Vanity Fair’s November 6 digital cover of President Donald Trump says it all: “34 Felony Counts, 1 Conviction, 2 Cases Pending, 2 Impeachments, 6 Bankruptcies, 4 More Years.” On November 5, the people of the United States elected Trump—a Christian nationalist and convicted felon—into office for a second term. His extreme views and policies beg the question, what happens to America now?
Among Trump’s plans for his upcoming presidency is putting Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services and its sub-agencies: the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, etc. In his Las Vegas campaign event, Trump said, “You know, like I said, Bobby [Kennedy] will work on health. He’s great.”
Kennedy is a known anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist who has made false claims about the effects of vaccines on autism rates. Post-election, Kennedy took to social media, telling FDA employees to “pack your bags.” The FDA is in charge of supervising the safety of drugs, food, medical devices, radiation products, cosmetics, vaccines, and biologics, among other things. Numerous health professionals, such as Dr. Jerome Adams—who served as surgeon general in Trump’s first term—have expressed concern at what Kennedy’s control over public health agencies could do to the United States.
Putting an anti-vaccine activist in charge of public health could change the list of recommended childhood vaccines and erode vaccine confidence in the United States. Vaccines help protect our immune systems from various diseases. The CDC states that many diseases are vaccine-preventable, such as whooping cough, chickenpox, and COVID-19. Although vaccines do not necessarily guarantee one prevention from receiving the disease that they are being protected against, they lessen the effects if one does become sick. If Kennedy erodes vaccine confidence in the United States, parents may be less willing to give early childhood vaccines to their children, causing an epidemic of preventable diseases.
Trump’s campaign has promised the American people tax cuts, lower interest rates, and tariffs on other nations’ goods; economists have agreed that these actions will reignite the inflation that the United States suffered under after COVID-19, starkly contrasting Trump’s additional promise to reduce inflation. Cutting taxes and lowering interest rates, both examples of expansionary policy, cause unemployment levels to decrease in the short term while price levels increase in the long term. Aside from the fact that the president cannot control interest rates or taxes, should Trump exert his influence over Congress or the Federal Reserve, his proposed economic plan will inevitably raise inflation levels again. “I feel the president should have at least a say in there. I feel that strongly,” Trump stated in an August press conference at Mar-a-Lago. “I made a lot of money. I was very successful. And I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve—or the chairman.”
The Federal Reserve, which uses monetary policy to stabilize the United States economy, is a politically unbiased entity. This allows the Fed to benefit the economy without worrying about political pressure to act a certain way. Since the election, Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Elon Musk, both Trump supporters, have made calls to abolish the Federal Reserve. Moreover, Trump has requested Jerome Powell, the chair of the Fed, to resign. During Trump’s first term, he nominated Powell, then threatened to fire him when Powell refused to bend to Trump’s will, but Powell remained inflexible, ready to turn to legal counsel. Powell made his stance on maintaining the Fed’s independence clear, stating that Trump is “not permitted under the law” to remove him.
A significant portion of both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaigns was their plans for immigration enforcement. Trump centered on the mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants, largely expanding the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and creating hundreds of new immigration courts focused on expediting cases. This massive deportation effort would inevitably be inhumane and extremely expensive, rerouting funding for essential public services. Trump’s immigration policy, combined with his extreme tax cuts, will only increase the national debt, a growing issue deeply concerning the nation’s economic future. In addition to the economic turmoil Trump’s approach may cause, it is certain that mass deportations of this magnitude will rip families and communities apart, affecting people from all walks of life.
However, Trump’s stance on immigration does not stop at policy. During his campaign rallies, it extended to disparaging comments. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, a guest speaker at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.” As far back as 2015, in his initial campaign for his first term, Trump stated that “[Mexicans] are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists.” During the presidential debate, he made a baseless claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating the pets of the people living there. Thirty bomb threats directed at government buildings and schools in and near Springfield promptly followed Trump’s hateful accusation.
As of November 5, Donald J. Trump is officially the president-elect and the 47th president of the United States, a result that did not sit well with many Americans. American women are joining the 4B movement, a South Korean social movement, in response to this victory of an adjudicated sexual abuser who largely contributed to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Women joining the 4B movement swear off childbirth, marrying men, dating men, and sex with men in protest of systemic misogyny and abuse. The rise of the 4B movement also provoked severely misogynistic comments like “your body, my choice” from men across the country, including right-wing commentator Nick Fuentes.
Queer Americans face another problem: the possibility that federal protections of marriage equality will be revoked. This fear has inspired many same-sex couples to run to the altar to get married before Trump’s inauguration next January. Trump’s victory also inspired racist hate crimes across the United States: Per the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there have been “offensive and racist text messages sent to African American and Black communities around the country…many say the recipient has been selected to pick cotton on a plantation. The text message recipients have now expanded to high school students, as well as both the Hispanic and LGBTQIA+ communities. Some recipients reported being told they were selected for deportation or to report to a re-education camp.” Trump’s victory, though a win for some Americans, is correlated with the uptick in hate crimes and racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and bigoted rhetoric being used.
There are many uncertainties about what a second Trump term means for America. Some critics believe that the damage of Trump’s presidency may be irreparable. Overall, we have no doubt that it will devastate numerous aspects of American life, from economy and public health to immigration and the safety of marginalized communities.
