With Trump’s return to the presidency, everything from abortion to immigration is threatened | US election 2024

On By Littum

With Donald Trump’s return to the White House for a second term as president, the impact will be felt in many aspects of American life and throughout the world as well.

From abortion to immigration, the environment, gun laws and LGBTQ+ rights: all are at stake with Trump and his allies back in power.

Here is a list of the main threats Trump represents:

The country may be on the brink of a profound change, greater than any in recent American history. Composite: James Moy Photography/Getty/Guardian Design Team

Freedom of the press will be threatened

In his first term and as a candidate, Trump has consistently attacked the mainstream press and used conservative media for his political purposes. He threatened to weaken libel laws and called the press “fake news” and “the enemy of the people”. There is no indication that a re-elected Trump would tone down his aggression.

In recent weeks, Trump demanded that CBS News be stripped of its broadcast license as punishment for airing a redacted response from an interview with his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, and he threatened that other broadcasters should suffer the same fate.

This rhetoric, along with Trump’s past actions, prompted one science journalist to consider whether press freedom and democracy should be added to the “threatened list.”

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Sensible gun safety policies can be revoked

As president, Joe Biden oversaw passage of the first major federal gun safety legislation in nearly three decades. Now, advocates fear those policies could be easily reversed if Trump and congressional Republicans win this election.

In a second term, advocates expect him to immediately close the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, created in 2023 and overseen by Kamala Harris, and nominate a pro-gun executive as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. . He could also interfere with the implementation of the law, which Biden signed, and derail some of his administration’s efforts to expand background checks.

Gun safety advocate Angela Ferrell-Zabala says a second Trump term would mean “fighting like hell” to ensure progress on “common basic gun safety measures.”

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Idaho’s extreme abortion ban could become statewide

Composite: Shutterstock/Getty/EPA

When the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, it paved the way for more than a dozen states to ban nearly all abortions. While these bans allow emergency abortions, the language and fear of criminal consequences mean doctors are forced to wait and watch as patients get sick.

Now it’s possible that federal restrictions on abortion are next. While Trump’s position on a national ban is not entirely clear — he has repeatedly flip-flopped on the issue — his administration would not need Congress to attack access to abortion nationwide.

Project 2025, the right-wing playbook for a second Trump term, proposes using the Comstock Act of 1873, which prohibits shipping abortion-related materials, to ban people from shipping abortion pills. These pills account for about two-thirds of American abortions.

If passed in its entirety, the Comstock Act could ban not just pills but the very equipment clinics need to do their jobs, and Trump could use the legislation to enact a nationwide de facto abortion ban.

Trump could also weaken the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala), a federal law that protects access to emergency abortion. Idaho’s extreme abortion ban has been at the center of a legal debate over the law that recently reached the Supreme Court. The court gave Idaho doctors the right to perform a wider variety of emergency abortions, but left the door open to reconsidering Emtala in the future.

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American cities are at risk of military takeovers

Trump has threatened to use presidential powers to seize control of cities largely run by Democrats, to use federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations and to wipe out left-leaning prosecutors’ progressive criminal justice policies. He threatened to deploy the National Guard to fight urban protests and crime—and would not wait to be called in by mayors or governors, but would act unilaterally.

“In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of law and order … I will not hesitate to send in federal assets, including the National Guard, until security is restored,” Trump says in his campaign platform.

Mayors and prosecutors in several American cities are collaborating on strategies to minimize the fallout. But as Levar Stoney, the Democratic mayor of Richmond, Virginia, said, “It’s very hard to autocrat-proof your city.”

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Mass deportations can wreak havoc on immigrants

Raids and mass deportations are at the heart of Trump’s vision for a second term.

He has promised to restore and expand his most controversial immigration policies, including the travel ban targeting mainly Muslim countries. He has consistently promised to stage the “largest deportation operation in American history”. It’s a refrain he repeated so often that “Mass deportations now!” became a rallying cry at this summer’s Republican National Convention.

Trump has provided few details about his plan to deport “perhaps as many as 20 million” people. But in public remarks and interviews, he and his allies have detailed a vision that matches the plans of Project 2025. The strategy, as Trump has described it, could involve the extraordinary use of U.S. troops for immigration enforcement and border security and the application of 18th-century war powers.

