What The Trump Agenda Means For Washington — And America

President Donald Trump has promised to conduct the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, impose new tariffs on some of America’s closest allies, freeze climate-related regulations, remake federal health agencies and abandon legal protections for transgender students.

With a Republican Congress at his back and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, he now has every opportunity to test the limits of his power.

“I will act with historic speed and strength and fix every single crisis facing our country," Trump told his supporters at his inauguration eve rally on Sunday in downtown Washington, D.C. “We’re going to stop the invasion of our borders. We’re going to reclaim our wealth. We’re going to unlock the liquid gold that’s right under our feet. ... We’re going to bring back law and order to our cities. We’re going to restore patriotism to our schools."

Trump is expected to sign executive orders throughout the day, including those about federal employees, diversity programs, birthright citizenship, gender identity and declaring a national energy emergency.

Trump has also tapped a slate of nominees more loyal than those recruited to his first administration and surrounded himself with staff that have had four years to study the hurdles of his previous White House — a combination some in the president’s orbit believe will move his agenda much faster this time.

Though some of Trump’s largest agenda items — tax breaks and sweeping actions on immigration — will take congressional approval, many don’t. The Trump administration can change immigration enforcement, impose tariffs, revise health regulations, intervene in (or disengage from) conflicts overseas and shape gender policies without needing much help from Capitol Hill. On some issues, such as immigration, the new president can likely count on eager Republican governors, mayors, sheriffs and other local officials to assist.

In the weeks leading up to his second inauguration, Trump has focused on other targets, too: annexing Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal; ending conflict in the Middle East; creating an “External Revenue Service” to manage money collected from international trade; renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

If Trump follows through on his core promises, his goals won’t just undo the work of the Biden administration. They’d test the reach of the executive branch, and how far one man can bend the federal bureaucracy.

Here’s a look at nine issues that’ll dominate the Trump presidency — what the president is proposing, and what’s actually possible.

Few things animate Trump more than the issue of immigration, which defined the launch of his first campaign in 2015, and it is certain to define the first day, week and year of his new administration.

Trump will move quickly to issue a slew of executive orders designed to send a message that the southern border is closed to illegal crossings and anyone living in the U.S. without documentation, especially immigrants who have committed crimes, isn’t safe from deportation.

Having installed immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as his deputy chief of staff for policy and Tom Homan as his border czar, immigration policymaking will once again be centralized in the Trump White House. The president also nominated South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Sen. Marco Rubio for secretaries of Homeland Security and State, respectively, two figures who will play a key role in activating their agencies to support Trump’s immigration agenda.

“It’s going to mean an executive order ending the border invasion, sending the illegals home and taking America back,” Miller said at Trump's Sunday rally. “It’s going to mean the eradication of the criminal cartels and the foreign gangs who are preying on our people. And it’s going to mean justice for every American citizen who has lost a loved one to illegal aliens.”

Trump transition officials have spent the last several months crafting executive orders designed to shred a number of Biden administration policies. Some targets stand out: its so-called Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans humanitarian parole program and a memo from former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that established the enforcement priorities for which immigrants to deport — with an emphasis on people who threaten national security and public safety.

The president is also expected to issue a national emergency declaration, a move designed to unlock additional authorities and resources to follow through on his promise to secure the border and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. And he will move quickly to end catch and release — the release of migrants into a U.S. community while they await their immigration court hearings — and begin the process of restoring Remain in Mexico, a policy from his first term that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases were processed. He is also expected to further clamp down on asylum in between ports of entry.

Where Trump may run into trouble is his mass deportations agenda — and he’ll be looking to Congress for help. Already, Miller, Homan and other Trump officials have been meeting with Republican lawmakers, urging them to follow the president’s moves with legislation to codify his agenda.

The Trump administration will need more resources to find, detain and remove the millions of undocumented immigrants they’ve promised, and detention capacity alone will be costly. Lawmakers will have to appropriate more funding, and the administration would need to hire and train more officers.

There will also be a steep legal hurdle. Democratic state leaders and immigration advocates have been preparing for months, analyzing Trump’s proposals, preparing legal briefs and organizing aid for asylum seekers. The president’s team will be forced to fight a number of battles in court, as state attorneys general say they will challenge Trump is he misuses military troops on domestic soil, attempts to force local or state law enforcement to do the job of the federal government or denies people’s right to the constitutional right to due process.

