BY MOSHE HILL OPINION COLUMNS NOVEMBER 13 2024
In the greatest comeback in political history, Donald Trump was elected to become the 47th President in American history. The joy in the Jewish community was palpable, with a huge sense of relief in many neighborhoods knowing that, for now, a return to normalcy was approaching. Electoral success is only the beginning, however. For the second Trump term to be truly historic, he needs to accomplish very specific tasks to get the country back on track.
This can be broken down into three different categories: what he can do within the Executive branch, what he can do with Republican allies in Congress, and what he can do in the Judiciary.
Executive Branch
As the head of the Executive branch, Trump has a lot of power to make massive changes to the way the country is run. The federal government employs approximately three million people, and it is nearly impossible to clean house and “drain the swamp” as many would like. We have also seen in the first Trump administration that there are many federal employees who are so politically biased that they will actively attempt to sabotage a sitting president if they don’t like him. (Side note: The Daily Wire broke a story of a FEMA official who instructed team members to ignore houses with Trump signs after the latest hurricane in Florida. The rot goes deep.)
One thing Trump can do is spread the agencies around the country. This will have a two-pronged effect. First, it would make working for the federal government not something that people use as a steppingstone to gain political power in Washington, nor a way for patronage jobs for Washington elites. Trump is planning on bringing back Schedule F, which he put in through an October 2020 Executive Order that Joe Biden reversed. Schedule F made it easier to hire and fire government employees, which should certainly be under the authority of the president.
Another effect this will have will be to move government employees out of Virginia and Maryland, which will mean that the Republicans in those states won’t have to contend with the votes of Democratic government lifers. (Yes, there are political ramifications to moving agencies to making them more efficient. That doesn’t make the move wrong.)
Trump has vowed to shut down the Department of Education. This is a tough promise to keep, but it would be a welcome one. The Department of Education was opened in the late 1970s, and the education in this country has gotten steadily worse. The funding for the department would be disseminated amongst the states, which means that states would have more control over how their populations are educated. This would, hopefully, incentivize more states to have universal school choice, and break the monopoly of the failing public school system.
Trump also is going to use executive authority to open America back up for business. The stock market jumped with the news that Trump was coming back, for good reason. Trump will open the oil fields, causing a drop in oil prices, as gas companies don’t need to worry about their short-term future and could plan for long-term needs. Trump will also deregulate businesses, making it easier to start a business in the country and allow it to grow. Anyone who has ever run a small business knows how difficult government regulation is, and so small business owners and prospective owners are far happier with deregulation that the false promise of a tax rebate that Kamala Harris proposed.
In terms of foreign policy, Trump is already winning. Qatar said it is kicking out Hamas. Putin said he wants to make a deal. Kim in North Korea is already getting quiet. Xi in China is no longer threatening Taiwan. Iran is toning down its rhetoric. Essentially, the kids were told to get the house in order because dad is on his way home.
The greatest wins on the Trump horizon are the expansion of his 2020 wins: the Abraham Accords. Trump needs to end the Ukraine war via negotiation, but he needs to let Israel do what it needs to do to finish off Hamas and Hezbollah. Once he is in power, the Saudis will come to the table to sign the Accords, and peace will return to the region.
Legislative Branch
The Legislature has always been a dumpster fire, which is why Obama simply quit on them and decided to do everything he wanted via Executive Order, or as he put it: “with a pen and a phone.” Trump continued this trend by undoing a lot of Obama’s EOs, and Biden did the same to Trump. This cycle must end by Congress actually passing meaningful laws instead of ignoring them.
The first thing they must do is true border and immigration reform. Build the wall, fund border patrol, fund ICE, outlaw “Catch and Release,” and begin deportations. Over ten million people have come into this country illegally in the last four years. That is not the way any country can run and still be sovereign.
The next thing Congress must act on is making permanent the Trump tax cuts, which are set to expire next year. They also need to expand the tax cuts to fulfill Trump’s promises, like no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on social security. Letting Americans keep more of their money is absolutely vital to the running of the country.
Alongside this, of course, is reigning in the spending. We cannot have $2-trillion deficits every year. The national debt is expanding at an unprecedented rate. The Covid spending bills should have been an aberration, but under Biden that amount became the norm. Elon Musk has expressed his desire to handle government efficiency, which can be done at some level on the executive side of things, but Congress holds the purse strings, and they need to do better.
This can partly be accomplished by defunding public universities, especially those that violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by targeting Jews on campus. Many of the bills that passed Congress this term but were blocked from getting to the Senate floor by Chuck “Shomer Yishmael” Schumer should be reintroduced in the next session and sent to President Trump’s desk to sign.
Judicial Branch
Trump’s greatest legacy in his first term was his judicial appointments, especially at the Supreme Court. He must continue this so the constitution and the country can be protected for at least another generation.
Clarence Thomas is 76. Samuel Alito is 74. John Roberts is 69. It would be foolish for any of these men to try to stick it out for more than a few years. Thomas and Alito have been two of the most stalwart conservative voices in American history, and they need to be replaced with equally conservative figures 30 years their junior. If Trump does this, his court will reign for the next 40 years, and he will go down as the most consequential president in American history in that respect.
There are also the less sung but equally important federal judgeships. Joe Biden has appointed 213 judges to lifetime appointments as of last month. Currently, there are 47 vacancies. They need to be filled quickly, so the courts can still have a semblance of constitutional sanity.
Conclusion
President-elect Donald Trump has a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it. If his first term and the reaction to his victory are any indication, he will have no honeymoon period. The Democrats are already vowing to resist him in any way possible. Some are still calling for states to jail him even if he is occupying the Oval Office. Republicans will have a slim majority in both Houses, and he will need to whip them up to get their support and votes for his agenda. If he does manage to accomplish this, however, it will resonate for generations to come.
