However bad you’re expecting it’ll be with Donald Trump as president again, it’ll be worse than you’re expecting.
Check me on this, but my recollection is that during Trump’s first term, things were (relatively) mild for a few years, but grew more and more horrendous as his term continued. After the midway point, there were nonstop jawdropping crudities and cruelties — another ghastly nomination, gawdawful statement, or a stupidity to top the previous day’s stupidities — every day.
It took him a while to warm up, because being president was something of a surprise, even to Trump. I’m sure he ran in 2016 just for the publicity, and winning caught him (and all of us) off guard. He was new at being Godzilla on the world stage, and it took some time for him to get the hang of it.
Now, though, he’s an experienced monster, with Project 2025 and a team of loyal suck-ups surrounding him from his first day, so everything’s going to be worse, lots worse, right from the start.
What outrages and obscenities can we expect from Trump?
Climate change: Trump will again pull America out of all climate change accords, and do all he can to bring us back to being powered by coal and perhaps whale oil. There will be no recovery from the damage he’s about to do, and it’ll finalize a perpetually hellish future for America and the world. Of course, we weren’t doing a fraction of what was needed even before Trump, so the looming climate catastrophe was bound to happen anyway, but Trump will make it happen sooner.
Abortion: Sorry, ladies. Your time of having almost-equal rights is at an end. Either by law or by a Supreme Court decision, abortion will be banned, in all 50 states. Women who have sex will be legally obligating themselves to give birth and raise a child. Many millions of women’s and children’s lives will be ruined, which is the intent. My suggestion is tubal ligations and vasectomies, and fast, before those options are also illegalized.
Israel will have carte blanche, even more than they’ve had in the past, to do anything without even the mildest statement of rebuke from American government. Best we can hope is for full evacuation of Gaza, but its utter annihilation, until there aren’t two bricks held together by mortar, is very much a possibility.
Ukraine will see the complete cessation of US weaponry and funding after Trump takes office on January 20, 2025, and sanctions against Russia will be lifted, so you might as well erase Ukraine from your world maps.
Regulation of big business, which has always been vapors anyway, will completely vanish. There will be no more of those very rare days when you’ve read that some corporation is being sued by a government agency. How quaint.
Those are the certainties, but by the nature of Trump, there’ll be surprises, so there’s really no knowing what else to expect. His Supreme Court has granted Trump unprecedented “presidential immunity,” so dang near anything goes.
Perhaps the ACLU will be banned. Perhaps transgender Americans will be stripped of citizenship until they resume their birth genders. Perhaps Yellowstone will become FritoLay Yellowstone Park. Everything previously unthinkable is now possible.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump spoke of deporting all immigrants, sending the military to guard the border with Mexico, ending the Department of Education, locking up his opponents, shutting down anti-MAGA (i.e., mainstream) media, imposing crippling tariffs, sending the National Guard into American cities to round up the homeless, pardoning all 1/6/2021 insurrectionists … and more, much more that I’ve forgotten.
For each of these items, if he’s successful, the ramifications will be dreadful, but there are two hopeful things to remember.
First and most obviously, Trump is a bullshit artist, always happy to lie. Much of what he’s promised, he has no intention of even trying. (How’s that wall coming, Donald?)
Second, many or most of the outrageous things he will attempt are blatantly illegal, so there’ll be lawsuits. In at least some of these cases, lower courts will rule against the Emperor’s atrocities, and even the fully owned Supreme Court might balk on lesser items, if only to retain credibility for ruling in Trump’s favor on the major items.
Still being optimistic, it’s too early in the fascism for Trump to order judges removed from the bench or executed. That’ll come later.
But he’s already stacked the courts, and the stacking will continue and get worse. Republicans will control the Senate, so every heinous judicial nominee will be confirmed, meaning the courts will block him less and less often, over the coming years.
What’s worst to me is knowing that there won’t be an “after.” Trump will abrogate the 22nd Amendment and become President for Life. When he dies we’ll have President J D Vance, who’s every bit as evil but much smarter, younger, and worse in every way.
If elections are still allowed, they’ll be sham elections, with full cooperation from the Democrats, since they won’t nominate anyone who could actually win.
In closing, I should mention that this collection of cynicism and despair was written off the top of my head, without consulting any experts’ articles on what Trump is planning. The coming reality, then, will certainly be much, much worse than what I’ve predicted.
Where I live, Washington, the minimum wage is $16.28 p/hour. Across the border in Idaho, the federal minimum applies — $7.25.
Businesses on the higher-wage side of the border are doing fine, and Spokaners do not drive across the border into Coeur d'Alene for cheaper groceries or a half-price Big Mac.