Daron Acemoglu
As Trump begins his second term, it’s really hard to see any silver lining in the dark clouds.
A convicted felon who effectively attempted a coup on January 6, 2021, is America’s next president, and his Republican Party, which has never failed to bow to him, controls both chambers of Congress. Meanwhile, the opposition is in disarray. Few Democrats recognize that the November election was as much their failure as it was Trump’s success. But the fact is that they are not currently equipped to build a coalition to oppose Trump that extends much beyond their most mobilized base.
Making matters worse, Trump’s erratic, uninformed, and dangerous rhetoric and behavior have been normalized. This is true in the media, with many publications fearing the “all-powerful” Trump’s wrath. It is also true in the business community, which is chomping at the bit for tax cuts and deregulation. And it is true for much of the population, a significant share of which appears to be more disillusioned with the Democrats than afraid of Trump.
It is starkly apparent that Trump is a danger to US institutions. In fact, it is safe to say that, after four more years of Trump, US democracy will not be the same. At the very least, he will have demolished several more democratic norms, such as by eroding the autonomy of the Department of Justice and, most likely, by using state institutions to target adversaries. (Outgoing President Joe Biden also wrecked a longstanding norm, when he granted a presidential pardon to his son.) At worst, Trump will leave behind a US democracy that has been permanently maimed.
Trump’s second administration will be no boon for the economy, either. As it stands, the US is doing quite well relative to Europe, owing to a combination of European weaknesses and policy failures, positive Biden-administration policies, and a dynamic US tech sector. But I fear that four more years of Trump will significantly damage the US economy’s medium-term growth potential, possibly even threatening US global economic leadership.
The main problem is that America’s comparative advantage depends on the constant introduction of innovative technologies and products, and innovation depends on vigorous competition and a level playing field, created and maintained by robust institutions. But Trump’s support for artificial intelligence and crypto will strengthen America’s tech giants – the economy’s biggest monopolies – implying even less competitive pressure and a weaker incentive to innovate.
Moreover, Trump’s proclivity for threatening businesses that don’t toe his line and giving breaks to “friendly” tycoons (Elon Musk is at the front of the line) will damage any remaining semblance of a fair and impartial competitive environment in the US. His transactional approach to business – and, perhaps more audacious, moves by his family to maximize financial gains from his presidency – will damage both competition and institutions.
Globally, Trump-induced destabilization is all but guaranteed. The risks on this front are wide-ranging and often too terrifying to contemplate.
The irony is that the US president who promised voters that he would “Make America Great Again” may well be the one who sows the seeds of the post-American order.
Bruce Ackerman
The question you pose contains a mistake – or, rather, a misrepresentation. Trump does not have full control of Congress, even though the Republican Party holds majorities in both chambers. Trump’s command over the House of Representatives is particularly uncertain. Only 31 House Republicans are members of the Freedom Caucus, and slightly over 100 more self-identify as “MAGA Republicans.” That adds up to only about 135 seats in the 436-member House. Although House Speaker Mike Johnson is a Trump ally, he will be able to get presidential initiatives passed only with the support of a majority coalition comprising pragmatic centrists from both parties, no matter how much pressure Trump applies.
Trump’s associates – from Musk to Vice President J.D. Vance, to the Heritage Foundation (the think tank behind the ultra-conservative Project 2025) – have divergent, even conflicting, agendas. But even if one or another of these actors convinces Trump to back their “revolutionary” horse, extremist initiatives will never get the 219 votes needed to pass the House. Johnson is well aware of this. So, rather than allow, say, Project 2025 to lose decisively on the floor of the House, he will try to convince his fellow Republicans to bury it in committee.
In any case, the Republicans might not maintain their congressional majorities for long. When the 2026 mid-term elections come around, many will face serious challenges from Democrats, and the Trump loyalists who helped them get where they are today might not show up to back Republicans who, in their view, have “betrayed” the president.
To be clear, there is plenty of reason to worry. Notably, Trump has repeatedly suggested that he would seek a third term, even though the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly states that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” What if he did decide to run again in 2028 – say, because a centrist took the lead in the Republican primaries? Would the self-declared “textualists” who now dominate the Supreme Court declare such a power play unconstitutional? Would he back down? If he didn’t, who would take decisive measures to preserve the foundations of US democracy?