— Myah Ward

Trump helped usher in the nation’s biggest set of tax cuts in years during his first administration. Now he gets to do it again.

Some $4 trillion in tax cuts are due to expire at the end of this year, and controlling that debate is one of the biggest trophies Republicans won in their sweep of Washington.

Amid all that excitement, however, lawmakers are caught up in a procedural drama where they can’t decide the basic parameters of their tax plans or whether to take up immigration, energy and other items first. The dispute has gotten sticky and sometimes elbowed aside by other concerns like how lawmakers intend to raise the debt limit.

Extending all the previous tax cuts would run more than $4 trillion, but last year Trump proposed a slew of new ones — such as exempting tips from taxes and creating a deduction for auto-loan interest — that would push the price tag even higher. And right now, Republicans have no idea what to include, cut or pay for.

House Speaker Mike Johnson says Republicans intend to pass a budget establishing the overall contours of their plans by the end of February.

Lawmakers from high-tax states are trying to secure a substantial easing of a hated $10,000 limit on state and local tax deductions, and there’s been a flurry of meetings, including with Trump, but nothing has been decided.

At the same time, Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), a Republican tax writer, has rolled out a plan to substantially increase the child tax credit. That’s likely only one of several proposals lawmakers will be jockeying to add to the plan.

Johnson has said he wants to get final legislation to Trump by the end of April — a challenging timeline that many tax vets say is likely to spill over until at least August.

— Brian Faler

Trump says “tariff” is his favorite word in the dictionary and he is expected to move quickly on new trade restrictions that he promised on the campaign trail.

The president has said he will impose an across-the-board tariff of between 10 percent and 20 percent on all $3 trillion worth of U.S. goods imports and stick a 60 percent tariff on all Chinese goods. That would dramatically expand the duties he imposed during his first term on tens of billions of dollars worth of steel and aluminum and more than $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.

Trump and his transition team have been vague about how he plans to implement that plan. Many trade experts think he could quickly draw on existing authority like the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which gives the president sweeping authority to control economic transactions after declaring an emergency.

That could lead to a legal challenge, but a recent report from the Cato Institute, a free market think tank, cast doubt on the courts’ or Congress’ ability to rein Trump in. However, trading partners such as the EU could retaliate with tariffs on U.S. exports.

Trump is also expected to take an aggressive stance in the six-year-review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which his first administration negotiated to replace the much-maligned NAFTA. That review officially begins in 2026, but the countries are already preparing for it.

The president started trying to corner Canada and Mexico well before his inauguration: He’s threatened a 25 percent tariff on their exports to the United States as a way to pressure them to do more to stop illegal immigration flows and fentanyl shipments across the U.S. border. Trump suggested declaring an emergency over similar issues back in 2019.

He’s also threatened a 10 percent tariff on China to stop fentanyl shipments from that country,

Other possible actions, like revoking permanent normal trade relations with China or imposing a carbon-border adjustment tax, would require congressional approval. Congress could also take up trade and tariff issues as part of legislation to renew Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which expire next year. Trump has talked about using the import tax both as a way to raise revenue and to reduce the U.S. trade deficit.

— Doug Palmer and Christine Mui

Trump has said that he wants peace in the Middle East within his first 100 days of taking office, including a complete end to fighting in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. He’s also called for an immediate end to the war in Ukraine.

Trump has elevated top allies and loyalists to prominent national security roles that would work on these two conflicts directly. But Trump and his team have been cagey about how exactly he will seek to end two of the world’s fiercest conflicts, navigate relations with a new Islamist government in Syria, counter Iran in the Middle East and manage competition with China.

The new Trump administration worked closely with Biden’s national security team on a cease-fire deal that would see remaining Israeli hostages in Hamas captivity released and fighting stop in the war-torn enclave for six weeks as part of a multi-phase plan to end the conflict.

Now that a deal is secured, it’s unclear how Trump will work to stabilize the region and approach the future of Palestinian territories. Trump’s team will have to negotiate a permanent cease-fire and continue pressuring Israel to commit to peace. Meanwhile, he has opposed sanctions and punitive measures against settlers in the West Bank accused of committing violence against Palestinians and is likely to ignore international concern about the expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. Trump also previously supported a plan that would allow Israel to gain greater control over the Palestinians while steering $50 billion in international spending toward the Palestinian people, helping it prop up their economy.

Trump may work to continue expanding the framework set out in the Abraham Accords — an agreement brokered by his administration where Bahrain and the UAE recognized Israel’s sovereignty. The Biden administration pursued a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia only to see its progress derailed by the war in the Gaza Strip.

