Exploring Trump’s Proposed Policies For His Second Term
Story by Judah Hillman. Photo courtesy of Sky News.
January 15, 2024. Not every race ends at the finish line, sometimes it ends at the heart of America—Wisconsin. On the morning of November 6th, the 2024 presidential election was called in the state of Wisconsin, and the world awoke to find that Donald J. Trump was the projected winner, and would become the 47th president of the United States. After running against the potential first female, first Black and first Asian-American president, Democrat Kamala Harris, Trump gained the electoral college votes for Wisconsin, which earned him the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidential race. Now, America prepares for Trump to step into office this upcoming Monday, January 20th.
Trump’s victory, along with the January 6th insurrection of 2021, raised concerns amongst liberals and democrats who were weary of Trump's policies and actions as president. A student at Friendship Tech Prep Academy (FTPA), who decided to remain anonymous, expressed their concerns about the 2024 election, “I think it was rigged personally, I think some votes weren’t counted and you see the people blew up some ballot boxes…I’m a little scared.”
One of Trump’s new policy proposals is to override the birth-right to citizenship called ‘ideological screening.’ This would empower the National Guard to deport mass amounts of immigrants. Students at FTPA call this disturbing, to say the least, and many have expressed fears of how one's friend may be deported.
Trump plans to maintain abortion bans, which were left to the decision of the states following the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Many have theorized whether Trump might advocate to make abortion illegal nationwide, since he has previously appointed Supreme Court judges that overturned Roe V. Wade. Additionally, to ensure abortion bans are being executed, Trump has previously threatened to monitor pregnant women and jail whomever aborts their fetuses. Protests against this ban have sparked a feminist movement. Women are expressing powerful statements like, “My Body My Choice,” and even decided to remain single, as part of the 4B movement, as a response to government attempts to legislate women’s anatomy.
Additionally, he would raise taxes on imported goods, called tariffs, by 20%, mainly to discourage overseas purchases from Chinese establishments and focus more on U.S companies. Initially, Trump illustrated how raising taxes on foreign goods would protect American businesses, but in actuality, it would increase prices of basic necessities for American consumers. To clarify, tariffs could greatly affect the price of products on famous Chinese-supported websites for online shopping such as Temu and Shein.
In regards to diversity and LGBTQIA+ rights, Trump plans to limit LGBTQIA+ diversity by limiting transgender students' ability to participate in either “boys” or “girls” sports, overriding Title IX’s civil rights protections for transgender students, and forcing people to identify as the gender they were assigned at birth. Many liberals and LGBTQIA+ advocates have expressed their concerns on social media, labeling Trump as sexist, racist, and homophobic.
Furthermore, Trump aims to control federal spending, even after Congress has appropriated funds by scrapping diversity programs at all levels of education. This means activities that promote race, gender, or political content for children would be at risk of being defunded by the federal government.
He plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but no initial plan to replace it has been disclosed. And he’s nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a strong critic of vaccines and pesticides in U.S. agriculture, to “make America healthy again.”
One Tech Prep teacher summed it up best, “It’s a whole lot to say, but I don’t think people realize how much this is gonna affect us 8 years from now, 12 years from now, so that’s my biggest concern, the fallout we have to deal with for the [next] twelve years.”
Judah Hillman is a junior at Friendship Technology Preparatory Academy