If Donald Trump returns to the White House for a second term as president, the impact will be felt in many aspects of American life and also across the world.
On almost every issue of domestic US policy – from immigration to the environment to gun laws to LGBTQ+ rights – Trump has tacked far to the right of the American mainstream.
On a host of other issues, including freedom of the press and the court system, Trump has threatened to break new ground in taking on what he sees as “enemies within”. He represents a real threat to freedom of the press and could weaponize the courts to go after those politicians, and others, who have opposed him.
With the election looming, the country could be on the brink of a profound change, greater than any other in recent American history. With Trump and Kamala Harris now neck-and-neck in the polls, the odds of this election could not be any tighter. But, crucially, the stakes could not be any higher.
Here is a list of the main threats Trump could represent:
Freedom of the press will be under threat
In his first term and as a candidate, Trump has consistently attacked the mainstream press and used conservative media for his political purposes. He threatened to weaken libel laws and called the press “fake news” and the “enemy of the people”. There’s nothing to suggest a re-elected Trump would tone down his aggression.
As recently as this month, Trump demanded that CBS News be stripped of its broadcast license as punishment for airing an edited answer of an interview with his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, and he threatened that other broadcasters ought to suffer the same fate.
This rhetoric, along with Trump’s past actions, prompted one science journalist to consider whether press freedom and democracy should be added to the “endangered list”.
Sensible gun-safety policies could be revoked
As president, Joe Biden oversaw the passage of the first major federal gun-safety law in almost three decades. Now, advocates fear that those policies could be easily reversed if Trump and congressional Republicans win this election.
If Trump wins election again, advocates expect him to immediately close the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, created in 2023 and overseen by Kamala Harris, and nominate a gun industry-friendly leader as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He could also disrupt implementation of the law Biden signed and wind back some of his administration’s efforts to broaden background checks.
The gun-safety advocate Angela Ferrell-Zabala says a second Trump term would mean having to “fight like hell” to secure progress made on “common basic gun-safety measures”.
Idaho’s extreme abortion ban could go nationwide
When the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, it paved the way for more than a dozen states to ban almost all abortions. While these bans allow for abortion in emergencies, the language and fear of criminal consequences mean doctors are forced to wait and watch as patients grow sicker.
If Trump wins, it’s possible federal restrictions on abortion are next. Although Trump’s stance on a national ban isn’t entirely clear – he’s repeatedly flip-flopped on the issue – his administration wouldn’t need Congress to attack abortion access nationwide.
Project 2025, the rightwing playbook for a second Trump term, proposes using the 1873 Comstock Act, which outlaws the mailing of abortion-related materials, to ban people from shipping abortion pills. These pills account for about two-thirds of US abortions.
If enacted to its fullest extent, the Comstock Act could not only ban pills but the very equipment that clinics need to do their jobs, and Trump could use the legislation to implement a nationwide de facto abortion ban.
Trump could also weaken the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala), a federal law that protects emergency abortion access. Idaho’s extreme abortion ban has been at the center of a legal debate over the law, which recently reached the supreme court. The court restored the right of Idaho doctors to perform a broader range of emergency abortions, but left the door open to reconsider Emtala in the future.
US cities are at risk of military takeovers
Trump has threatened to use presidential powers to seize control of cities largely run by Democrats, to use federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations, and to obliterate the progressive criminal justice policies of left-leaning prosecutors. He threatened to deploy the national guard to combat urban protests and crime – and wouldn’t wait to be called in by mayors or governors but would act unilaterally.
“In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of law and order … I will not hesitate to send in federal assets including the national guard until safety is restored,” Trump says in his campaign platform.
Mayors and prosecutors in several US cities are collaborating over strategies to minimize the fallout. But as Levar Stoney, the Democratic mayor of Richmond, Virginia, said: “It’s very difficult to autocrat-proof your city.”
Mass deportations could wreak havoc on immigrants
Raids and mass deportations lie at the heart of Trump’s vision for a second term.
He’s promised to restore and expand his most controversial immigration policies, including the travel ban aimed at mostly Muslim countries. He has consistently promised to stage the “largest deportation operation in American history”. It’s a refrain he repeated so often that “Mass deportations now!” became a rallying cry at this summer’s Republican national convention.
Trump has offered few details of his plan to expel “maybe as many as 20 million” people. But in public remarks and interviews, he and his allies have detailed a vision that matches plans laid out in Project 2025. The strategy, as Trump has described it, may involve the extraordinary use of US troops for immigration enforcement and border security and the application of 18th-century wartime powers.