But there are two immediate challenges that could stymie or even wreck those efforts: The biggest potential disruptor in the Middle East is Iran, as Trump’s stance toward Iran is likely to shape the administration’s stance on the new government in Syria. Iran’s nuclear program has continued to grow and Tehran and its proxies have made threats to kill Trump over his role in the 2020 assassination of top Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani.

Like his comments on the Middle East, Trump said he would be able to quickly end the war between Ukraine and Russia — saying during the campaign he would begin talks before taking office.

He has kept the Russia critics among his supporters anxious since being elected, having elevated people like having Richard Grenell as his envoy for “special missions.” But other Trump selections, such Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as special envoy for Russia and Ukraine and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as secretary of State have quieted concerns that he might be hostile to Kyiv.

Trump’s approach to China is also looking more complicated and global than it was during his first term. Tensions with Beijing could, after all, undermine one of the president’s key goals: lowering prices for consumer goods and easing inflation at home.

Trump’s first administration focused on bilateral trade, implementing tariffs to reduce the United States’ economic reliance on Beijing and punishing intellectual property theft. Yet his recent comments about the country’s presence in Panama suggest that the second Trump administration will focus more directly on China’s rising influence in Latin America and Africa.

He’ll also need to manage new alliances in China’s backyard to counter Beijing’s provocative military actions across Asia. While Trump has been critical of Taiwan’s military, he has voiced openness to continuing many of the partnerships brokered under the Biden administration.

— Eric Bazail-Eimil

Trump rattled the health care industry well before Inauguration Day and laid the groundwork for slashing health agencies and redirecting their focus under his plan to “Make America Healthy Again.”

The president’s decision to tap Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has promised to focus on nutrition, chronic disease and upending the regulatory system, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services has the potential to be the seat of Washington’s most radical policy shift in decades.

Kennedy could veer the Republican agenda away from debates over legislation and regulation toward a more fundamental one about the government’s role in medicine.

Kennedy remains far outside the mainstream of even conservative health leaders. He has long touted the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism and wrote a book accusing former NIH official Anthony Fauci of conspiring with tech mogul Bill Gates and drug makers to sell Covid vaccines — views that have worried some senators he will need to confirm him.

Several other nominees, including Marty Makary, Jay Bhattacharya and Mehmet Oz, also have a history of pushing ideas at odds with much of the public health establishment — especially through the Covid pandemic.

But Trump has offered signs of other health changes beyond the Make America Healthy Again agenda.

Empowered by Republican control in the House and Senate, Trump could aim to slash health spending — an idea that hasalready been floated by leaders on Capitol Hill. And some of Trump’s picks to lead health agencies have been intent on encouraging privatization of parts of the health system.

On the campaign trail, Trump tried to distance himself from his role in appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, the decision that rolled back federal abortion rights. He has previously denied that he would seek federal legislation to ban or restrict abortion but also said he’d veto any ban that reached his desk.

Still, Trump is unlikely to codify abortion protections under Roe or otherwise seek to make the procedure more accessible in states that have restricted it.

On Obamacare, even conservative health policy analysts who’d like to repeal the Affordable Care Act say that’s not in the cards. Instead, they say Trump will focus on loosening regulations on insurers and targeting specific elements of the law for repeal or reform, a goal that is increasingly in grasp with a congressional majority.

Vice President JD Vance has previously said he wants to cut costs for healthy, younger people by allowing them to sign up for insurance based on the health risks they face. That could increase prices for older people and those with preexisting conditions, who are shielded from risk-based pricing under Obamacare.

Trump supported allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices in his 2016 campaign but later backed away. Now he’s in charge of negotiations Congress mandated in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which are supposed to include dozens of new drugs during his term. Every Republican lawmaker voted against that law. Trump’s Justice Department is now tasked with defending it against pharmaceutical company challenges in court.

— Daniel Payne

Trump has attacked Biden’s student loan initiatives as a waste of taxpayer money, and he’s likely to sink many of them over the next few months.

Biden made a big push on the issue in the final week of his administration, forgiving debt for 150,000 people on Monday, then $4.5 billion on Wednesday and an additional $600 million on Thursday.

But several of his big debt-relief plans are tied up in court: Just weeks after Trump was reelected, the Biden administration withdrew two of its debt cancellation proposals.