Immigrant advocates and leaders say they are better prepared and more organized than they were in his first term. Groups are already considering legal action against key parts of his immigration agenda, and activists say they have learned how to capitalize on public outcry.

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Trump could launch a ‘catastrophic’ rollback of LGBTQ+ rights

In his first term, Trump banned transgender people from the military. If re-elected, he has promised even more aggressive attacks on LGBTQ+ rights.

Trump vows to order all federal agencies to end programs that “promote … gender transition at any age,” cut funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care, push for a federal law that says the government cannot legally recognize transgender people and repeal federal LGBTQ+ non-discrimination policies.

Project 2025, meanwhile, calls for replacing Biden-Harris policies with ones that support “heterosexual, intact marriage.”

Legal scholars warn that marriage equality could be further threatened under Trump, especially if he has the chance to appoint additional justices.

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He will judge the efforts to curb the climate disaster

In his first term, Trump pulled the US out of the Paris climate accords, undermining the progress the negotiations had made. In his second term, Trump would be a disaster for efforts to curb the climate crisis.

Project 2025 outlined the myriad ways his administration could hurt environmental policy, from boosting oil, gas and coal to shutting down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency that measures how much temperatures are rising.

Trump, who has called the climate crisis a “scam” and “one of the great frauds of our time”, has promised, among other things, to “drill, baby, drill” and end Biden’s pause on export terminals for liquefied natural gas. And his four-year term comes at the very moment when Earth most needs to speed up efforts to curb climate change.

Climate scientists say emissions must be reduced by 2030 to stand a chance of a Paris road. Trump’s term in office is extended until 2029.

The climate effects may not be immediate, but will be felt in the coming years.

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Biden-era achievements like the Inflation Reduction Act would be repealed

Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, called the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act — the $370 billion bill aimed at accelerating the transition to clean energy — a “green energy scam.” That’s despite the millions in climate investments made in Vance’s hometown of Middletown, Ohio.

Republicans in Congress have tried to gut the legislation, and Project 2025 has called for it to be repealed under Trump.

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Public lands would be opened up for oil and gas production

Early plans suggest a re-elected Trump would take on the Interior Department, the agency responsible for national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and endangered species protection. The department is the focus of a chapter of Project 2025, the policy document that also calls for reinstating Trump’s energy-dominant agenda, reducing national monument designations and weakening endangered species protections.

In office, it is likely that Trump would reverse the Biden administration’s efforts on the green transition and protection of public lands. A second Trump term could slash regulations, weaken environmental protections and, in Trump’s words, “drill, baby, drill.”

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American protest movements may face severe repression

Since the death of George Floyd in 2020 and the ensuing racial justice protests, Republican-led states have expanded anti-protest laws — a push coming from Trump, the party’s standard-bearer.

Trump campaigned on a platform that includes cracking down on protests and has promised to bring in the National Guard where “law and order” has broken down. Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a key Trump ally, called for the National Guard to be used against students protesting Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

In his second term, Trump could direct a militarized response to protests and push congressional Republicans to pass legislation that would impose nationwide sanctions like those already in place in Tennessee; the Republican-led state passed a bill that, among other things, created a new crime for protest encampments on state property.

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He would bring instability in foreign policy

During his first term, Trump’s brand of “America first” politics created instability among partners and opponents alike. Nato members said the US had never before been seen as the “unpredictable ally”.

His second term could bring more instability to a time when conflicts — including the escalating war in the Middle East and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war — are raging around the world.

In 2018, Trump hinted at leaving Nato in an attempt to force member states to increase their defense spending. This year he hinted that he would let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” to countries he says don’t contribute enough to Nato. A Trump victory is likely to threaten Nato cohesion.

Trump is also likely to be surrounded by “advisors who are hawkish on China and very likely pro-Taiwan,” said Jude Blanchette, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But, Blanchette says, it is likely that relations between the US and China would have been strained even if Harris had been elected to the White House.

Benjamin Netanyahu, would not have to deal with American opposition to greater Israeli control over the West Bank. Annexation of the West Bank would become a “much more active option” under Trump, said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. It is less clear whether a Trump victory would prompt the Israeli prime minister to enlist the United States in a decisive strike on Iran’s nuclear program, a longtime goal of the Israeli leader.

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