The NPR Politics Podcast - Donald Trump's Domestic Policy Agenda

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

Trump campaigned on mass deportation, sweeping tariffs & other widespread changes to U.S. policy. How many of those changes are achievable? This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith.The podcast is produced by Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Indicator is a podcast where daily economic news is about what matters to you. Workers have been feeling the sting of inflation. So as a new administration promises action on the cost of living, taxes, and home prices, The S&P 500 biggest post-election day spike ever. follow all the big changes and what they mean for you. Make America affordable again. Listen to The Indicator, the daily economics podcast from NPR. Hey there, it's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Susan Davis.

I cover politics. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And today we're going to take a look at what president-elect Donald Trump's domestic policy agenda is likely to look like as he prepares to take office for the second time. I think we should start by taking a step back and noting that this is a bit extraordinary

because Donald Trump is entering office with a lot of experience. He's done this before and it seems like day one, the second time around, feels a lot more rested and ready than day one the first time around. Yeah. I mean, I think you're absolutely right. I think that is the clear point, is they have done this before. They know what the barriers are, they know what the roadblocks are, and they know that they have to move fast before campaign midterm season kicks in.

And I think you're seeing that already with all these cabinet picks, with all these promises of certain executive orders, kind of laying the groundwork so that they're moving on day one. I mean, if you just look back to eight years ago when the last time they tried this, they brought in Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor. He was kind of leading the transition. He had all these plans. They were all scrapped. Such a debacle. They put in as cabinet leaders a lot of traditional GOP

people, military generals who just were not in sync with Trump. In some cases, a lot of the Trump team felt they were acting more like guardrails and not pursuing Trump's agenda. That is not going to happen this time. You're seeing that with the picks. And I think they're feeling more confident that they will be able to hit the ground running. Yeah. So they learned from their mistakes and they made a lot of mistakes, but they are assuring us that they have learned from that, that also they have had four years out of office where their policy people like Stephen Miller, who's going to be a top advisor on immigration,

or Russ Vogt, who's going to be the head of the Office of Management and Budget, these people have spent four years making plans. Or entire careers waiting for this moment. And drafting executive orders and getting ready so that in the first week of the first Trump administration, there were like a couple of executive orders or memoranda a day. They're saying that it's going to be like a huge number.

It's going to happen really fast. They said last time that they were aiming for shock and awe. This time, I think Stephen Miller said on Fox, it's going to be like a bolt of lightning. I mean, velocity is the word I keep coming back to where it does seem like every signal they're sending is that they want to move fast and they want to do a lot and it also seems to me Franco that we are now at a time where because everything has become so polarized each administration comes in with part of their goal being let me erase as much of the past administration as I possibly can.

Donald Trump tried to do this to the Obama agenda, Biden tried to do it to the Donald Trump agenda, and now here we are again with Donald Trump trying to roll back as much of the Biden agenda as he can. What can he realistically do there? I mean he can do a lot. I mean Biden tried to do a lot and I think Trump essentially has made very clear that he wants to start where he left off four years ago. That starts with immigration policies. Jason Miller, Trump's senior advisor on the campaign was on our air recently talking about reinstating

a bunch of policies, whether that's remain in Mexico where migrants have to stay in Mexico while their cases go through the courts. Title 42 put in place during COVID to prevent any asylum seekers from coming in. Trump himself in a recent press conference talked about the border wall, but it's not just immigration. Trump has also promised about reversing Biden's climate agenda. Yeah. So things like making permitting easier for oil drilling or exploration, getting pipelines

up and running. As Trump says, drill, baby, drill. There are a lot of things that they can do quickly. There are also a lot of things that they're going to be a little hamstrung on because it turns out regulations are hard to reverse. An executive order, that's easy to reverse. And we're going to see that. Presidential memoranda, easy to reverse. But a regulation that's gone through the regulatory process at the agencies and has been posted in the federal register and there's been a comment period, that takes typically about 18 months. And it could take 18 months to reverse it. I will say, and I think Franco and I have both

been looking at this, there might be some efforts to try to reverse things with executive orders, to try to really test the limits. For instance, one of the things they're talking about is trying to do away with birthright citizenship. Sure, you gotta pass a law to do that. Yeah you say that's in the 14th Amendment, guys. How could you do that? Well, you can try to do it through executive action

and send it to the courts and see what happens. I think some portion of what Trump is going to try to do is about actually doing things. Yeah, I think that's no question at all. I mean, we also saw that eight years ago in the first Trump administration with the travel ban. Everyone said, you can't do this, this is illegal. Did that stop Trump?

No. And it didn't stop the chaos at the airports. It blew up the chaos in the airports, but Trump did it and then the courts stopped it. Well, these people that Tam was talking about before, folks like Stephen Miller got to work with other lawyers and they just kind of redid it. I mean, these people have the experience of not only having been in office but of fighting in the courts.

