In just a bit more than two months the nation begins its second go round with Donald Trump as President. While many, certainly those who voted to make him our next chief executive will be elated, others are living with anxiety, perhaps even high anxiety.
But Trump not only won the 2024 presidential election, he won it comfortably. He won the three ‘blue wall’ states and, when every last vote is counted, the four swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. He also somehow won nearly half the votes from Latino men, increased support among Latinas and showed stronger support from African American men. He painted the country crimson red.
But the breadcrumb trail Trump left over the course of his nearly two-year campaign to regain the office has created a fraught perspective of what may come in a second term.
At various times he has promised, sometimes bullhorn loud, other times in his softer Trump timber dog whistle, plans he intends to carry out as he transforms the nation’s institutions and everyday life.
Whether his post-January 20th agenda mirrors his campaign bluster remains to be seen. But his promises have found hope among the various constituencies, including ultra-right blocs that elected him.
An abridged list of Trump’s plans for his soon-to-begin second term include: mass deportations, tariffs, dramatic foreign policy shifts, prosecution of the “Biden crime family,” end to veteran homelessness, legislation establishing only two genders, elimination of the Department of Education and $10,000 payments to home school parents.
Many, if not most, of these plans are contained in the 900-page blueprint, Project 2025, assembled by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. Its authors include a number of key former Trump staffers.
There are also other, more fanciful ideas floated during the campaign that include the promotion of research and development for vertical takeoff flying cars and creation of a “great American state fair.”
But of all the ideas contained in Project 2025, none seems to be as dark as mass deportation. If implemented, it would include deporting DACA recipients, young adults brought to the country as infants and children, and breaking up families that include spouses and children of undocumented immigrants.
Estimates of undocumented in the country range from ten to twenty million. Many have lived and worked here for decades. But, as signs from his rallies, along with Trump surrogates, say ‘mass deportation awaits.’“I’m very concerned,” said retired Pueblo chief Judge Dennis Maes. Mass deportation, as Stephen Miller, Trump’s architect of the plan, has said, means everyone. But there are safeguards that may delay the plan, at least in the way Team Trump envisions it. “It’s a violation of civil rights.” Still, said Maes, “I believe him when he says he’s going to do all this stuff.” Trump can and will do almost anything he wants, said the retired jurist. “If we depend on the Supreme Court to stop him, we’re in real trouble.” The Court, he said, “will do Trump’s bidding.”
Over the course of his marathon campaign, Trump often suggested implementation of the Insurrection Act, a federal law that allows a president to use the U.S. military in certain domestic situation. “That is totally wrong,” said Maes, “unless someone can convince me there is a massive revolution.”
Twenty-first century mass deportation, say critics, including LULAC, should remind everyone of the federal government’s draconian fifties and sixties-era mass deportation fiasco known as ‘Operation Wetback.’
Begun In 1954, nearly 1.1 million Mexicans were rounded up and returned to Mexico, including many Mexican Americans. The program continued until 1962.
(It should be noted that the program began as a joint agreement between the U.S. and Mexico. It was originally proposed to stem the flow of labor leaving Mexico for the U.S. At the same time, U.S. agribusiness was recruiting massive numbers of Mexican labor.)
While costs to implement mass deportation have been estimated as high as $80 billion in year one and as much as $950 billion over ten years, Trump told NBC News in a post-election interview, “It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not…really, we have no choice.”
Still, Team Trump seems enthusiastically supportive of mass deportation despite its unknown consequences which may include huge tax increases and higher prices, especially for food. Still, it’s all systems go for his supporters. “It’s my hope that we deport every single one of them,” said Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), adding it should begin the day Trump takes office.
But while there is great concern that implementing Trump’s plan and parts of Project 2025, others like Pueblo Mayor Heather Graham, say it is premature to begin worrying. “I’m not frightened at all,” Graham said in a recent phone interview. “The President-elect has issues more important,” including the economy, crime, inflation. “At the end of the day,” she said, “people want to buy groceries and spend time with their families and live in a safe community.”
