Transition Politics and the Fate of American Cities
Transition Politics and the Fate of American Cities.
As of today, Donald Trump received approximately 49.97% of the popular vote across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.[i] Those votes translated into 312 votes in the Electoral College, which is 42 more votes than the 270 need to win. There is no doubt that the 2024 Presidential election was free and transparent, and that Trump won, fair and square.
Trump won the states he was expected to win. In addition, he won the most votes in each of the seven so-called “swing states” of Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin. These seven states collectively gave him 93 of his 312 Electoral College votes.
Most political commentators have characterized Trump’s victory as a pivot point in American history. Many have used terms such as “landslide,” “mandate,” and “triumph.” This type of boastful rhetoric has been magnified eagerly by the President-elect’s transition team, especially as Trump has begun naming highly controversial people for key roles in his administration.
Yet regardless of the rhetoric, the U.S. Constitution requires all Secretaries of Federal departments to be confirmed by a majority vote of the U.S. Senate. In addition, other Federal laws require at least 1,200 other Presidential appointments to also earn Senate confirmation. These are generally known as “PAS” appointments – Presidential Appointment needing Senate confirmation. No administration can govern without installing its people in key Executive branch positions.
The 2024 election returned control of the U.S. Senate to a Republican majority of 53 Senators, four more than they had previously. Each of the thirty-three newly elected or newly re-elected Republican senators promised full fidelity to the President-elect during their campaigns.[ii] Yet there is still a handful of sitting Republic senators that may challenge his appointments. That makes the 53-seat Senate majority potentially tenuous.
The President-elect, his transition team, and his most ardent supporters have tried to bully their way to power in the transition. They have boasted that Trump’s “mandate” is so clear that the Senate should either approve all of his PAS nominations as a package, or vote itself into recess for more than ten days so that any controversial PAS nominees could be appointed by the President directly as “recess appointments,” thus bypassing the need for individual votes in the Senate.
This unprecedented push to staff the Executive Branch en masse would bypass nominee hearings before the seventeen different Senate committees that have jurisdiction over PAS nominations. This would also avoid policy inquiries from Democratic senators on each of those seventeen committees.
The President-elect’s most ardent supporters assert that Senate hearings would infuriate voters because “the American people” gave Trump the clear mandate to disrupt business as usual and bring radical reform to the Federal government without delay.
FBI background checks for PAS nominees could also be bypassed. Supporters assert that no FBI background checks should occur for three reasons. First, they assert that the FBI can no longer be trusted to conduct non-partisan background checks because the agency is controlled by Biden-loyalists who have been unlawfully persecuting Trump by prosecuting him for alleged criminal behaviors.
Second, the FBI is called a demoralized and bureaucratic morass that would simply take too long to perform background checks even if those checks could be made non-partisan. The American people demand quick action, and so the FBI should not hinder that process.
Finally, the Trump transition team and its affiliated non-governmental allies, such as the Heritage Foundation, the America First Policy Institute and others, have already been conducting widespread, privately funded background checks on more than 1,800 potential PAS nominees for more than two years. So, FBI background checks would be an unneeded duplication.
Consequently, the Trump transition team asserts that it is already prepared to offer a full package of highly qualified, pre-vetted nominees who can efficiently and effectively take control of the Federal government and can quickly implement the wide-ranging disruption in Federal governmental operations that the American people expect.
The Senate, they assert, should respect the demands of the American people and allow the President-elect free reign to staff his government immediately with loyal officials who will implement Presidential directives without push-back or delays.
As of today, it appears very unlikely that the U.S. Senate will comply with either of Trump’s demands to bypass Senate hearings by confirming nominations as a package or by going into recess. The withdrawal of Matt Gaetz from consideration for Attorney General came after his behind-the-scenes meetings with prominent Republican senators. These senators clearly told him he would face a tumultuous hearing. Tough questions would come from Republican senators as well as Democrats. Other prominent Trump nominees will likely face the same treatment, as may hundreds of less prominent ones.
Despite all the boastful rhetoric, political power in American government rests on actual election results, not boastful rhetoric. The reality of the 2024 election results reveals a nation that is still very unsure of its path forward.
