Election Day
After this long and miserable campaign, Election Day has finally come and gone. We're going into uncharted waters here; America has had good and bad presidents, but we have never before elected an actual demagogue. It's hard to know what exactly will happen next.
Trump repeatedly changed his policy proposals, limited as they were, during the campaign, so we can't be sure exactly what he'll try to do when in office. But we do know some of them, and we know the budget the Republican Congress is likely to try to pass (Paul Ryan has been trying to pass it for a while). The economic effects are fairly grim; food stamps, medicaire, and other safety net programs would be gutted. Repubs have been promising to repeal ObamaCare for years, and it may be possible for them to do so now. And of course, they will likely try to appoint a far right judge to the Supreme Court (and if other current judges die in the next four years, they'll appoint multiple such judges). So we could potentially be looking at a lot of things being overturned depending on what cases are brought.
Whether Congress would actually approve funding for a border wall we don't know; Paul Ryan is very fiscally conservative and the wall would be exporbitently expensive, but we also don't know if he'll remain Speaker of the House. The President actually has quite a lot of power over immigration, but again we don't know what precisely Trump will do or how extensive his actions will be. But mass deportations were already occuring under Obama, so it isn't a stretch for that to just be expanded even further. It may well happen.
In the Senate the Democrats just barely have enough seats for fillibustering, but it is also possible that the Repubs will pass changes to the fillibuster rules now that they have a majority. There are also Obama's various executive orders, many of which Trump can simply overturn. Energy policy is likely to change; we can't be sure what will happen with the Paris Accords, but in any case it seems likely that the country will be moving away from fighting climate change and back towards fossil fuels.
Depending on whether Trump's proposed tax plan is actually enacted and what he does in terms of trade (we can't know whether he would actually start a trade war, as he proposed during his campaign), we could potentially be facing another recession. Job losses would likely hurt lower wage workers the most.
All told, there are serious risks going forward. And there is also a great deal of uncertainty. As for me, I'm frightened of what may happen...in all likelihood I will lose some of my civil rights (I was so excited when marriage equality was passed, but...now that may be gone). We are already seeing a surge of racial hostility and violence; we may see a surge of misogynistic incidents soon as well. Another recession could hurt badly for someone like me, who is just barely in the lower middle class, and for people like my brother (new baby to take care of, both he and his wife don't make a whole lot of money).
The thing that worries me the most is climate change. We only have so much time to take action before it's too late to stop some of the worst effects. We can't unmelt the polar icecaps, you know? Depending on what we do now...it's frightening to think of my little nephew growing up in a world that's been severely harmed by climate change with no hope of fixing it.
Well...tomorrow is another day. That's all there is to say, I suppose.
Trump repeatedly changed his policy proposals, limited as they were, during the campaign, so we can't be sure exactly what he'll try to do when in office. But we do know some of them, and we know the budget the Republican Congress is likely to try to pass (Paul Ryan has been trying to pass it for a while). The economic effects are fairly grim; food stamps, medicaire, and other safety net programs would be gutted. Repubs have been promising to repeal ObamaCare for years, and it may be possible for them to do so now. And of course, they will likely try to appoint a far right judge to the Supreme Court (and if other current judges die in the next four years, they'll appoint multiple such judges). So we could potentially be looking at a lot of things being overturned depending on what cases are brought.
Whether Congress would actually approve funding for a border wall we don't know; Paul Ryan is very fiscally conservative and the wall would be exporbitently expensive, but we also don't know if he'll remain Speaker of the House. The President actually has quite a lot of power over immigration, but again we don't know what precisely Trump will do or how extensive his actions will be. But mass deportations were already occuring under Obama, so it isn't a stretch for that to just be expanded even further. It may well happen.
In the Senate the Democrats just barely have enough seats for fillibustering, but it is also possible that the Repubs will pass changes to the fillibuster rules now that they have a majority. There are also Obama's various executive orders, many of which Trump can simply overturn. Energy policy is likely to change; we can't be sure what will happen with the Paris Accords, but in any case it seems likely that the country will be moving away from fighting climate change and back towards fossil fuels.
Depending on whether Trump's proposed tax plan is actually enacted and what he does in terms of trade (we can't know whether he would actually start a trade war, as he proposed during his campaign), we could potentially be facing another recession. Job losses would likely hurt lower wage workers the most.
All told, there are serious risks going forward. And there is also a great deal of uncertainty. As for me, I'm frightened of what may happen...in all likelihood I will lose some of my civil rights (I was so excited when marriage equality was passed, but...now that may be gone). We are already seeing a surge of racial hostility and violence; we may see a surge of misogynistic incidents soon as well. Another recession could hurt badly for someone like me, who is just barely in the lower middle class, and for people like my brother (new baby to take care of, both he and his wife don't make a whole lot of money).
The thing that worries me the most is climate change. We only have so much time to take action before it's too late to stop some of the worst effects. We can't unmelt the polar icecaps, you know? Depending on what we do now...it's frightening to think of my little nephew growing up in a world that's been severely harmed by climate change with no hope of fixing it.
Well...tomorrow is another day. That's all there is to say, I suppose.