuel production rather than public health protections. The Heritage project even proposes eliminating one of the world’s leading science bodies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, calling it “one of the main drivers of the…
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