Revisiting: What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Second Trump Administration

Where does energy lie in our polity and in our political system?

Former US President Barack Obama speaks with President-elect Donald Trump before the State Funeral Service for former US President Jimmy Carter at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC, on January 9, 2025. (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)

One week from today at noon, Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated for the second time as president of the United States.

Two months ago, on November 11, 2024, I wrote a post about that looming reality, attempting less than a week removed from Trump’s victory to think through what we would be likely to see during a second Trump administration. What I produced was pretty vague. I talked in fairly abstract terms about how we’d get right-wing government; how that would differ from the center-right presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush; how Republicans in Congress would bow down before the incoming president; and how his presidency would be rife with corruption.

I stand by all of that. But at the tail end of the transition period, with dozens of Senate-confirmable nominees scheduled for hearings this week and beyond, and two months of pronouncements by the president-elect and his circle of oligarchic advisers behind us, it’s possible to make much better informed and more precise predictions about what awaits us.

Energy in the Executive