Whether you love him or hate him, President Trump is far more than a politician, having become a cultural figure that represents perhaps better than anyone else the key issues of our time, and his retaking the Presidency marks a clear before and after.
When President Joe Biden was set to take office in 2021, I opined that it was a whole new day in Washington, but as President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office for the second time four years later, the changes are likely to be much more dramatic. Once and future President Donald J. Trump, of course, occupies the same position as Chief Executive and Commander in Chief as his predecessor. He will sit behind the same Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, where he will issue Executive Orders, appoint individuals to various positions, make decisions regarding war and peace, and work with Congress on his legislative priorities. In this sense, he will be a traditional President, but as we have seen for almost the past decade, there is nothing traditional about Donald Trump. Having served already, he enters office with the benefit of experience and a keen understanding of how short a time period he has to accomplish his goals. Therefore, at least some of his agenda will be implemented on day one, and at least some of it will be on a scale never before seen in United States history. As Investor’s Business Daily recently described the flurry of actions planned for this very afternoon, “To say that Trump plans to hit the ground running would be an understatement. Reports indicate that Trump intends to sign 100 executive orders and related actions before heading to the inaugural balls. By comparison, President Biden issued 17 such orders on his first day, which was said to be a record.” “We want to come in and show just how serious we are. Trump is back, it’s go time. Like a shock to the system,” an adviser recently told CNN, claiming their plans have been percolating since he left office the first time. “It’s going to be the equivalent of sending George Patton into Europe to win World War II,” a second advisor told the same network, describing the series of executive actions as “rapid-fire, very intense.” From what we can tell, these orders will be unprecedented in scope, addressing a an extremely wide range of issues including trade via an “External Revenue Service” to manage tariffs, immigration and border security to “seal the border shut and begin the largest deportation operation in American history” according to one of his advisors, energy to remove all of President Biden’s restrictions and end all electric vehicle mandates, federal regulations to direct “every federal agency to immediately remove every single burdensome regulation driving up the cost of goods,” education and gender identity including changes to Title IX, even pardons or commutations for protestors charged in conjunction with January 6. (Full disclosure: I had also opined that executive orders are a looming Constitutional crisis, but there also the way the government works these days, for better or worse.)
Simultaneously, President Trump’s key cabinet picks, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, appear headed to quick confirmations, ready to disrupt the organizations they lead, meaning we can expect rapid changes at the department level in addition to the overall federal level. For perhaps the first time in history, a President has chosen a cabinet that begins their time in the government deeply skeptical of the government itself. Mr. Hegseth, for example, believes we need to reconsider everything, including the roles of women in combat if that means lowering our standards, a controversial topic that extends far beyond the military, impacting even the response to the recent fires in California. Previously, he’d written, “Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes. We need moms. But not in the military, especially not in combat units.” When Democrat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand asked him last week, “would you take any action to reinstitute the combat arms exclusion for female service members, knowing full well you have hundreds of women doing that job right now?” He replied, “Senator, I appreciate your comments. And I would point out I’ve never disparaged women serving in the military. I respect every single female service member that has put on the uniform, past and present. My critiques, senator, recently and in the past, and from personal experience, have been instances where I’ve seen standards lowered.” Later, he added in a response to another Senator who had also served, Iowa’s Joni Ernst, “Senator, first of all, thank you for your service. As we discussed extensively as well, and my answer is yes, exactly the way that you caveated it. Yes, women will have access to ground combat roles, combat roles given the standards remain high, and we’ll have a review to ensure the standards have not been eroded.” Ms. Bondi has promised equally substantive changes at the Department of Justice. “The partisanship, the weaponization, will be gone. America will have one tier of justice for all,” she said, while vowing, “There will never be an enemy’s list within the Department of Justice.” “No one will be prosecuted, investigated because they are a political opponent. That’s what we’ve seen for the last four years in this administration. People will be prosecuted, based on the facts and the law,” she continued, claiming the goal will be to get back to basics, addressing many conservatives who feel this vital institution has gone astray in recent years.
