How Trump 2.0 Would Remake Washington

On January 20, 2025, the President-elect is expected to follow a tradition: to have coffee at the White House with the outgoing President before riding in a motorcade down Pennsylvania Avenue for the inaugural ceremony at noon. If that person is Donald Trump, there will be a mass of MAGA diehards assembled on the National Mall with their own expectations: that he deliver on his campaign pledge to smash our system of government and upend Official Washington.

This scenario was hardly conceivable four years ago, when Trump refused to attend Joe Biden’s inauguration after inciting a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol and prevent the peaceful transfer of power. But now, it’s very much a possibility; the polls show the race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is a toss-up. If the voters choose Trump, he will not moderate, according to those who know him best. Instead, he will view his improbable comeback as a mandate to govern on the radical agenda he campaigned on.

At the heart of Trump’s designs is a plan to concentrate the powers of the federal government inside the office of the presidency. His most ambitious proposals, he says, would be implemented through executive action: shutting down the southern border and initiating mass deportations of migrants; imposing across-the-board tariffs on imported goods; and withdrawing the U.S. from its role as a bulwark against tyranny abroad. He would attempt to castrate the federal bureaucracy by firing civil servants at will, and he would aim to neutralize Capitol Hill’s power of the purse by controlling congressionally-appropriated funds. To further his vision of enhanced executive authority, Trump would staff his Administration with acolytes committed to removing the guardrails that persisted in his first term. “The President never had a policy process that was designed to give him what he actually wanted,” says Russ Vought, Trump’s former Office of Management and Budget director who now heads a think tank preparing for a second Trump term. “You had various institutional obstacles.”

By removing those obstacles, scholars say, Trump 2.0 would test the strength and fragility of American democracy, threatening to dismantle the separation of powers that has defined U.S. governance since the nation’s founding. “They’re looking to go back to an imperial President and have a shrinking influence of Congress,” says Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian.

Whether Trump can succeed remains an open question. His goal of governing by fiat would not happen without a fight. While the Supreme Court has already given him more liberty to act outside the bounds of constitutional norms—granting all presidents immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts—many of his other measures will face legal challenges. “We are a highly litigious society,” Brinkley says. “For every chess move Trump makes as President, he will be met with a counter check, and then it will become a battle in the courts.”

Those battles would begin at the outset of Trump’s presidency. On Day 1, he says he would sign a series of executive orders to close the U.S.-Mexico border and deport undocumented migrants. The latter part is easier said than done. Trump has vowed to use the National Guard and other parts of the military to round up as many as 11 million foreign nationals, despite U.S. law that forbids the deployment of armed forces against civilians. But those removals can’t happen overnight. America has to negotiate permissions with receiving countries. For that reason, the former President’s allies plan to build a network of new migrant detention camps. When I interviewed Trump in April, he suggested this was a possibility. “I would not rule out anything,” he said. “But there wouldn’t be that much of a need for them, because of the fact that we’re going to be moving them out.” Trump’s top aides expect to face lawsuits over these actions but believe they will ultimately be blessed by a conservative-majority high court.

Within hours in office, Trump would also overtake the Justice Department and install an Acting Attorney General who would fire Special Counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor who indicted Trump for willfully mishandling classified information and conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. Another one of his first official acts, Trump told me, would be to pardon most, if not all, of his supporters accused of attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Those are not the only ways Trump would take the nation by storm. He has vowed to enact a protectionist trade regime, imposing a 10% tariff on all imports and a 100% tariff on Chinese imports—moves that most economists say would be inflationary. Trump has insisted his tariffs would create jobs at home and emancipate the U.S. from being at the mercy of foreign manufacturing. “I think what happens is you build,” Trump said. “Instead of having your product brought in from China, because of that additional cost, you end up making the product in the United States.” But independent analysts estimate Trump’s first-term tariffs on thousands of products, including steel and aluminum, solar panels, and washing machines, may have cost the country $316 billion and, by one account, more than 300,000 jobs.

Equally consequential will be Trump’s management on the world stage. The former President has expressed a desire to dismantle decades of diplomacy, saying he wouldn’t defend a NATO country if it doesn’t spend enough on collective defense. “I said it with great meaning,” Trump told me last spring, “because I want them to pay.” Officials in Trump’s first term suspect he will aggressively transform America’s foreign policy. His former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, predicts that Trump would effectively withdraw from NATO entirely, if elected.

The cost of the U.S. abandoning its traditional allies could be stark. For the last 80 years, America has acted as a global superpower to defend the West and its shared values of political and economic freedom. Seasoned diplomats worry that retreating from that posture would enable autocrats around the world, including Vladimir Putin and his aims of Russian expansionism. Trump’s choice of a running mate didn’t ease those concerns; Ohio Senator J.D. Vance has been one of Washington’s most vociferous critics of continued aid to Ukraine.

While Trump may not request increased military assistance from lawmakers to defend the Ukrainian people from Russia’s invasion, there is little else he plans to ask from them. His main legislative proposal is an extension of his 2017 tax cuts, with many of its provisions expiring in 2025. Trump’s relationship with Congress will depend on its post-election composition. Over the last four years, Trump has intervened in GOP primaries across the country to weed out intra-party heretics in both houses of Congress. To that end, Republicans could rubber-stamp his judicial and cabinet nominees if they win a Senate majority.

For now, Trump’s allies say they oppose repealing the filibuster. Getting rid of the procedure that allows minority members to obstruct legislation would give Republicans greater power to turn Trumpism into policy that could outlast Trump. But they worry Democrats would exploit the same mechanism as soon as they have the opportunity. “I’m not a fan of ending the filibuster,” Vance told me in April. “I think that it certainly served a function and will continue to serve a function. I am very mindful of worries that if we end the filibuster on our watch, then perhaps the Democrats add D.C. and Puerto Rican statehood to the mix, perhaps they try to pack the Supreme Court.”

Republicans could change their mind if Trump tells them to. It wouldn’t be the first time the party buckles to his whims. But Trump would not be entering a second term with aspirations to pass major legislative priorities. Rather, he’s bent on shaping the government to his will without any need for legislation. One such idea includes restoring the power of impoundment, which allowed Presidents to withhold congressionally appropriated funds—a favorite maneuver of Richard Nixon’s—until it was outlawed by Congress in 1974. To Trump, it’s but one part of his planned war on Washington. “Trump’s not a shrinking violet,” says Brinkley. “He’s telling us what he would do if elected. You have to believe him.”