Eventually, after two or three times, they did get that travel ban implemented. So I see that very much so. And actually, I spoke with Russ Voed about this. This will be a technique where they are going to kind of test those limits, take another look at statutes and try to kind of push through those regulations. Test the limits of executive authority. I do wanna talk a little bit more specifically

about the actual agenda. And obviously we have a lot to say about immigration. We'll go deeper on that later. But let's start with economic policy because that was also the number one issue in a lot of voters' minds in this election. And the first thing that comes to mind is tariffs. Donald Trump has already announced that he is considering sweeping tariffs. But as we've discussed in the past, sometimes this is just the stick, right, that Donald Trump is using to enact other policies. But how seriously are you taking the tariff talk?

Yeah, I think it's very much a stick. I mean, I think it's a very big deal. It absolutely moves markets. I can assure you that I've spoken with diplomats who say this is a big discussion in their embassies right now. Trump makes huge, huge claims about the use of tariffs. He claims that he has stopped wars using the

threat of tariffs. At his press conference recently, he talked about the U.S. getting rich off of tariffs. I mean, we saw when Trump threatened tariffs against Canada and Mexico, he had a call within a day, I think it was, with the president of Mexico. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came rushing to Mar-a-Lago within a matter of days. The President of France invited Trump a few days after that to France. He is having a response because of this kind of talk. Now will he go through?

I mean, economists, as we have reported on this podcast, have warned of huge consequences if he carries out these threats. I think the question is going to be how much of this really is a negotiating tactic and many indications point he is and whether world leaders are actually going to call his bluff because as we've seen, they've been a bit resistant to do that. Trump sees tariffs as sort of this magical tool that he can use to make a deal. And get people to the table. And get people to the table.

And they are also this magical tool that he says will solve our debt and deficit problems. He's not persuadable on this. He really, truly believes that tariffs are a solution to a whole host of problems. It's also interesting to me because look, executive orders he can do on his own. Tariffs is something that the president can do virtually without any approval from Congress. But then as we shift to other parts of what he wants to do, this is where the other branches of government start to come into play. Tim, I think that I don't think we should say anything is a certainty when Donald Trump is president, but it seems

the closest thing to a certainty is that they are going to extend the Trump tax cuts which expire at the end of the year. And he can't do that on his own. Right. He can't do that on his own. He is going to need Congress to do it. And as you know very well, Republicans have a very incredibly narrow majority in the House, which means essentially all House Republicans have to agree on this, which is really tough because all House Republicans don't agree on anything. They might not agree that what day of the week it is. Yes.

What we know is that not only does Trump want to extend the existing tax cuts, the 2017 tax cuts, but he also wants to add things that he promised on the campaign trail. So no taxes on tips, no taxes on social security income, no taxes on overtime. Those are going to be interesting and challenging things to insert into this. And you already have members of Congress, Republican members of Congress saying, we can't cut all these taxes if we aren't also cutting spending. That's a good point, Tam. And Franco, that's also something that Donald Trump wants to do is he wants to cut federal spending. He's tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to help him do that. But I think it's also, we've said it before, it's real

difficult to cut spending in Washington. I mean, it's so difficult. I mean we already have had so many analysts saying that there's just very little fat to cut. This is an area that he has said it's going to be easy to take through and I think there is a reason why you know these federal spending there's always these big fights because things cost money and they have to get these things through. So Republicans are just as responsible for these, you know, increases in spending as Democrats and

they are going to have to be the ones as well to agree to these spending cuts of the things that they have supported and continue to want. One of the things I think will be fascinating to watch not just from a policy perspective but a political one is that so much of the places where Republicans historically look to cut spending in these domestic programs are the social safety net, their childcare funding, education funding, things that working class Americans need. And as the Republican Party shifts to become more of a working class party, that gets harder and harder to do politically. OK, let's take a quick break. We'll talk more about Trump's agenda when we get back. Okay, let's take a quick break. We'll talk more about Trump's agenda when we get back. What's in store for the music, TV, and film industries for 2025?

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Specifically, we make pop culture resolutions. We also check in on what we resolved to do this last year. Did we catch up on all those classic movies or finally write that novel? Find out on the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. And we're back. And Tam, at the risk of bearing the lead in this podcast, I think now we have to talk about immigration because I think that that is a policy issue that Donald Trump campaigned so clearly on that is so closely aligned with his vision for America and his administration. I think that's one arena where it's fair to say they're planning to go really big.

Yes, they want to return as Franco said Trump-era policies using unilateral action to halt the flow of people and also to begin deporting. They're going to look for criminal aliens, people who shouldn't be here, transnational gangs. They're planning to work with state and local authorities to try to find transnational gangs and deport them first. Franco, obviously, Donald Trump as president can do executive orders on this front, as you noted. A lot of the deportation forces can happen through the executive branch action without Congress.

And they're also looking at passing immigration legislation on Capitol Hill to spend a whole lot more money trying to secure the border. There is a lot he can do, but there's also a lot of limits to what he can do. I mean, he's talked about mass deportations and you can figure what does mass deportations mean. He even recalibrated towards the end of his campaign talking about mass deportations of criminal immigrants. Though when he was questioned from Kristen Welker of NBC whether he was going to continue deporting 11 million people, he did not back down from that. The reality though is no administration is going to be able to deport that amount of people considering the likely

impacts it would have on the economy, but particularly the U.S. just doesn't have the resources to carry that out, doesn't have the manpower or the money to do something like that. It would just be such a big move. Tam spoke about staffers saying they're not going to pull kids out of schools. I think what you will see as she said is it's gonna be a show.

