After realizing how much longer Trump’s second term in office would last, I took a long and sober look at New York at what might happen, and what might restrain Trump from doing his worst:
Donald Trump has a flexible attitude toward truth and facts, typically embracing whatever version of reality that suits his purposes. His latest rally speech in Pennsylvania was something of a “greatest hits” display of fact-checker challenges on a wide range of issues. But he said one thing that no one should doubt or deny: “You know what? We have three years and two months to go. Do you know what that is in Trump Time? An eternity.”
So what will America look like after three more years of this barrage? As always, the administration’s intentions are opaque. But there are several outside variables that will dramatically shape how much Trump is able to do by the end of his time in office (assuming he actually leaves as scheduled on January 20, 2029). Here are the factors that will decide the outcome of this three-year “eternity.”
One huge variable is the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections. If history and current polling are any indication, Democrats are very likely to gain control of the U.S. House and bust up the partisan trifecta that has made so much of Trump 2.0’s accomplishments (for good or ill) possible. With a Democratic House, there will be no more Big Beautiful Bills whipped through Congress on party-line votes reconfiguring the federal budget and tax code and remaking the shape and impact of the federal government. A hostile House would also bedevil the administration with constant investigations of its loosey-goosey attitude toward obeying legal limits on its powers, and its regular habits of self-dealing, cronyism, and apparent corruption. The last two years of the Trump presidency would be characterized by even greater end runs of Congress, and in Congress, by endless partisan rhetorical warfare (as opposed to actual legislation).
It’s less likely that Democrats will flip control of the Senate in 2026, but were that to happen, Trump would struggle to get his appointees confirmed (though many could operate in an “acting” capacity). We’d likely see constant clashes between the executive and legislative branches.
Conversely, if Republicans hold onto both congressional chambers, then all bets are off. Trump 2.0 would roll through its final two years with the president’s more audacious legislative goals very much in sight and limited only by how much risk Republicans want to take in 2028. You could see repeated Big Beautiful Bill packages aiming at big initiatives like replacing income taxes with tariffs or consumption taxes; a complete return to fossil fuels as the preferred energy source; a total repeal and replacement of Obamacare and decimation of Medicaid; a fundamental restructuring of immigration laws; and radical limits on voting rights. Almost everything could be on the table as long as Republicans remain in control and in harness with Trump. And with his presidency nearing its end, you could also see Trump tripling down on demands that Republicans kill or erode the filibuster, which could make more audacious legislative gains possible.
The U.S. Supreme Court will also have a big impact on how much Trump can do between now and the end of his second term. Big upcoming decisions on his power to impose tariffs will determine the extent to which he can make these deals the centerpiece of his foreign-policy strategy and execute a protectionist (or, if you like, mercantilist) economic strategy for the country. Other decisions on his power to deport immigrants and on the nature and permanence of citizenship will heavily shape the size and speed of his mass-deportation program. The Supreme Court will soon also either obstruct or permit use of National Guard and military units in routine law-enforcement chores and/or to impose administration policies on states or cities. And the Supreme Court’s decisions on myriad conflicts between the Trump administration and the states could determine whether, for example, the 47th president can sweep away any regulation of AI that his tech-bro friends oppose.
A separate line of Supreme Court decisions will determine Trump’s power over the executive branch — most obviously over independent agencies like the FTC and the Fed, but also over millions of federal employees who could lose both civil-service protections and collective-bargaining opportunities.
Even a president as willful as Trump is constrained by objective reality. His economic policies make instability, hyperinflation, and even a 2008-style Great Recession entirely possible. If that happens, it could both erode his already shaky public support but also encourage him to assert even greater “emergency” powers than he’s already claimed.
Trump’s impulsive national-security instincts and innate militarism could also lead to one of those terrible wars he swears he is determined to avoid. It’s worth remembering that the last Republican president was entirely undone during his second term by economic dislocations and a failed war.
Let’s say Trump has the power to do what he wants between now and the end of his second term. What might America look like if he fully succeeds, particularly if his policies are either emulated by state and local Republicans or imposed nationally by Washington?
- A country of millions fewer immigrants, with immigrant-sensitive industries like agriculture, health care, and other services struggling.
- A more regressive system of revenues for financing steadily shrinking public services.
- A fully shredded social-safety net feeding steadily increasing disparities in income and wealth between rich and poor, and old and young, Americans.
- Cities where armed military presence has become routine, particularly during anti-administration protests or prior to key elections.
- Elections conducted solely on Election Day in person, with strict ID requirements and armed election monitors, likely on the scene during vote counting as well.
- A new “deep state” of MAGA-vetted federal employees devoted to carrying out the 47th president’s policies even after he’s long gone.
- A world beset by accelerated climate-change symptoms, particularly violent weather and widespread natural disasters, and a country with no national infrastructure for preventing or mitigating the damage.
- An economy where AI is constantly promoted as a solution to the very problems it creates.
- A world beset by accelerated climate-change symptoms, particularly violent weather and widespread natural disasters, and a country with no national infrastructure for preventing or mitigating the damage.
- A scientific and health-care research apparatus driven by conspiracy theories and cultural fads.
- A public-education system hollowed out by private-school subsidies and ideological curriculum mandates.
- And most of all: a debased level of political discourse resembling MMA trash talk more than anything the country has experienced before.
Some of these likely effects from Trump 2.0 are reversible, but only after much time and effort, and against resistance from the MAGA movement he will leave as his most enduring legacy.
