Trump victory slams Democrats' woke world view. Here's what's next

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As a candidate, Donald Trump waffled on his positions on abortion. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images Kamala Harris elevated abortion rights to the heart of her campaign, but Donald Trump is the winner of the 2024 presidential election. So what does this mean for reproductive rights on the federal level?  The short answer is that there are many ways Trump could ban abortion, and the most likely way isn’t through Congress, even with a Republican-controlled Senate. (It is not yet clear whether Republicans will take control of the House.) The long answer is that as a candidate, Trump waffled on his positions on abortion. Despite frequently bragging about appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, Trump started to soften his tune in the months leading up to the election, especially as his vice presidential pick JD Vance began generating negative media attention for his anti-abortion views. As Election Day drew nearer, Trump began insisting he’d be “great for women and their reproductive rights” but he also repeatedly dodged questions about whether he’d veto any national abortion bans that land on his desk. At the presidential debate in September, Trump refused to answer that question multiple times, insisting it wouldn’t be necessary since abortion rights are now a matter of state discretion. By October, though, he finally came out to say he would veto a federal abortion ban, posting on social media that he would “not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances.”  Unfortunately, that’s not as reassuring as it sounds. Federal abortion bans in 2025 are not likely to take the form of bills landing on the president’s desk. Any bill out of Congress would still require some bipartisan agreement unless lawmakers overturned the filibuster. Republican senators have already promised to preserve the filibuster in a Trump administration, and the anti-abortion movement, for its part, has not been counting on the GOP to push bills with a simple majority. Given the widespread support for abortion rights across the US, passing a federal ban would also be politically dangerous for congressional lawmakers from swing or moderate districts, making the near-term prospect of such efforts highly unlikely. “Quite frankly, unless something really unusual happens in this election, neither side is going to have the votes in Congress to pass a national law,” Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, told the Associated Press in early October. “So that wasn’t really at the top of our list anyway.” They do have a list, though. Sending abortion pills by mail is more at risk One agenda item at the top of the anti-abortion movement’s list is enforcement of the Comstock Act, an 1873 federal law that could prohibit anything associated with abortion from being sent in the mail. Such a ban could mean not only restricting abortion medication — the most common method used to end a pregnancy in the US — but also any medical equipment used during abortion procedures, like speculums, suction catheters, and dilators. “We don’t need a federal abortion ban when we have Comstock on the books,” Jonathan Mitchell, the legal architect behind a 2021 law in Texas that effectively banned abortion in that state, told the New York Times earlier this year. Mitchell urged anti-abortion groups to “keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election” regarding this strategy. The Comstock Act was rendered moot by Roe in the 1970s but never formally repealed, and now, with Roe gone, many conservatives see it as an ideal vehicle for restricting abortion nationwide, precisely because it wouldn’t require the passage of a new federal law.  For months Trump dodged journalists’ questions regarding the Comstock Act, but by August, he finally said he would not use the old statute to ban abortion drugs in the mail. However, many people in his close orbit, including the vice president-elect, are on record urging the opposite, and it was a core item of Project 2025, the notorious policy blueprint drafted by the Heritage Foundation and many people close to Trump’s campaign. Trump could also ban abortion by appointing anti-abortion leaders to control key federal agencies that could use executive power to restrict reproductive rights, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, says her top priority is to push Trump to appoint anti-abortion leaders to executive agencies so they can integrate anti-abortion policies into existing federal programs. “I think reversing the Biden-Harris abortion agenda will be vibrant, it’ll be active,” she told the New York Times over the summer.  Hawkins says her group’s second priority will be to push HHS to defund Planned Parenthood. While federal funds are already barred from financing abortion, Planned Parenthood receives federal money from the Office of Population Affairs for family planning and preventive health services, including contraception, cancer screenings, and STI testing. (In 2019, Trump issued a rule to limit this money, which was subsequently reversed under the Biden administration.) Appointing anti-abortion leaders to agencies like the FDA and DOJ could affect anti-abortion litigation. In October, three Republican attorneys general (Raúl Labrador in Idaho, Kris Kobach in Kansas, and Andrew Bailey in Missouri) filed a lawsuit to force the FDA to heavily restrict access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used to induce abortions. (Though medication abortion has a lower risk of complication than many other widely available drugs, it has faced stricter regulation in the US largely for political reasons. Since 2016, the FDA has gradually reduced these restrictions, including allowing for telemedicine prescriptions.) While the Supreme Court threw out a similar FDA complaint over the summer, concluding the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the lawsuit, the Republican attorneys general believe they’ll be better able to prevail in this new attempt. Notably, they also argue in their complaint that the FDA has violated the Comstock Act by permitting abortion bills to be sent by mail. While a 2022 Biden DOJ opinion ruled that the Comstock Act doesn’t criminalize mailing abortion drugs if the sender lacks intent for unlawful use, a Trump DOJ could interpret the law differently. A Trump FDA also may not fight changing rules on abortion pills at all. The judiciary awaits The last major way Trump could promote a federal abortion ban is through federal court appointments. In his first presidential term, for example, Trump appointed one of the most anti-abortion judges in the country — Matthew Kacsmaryk — to a federal court in Texas. Kacsmaryk greenlighted the now-overturned legal opinion that the FDA should revoke its approval of mifepristone. Trump’s campaign has maintained close ties to Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the right-wing Federalist Society, which helped Trump vet all his anti-abortion judicial appointments in his first four years in office. (Leo also helps finance groups to bring cases to the Supreme Court and orchestrates strategy for the conservative legal movement broadly.)  The anti-abortion movement has been explicit that its long-term goal is “fetal personhood” — endowing fetuses, embryos, and fertilized eggs with full human rights and legal protections. This once-fringe idea has been gaining traction over the last few years. (Kacsmaryk also embraced the idea of “unborn humans” and fetal personhood.) At least 19 states have declared that fetuses at some stage of pregnancy are people, according to a report from Pregnancy Justice, a group that advocates for pregnant people’s rights. In February, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a decision that claimed frozen embryos count as “children” under state law. In April, the Florida Supreme Court signaled openness to hearing a future challenge on fetal personhood when its chief justice asked whether Florida’s constitution should include “the unborn” in its equal protection statute.  And in the 2022 majority opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito seemed to lay the groundwork for a fetal personhood challenge by repeatedly emphasizing the significance of “fetal life.” Over the spring, Alito also seemed to endorse the idea that a fetus needed the same “stabilizing treatment” in a hospital as a pregnant patient. Codifying a fetal personhood standard could lead not only to the outright ban of abortion but also most forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization (IVF). While Trump and Republican lawmakers insist they are determined to protect reproductive rights, including IVF and contraception, their anti-abortion judicial picks could do just the opposite. 

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In nearly every conceivable way, a second Trump administration will likely be more dangerous than the first. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The 2024 presidential election is over — and Donald Trump is the victor. There is no doubt about the election’s legitimacy: Trump is on track to win the Electoral College by a wide margin, and potentially win the popular vote for the first time. Yet while the election itself was clearly on the level, what comes next may not be. Having won power democratically, Trump is now in a position to enact his long-proposed plans to hollow out American democracy from within. Trump and his team have developed detailed plans for turning the federal government into an extension of his will: an instrument for carrying out his oft-promised “retribution” against President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and anyone else who has opposed him. Trump’s inner circle, purged of nearly anyone who might challenge him, is ready to enact his will. And the Supreme Court, in its wisdom, has granted him sweeping immunity from his actions in office. In nearly every conceivable way, a second Trump administration will likely be more dangerous than the first, a term that ended in over 1 million deaths from Covid-19 and a riot at the Capitol. A predictable crisis — a president consolidating power in his own hands and using it to punish his enemies — looms on the horizon, with many unpredictable crises likely waiting in the wings. Yet as dire as things are, America has reserves it can draw on to withstand the coming assault. Over the course of the country’s long democratic history, it has built up robust systems for checking abuses of power.  America’s federal structure gives blue states control over key powers like election administration. Its independent judiciary stood strong during Trump’s first term. Its professional, apolitical military will likely push back against unlawful orders. Its politically active citizenry has a proven capacity to take to the streets. And America’s world-leading media will fiercely resist any effort to compromise its independence. No country at America’s level of political-economic development has ever collapsed into authoritarianism. There are some reasonably close modern analogues, most worryingly modern Hungary, but even they are different in crucial respects. This is not to make an argument for complacency or naïve optimism. Quite the opposite: The next four years will be American democracy’s gravest threat since the Civil War; if it survives them, it will surely do so battered, bruised, and battle-scarred. But this realism should not be cause for succumbing to despair. As grim as things feel now, it’s possible that — if people take the gravity of the threat seriously — the republic may come out intact on the other side. Trump’s scary second term agenda, explained We do not know why, exactly, America’s voters have chosen to return Trump to high office. The data isn’t fully in, let alone analyzed in detail. But as murky as the electoral picture remains, certain elements of the policy future are crystal clear. Trump’s own comments, his campaign’s statements, and allied documents like Project 2025 give us a relatively coherent picture of what the agenda will be in the next Trump administration. Much of it resembles what you’d see from any other Republican president. Trump will appoint corporate allies to lead federal agencies, where they will work to slash regulations on issues ranging from workplace safety standards to pollution. He has already proposed regressive tax cuts without off-setting hikes, which would