December 26, 2024 - 5:30pm
Conservatives may control the three branches of Government, but Donald Trump’s majorities in both the House and Senate could pose major problems for the President-elect.
Because of the unusual combination of the Constitution’s term limits and Trump’s non-consecutive tenure in the office, the President-elect is entering the White House as a lame duck. And, as last week’s debt fiasco shows, the truth of this is being made plain even before he settles into the Oval Office.
It’s a fact of American political life that a president in his second term lacks the sway of one just entering office. But every time this has happened before, it has concerned a president who was already in office, who already had his people in place from the first term and could hit the ground running in the second. (The only other non-consecutive presidency, Grover Cleveland’s, predated formal term limits, but even he struggled in the last two years.)
Trump, on the other hand, will be putting his staff and his agenda in place at the same time that the big political players are already looking past him to 2028. Trump will certainly impact the midterm elections in ways we cannot yet guess, but 5 November 2024 was the last time any member of Congress will appear on the ballot with him. This is already the most influential Trump will ever be, and his power will decline with each passing day.
Trump’s plan for the coming years is still unknown, but it will certainly involve some of his signature issues. On immigration, he enjoys the support of the American people in poll after poll, and will probably have little trouble in getting Congress to go along with building more sections of the wall or increasing funding for more border patrol agents. Maintaining the tax cuts of his first term should also prove popular.
On other issues, like the introduction of higher tariffs and the reduction of government spending, he faces a more uphill battle. Even where tariffs might be broadly popular among his supporters, each individual rate hike will challenge the financial position of a vested interest. Will a lame-duck president be able to sway members of congress to alienate those friends in industry that promise support for years to come?
Likewise, each cut to the bureaucracy endangers a programme that some representative or senator holds dear. Shallow but widespread support for change often fails against narrow but deep efforts to keep things the same. While some moderate Democrats might be inclined to support tariffs or border security, to reduce the size of government Trump will have to rely upon his own party.
Trump comes to office now, as he did in 2016, as the leader of a triumphant populist movement. But nothing lasts forever. For Trump to see his vision written into law, he must act quickly, before the gravity of term limits drags him back to earth.
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SubscribeUniversities need to run their own campuses, which includes permitting protest activity and not permitting it. Given the interest, which I’m sure is genuine, taken by JD Vance in free speech, universities and organisations like FIRE should seek a meeting with the VP to urge him to tell Trump to calm down. Vance in turn should tell the universities to do their job in which case the President won’t be annoyed by occasional outrageous behaviour on campuses.
The constitution gives you the right to peacefully assemble. It does not give you the right to harass or disrupt the normal operation of a college campus. Universities can set rules as well as time and places for those that want to protest. No one has a right to cover their face at a protest
Yes – This is why many UnHerd readers and writers for that matter are Classically Liberal and nonpartisan… It’s not about who, it’s about what….
Where did the writer get the kooky idea there is free speech on American campuses? You toe the hard lefty line or pay the consequences in grades and hiring.
> if a protest devolves into violence and property destruction, you don’t have an “illegal protest”:
You’re it was first but mostly peaceful protest when it was for approved social justice causes. Of course when truckers were protesting about their livelihood being stripped from them then it was an “illegal protest” and “treason”.
Now that they don’t control all of the branches of government it seems that now these leftists really care about the freedom of speech. Go kick an egg.
Do we think the marches in London with Palestinian flags are protests ?
Do we think hammering on doors and using loudhailers to drown out speakers in Universities are “protests ” ?
I dont
At least in the UK universities are a heavily subsidised middle class perk that we can no longer afford. We need to return to a system under which only the most academically talented students are subsidised. The Desmond fodder can learn how to unblock a u-bend instead.
And this, Greg, is merely one more example of why the US Government should never have been in the business of funding Universities. Nor funding progressive NGOs that have been the ‘muscle’ behind progressive’s “Cancel Culture” cult-like movement. Nor should the government be providing any funding or vouching for any other quasi-governmental organization, such as Fannie and Freddie Mac that, coupled with Congress’s ‘Affordable Housing’ marketplace demands (in the 1990s), led banks/investment institutions to follow Congress’s demands and inevitably push America into the Great Recession.
Here’s hoping Trump clears up most of this by significantly reducing the size of the government so that, going forward, government officials that think they’re Emperors don’t tyrannize innocent Americans anymore. This has been happening for well over a decade, and too many organizations and Social Activists get their funding by suckling off the government teat (that’s racking up debt), rather than doing the hard work of learning how to be actual productive members of society.
It requires bravery or self interest to venture fully in to support for one side or the other in this existential war. There are rights and wrongs on both sides, on that of the protestors and that of the Zionists. Doxxing, imprisonment, assault, denying employment and racist harassment are part and parcel of the present university space. Higher education is no longer an island and students need to factor this in to their protests. Go full on and risk the consequences or complete one’s education. I did the latter in the seventies and don’t regret it for one moment. Then again I was not rich nor connected for future elevation by the participants. Keep it simple students.
This is conspicuously an issue affecting elite universities. Their students are pampered, privileged brats. Their endowments are scandalously large, reason enough to question why they should be subsidized by taxpayers at all. Few schools outside the Ivies and California have had significant problems dealing with differences of opinion on contentious issues. These schools have had because they have engendered an intolerant mindset and a lack of the true liberality they pretend to represent.