Should Trump return to power, immigrant advocates and leaders say they are better prepared and more organized than they were in his first term. Groups are already considering legal action against key pieces of his immigration agenda and activists say they’ve learned how to harness public outcry.
Trump could launch a ‘catastrophic’ rollback of LGBTQ+ rights
In his first term, Trump banned trans people from the military. If re-elected, he has promised even more aggressive attacks on LGBTQ+ rights.
Trump pledges to order all federal agencies to end programs that “promote … gender transition at any age”, cut funding from hospitals providing gender-affirming care, push for a federal law stating the government doesn’t legally recognize trans people and rescind federal LGBTQ+ non-discrimination policies.
Project 2025, meanwhile, calls for replacing Biden-Harris policies with those that support “heterosexual, intact marriage”.
Legal scholars warn that marriage equality could further be threatened under Trump, especially if he has the chance to appoint additional justices.
He would doom efforts to slow the climate disaster
In his first term, Trump pulled the US out of the Paris climate accords, undermining the progress the talks had produced.
If re-elected, Trump would be a disaster for efforts to slow climate change.
Project 2025 outlined the myriad ways his administration could harm environmental policy, from bolstering oil, gas and coal to closing down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency that measures how much the temperature is rising.
Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and “one of the great scams of all time”, has promised to “drill, baby, drill” and end Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas export terminals, among other things. And his four-year term would arrive at precisely the moment the Earth most needs to accelerate efforts to curb climate change.
Climate scientists say emissions must be cut by 2030 for a chance at a Paris pathway. Trump’s term would extend until 2029.
If Trump wins, the climate effects may not be immediate but will be felt for years to come.
Biden-era accomplishments like the Inflation Reduction Act would be repealed
Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, called the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act – the $370bn bill aimed at accelerating the move to clean energy – a “green energy scam”. That’s despite the millions in climate investments made in Vance’s home town in Middletown, Ohio.
Republicans in Congress have attempted to gut the legislation and Project 2025 has called for it to be repealed under Trump.
Public lands would be opened up to oil and gas production
Early plans suggest a re-elected Trump would gut the Department of the Interior, the agency responsible for national parks, wildlife refuges and the protection of endangered species. The department is the focus of one chapter of Project 2025, the policy document that also calls for reinstating Trump’s energy-dominant agenda, reducing national monument designations and weakening protections for endangered species.
In office, it’s likely Trump would reverse the efforts made by the Biden administration on the green transition and protecting public lands. A second Trump term would cut regulations, weaken environmental protections and, in Trump’s words, “drill, baby, drill”.
US protest movements could face serious crackdowns
Since George Floyd’s death in 2020 and the resulting racial justice protests, Republican-led states have expanded anti-protest laws – a push that comes from Trump, the party’s standard-bearer.
Trump is campaigning on a platform that includes suppressing protests and has vowed to bring in the national guard where “law and order” has broken down. Meanwhile, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, a key Trump ally, called for the national guard to be used against students protesting Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
If re-elected, Trump could direct a militarized response to protests and pressure congressional Republicans to pass legislation that would impose nationwide penalties like those already in effect in Tennessee; the Republican-led state passed a bill that, among other things, created a new felony for protest encampments on state property.
He would bring instability to foreign policy
During his first term, Trump’s brand of “America first” politics created instability among both partners and adversaries. Nato members said that never before had the US been seen as the “unpredictable ally”.
His re-election could bring more instability to a time when conflicts – including the widening war in the Middle East and the continuing Russia-Ukraine war – are raging around the world.
In 2018, Trump hinted at leaving Nato in a bid to force member countries to increase their defense spending. This year, he implied he would let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” to countries he says are not contributing enough to Nato. A Trump win would be likely to threaten Nato cohesion.
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Trump is also likely to be surrounded by “advisers who are hawkish on China and very likely pro-Taiwan”, says Jude Blanchette, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. However, Blanchette says, it’s likely US-China relations would be strained even if Harris were elected to the White House.
And should Trump win, Benjamin Netanyahu, would not have to deal with US opposition to greater Israeli control of the West Bank. Annexation of the West Bank would become a “much more active possibility” under Trump, said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. It’s less clear whether a Trump win would see the Israeli prime minister recruit the US for a decisive attack on Iran’s nuclear programme, a longstanding goal of the Israeli leader.