Trump’s transition advisers have been discussing how to unwind the various Biden-era initiatives that offered new or easier paths to loan forgiveness — a strategy that’s likely to get an assist from Republicans in Congress.

In the House, Republicans are looking to cut student loan debt relief or repayment programs as a possible spending offset for Trump’s top priorities, which they say could save $200 billion to $330 billion over the course of 10 years.

The Republican Party platform, which doesn’t mention student loans, calls for firing “radical Left accreditors” to drive down tuition costs. Trump has previously advocated for replacing accrediting organizations that oversee colleges and universities and imposing new standards such as removing staff members that focus on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The platform also calls for creating “more affordable alternatives to a traditional four-year college degree” and funding “proven career training programs.” Linda McMahon, his nominee for Education secretary, has also advocated for supporting alternatives to a four-year college degree, bolstering apprenticeships, and expanding Pell Grant eligibility to short-term training programs.

— Rebecca Carballo

The 2024 Republican platform vowed to cut federal funds for schools that teach about race and gender, bar transgender athletes from women’s sports teams and deport international students who voiced support for Palestinians.

Trump could accomplish many of those promises in his new administration — even without Congress.

He has threatened to pull federal money for schools that teach certain race-related curriculum, which he could do by directing his Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to launch investigations into schools with these lessons and yank their funding.

His previous administration followed a similar playbook. Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ civil rights office determined that letting transgender women play on women’s teams violated a federal anti-discrimination law known as Title IX. She used the policy to threaten a local school board with legal action or a loss of funding.

Trump has promised to overhaul Title IX, especially after the Biden administration finalized its rule that bolstered discrimination protections for transgender students. But a federal court vacated the Biden rule in January, giving Trump a clean slate to revamp how the law is interpreted.

His Education Department’s 2020 rule guided how schools respond to reports of sexual misconduct. A new rule could go much further to include clarifications on what “sex” means and determine whether transgender students can play on sports teams or use facilities that align with their gender identity.

Before dealing with the rule, however, incoming Trump officials told reporters Monday morning that the president would direct federal agencies to no longer consider gender identity as protected under laws that bar sex-based discrimination, which will have implications for athletes, passports, visas and employment documentation.

“What we're doing today is defining that it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes: male and female,” the White House official said.

The president has also promised civil rights investigations into schools that use race in admissions and vowed to reinstate his 1776 Commission, which seeks to “promote fair and patriotic civics education.”

— Bianca Quilantan

Washington’s latest chill is now poised to become a full-fledged Trump regulatory freeze — one that’s likely to settle in on Inauguration Day. The president is expected to reverse work on Biden’s aggressive climate change agenda that aimed to reduce fossil fuel use and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, Trump has vowed to save the nation’s aging fleet of coal-fired power plants and boost production of oil and natural gas, even as the U.S. is already producing those fuels at record levels.

But the process of repealing and replacing Biden’s rules can be lengthy. Trump’s EPA was sometimes criticized for moving too slowly in 2017, but lessons learned in the first term likely mean those he appoints will move faster in Round 2.

There are some added twists this time around on key climate rules. Trump’s power plant climate rule was struck down in 2021 — coincidentally, on his last full day in office. Trump’s rule would have required coal-fired power plants make minor adjustments to improve their efficiency. A federal appeals court said EPA should have at least considered other regulatory possibilities such as carbon capture, the technology that now forms the basis of Biden’s replacement rule. That 2021 court ruling has technically been vacated, but it’s something Trump’s legal team may keep in mind moving forward.

Trump also can’t completely repeal Biden’s big methane rule that requires the oil and gas sector to crack down on its leaks of the potent greenhouse gas. Trump did a full repeal in his first term, but Congress since then has essentially required EPA to regulate. However, he can make a suite of tweaks the industry wants.

— Alex Guillén

Trump has pledged to ease regulations to help builders boost the supply of housing in a bid to bring down costs. The Republican National Committee also endorsed the idea of selling off federal lands for the construction of housing, which Utah Republicans have pushed in Congress. Scott Turner, Trump’s pick for the Housing and Urban Development Department, called for the construction of new housing in his nomination hearing last week.

The first Trump administration worked to recapitalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-controlled companies backing roughly half of the nation’s residential mortgages. But the plan to eventually release and privatize the government-sponsored enterprises ran aground when the pandemic struck. Now, with Scott Bessent and Bill Pulte, Trump's respective picks to lead the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the administration may have another shot.

— Katy O’Donnell