Trump’s Triumph

On November 5th, 2024, Donald Trump was declared the 47th president of the United States
against Kamala Harris after winning all seven swing states for a total of 312 electoral college
votes compared to Harris’ 216. This landslide victory is historic in many more ways than one.
Not only is he now the oldest president to be elected, but his winning marks only the second
time in the history of the United States that someone has won two non-consecutive terms, with
Grover Cleveland being the first. Not to mention Trump previously being impeached twice
during his first presidency and now being the first convicted felon to be sworn in as president.
On May 30, 2024 a jury found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business
records in order to conceal a scheme that was found to corrupt the 2016 election process. He was
sentenced to an unconditional discharge on January 10, 2025 which allowed his inauguration to
proceed.

During his reelection campaign, Trump promised to fight for middle and lower class
Americans through crackdowns on illegal immigration, drug flow throughout the country,
building more job opportunities, and implementing immediate tariffs to try to bring the cost of
gas and groceries down. Some research suggests that tariffs have been shown to raise
the cost of goods for consumers, as the prices of these goods are usually raised in order to make
up for the extra cost to import them. If President Trump goes through with the 60% tariff on
China, one of our biggest trading partners, there may be a retaliation of tariffs being put into
place on American imports into China as well as an increase in prices and inflation.

Throughout the campaign cycle, Project 2025 was a major point of debate. Project 2025 was a supposed conservative roadmap including restricting reproductive rights, undoing climate change legislations, eliminating the Department of Education and the National Weather Service, expanding executive powers, carrying out mass deportations of illegal immigrants, and shutting the southern border down. Throughout his campaign, Trump claimed that he had no involvement in the makings of this document. After securing victory, he started naming major proponents of Project 2025 to his cabinet including Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget, Tom Homan as “Border Czar”, and Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy.

Since being inaugurated this past Monday, Trump has already begun making drastic changes by signing 26 executive orders compared with Biden’s 9 executive orders on his first day in office. These executive orders include repealing the United States from the Paris Agreement joining only three other countries, Iran, Libya, and Yemen, to do so; designating drug cartels and other organizations as terrorists, implementing the Department of Government Efficiency, pardoning over 1,500 people who had been arrested and jailed during the January 6 insurrection of 2021, and proclaiming only two recognized biological sexes: male and female. This comes after reversing a number of former president Biden’s executive orders. Americans will be watching as more changes unfold amid the transition of political power.

(Featured image source: FMT website / AP pic)