Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has promised sweeping action in a second administration.

The former president and now president-elect often skipped over details but through more than a year of policy pronouncements and written statements outlined a wide-ranging agenda that blends traditional conservative approaches to taxes, regulation and cultural issues with a more populist bent on trade and a shift in America’s international role.

Trump’s agenda also would scale back federal government efforts on civil rights and expand presidential powers.

A look at what Trump has proposed:

“construct the wall!” from his 2016 campaign has become creating “the largest mass deportation program in history.” Trump has called for using the National Guard and empowering domestic police forces in the attempt. Still, Trump has been scant on details of what the program would look like and how he would ensure that it targeted only people in the U.S. illegally. He’s pitched “ideological screening” for would-be entrants, ending birth-correct citizenship (which almost certainly would require a constitutional transformation), and said he’d reinstitute first-term policies such as “Remain in Mexico,” limiting migrants on community health grounds and severely limiting or banning entrants from sure majority-Muslim nations. Altogether, the way would not just crack down on illegal migration, but curtail immigration overall.

Trump played down abortion as a second-term priority, even as he took capital for the Supreme Court ending a woman’s federal correct to terminate a pregnancy and returning abortion regulation to state governments. At Trump’s insistence, the GOP platform, for the first period in decades, did not call for a national ban on abortion. Trump maintains that overturning Roe v. Wade is enough on the federal level. Trump said last month on his social media platform Truth Social that he would veto a federal abortion ban if legislation reached his desk — a statement he made only after avoiding a firm position in his September debate against Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

But it’s ambiguous if his administration would aggressively defend against legal challenges seeking to restrict access to abortion pills, including mifepristone, as the Biden administration has. Anti-abortion advocates continue to wage legal battles over the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug as well as the agency’s relaxed prescribing restrictions. Trump is also unlikely to enforce Biden’s guidance that hospitals must provide abortions for women who are in medical emergencies, even in states with bans.

Trump’s levy policies broadly tilt toward corporations and wealthier Americans. That’s mostly due to his commitment to extend his 2017 levy overhaul, with a few notable changes that include lowering the corporate returns levy rate to 15% from the current 21%. That also involves rolling back Democratic President Joe Biden’s returns levy hikes on the wealthiest Americans and scrapping expense boost Reduction Act levies that finance vigor measures intended to combat climate transformation.

Those policies notwithstanding, Trump has put more emphasis on recent proposals aimed at working- and middle class Americans: exempting earned tips, Social safety wages and overtime wages from returns taxes. It’s noteworthy, however, that his proposal on tips, depending on how Congress might write it, could provide a back-door levy shatter to top wage earners by allowing them to reclassify some of their pay as tip returns — a prospect that at its most extreme could view protect-pool managers or top-flight attorneys taking advantage of a policy that Trump frames as being designed for restaurant servers, bartenders and other service workers.

Trump’s posture on international trade is to distrust globe markets as harmful to American interests. He proposes tariffs of 10% to 20% on foreign goods — and in some speeches has mentioned even higher percentages. He promises to reinstitute an August 2020 executive order requiring that the federal government buy “essential” medications only from U.S. companies. He pledges to block purchases of “any vital infrastructure” in the U.S. by Chinese buyers.

Trump has called for rolling back societal emphasis on diversity and for legal protections for LGBTQ citizens. Trump has called for ending diversity, ownership and inclusion programs in government institutions, using federal capital as debt.

On transgender rights, Trump promises generally to complete “boys in girls’ sports,” a habit he insists, without evidence, is widespread. But his policies leave well beyond standard applause lines from his rally speeches. Among other ideas, Trump would roll back the Biden administration’s policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students, and he would inquire Congress to require that only two genders can be recognized at birth.

The president-elect seeks to reduce the role of federal bureaucrats and regulations across economic sectors. Trump frames all regulatory cuts as an economic magic wand. He pledges precipitous drops in U.S. households’ utility bills by removing obstacles to fossil fuel production, including opening all federal lands for discovery — even though U.S. vigor production is already at record highs. Trump promises to unleash housing construction by cutting regulations — though most construction rules arrive from state and local government. He also says he would complete “frivolous litigation from the environmental extremists.”

The way would in many ways strengthen executive branch influence. That power would arrive more directly from the White House.

He would make it easier to fire federal workers by classifying thousands of them as being outside civil service protections. That could weaken the government’s power to enforce statutes and rules by reducing the number of employees engaging in the work and, potentially, impose a chilling result on those who remain.