At this point, my crystal ball clouds over. I leave it to readers to consider the grim scenarios that may well lie ahead.
Aziz Huq
For those searching for guardrails for Trump’s second administration, it is well worth remembering how we got here. Among the many reasons for America’s rightward swing in the November 2024 election is the fact that neither of the serious federal criminal cases filed against Trump for grave abuse of power came to a hearing, let alone judgment. Both cases were derailed by federal judges – a district court judge in one case, and six Supreme Court justices in the other – who dragged their feet to delay the case, and then issued rulings shielding Trump from liability.
Those rulings – which were founded in novel, extravagantly creative legal theories – will end up shielding high-level officials from accountability, even if they carry out flagrantly criminal acts, such as to keep themselves or their allies in power. Thanks to this new promise of impunity, such behavior is about to become a lot more common. With “guardrails” like these, does American democracy need enemies?
But it gets worse. American voters chose Trump in a free and fair election. So, not only do US presidents now know that they will face no legal consequences for criminal efforts to thwart democracy; their fears of an electoral penalty are waning. Put another way, US voters have both decimated the implicit threat that a political leader will be removed from office for criminal self-dealing, and hollowed out the threat that voters will oust them in the next election. In this sense, US voters have sacrificed the guardrails that might have ensured a democratic future for their children on the altar of their (perceived) short-term well-being.
Alison L. LaCroix
With the Republican Party effectively controlling all three branches of the federal government, our best hope for an institutional check on Trump’s lawless impulses may well lie with 50 unruly actors: the states. America’s unique version of federalism – sometimes decried as dysfunctional or outmoded – now may serve a valuable purpose: adding necessary friction to the federal machine. In fact, slowing down the federal government – especially when it is dominated by one party – may well be the point of American federalism.
We know that decentralized power benefits the opposition. But this familiar argument is only part of the story. We might also need to embrace the notion that, in an imperfect world, it is better to have more and different jurisdictions – each with its own set of rules – and thus more and different local political communities. Such “jurisdictional redundancy,” as the legal scholar Robert M. Cover called it, may well be American federalism’s greatest asset.
When there is a “unitary source for norm articulation over a given domain,” Cover wrote in 1981, “the costs of error or lack of wisdom in any norm articulation” will be “suffered throughout the domain.” This insight, combined with the well-established legal principle that the federal government may not “commandeer” state and local officials by forcing them to carry out its mandates, can help keep the American republic anchored to its founding principles in the coming four years.
Richard K. Sherwin
Can existing institutions protect America’s democratic republic from autocracy?
The framers of the US Constitution, many of whom were steeped in ancient history, were acutely aware of the risk of authoritarianism. That is why they separated the federal government into three separate branches, and established a set of checks and balances that – in conjunction with a free and credible press (the “Fourth Estate”) – were supposed to safeguard against popular passions and wily tyrants. But as illiberal leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán have shown, liberal democracies can be dismantled from within, and the press, to the extent that it eludes state control, can be discredited as an “enemy of the people.”
Ultimately, the survival of the rule of law depends upon character and good faith. In his recent eulogy for President Jimmy Carter, Biden repeated a well-known quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “Character is destiny.” Carter’s character, Biden said, embodied love, mercy, and respect. Trump, by contrast, channels rage, resentment, and retribution. When loyalty to the leader, rather than to the Constitution, becomes the chief qualification for public service, the country’s fate becomes even more entangled with that individual’s character.
The US Supreme Court sharply escalated the risk that “personalized power” will take hold in the US when it granted presidents immunity from criminal prosecution, thereby elevating them above the law. Agents of this personalized power – like the insurrectionists who attempted to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power on January 6, 2021 – may be similarly shielded, whether by presidential pardons or through an inappropriate application of the Insurrection Act, which permits the use of armed forces to quell domestic unrest.
Those who truly value freedom, including Trump supporters who belatedly grasp the political costs of their actions, may seek to reassert their sovereign power in future elections. When that moment comes, they must hope that free and fair elections are still an option. There is an important corollary to Heraclitus’s maxim: collective character – the ethos embodied in the stories and images we share – is also destiny.