increase the federal deficit in the same way as George W. Bush’s fiscal policy did. He will likely take steps to curtail abortion access, end federal police efforts to rein in abusive police, and crack down on federal protections for trans people — all examples of how his agenda would hurt certain groups of people, typically already vulnerable ones, more than others. Trump’s biggest breaks with his party in traditional policy areas will likely come on trade, immigration, and foreign policy. Trump has proposed a “universal” tariff on imported goods, a mass deportation campaign that detains suspected “illegals” in camps, and weakening America’s commitment to the NATO alliance. These policies would together be a recipe for economic decline, domestic turmoil, and global chaos — at an already chaotic time. But perhaps the most dangerous Trump policies will come in an area that traditionally transcends partisan conflict: the nature of the American system of government itself.  Throughout the campaign, Trump has proven himself obsessed with two ideas: exerting personal control over the federal government, and exacting “retribution” against Democrats who challenged him and the prosecutors who indicted him. His team has, obligingly, provided detailed plans for doing both of these things. This process begins with something called Schedule F, an executive order Trump issued at the end of his first term but never got to implement. Schedule F reclassifies a large chunk of the professional civil service — likely upward of 50,000 people — as political appointees. Trump could fire these nonpartisan officials and replace them with cronies: People who would follow his orders, no matter how dubious. Trump has vowed to revive Schedule F “immediately” upon returning to office, and there is no reason to doubt him. Between a newly compliant bureaucracy and leadership ranks purged of first-term dissenting voices like former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Trump will face little resistance as he attempts to implement policies that threaten core democratic freedoms.  And Trump and his team have already proposed many of them. Notable examples include investigating leading Democrats on questionable charges, prosecuting local election administrators, using regulatory authority for retribution against corporations that cross him, and either shuttering public broadcasters or turning them into propaganda broadsheets. Trump and his allies have claimed unilateral executive authority to take all of these actions. (It remains unclear which party will control the House, but Republicans will be in charge of the Senate for at least the next two years.) Ultimately, all this executive activity is aimed at turning the United States into a larger version of Hungary — a country whose leadership and policies are regularly praised by Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, and Project 2025 leader Kevin Roberts. Hungary still has elections and nominal free speech rights; there are no tanks in the streets or concentration camps for regime critics. But it is a place where everything — from the national elections authority down to government art agencies — has been twisted to punish dissent and spread the government’s propaganda. Every aspect of government has been bent to ensure that national elections are contests in which the opposition never has a fighting chance. It is a kind of stealth autocratization, one that maintains the veneer of democracy while hollowing it from within. This is why the second Trump presidency is an extinction-level threat to American democracy. The governing agenda Trump and his allies explicitly laid out is a systematic attempt to turn Washington into Budapest-on-the-Potomac, to deliberately and quietly destroy democracy from within. Democracy is not lost It is important to remember that, as dire as things are, the United States is not Hungary. When Prime Minister Viktor Orbán came to power in 2010, he had a two-thirds majority in the country’s parliament — one that allowed him to pass a new constitution that twisted election rules in his party’s favor and imposed political controls on the judiciary. Trump has no such majority, and the US Constitution is nearly impossible to amend. America’s federal structure also creates quite a few checks on the national government’s power. Election administration in America is done at the state level, which makes it very hard for Trump to seize control over it from Washington. A lot of prosecution is done by district attorneys who don’t answer to Trump and might resist federal bullying. The American media is much bigger and more robust than its Hungarian peers. Orbán brought the press to heel by, among other things, politicizing government ad purchasing — a stream of revenue that the American press, for all our problems, does not depend on. But most fundamentally, the American population has something Hungarians didn’t: advanced warning. While the form of subtle authoritarianism pioneered in Hungary was novel in 2010, it’s well understood today. Orbán managed to come across as a “normal” democratic leader until it was too late to undo what he had done; Trump is taking office with roughly half the voting public primed to see him as a threat to democracy and resist as such. He can expect major opposition to his most authoritarian plans not only from the elected opposition, but from the federal bureaucracy, lower levels of government, civil society, and the people themselves. This is the case against despair. As grim as things seem now, little in politics is a given — especially not the outcome of a struggle as titanic as the one about to unfold in the United States. While Trump has four years to attack democracy, using a playbook he and his team have been developing since the moment he left office, defenders of democracy have also had time to prepare and develop countermeasures. Now is the time to begin deploying them. Trump has won the presidency, which gives him a tremendous amount of power to make his antidemocratic dreams into power. But it is not unlimited power, and there are robust means of resistance. The fate of the American republic will depend on how willing Americans are to take up the fight.

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