An increasingly detailed picture of former President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda is emerging — one that would make the near-daily shocks of his norm-shattering first White House tenure look tame.
Some of the particulars have already blown up into campaign furors, thanks to Trump’s public remarks about abandoning NATO allies and serving as a “dictator” on “day one,” as well as leaks of his private musings on a 16-week abortion ban. His supporters’ policy manifestos have yielded headlines predicting that Trump 2.0 would bring mass deportations of immigrants, overt use of the Justice Department to punish his political enemies, and — as POLITICO reported Tuesday — an embrace of “Christian nationalism” to guide federal policies.
Other items on the potential Trump second-term agenda would be more granular but also far-reaching, from publishing federal science reports that dispute the reality of global warming, to launching new and wider trade wars, cracking down on liberal school districts’ transgender policies and freeing the crypto industry from the threat of regulation.
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:
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
Expanding trade fights against rivals — and allies
Trump has made no secret that he intends to pursue a dramatic escalation of his “America First” trade agenda if reelected, ratcheting up tariffs and other trade barriers against both U.S. enemies and allies — far higher than the levels he enacted during his first term.
Trump has also said he would impose a “four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods — everything from electronics to steel to pharmaceuticals,” and create new rules to block U.S. companies from making investments in China.
The proposals, which would likely violate global trading rules, face fierce pushback from industry and would lead to higher prices for consumers on a wide range of goods, economic experts warn.
Waging classroom culture wars
Efforts by Republican governors and school boards to restrict teaching on subjects like race, sexuality and gender identity have mushroomed since Trump left the White House, as have GOP attempts to roll back protections for transgender students. And Trump is promising that he and his Education Department would expand that fight.
His latest education plan calls for cutting federal funding for any school or program that includes “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.”
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights could also dismantle discrimination protections for transgender students and reinstate its regulation on how schools must respond to sexual misconduct — which would be the third regulatory change to Title IX in three administrations.
Deploying U.S. troops against Americans
Four years ago, Trump held back from invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy federal troops to inner cities where protesters took to the streets after the police killing of George Floyd.
He has said he won’t hold back again.
“And one of the other things I’ll do — because you’re supposed to not be involved in that — you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in,” Trump told an Iowa audience in November. “The next time, I’m not waiting.”
Abandoning NATO
Trump stirred up a transatlantic storm this month when he said he would “encourage” Russian attacks on NATO allies that fail to spend enough on defense.
But it was far from the first time that he had expressed derision for one of the alliance’s most solemn obligations — that its nations come to the aid of another member facing military assault.
If reelected, he might really pull out this time, his former national security adviser John Bolton said on MSNBC amid the furor over Trump’s most recent remarks.
“When he says he wants to get out of NATO, I think it’s a very real threat, and it will have dramatically negative implications for the United States, not just in the North Atlantic, but worldwide,” Bolton said. A U.S. withdrawal would increase Russian leverage in Europe, where Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has brought Moscow’s troops nearly to NATO’s doorstep.
A second piece takes a further look at some of the specifics of the white Christian nationalist agenda. Here are highlights:
An influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.
Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term and has remained close to him.
Christian nationalists in America believe that the country was founded as a Christian nation and that Christian values should be prioritized throughout government and public life. As the country has become less religious and more diverse, Vought has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.
One document drafted by CRA staff and fellows includes a list of top priorities for CRA in a second Trump term. “Christian nationalism” is one of the bullet points. Others include invoking the Insurrection Act on Day One to quash protests and refusing to spend authorized congressional funds on unwanted projects, a practice banned by lawmakers in the Nixon era.
The documents obtained by POLITICO do not outline specific Christian nationalist policies. But Vought has promoted a restrictionist immigration agenda, saying a person’s background doesn’t define who can enter the U.S., but rather, citing Biblical teachings, whether that person “accept[ed] Israel’s God, laws and understanding of history.”
Vought has a close affiliation with Christian nationalist William Wolfe, a former Trump administration official who has advocated for overturning same-sex marriage, ending abortion and reducing access to contraceptives.
Vought, who declined to comment, is advising Project 2025, a governing agenda that would usher in one of the most conservative executive branches in modern American history. The effort is made up of a constellation of conservative groups run by Trump allies who’ve constructed a detailed plan to dismantle or overhaul key agencies in a second term.
Trump formed a political alliance with evangelicals during his first run for office, delivered them a six to three conservative majority on the Supreme Court and is now espousing the Christian right’s long-running argument that Christians are so severely persecuted that it necessitates a federal response.
In 2019, Trump’s then-secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, set up a federal commission to define human rights based on the precepts Vought describes, specifically “natural law and natural rights.” Natural law is the belief that there are universal rules derived from God that can’t be superseded by government or judges. While it is a core pillar of Catholicism, in recent decades it’s been used to oppose abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and contraception.
Vought sees his and his organization’s mission as “renew[ing] a consensus of America as a nation under God,” per a statement on CRA’s website, and reshaping the government’s contract with the governed. Freedom of religion would remain a protected right, but Vought and his ideological brethren would not shy from using their administration positions to promote Christian doctrine and imbue public policy with it, according to both people familiar with the matter, granted anonymity to avoid retaliation. He makes clear reference to human rights being defined by God, not man.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 offers more visibility into what policy agenda a future Trump administration might pursue. It says policies that support LGBTQ+ rights, subsidize “single-motherhood” and penalize marriage should be repealed because subjective notions of “gender identity” threaten “Americans’ fundamental liberties.”
It also proposes increasing surveillance of abortion and maternal mortality reporting in the states, compelling the Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of “chemical abortion drugs” and protecting “religious and moral” objections for employers who decline contraception coverage for employees. One of the groups that partners with Project 2025, Turning Point USA, is among conservative influencers that health professionals have criticized for targeting young women with misleading health concerns about hormonal birth control. Another priority is defunding Planned Parenthood, which provides reproductive health care to low-income women.
Wolfe, who has deleted several posts on X that detail his views, has a more extreme outlook of what a government led by Christian nationalists should propose. In a December post, he called for ending sex education in schools, surrogacy and no-fault divorce throughout the country, . . . .
The effort to imbue laws with biblical principles is already underway in some states. In Texas, Christian conservative supporters have pressured the legislature to require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom; targeted prohibitions on churches against direct policy advocacy and organized campaigns around “culture war” issues, including curbing LGBTQ+ rights, banning books and opposing gun safety laws.
“There’s been a tectonic shift in how the leadership of the religious right operates,” said Matthew Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Christian Jewish Studies, who grew up evangelical. “These folks aren’t as interested in democracy or working through democratic systems as in the old religious right because their theology is one of Christian warfare.”
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