American Cities and Trump's Second Presidency
American Cities And Trump’s Second Presidency.
Two weeks ago, on November 5th, American voters made the historic decision to empower Donald Trump to serve as the 47th President of the United States. Despite well-publicized fears about the potential for widespread election interference, the decentralized, bi-partisan system of election governance in the U.S. functioned smoothly.
Thousands of state and local election officials oversaw the work of tens of thousands of nonpartisan election workers and volunteers throughout the nation. The result was a free, fair, and transparent election.
On the national level, the Republican Party gained a 3-seat majority in the U.S. Senate. Republicans also maintained a very thin majority of the House of Representatives (the final number is still not certain). Former President, and now President-elect, Donald Trump won 312 votes in the Electoral College (270 needed to win). He also won more than 50 percent of the total popular vote (almost 3 million more votes than Harris).
Trump’s victory was unexpectedly broad. Although he did not win the majority of votes across every major demographic group, his share of the vote increased within almost every one of them.
For example, Forbes reports that although Harris won the overall Latino vote by about 6 points, Trump won the male Latino vote by 12 points. Similarly, Harris won the overall African American vote. Yet Trump’s share of the Black vote grew enough (as much as 5-6 points) to put him over the top in several key states. Harris won the majority of women voters overall, yet Trump won the majority of white women. He also won 55% of the male vote nationwide, beating Harris among white men by more than 23 points. Harris won the vote among those with college degrees by 13 points, but Trump prevailed among those without college degrees by 14 points. And Trump won among those with household incomes of less than $100k by more than 5 points.
Trump’s victory was also widespread across the nation. Political analysts focused most of their attention on the results of seven so-called “swing states:” Pennsylvania; Michigan; Wisconsin; Georgia; North Carolina; Nevada; and Arizona. Trump has now been declared the winner in all seven.
Yet his victory went far beyond those battlegrounds. Trump improved his proportion of votes in almost every county across the nation. According to the Washington Post, he picked up an additional 3.8 percent of the vote in small cities & rural areas, 4.8 percent among medium-sized metro counties, 5.6 percent among major suburban counties, and a whopping 7.6 percent among the nation’s urban core counties. His share of the vote in New York City increased by 7 points and his share in Chicago went up 6 points.
Although Trump still claims that the electoral governance system defrauded him in 2020, he was quick to accept its results in 2024. Vice President Harris conceded the race the next day, on November 6th . As a result, the transition period is now underway, and the second Trump administration will assume power on January 20, 2025.
As discussed in previous posts, cities themselves do not play any formal role within the Constitutional order of governance within the U.S. Cities are political subdivisions of states. As a result, cities play no specific role in a presidential transition.
Yet cities are not insulated from the consequences of presidential transitions. This is especially true today since cities are directly connected to the most divisive issues President-elect Trump used to rally voters to his side.
Trump’s campaign rhetoric created dramatic images of apocalyptic decline in American life. The ongoing decline has not been an accident, he asserted. Rather, it has been the deliberate goal of organized groups of cultural elites – over-educated, un-American, and urban – who have been taking control of American cities, Blue state governments, corporate boardrooms, nonprofit civic agencies, and the Democratic Party to impose their vision of a dystopian, globalist future that would destroy individual freedoms, end American democracy, and destroy the future financial security of most citizens in order to enrich themselves.
Trump’s apocalyptic narrative claimed that most of the issues that have defined mainstream American politics over the last few decades are actually “fake news.” The truth, he asserted, is that cultural elites and Federal bureaucrats have been creating false issues about global climate change, economic globalization, legal and illegal immigration, racial inequality, education reform, and even gun control, as excuses to create an undemocratic and unholy alliance among “the enemies within” and the Federal “deep state.”
Electing Trump, he asserted at every campaign event, was America’s last chance to avoid catastrophe because he alone could rally American politics to defeat America’s internal enemies by unmasking “false flag” policies based on “fake news” and deconstructing the stifling bureaucracy of undemocratic Federal bureaucratic control.
Powerful political rhetoric rarely requires internal logical consistency since it is designed to stimulate core emotions, not careful cognition. But when powerful rhetoric produces real governance authority, the people whose emotions were stoked by the rhetoric want to see real results, especially in the short-term. They want dust to fly, they want enemies to suffer, and they want to see order imposed. That’s the political logic of populism.
Consequently, cities and Federal agencies are likely to be the two principal settings for the new administration’s efforts to create visible examples of its muscular capacity to “make American great again.”
The President-elect has already begun creating his cabinet and organizing his outside advisors by naming people who will be dedicated to deconstructing the departments and the agencies they will lead and/or advise.
The President-elect has also reaffirmed his commitment to using the full force of Federal governmental power – including the Department of Justice, the U.S. miliary, and nationalized units of each state’s National Guard if necessary – to intervene in recalcitrant cities to impose new Presidential directives related to deporting millions of immigrants (both legal and illegal), reversing gun controls, reforming public schools, eliminating DEI initiatives, ending green infrastructure investments, bolstering aggressive local law enforcement, and any other issue he decides needs to be addressed to restore America’s greatness.
Since cities have only limited standing in the Constitutional power-plays that will likely ensue during the first year of the new Trump Administration, state governments will play important roles in negotiating what changes occur on the ground. State governments that are controlled by Republicans will respond differently than those controlled by Democrats. States where power is shared will be especially complex.
All of this will be further complicated by the fact that some portions of the new Federal agenda will be sensible, even if imposed autocratically. Many people voted for Trump as a general change agent, so his administration will likely sponsor some set of pragmatic changes that are not explosively divisive.
In addition, all states will need to cope with profound, new uncertainties about the limits of Presidential authority that were created by last year’s Supreme Court decision in Trump v. United States. The Roberts Supreme Court has created a new era for American life by creating a turbo-charged Presidency (discussed in previous posts).
The American people have used their free, fair, and transparent election system to give President-elect Trump the clear authority to test the limits of the new, turbo-charged American Presidency at this critical time in our nation’s history. Cities will be very active stages where these dramas will play out.
Hang on. We don’t know if any of these dramas will make America great. But we know it will be a very bumpy ride.
Bob Gleeson