Urgent items on the policy agenda for a second term
DONALD TRUMP gave further hints of his priorities for a second term on Tuesday night, as he attacked Joe Biden over illegal migration, energy security and the economy.
The former president said he would put an end to “Biden migrant crime” and repeated his pledge to “drill, baby, drill”. He also promised a raft of tax cuts and said he would reduce America’s national debt, now at an all-time high.
Immigration
Mr Trump has pledged a raft of new measures on immigration, including a new “Alien Enemies Act” to remove “gang members, drug dealers and cartel members” from the US, and a mechanism for deporting “Hamas sympathisers” from American college campuses.
He has also promised to close sections of the US southern border, reinstate his plans to build a border wall, introduce “ideological screening” for immigrants and repurpose federal agencies with other jurisdictions to work on border security.
Foreign policy
The former president is sceptical of Nato, and has said he would work to increase the defence spending of the alliance’s members by threatening not to honour the collective security pact.
He has also pledged to end the war in Ukraine by mediating between Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin and said he would back Israel to “finish the problem” of Hamas in Gaza. On defence, he said he would build a “a state-of-theart missile defence shield” over the US that will be “the greatest dome ever”.
Energy security
Mr Trump is a staunch supporter of fossil fuel extraction, and has said he would reverse the Biden administration’s policies to pivot US energy production to clean power, reopening refineries on land protected by Mr Biden and scrapping green energy subsidies. Mr Trump said the US was close to becoming “energy dominant” before he lost the 2020 election, and promised to restore fossil fuel production.
He would also be expected to remove Mr Biden’s federal incentive programme for electric vehicles, arguing: “They don’t go far, they cost a fortune.”
Civil service reform
After years of promising to “drain the swamp”, Mr Trump’s plans to make it easier to sack federal employees was blocked at the end of his first term after a legal challenge from unions.
He has said he would bring back the controversial “Schedule F”, which would give him hire-and-fire power over the civil service and allow him to install loyalists in key jobs in the administration, including the law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Mr Trump has also suggested he would use the Department of Justice to attack his political opponents in “retribution” for the legal action against him during this presidential campaign.
Healthcare
Mr Trump has said he would repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as “Obamacare”, and replace it with a new system he claims would give Americans better and cheaper healthcare.
He says he would also impose an executive order to esnure the US pays the same for pharmaceutical products as other developed countries.
‘The Alien Enemies Act will remove gang members, drug dealers and cartel members’
Education
Like many other Republican candidates, Mr Trump has pledged to shutter the federal Department of Education, allowing individual states to “run the education of our children” and cutting federal funding for programmes that promote “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content.”