*The ACA? Gone. Won't last a year. They don't need a concept of anything to replace it & they never will.
He will have a small majority in the Senate and we don't know yet on the House, but likely close to the same. I don't think he can control this House well enough to pass a lot of legislation and ACA is difficult. It's been the law a long time now. A lot of constituents like it.
*Legal abortion? Done for. The token state-level protections won't survive the national ban that's certainly coming.
No. This is a place where Kamala was being disingenuous. A national ban is VERY blocked. It is probably too hot to pass the House where they face reelection every 2 years, DEFINITELY too hot to pass the Senate where you have to have 60 Senators if the other party cares enough about it to Filibuster, and Dobbs makes it unConstitutional. The argument in Dobbs is that the Constitution gives the Federal Government no right to regulate a medical procedure that would not have even been mentioned in polite society at the time it was written. If a ban passed the House, the conservatives not the Supreme Court would be as nervous as the liberals.
*Gaza & Ukraine? Both leveled. And conflict will spill further across the regions. Netanyahu & Putin now know they will not be stopped.
Israel will have a pretty free hand and Gaza will have little useful help unless Iran gets heavily involved. I don't know.
I don't have any clear eye on Ukraine. While I believe it is in the USA's strong interest to stand in Ukraine, it is very much more poignantly in the interests of Poland and Germany and France and they've all been doing tall talk about how they've been getting ready for the possibility of America wussing out.
*LGBT/Civil Rights? Decapitated. cases are already cued up to topple Obergfell. Once Donald puts in his other Justices that won't come back for close to a CENTURY...
I don't know. I don't say no. Trump certainly will keep nominating hard conservative judges. But at the same time you do have to remember that while Clarence Thomas has a big mouth, all the justices aren't Clarence Thomas. And the Supreme Court doesn't just vote. They have to write an argument that makes some kind of sense in reference to the Constitution and precedents. There have been some fairly threadbare ones at times, but this issue is increasingly difficult to bottle up. There is actually a foundational problem on approach. The Supreme Court has to get a case on the docket that challenges Obergfell. Someone has to bring suit and come up with an argument (good enough for the Supreme Court to endorse) that THEY have been damaged by states being compelled to recognize gay marriages in other states. I have no idea how to craft that argument, but it isn't my job, so again I say I don't say no, but I don't see the path.
*with RFKJr in charge of Health that likely means no more vaccine mandates- on top of childhood maladies becoming full on plagues that probably ALSO means no new COVID boosters so whatever tenuous hold we had on that pandemic is out the window.
Trump would have to settle for RFK Jr being ACTING HHS Secretary. Democrats would definitely filibuster if necessary. He doesn't have the votes. The Democrats probably wouldn't HAVE to filibuster. I don't think 51 Republicans would be okay with that. But Trump was doing a lot of acting secretaries by the end of Term 1. There are time limits on acting secretaries and they don't have all the access and authority of a Senate confirmation.
*Separation of Church & State? Toast. Future graduating classes will know more about the Ten Commandments then the periodic tables.
This prediction is somewhat unclear. I expect that there has never been a graduating class in the USA that knew more about the periodic table than the Ten Commandments. The latter is shorter and much easier. You're likely talking about Oklahoma where a lot of teachers are scratching their heads wondering they're expected to work Christianity in to a trigonometry lesson. My expectation (and I am an Oklahoman) is that some teachers are going to use the latitude offered, but a lot of teachers are going to do nothing except have a Springsteen Bible in their classroom and there's never going to be any accountability about it. Walters has apparently a decent shot at becoming Secretary of Education and leaving Oklahoma behind, but in any case I don't think he ever cared about all the students learning about the Bible. He cares about demonstrating his friendliness to Christianity.
I expect the Oklahoma policy to make its way through the courts before long.
*Social Security & Medicare? Gutted. More kickbacks in their pockets; no handouts for THE POOR.
While you never know what Trump himself will try to do, the House of Representatives knows they can't throw these out. They can neglect maintenance on them for sure. But cuts come with a heavy price.
*Tariffs and mass deportations will make Dubya's Great Recession seem like a pleasant windfall.
I don't know how to evaluate this. My understanding is that Biden kept the tariffs that Trump created. At least substatially. He may expand them like he says. I think there is a reasonable chance that he will listen to advisors telling him that it'll cause inflation and the Democrats are already on record saying that tariffs will cause inflation. If he does it right out of the gate and hits recession right away, he'll be able to blame Biden. There's been an idea floating out there for some time that the economy is headed for recession, so he'll be able to effectively stick that, but if it doesn't happen for over a year or if it happens and he can't manage to get back out of it, it hurts him pretty bad. There is a chance that a clearer mandate and a term limit allow Trump to be bolder than last time, but for Trump the very worst thing is being labelled a loser or a failure.
I don't know if he will really do the mass deportations. Like the tariffs he might. But it is likely that he'll be told that it is actually much too difficult and he's already mopped himself in a corner a little bit. Trump has said there are 20 or 30 or 34 million illegal immigrants in the US. He wouldn't bat an eyelash at lying and saying that is how many he deported, but I don't think DHS would lie in their report. It is possible that Trump wouldn't mind that, because his core supporters don't fact check him, but he is not going to find anywhere near 34 million because 1) There almost certainly are not close to that many and 2) most of them have always kept a low profile whoever was President. If stories about separated families start coming out and especially if there starts to be stories of violence, this backfires on him. As I have said before, Trump does commit blunders. He doesn't always get or listen to good advice. So I don't know. He might do it. But it is dangerous for him.