He's going to take credit for some of the reductions that are happening right now in the border. I could see some raids, I could see some action absolutely being taken, and then seeing big, big reports. Anytime there's a report of a downfall, I think we're gonna hear it, there's going to be headlines about it.

And I think you're gonna see a very much promotional effort of the work they're doing on this front, as well as any small win is going to be portrayed as a huge victory. I also am interested in how far they go on Capitol Hill as well, because immigration is one of those issues where I go back to that word mandate, where I think a lot of Republicans down-balloting in Congress saw the outcome of this election as a mandate on the issue of immigration. And they are already looking at using, and we won't go

deep on the process in this podcast, but using a special budget process to try to get immigration legislation through that won't require the votes of Democrats, just to spend more money on immigration, to do things like where you said they need resources, more border patrol agents, building more detention facilities along the border. And I am personally watching what the Republican unity around that will be around that vote. But the sense I have now is that the political momentum, they feel like they have the wind at their backs to do this thing that they feel Republicans believe that they do have a mandate to go really aggressive to crack down on illegal immigration in this country.

I mean, they certainly have the wind at their back. I mean, we've seen that over the last six months. I mean, the things that Biden has implemented in the last six months are the most, I mean, I've been covering immigration for many, many years. I have never seen Democrats support the extent of enforcement measures that Biden implemented. I mean, he essentially implemented the same asylum rules as close to Title 42, denying asylum seekers, even the ability to seek asylum, he's gone very, very far. You have Democratic governors who are criticizing Biden for not doing enough. I absolutely think they have the wind at their backs, right now at least.

Danielle Pletka Frank, we talked about how Donald Trump wants to reduce spending, but they say they also want to make the government more efficient. And by that, the president also has certain levels of power to just reduce the size of the federal workforce. And the federal workforce is the largest employer in the United States. But the Trump administration seems pretty clear that they want a lot fewer federal workers. Yeah.

I mean, I think that is an area that is almost as clear of what Trump wants to do as kind of immigration. I mean, Trump has made every indication possible of his intent to aggressively expand the presidential powers. I mean, we were kind of talking about it earlier a little bit. Tam was talking about Russ' vote, taking over for the Office of Management and Budget. The Office of Management and Budget is basically the nerve center of not only the White House, but basically the entire executive branch.

It makes sure that all the other agencies are kind of working in tandem. And he put in place Russ Vogt, as well as a couple other people, or he's gonna have them in place, who were in this office before. And they are essentially activists in many ways for expanding presidential powers.

And I'm talking about two areas specific, which you're alluding to. One is schedule F, which is this measure that allows you to kind of change these federal workers, protected federal workers, and make them more of a political class who can be fired at will and replaced with allies. Another one is this thing called impoundment, which is this really wonky word that essentially takes more control of the power of the purse away from Congress. I mean, these are two very significant measures and just two of the things that Vought and his allies are proposing for the Office of Management and

Budget. And one thing that they're talking about is mandating that federal workers be in the office five days a week. Now, since COVID, that has not been the rule. A lot of people have been teleworking, but they are going to make it uncomfortable for federal workers who they see as part of the deep state and as part of the problem. And so they're going to make it very uncomfortable and make it so that people want to retire or want to find jobs in the private sector.

Last time, he signed a federal hiring freeze. So something like that could happen again, and they could bleed the federal workforce essentially just through attrition. I kind of want to end this conversation on a vibe. I'm trying to think about how I put this. What is that vibe? In that we all covered the first Trump administration. The energy around this one feels different.

And I think that in the first Trump administration, he was such an upset to the system and everything he did was so deeply criticized, often sometimes from within the party. And it seems like this time around, Donald Trump has really shifted the window of what Americans think is acceptable behavior from an American president. And I think that's just something I'm keeping in mind as we go to cover his second term, is that Trump is just willing to push envelopes. He's

willing to say the thing. He's willing to do the thing. And I guess part of this is like we have to be really prepared for the unexpected because Trump is willing to say the thing. He's willing to do the thing. And I guess part of this is like we have to be really prepared for the unexpected because Trump is willing to do unexpected things. Yeah. I mean, I definitely agree that we have to be ready for the unexpected. And I do think that he's got more support from the American people to do these unexpected things. And he has more support in Congress because he's basically run out anyone who was not Trumpy enough.

There are very few senators left who would ever stray from him. And in his hiring this time, he's hiring people who are loyalists. That is their primary qualification, is that they have the same worldview he does. Yeah, I mean, I do wonder if there is going to come a point where we talk about, well, you know, they've gotten these nominations out so quickly,

they're moving more efficiently, they know how to do. But the X factor always was last time around, Trump himself. Yeah. Like all these people can have great plans, but if he sees something on the news that changes his mind, the policy could change. Totally. And Trump changes his mind a lot.

He's very malleable on policy, which I think often makes him a hard-to-predict president because he can change his mind in a way that other presidents don't. All right. Let's leave it there for today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.