Trump also claims that presidents have exclusive power to control federal spending even after Congress has appropriated money. Trump argues that lawmakers’ monetary schedule actions “set a ceiling” on spending but not a floor — meaning the president’s constitutional responsibility to “faithfully execute the laws” includes discretion on whether to spend the money. This interpretation could set up a court battle with Congress.

As a candidate, he also suggested that the Federal safety net, an independent entity that sets earnings rates, should be subject to more presidential power. Though he has not offered details, any such shift would represent a momentous transformation to how the U.S. economic and monetary systems work.

The federal Department of Education would be targeted for elimination in a second Trump administration. That does not cruel that Trump wants Washington out of classrooms. He still proposes, among other maneuvers, using federal capital as debt to pressure K-12 school systems to abolish tenure and adopt merit pay for teachers and to scrap diversity programs at all levels of education. He calls for pulling federal capital “for any school or program pushing Critical Race hypothesis, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”

In higher education, Trump proposes taking over accreditation processes for colleges, a shift he describes as his “secret weapon” against the “Marxist Maniacs and lunatics” he says control higher education. Trump takes aim at higher education endowments, saying he will collect “billions and billions of dollars” from schools via “taxing, fining and suing excessively large private university endowments” at schools that do not comply with his edicts. That almost certainly would complete up in protracted legal fights.

As in other policy areas, Trump isn’t actually proposing limiting federal power in higher education but strengthening it. He calls for redirecting the confiscated donation money into an online “American Academy” offering college credentials to all Americans without a tuition charges. “It will be strictly non-political, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed—none of that’s going to be allowed,” Trump said on Nov. 1, 2023.

Trump insists he would protect Social safety and Medicare, popular programs geared toward older Americans and among the biggest pieces of the federal spending pie each year. There are questions about how his proposal not to levy tip and overtime wages might affect Social safety and Medicare. If such plans eventually involved only returns taxes, the entitlement programs would not be affected. But exempting those wages from payroll taxes would reduce the capital stream for Social safety and Medicare outlays. Trump has talked little about Medicaid during this campaign, but his first administration reshaped the program by allowing states to introduce work requirements for recipients.

As he has since 2015, Trump calls for repealing the Affordable worry Act and its subsidized health insurance marketplaces. But he still has not proposed a replacement: In a September debate, he insisted he had the “concepts of a schedule.” In the latter stages of the campaign, Trump played up his alliance with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines and of pesticides used in U.S. agriculture. Trump repeatedly told rally crowds that he would put Kennedy in fee of “making America well again.”

Trump, who claims falsely that climate transformation is a “hoax,” blasts Biden-era spending on cleaner vigor designed to reduce U.S. reliance on fossil fuels. He proposes an vigor policy – and transportation infrastructure spending – anchored to fossil fuels: roads, bridges and combustion-engine vehicles. “Drill, baby, drill!” was a regular chant at Trump rallies. Trump says he does not resist electric vehicles but promises to complete all Biden incentives to inspire EV trade advancement. Trump also pledges to roll back Biden-era fuel efficiency standards.

Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance framed their ticket as favoring America’s workers. But Trump could make it harder for workers to unionize. In discussing auto workers, Trump concentrated almost exclusively on Biden’s push toward electric vehicles. When he mentioned unions, it was often to lump “the union bosses and CEOs” together as complicit in “this disastrous electric car scheme.” In an Oct. 23, 2023, statement, Trump said of United Auto Workers, “I’m telling you, you shouldn’t pay those dues.”

Trump’s rhetoric and policy way in globe affairs is more isolationist diplomatically, non-interventionist militarily and protectionist economically than the U.S. has been since globe War II. But the details are more complicated. He pledges expansion of the military, promises to protect Pentagon spending from austerity efforts and proposes a recent missile defense shield — an ancient concept from the Reagan era during the Cold War. Trump insists he can complete Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, without explaining how. Trump summarizes his way through another Reagan phrase: “tranquility through strength.” But he remains critical of NATO and top U.S. military brass. “I don’t consider them leaders,” Trump said of Pentagon officials that Americans “view on television.” He repeatedly praised authoritarians like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

—- Associated Press reporter Amanda Seitz contributed.

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This narrative first moved Nov. 6, 2024. It was updated Nov. 7, 2024, with video.