And if Trump bequeaths the presidency to a successor (either a political heir like J.D. Vance or a biological heir like Don Jr.), then what American could look like by 2032 or 2036 is beyond my powers of imagination.
The parts of the memo that are really important need to be highlighted. It could use an executive summary. Otherwise the more original arguments (even if they are rethreads) get obscured by the more well known ones that have been debated endlessly.
These are the key insights (imo):
1. The political views of white workers were dramatically transformed by Donald Trump’s election in
2016. It is vital to understand the change that has occurred. … Since Trump’s campaign and election in 2016, however, circumstances have profoundly changed –and changed in a way that has shifted the political terrain dramatically against the Democrats. The difference can be stated simply: when white construction workers now sit around for lunch and the conversation turns to politics, Trump now completely defines and shapes the conversation. Every discussion quickly becomes framed in terms of what they agree with or disagree with about what Trump has done and said. They may have a range of opinions about specific policies and issues, but it is always Trump and his actions that defines the terms of the debate. (p.22-23 -talk about burying the lede-)
2. A key difference between the modern white working class conception and the traditional radical
view is that white working people do not visualize a single dominant “ruling class” or “power elite”
above them but rather see three different and distinct groups, none of which totally dominates
society but each of which in one way or another mistreats them and holds them in contempt. … The first group is the political class…The second group is the “Wall Street” financial elite…The final group is the “liberal” elite (p.24)
3. It is notable that none of the key distinctions indicated above between extremists and cultural traditionalists involve opinions on specific political issues. Instead, they deal with differences in basic social values like tolerance, compassion, empathy and open-mindedness and personal characteristics like psychological rigidity and obsessiveness. While these characteristics are resistant to change, they clearly divide the white working class into distinct sectors that are more and less persuadable. (p.6)
4. White workers in the groups very un-self-consciously expressed an old-fashioned “I have a dream”
philosophy about race – a philosophy that is now often viewed by progressives as naïve. … This feeling is expressed most clearly in disgust with “political correctness,” which they see as an attempt to impose upon them values with which they do not agree. Unlike conservatives, a number of participants in the groups admitted that over the years, they had gradually come to recognize that the biased cultural attitudes regarding African Americans that they’d held in the past were wrong and needed to change.
(p.11-12)
5. Progressives cannot assume that they can detach white workers’ displays of tolerance (of which they approve) from these workers’ cultural traditionalism (of which progressives do not approve and wish they would discard). Culturally Traditional white workers’ basic mental frameworks cannot be taken apart and reassembled at will. (A) progressive Democratic candidate who tries to run a campaign based on an elegantly detailed agenda of issues and policies but who cannot communicate a personal connection and emotional identification with the culture of the voters he or she seeks to represent will rarely succeed. (p.13-14)
6. (T)hey described politicians not simply as sometimes individually corrupt but as part of an inherently and irredeemably corrupt system that requires politicians to sell themselves to special-interest contributors to get elected, and who inevitably use their position to become wealthy. They further perceive all politicians as living in an insular and elite artificial world of wealth and influence-peddling.
They noted, in fact, that this perception was so strong that it represented “a new form of class consciousness.” (N)ever vote for the Democratic politicians who promise to enact them. The mystery disappears when it is understood that white working people tend to see Democrats as just as corrupted by the political system as Republicans are. (p.16-17)
7. Measures that Democrats themselves consider entirely altruistic policies to help not only the poor and needy but white working-class people as well are seen by white workers as cynical electoral bribery to buy mostly minority votes. (p.17)
8. When conservatives express broad generalizations about “welfare queens and Cadillacs,” it is
reasonable for progressives to dismiss such statements as urban legends that mask simple prejudice. But the anecdotes offered in the focus groups were entirely different; they were highly detailed and specific stories of people-white people-who the participants knew personally, and who were frequently their own white neighbors and relatives. It was, in fact, precisely the very clear, detailed, and vivid personal knowledge they demonstrated about such people taking advantage of the system that formed the basis for their intense anger. (p.18)
9. This same distinction between fairness and unfairness also appeared in the participants’ attitudes toward the wealthy. On the one hand, there was no antagonism for people who become wealthy through business success, and virtually no support for abstract “income redistribution” or punitively taxing the rich as a matter of basic social justice. But at the same time, there was a deep anger at the way the wealthy manipulated the system to pay lower taxes than ordinary workers or otherwise game the system to their advantage. There was also a feeling that the rich had become increasingly separated from and indifferent to those below. (p.18)
10. The participants supplemented these general views with specific ideas: that candidates should
live on their government salary and reject all other income, and that they should come from and
live in the very same community that elected them. … It is important to notice that this distinctive, personal-character-based set of criteria describe a candidate who is profoundly different from many of the “blue dog” Democrats that progressives quite reasonably scorn. Such candidates pander to conservative hot-button issues to win votes, while at the same time do not seriously defend workers’ economic interests but rather take money from special interests and make no effort to reduce the influence of big money in politics. (p.19)
I haven’t read the entire paper. But I totally agree with the premise. I have family in Ohio – white working class. They are not fire breathing extremists. They just feel that they work hard and play by the rules but just can’t get ahead. They feel that the system is stacked against them and no one cares. Culturally they are more aligned with the GOP but that’s not really what motivates them. They vote for the GOP in hopes that they will shake things up. Things like free college tuition or cancelling student debt has no relevance. At the same time, I’m not really sure what can be done to help in this global, knowledge based economy.
Levison’s argument is sound. I fear it will fall on deaf ears.
It has the advantage of not being as belligerent as many of Teixeira’s recent posts.