In the US it’s not just the elite universities, but virtually all of them.
As I understand it, experts agree that a protest staged by lefty students in which crimes are committed and property destroyed is called a “mostly peaceful protest.”
Experts also agree that any protest staged by “far-right” racist sexist homophobes ia called an “armed insurrection.”
I think this is largely a disagreement about semantics. What Trump calls an unlawful protest you want to call a riot. While I would agree that peaceful protests should be allowed, campaigns of harassment, death threats, and even physical assaults on conservative voices on college campuses have to stop, and I think yourselves and President Trump agree on that.
Hamas must be destroyed and Palestinians left free of their terror. Islam has no place in Western societies and all mosks must be closed. If Islam withdraws it stated intent to destroy Israel and It’s annihilation of the Jews then it may be seen as a peaceful cult. Until then, Islam is the enemy of the free world.
The right-wing free speech mob shuts up and sidles off, tail between legs, when their Israeli masters tell them exactly what the limits are to the ‘free speech’ they were fighting for…. smh
Remember guys, if it’s college kids protesting Palestinian women and children being bombed to a pulp by the IDF with Western-supplied weapons… it’s “iLLegAL pR0tEsTs”.
Trump is being forced into this position by his AIPAC handlers who know how bad it looks when every college campus in the country is rightly outraged over the genocide happening on livestream. The youth naturally recognize and are shocked by what they see. After being educated for a few years, reading Unherd, and watching Triggernometry, maybe they’ll be as smart as you fine gentlemen, and realize that Netanyahu is a good master, and that free speech is only free when it’s your side that gets to define it.
“And schools that attempt to comply are likely to crack down on both protected and unprotected speech. This is exactly what happened when the Obama and Biden administrations revise
d federal Title IX guidance,”
Oh to watch the Progressive waking up and smelling the coffee! Maybe, just maybe, the odd ‘liberal’ could and should have found the behaviours of the Obama and Biden administrations objectionable. Then they might be in a position to protest now. But they didn’t. And Middle America sees their objections now as trying to apply double standards against the president they elected.
There’s a good opinion piece on the NY post about this
Unlike this piece it’s straight to the point : Potus should not interfere with private institutions
That he has comes both as a relief and as a worry.
The headline news shouldn’t be Trump: it should be the governance of these institutions, accountability, equality in front of the law. That it has come to Potus to sort this shit out is regrettable. Unpleasant. Potentially dangerous.
Sure.
Only themselves to blame. Shame on them.
(Vague echo to the Ukrainian crisis ?)
Institutions that have accepted billions in taxpayer money are only nominally “private”. A solution is to do exactly as Trump threatens and fully return them to their private status. All of the schools in question are obscenely rich with endowments of stunning valuation, a fact all the more scandalous in view of how many of their students are buried under the weight of loans to pay their tuitions. Higher education has become a grift that dwarfs the Bernie Madoff scheme.
Violence and intimidation are not speech, much less protected speech.
Generally agree Greg. The problem is his definition of “protest.” What Trump is trying to describe as an “Illegal Protest” is not actually a “Protest.” He’s trying to make the case that using intimidation to monopolize public spaces can’t be tolerated.
Public spaces are by definition “inclusive spaces.” If one group takes over a space through intimidation they are creating an “exclusive space” and effectively censoring everyone else. Occupying a building is not a Protest, its more likely a Public Trespass that the universities are not enforcing out of fear. Its a category error.
Does that logic of occupying a building apply to January 6th then? i.e. was that occupation legal or not?
Obviously since many were indiscriminately put in prison for years. The question for you is whether the January 6th punishment standards should apply to Left Wing building occupiers?
And not just any old buildings – the occupation of US federal and state government buildings has been a proud centerpiece of Leftists movements – with bragging rights – for well over 50 years (i.e. since the 1960s). It was always considered ‘cool’ when Leftists did it (and, because of this, such acts rarely make the news anymore), but it’s considered ‘insurrection’ when those on the Right do it. I recall reading an article about the Left’s occupation of a US federal building that occurred merely months after January 6, with only a few news organizations reporting on it.
I say tolerating the occupation of any federal or state building was a bad idea from the beginning. It should have been binned, along with all of the bell bottoms and ‘flower power’ tee-shirts that quickly fell out of fashion, back in the 1970s.
Everyone’s in agreement that breaking the law is illegal.
People are worried that any kind of protest against Israel’s war crimes will be outlawed/made very ‘expensive’.
I suspect you’re part of the problem rather than the solution.
Well said, Mr. Bone.
“… when talking about arresting people for their expression, a little precision is in order.”
This is the problem with Trump. He says stupid stuff all the time. It gives ammunition to his enemies. Although I don’t think Trump is the great defender of free speech, he’s soooo much better than the previous administration.
“Stupid stuff”.He tends to say what an awful lot of people are thinking. And unlike most career politicians he’s not the least afraid of the wailing of his enemies. Why should he be? He’s wealthy, doesn’t even take his salary, this is the end of his brief career in politics, he’s survived everything the left has thrown at him (even multiple threats to his life), and he has the possibility of becoming the most consequential US president since Reagan. Not a bad way for a chap to wind down a life, I think.