Throughout the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump made numerous promises and promoted a series of often contradictory messages about what a second Trump term would offer and what it would do.
While his primary focus was the economy — which he claimed was in worse shape than it actually is or has been — he also addressed abortion, health care, education, climate change (where he maintained his firm stance as a climate denialist), and LGBTQ+ rights.
Trump also promised retribution against his enemies — a long list that includes individuals like President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Dr. Tony Fauci, Hillary Clinton, as well as the leaders of the January 6th Committee, like Liz Cheney, who he says should be imprisoned.
Trump framed Democrats as an “enemy from within” and said at a town hall in Pennsylvania right before the election, “They are so bad and frankly, they’re evil. They’re evil. What they’ve done, they’ve weaponized, they’ve weaponized our elections. They’ve done things that nobody thought was even possible.”
During his first administration, Trump regularly referred to the press as the enemy of the people. He has made threats against various news and media outlets and promised to have them investigated. He has already sued ABC, which settled out of court.
Trump has also promised to vitiate the sentences of Jan. 6 insurrectionists, over 1,000 of whom have been prosecuted and convicted, and issue pardons for the Jan. 6 rioters on his first day in office.
Now, with only days left until the Jan. 6 certification and the Jan. 20 Inauguration, here’s what we can expect from Trump in his first 100 days, according to promises he has made recently as well as backtracking he has made on several key election issues.
Overturning the Biden agenda
When he was elected in 2016, Trump pledged to vitiate much of President Barack Obama’s policies and dedicated much of his focus to doing so. In his new term, Trump has pledged to do the same with Joe Biden’s initiatives. Trump has regularly referred to Biden as the worst president in U.S. history and has targeted his major legislative actions, many of which saved the economy after Trump’s disastrous mishandling of the pandemic, for review or repeal, including on health care and the environment.
The economy
Since the election, it has been widely argued by pundits and the media that Trump won on his claims about the Biden economy and the price of groceries. Trump pledged to lower prices and make it easier for working families to make ends meet.
But since the election, Trump has walked back on those promises, noting it will be “hard” to bring down grocery prices. “Look, they [the Biden administration] got them up. I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard,” he said in an interview with Time magazine after he was named Person of the Year.
Immigration
The other hot-button issue of the election that Trump hammered incessantly is immigration. Trump regularly asserted that other countries were sending criminals and inmates from insane asylums to the U.S. He highlighted several gruesome crimes perpetrated by undocumented men and his PACs ran many ads focusing on those crimes and suggesting that they were a result of Kamala Harris’s policies.
Trump has promised mass deportations. The League of United Latin American Citizens, the oldest Hispanic civil rights organization in the U.S., is securing money and lawyers to fight what it is already calling potential “vicious, malevolent, cruel and ruthless” immigration policies.
A lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union told CNN its planning for legal challenges is already well advanced.
“We have been preparing for a second Trump term for nearly a year, with a focus on the most draconian possible policies, including the threat to use the military for deportation, which is flatly illegal,” said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney who argued many of the most high-profile cases during Trump’s first term.
Deportations could have a massive impact on the economy as well as on individual families. Migrant workers are a large part of America’s agricultural, meat-processing, hospitality and health-care industries, with workers doing menial jobs many Americans consider beneath them.
Democrats in the Congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC) released a report noting that “Trump’s mass deportation proposals threaten to gut the U.S. economy, shrinking growth and the labor force while juicing inflation.”
Abortion
Reproductive rights were a focal point of Kamala Harris’s campaign and an issue that had been expected to drive female voters. Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade, more than a third of U.S. states have abortion bans in place.
Trump has wavered on this issue, at first claiming women should be legally punished for abortions and then walking that back somewhat, saying “everyone” wanted Roe overturned and the states should be allowed to decide.
But in recent months, some high-profile deaths of women who needed therapeutic abortions to address miscarriages have kept this issue in the forefront.
Trump also told Time magazine he will ensure the FDA will not block access to abortion pills.
Medication abortions account for nearly two-thirds of all abortions nationwide.
In the Time interview accompanying his Person of the Year story, Trump said he had been “against stopping” the abortion pill during his campaign and that it was “very unlikely” he would do anything to restrict access.
LGBTQ+ rights
Trump’s first term presidency was disastrous for LGBTQ+ people and LGBTQ+ civil rights and even included outsourcing anti-LGBTQ actions via his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who used USAID as a focal point for anti-LGBTQ+ actions abroad.
Trump’s second term is likely to be worse. Trump’s 2024 campaign focused on LGBTQ+ people as dangerous. His Cabinet picks include some notorious anti-LGBTQ+ people, including Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trans youth and gender-affirming care (GAC) were focal points of Trump’s campaign messaging. Trump accused Kamala Harris of being more concerned about GAC than other issues. In addition, he repeatedly claimed — falsely — that GAC surgeries were being performed in schools. At one Pennsylvania rally, Trump asserted, “We’re the party of common sense. That means no open borders, and no transgender operations.”
Trump has also said he would end Medicare and Medicaid funding for hospitals that provide GAC to trans youth. He has also targeted teachers, saying they should be held accountable for affirming students’ gender identities. Trump would also have federal agencies “cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.”
Trump has also pledged to ask Congress to halt the use of federal funds to promote or pay for GAC. In none of these proposals does Trump outline distinctions between GAC for adults and minors, putting all trans people at risk.
Climate change
In his first term, Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords, rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations and deleted climate change references from agency websites. He also eviscerated the Environmental Protection Agency.
Throughout his campaign, Trump pushed back on climate science, claiming there was “global cold” in places, which is patently false. He regularly claimed that wind turbines were killing whales and birds. He intends to overturn any policies initiated by Biden — the best climate president in U.S. history — that address clean energy and environmental justice.
Trump has pledged to intensify fossil fuel production in complete contravention of what all science has said is necessary to mitigate the perils of climate change and limit the climate crisis.
At rallies, Trump asserted, “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world. We will drill, baby, drill.”
In Project 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency would be weakened, putting the populace at risk. Project 2025 also states that the government should reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Programs and related climate change research programs. It states that any future climate change assessments — intended to inform policymakers about how the climate crisis will affect the country — should include “diverse viewpoints,” meaning input from climate deniers.
Project 2025’s architects also call for an end to American climate leadership on the international stage, which would harm Americans and prevent the global community from achieving climate goals necessary to maintain a livable planet.
These are some, but by no means all, focal points for Trump’s new term — and this agenda bodes ill for the U.S. and its most vulnerable citizens.