As you may have noticed, Donald Trump is promising to make his prospective second term a real MAGA-fest of extremist policies. As my colleague Margaret Hartmann has explained in a round-up of Trump campaign promises, it’s pretty wild stuff:
He has been releasing policy papers and videos on what he calls “Agenda 47” for months, and he and his advisers are openly bragging about their radical plans for a second term. Some of the worst elements of Trump’s first-term agenda were thwarted by scrupulous government officials, legal challenges, and the Trump team’s general ineptitude. But the former president and his well-funded allies in the conservative movement are already working to make sure they’ll be more successful if he winds up back in the White House.
It’s very clear Trump doesn’t hew to the ancient wisdom that presidential candidates should focus on assuaging swing-voter concerns about extremism. His agenda includes the mass deportation of all undocumented immigrants, the destruction of the civil service in order to install MAGA loyalists in high-ranking federal offices, the systemic revocation of federal agency rule-making powers, and more exotic items like building new “Freedom Cities” where happy citizens drive flying cars. Most recently he’s talked about returning to his first-term efforts to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. And he has been especially unsubtle about threatening to turn the federal machinery of justice against his political enemies.
Unsurprisingly, Republican lawmakers focused on winning close 2024 elections aren’t jazzed about sharing a ticket with a presidential candidate letting his authoritarian freak flag fly. That’s particularly true in the U.S. Senate, where the GOP has a got a shot at flipping control of the chamber, as the Hill reports:
Former President Trump is creating new political headaches for Republicans locked in a highly competitive battle to win back the Senate majority by making extreme statements on health care, immigration and other issues unlikely to play well with swing voters in key states. …
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate GOP leadership team, said there’s no consensus within his party on how to replace former President Obama’s landmark law.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is trying to negotiate a deal with Democrats to stop the flood of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border, said while Trump’s rhetoric on immigration may play well with the GOP base, it’s likely to be a liability with moderate and independent voters in the general election.
“It’s maybe not words that work,” he said of calls for mass deportations.
But if congressional Republicans think Trump’s campaign message is unhelpful, what if he wins and doubles down on the same unhinged proposals? After all, it’s not that hard for GOP candidates to ignore what Trump is saying on the campaign trail, or to tailor their own more reasonable-sounding messages even as Trump helps turn out the MAGA base. But if he is the 47th president, it could be legislation or executive orders flowing out of the White House rather than just words. And worse yet, if Republicans win a trifecta like they did in 2016, the MAGA base is going to expect results from Congress.
Aside from the obvious problems like another counterproductive and probably unsuccessful Obamacare repeal effort, Trump would surely expect Republicans in Congress to support his nativist immigration agenda with changes in laws to accompany Trump’s executive-branch enforcement push. But it’s probably the challenge his agenda poses to the powers of Congress itself that will give Republicans on Capitol Hill the most heartburn. If, for example, his plans to revoke agency rule-making authority (vital in areas ranging from securities regulation to environmental protection to health-care safeguards) get snagged in the courts, Trump would demand that Republicans in Congress revoke specific regulations legislatively. On the other hand, if the courts back up Trump’s power to restrict agency actions to specific legislative authorizations, Congress will have to come back in and figure out how to reconstitute much of the executive branch with explicit congressional directions. It could be a real nightmare for congressional Republicans.
A more obscure part of Trump’s second-term agenda is to bring back the presidential “impoundment” powers last used aggressively by Richard Nixon. That means he’d claim the right to withhold spending authorized and appropriated by Congress, a very direct challenge to the power of his allies at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Meanwhile, Trump would be able to wield the threat of a veto pen to shape and/or stymie Congress’s own budgeting decisions, particularly if legislative leaders decide to bundle all their big proposals into giant budget-reconciliation bills, as both Republicans and Democrats have done in recent years.
Even in areas where Trump isn’t challenging congressional powers, the blowback from his promised excesses would cause untold problems for Republicans. From “enemies” investigated and prosecuted by a Trump Justice Department, to businesses whose employees are being deported by immigration czar Stephen Miller, to cashiered federal employees, Republican members of Congress are going to be hearing a lot of complaints whenever they dare to show up in their districts.
In the end, a second-term Trump is sure to be even more uninhibited and indifferent to political consequences than he was the first time around, while his partisans in Congress will have to face the music for years to come. It could be a high price to pay for whatever tax cuts or patronage goodies Trump offers them as a consolation prize for giving up any real control over the country’s future.
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