On the international front, major changes have already been occurring around the world. Most significantly, Israel and Hamas are in the early stages of a cease fire and a hostage exchange, with the first hostages being released hours before President Trump retakes office. As CBS News described it, “The deal reached between Israel and Hamas for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release immediately brought jubilation to thousands of people across the decimated Palestinian territory, but both there and on the streets of Israel, hope was still constrained by anxiety [last] Thursday morning. The jitters were fueled by both increasing bloodshed in Gaza, and doubt cast by Israel’s leader on the solidity of the deal announced the previous evening.” “We fully expect the deal to proceed as described yesterday, and on the timeline that we’ve laid out, so implementation beginning as soon as Sunday with a ceasefire and the release of the first hostages,” explained a U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor, acknowledging “a set of implementation details and conditions that are going to be a challenge throughout the implementation of this deal, which is going to extend well into the next administration.” While the in-progress deal has technically been negotiated by the Biden Administration, even progressives are acknowledging it was unlikely to happen without President Trump’s victory. Center for International Policy executive vice president and former advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders, Matt Duss told Politico the President-elect “made clear he wanted this war to end and pressed Netanyahu on it in a way that Biden clearly wasn’t willing to do.” “Trump has made clear what he wants, he has his own priorities, and I think it was clearly the unconditional support that Biden gave that provided cover for Netanyahu to continue to prosecute this war, and also that there would be no costs for ignoring either private or public criticisms from the United States,” but after Trump’s team joined, “That calculus has changed.” IDF Reserve Brigadier General Amir Avivi told Fox News, “Once President Trump threatened them, that if they don’t release hostages, there will be hell… I think they understand that if they don’t get a deal now, the chances of getting a good deal for them will be very, very low, if at all.” The ripple effects are expected to be equally huge, with even the Houthis promising to stop harassing shipping in the Red Sea. “We will continue to follow up on the stages of implementing the agreement, and any Israeli retreat or massacres or siege, we will be ready immediately to provide military support to the Palestinian people,” Abdul al-Houthi, the leader of the terrorist group, warned while promising to stop all attacks in the meantime.
Domestically, President Trump has also been working with congressional leaders, especially Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to advance his legislative priorities, whether through “one big, beautiful bill” as he prefers, or a series of bills. Speaker Johnson himself described it this way, “At the end of the day, President Trump is going to prefer, as he likes to say, ‘one big, beautiful bill.’ And there’s a lot of merit to that, because we can put it all together, one big up-or-down vote, which can save the country, quite literally, because there are so many elements to it,” claiming that they are targeting April for final passage. While the details remain unclear, it is expected that the bill will address making tax reform achieved during his first term permanent, cutting taxes further on items like tips and overtime, the debt ceiling, border security, and more. In addition, an expansion of the state and local tax credit and the child tax credit are under consideration. Of course, the path ahead is not without its challenges. The Republican majority in the House is tiny, pitting more moderate members from Democrat states against more conservative members, and there are limitations as to what can be accomplished in the Senate under the 50 vote reconciliation threshold. The state and local tax deduction represents this challenge perhaps better than anything else. Five House Republicans have promised to vote as a block against any bill that doesn’t increase the deduction, while conservative Senator Tom Tillis remains unenthused, claiming, “You got the child tax credit. You’ve got the subsidy for folks on the Affordable Care Act exchange. You’ve got a lot of Democrat priorities there that could actually take some pressure off of what we have to do in reconciliation by negotiating something in good faith…SALT or not. I like salt on my pecans. I don’t like a lot of SALT deductions up here.” Jon Traub, managing principal at Deloitte Tax LLP and a former Republican staff director on tax writing, put it this way. “I think it’s very ambitious timing. It’s not impossible, since I think the moving pieces are mostly identified and well-known. But putting them together with whatever revenue constraints they will self-impose — and getting agreement on the revenue targets in the first place — will be difficult. Regardless, it seems clear that there is a will to do something substantive and though the wheels of government turn altogether too slowly at times, they are already beginning to roll in this case, far sooner than usual and likely with far bigger impacts.
Beyond the politics and the policy, there is also an unmistakable sense that something is different this time, that’s we’re witnessing a truly historic moment, a pivot point that will clearly mark a before and after. The President-elect himself is an historic figure, having only been the second man in history to win two non-consecutive terms, perhaps the only man in history to have personally taken on the entire political, legal, educational, and media establishment and won, far eclipsing President Biden, who in addition to his obvious mental decline has been and always will be rather generic politician. Whether you love him or hate him, President Trump is far more than a politician, having become a cultural figure that represents perhaps better than anyone else the key issues of our time, from rapidly changing definitions of men and women, a rapidly changing notion of whether a country has a right to define who makes up its own populace, to whether the principles enshrined in the Constitution including free speech and limited government will remain crucial parts of the American experiment or will be replaced by radical new ideologies and open borders governed over an unassailable expert class. As such, he will re-enter office stronger than ever before, backed by the most diverse Republican coalition since at least Reconstruction, and a popularity with the broader public that has eluded him in the past. Conservatives, generally speaking, adore the President because he represents this flashpoint, believing he is unafraid to take on the most important issues of our time, unintimidated by the forces aligned against him, and unfiltered when speaking his mind. Progressives, generally speaking, loathe him for the same reasons. At the same time, Republicans have secured control over both the presidency and congress, putting them in a position to enact President Trump’s preferred agenda and putting the American people in a position to judge the results for themselves, both in the midterm elections in 2026 and the next presidential election in 2028. Both politically and culturally speaking, this represents an extremely rare opportunity for both success and failure, either of which will have a tremendous impact on the future of the United States and the entire world. “The contrast on display tonight was so stark, I mean those lights that are just shooting out from the Lincoln Memorial along the reflecting pool, extensions of Joe Biden’s arms embracing America. It was a moment where the new president came to town and sort of convened the country in this moment of remembrance, outstretching his arms,” CNN Political Director David Chalian declared the night before President Biden officially took office, but neither he nor we have seen anything yet.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 