The lasting implications of Trump's presidency
By Megan Suchet, Copy Editor
Though his presidency ended on Jan. 20, Former President Donald Trump left a destructive legacy in his wake. In just four years, the former president has done profound damage to the country’s domestic and foreign policy, as well as its social and moral standing. The trauma of the Trump administration will resonate beyond the (first) four years of the Biden administration.
The Trump administration took the United States’ international credibility and beat it with a stick. With the extended Muslim Ban (which banned foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries from visiting the country for 90 days, suspended entry to the country of all Syrian refugees indefinitely and prohibited any other refugees from coming into the country for 120 days), the systematic and inhumane separation of migrant families at the southern border and the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords, Trump managed to alienate large swathes of the international community. His justification? As he told the UN General Assembly, “globalists are not the future.”
Domestic policy also underwent transformative changes. Only weeks after his inauguration, Trump aides set in motion the widest usage of the Congressional Review Act since its establishment 20 years ago. Under its rule, the government was allowed to sign 13 bills to erase federal bills enacted during the Obama administration. Furthermore, tone deaf to global developments, facts or science, the Trump administration managed a clean sweep of rules on the environment, labor, financial protection, abortion, education, gun rights and internet privacy.
The changes to the United States’ legal system during the Trump-era are historic and underreported. By appointing a record number of 48 judges in just three years (compared to 55 for Obama over eight years), who often serve decades or even life-long seats in critical courts, the administration has ensured that today’s culture wars will be futile. Three of the nine sitting judges on the Supreme Court were nominated by Trump. Even though Democrats swept the 2020 election – winning the presidency and both Houses of Congress – Trump’s judges retain broad authority to undermine President Joe Biden’s agenda, including in portfolios relevant to international policy on trade, environmental and commercial diplomacy. Judges have become the most impactful policy framers in the nation and will shape the law for decades to come.
Over the years, Trump has grown a massive following. The power Trump holds with the blind loyalty of his supporters is extremely dangerous. Without lifting a finger, Trump has inspired hundreds of self-proclaimed vigilantes at the border to regulate illegal immigrants how they see fit. He convinced millions that the global pandemic, the one that sent nearly every country into a nation-wide quarantine and took the lives of over 500 thousand Americans, was not a big deal and incited a riot at the Capitol, during which five people were killed and over 100 more were injured, to protest the results of a fair election. The pillars of democracy lay in ruins next to the unrelenting resolve of Trump’s supporters to follow their leader to the bitter end.
On Jan. 6 of this year, Trump exhorted his followers to march on Congress in a 70-minute address (politicians were meeting to certify Biden's win). The attack began moments after he took the applause. An investigation soon followed that found him not guilty of inciting a riot despite the mountain of evidence stacked against him, including video recordings of him directing the rioters to the Capitol. Does the president work free from the law? Is the president not bound to the same Constitution that dictates the lives of every one of his citizens? Trump doesn’t pay taxes. Trump colludes with foreign countries to rig presidential elections. Trump incites riots. And yet, he walks free. The law doesn’t seem to apply to the president of the United States.