At least thirty-four senators will face re-election in 2026. Twenty of them are Republicans. Trump’s electoral victory in 2024 is secure, but he becomes a so-called “lame duck” President the day he begins his term. The 22nd amendment to the U.S Constitution states clearly that no one can be elected to the office of President more than twice. There is no exception for non-consecutive terms.
Trump did win all seven swing states. But his margin of victory was so close that my own analysis of swing state voting reveals multiple scenarios among the swing states where small shifts among voters from Trump to Harris would have yielded a Harris victory.
The scenario that seems to require the fewest vote shifts includes Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Together these states have 45 Electoral Colleges votes. A shift of only 133,200 votes in these three swing states from Trump to Harris (60,800 in PA, 57,600 in GA, and only 14,800 in WI) would have given the White House to Harris in the Electoral College. That amounts to 133,200 votes from the nationwide total of 153,942,298, or 0.000865 of all votes, which is 0.0865 of 1 percent of the vote. There is no mandate in these numbers.
Digging deeper into the election results in these three states, most of Trump’s margin of victory seems to have come from his ability to achieve unexpected, small increases in the percentage of votes from inside central urban counties.
Central urban counties in these states gave Harris wide margins of victory, and simultaneously elected many Democrats to state and local offices. Yet Trump was able to activate support from tens of thousands of disgruntled urban voters. They joined with his most ardent supporters in suburban areas, exurban counties, and rural counties to put him over the top on swing state vote totals. Disgruntled urban voters responded to his anti-urban rhetorical vitriol.
Trump’s campaign rhetoric continually blamed American decline on its cities. Philadelphia, he claimed, was “ravaged by bloodshed and crime.” He declared Milwaukee “horrible” just before attending the Republican National Convention in that city. Other cities, large and small, he claimed, were “cesspools” dominated by “criminal gangs of illegal immigrants.” Legal and illegal immigrants were characterized as “murders, and former mental hospital residents” who were deliberately sent to the U.S.-Mexico border by foreign governments who no longer wanted to pay for their care. Perhaps most infamously, Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance declared that Haitian immigrants in mid-sized cities were eating their neighbor’s pets.
This newly formed Trump constituency of disgruntled urban voters is relatively small. But in today’s era of precariously slim voting margins, any Republican who wishes to inherit Trump’s voting coalition had better make sure that Republican urban policies in the next four years play well among these disgruntled urban voters.
Regardless of the complex, “on the ground” true conditions in each large and medium-sized city in the U.S., the incoming Trump Administration needs to staff itself with Presidential appointees who will create visible, disruptive action that is directly tied to each of the Trump campaign’s rhetorical causes of American urban decline.
The Heritage Foundation’s infamous Project 2025 report provides a clear blueprint for how the full power of the Federal government can be targeted to create mass deportations of immigrants, both illegal and legal. Nominations for key national security positions and key domestic justice and law enforcement positions seem to be predicated on each candidate’s willingness to use both military and civilian forces inside the U.S. as well as overseas to bring “law and order” to American cities. Hundreds of potential nominees have already been vetted for loyalty to whatever directives the President makes.
Trump’s national victory in the Electoral College seems to be rooted in his appeal to a relatively small proportion of disgruntled urban voters. They accept without evidence his dystopian claims about American urban decline. And they accept without critique his prescriptions for how a turbo-charged President can use the power of the Federal government to improve their lives inside American cities.
Nothing short of highly visible and dramatic Federal intervention in the day-to-day life of American cities will be required for Trump to claim political success for his “lame duck” administration before the 2026 elections. No Republican who desires to inherit his voting coalition in 2028 can risk being labeled as a barrier to any urban policy initiative the President-elect chooses to pursue in the next two years.
American cities are in the bull’s eye of America’s political reconfiguration. Republican senators may be willing to provide examples of their independence by rejecting some of the President-elect’s most controversial nominees. But they cannot afford to disrupt whatever urban policies his eventual nominees choose to inflict on Democrat-controlled American cities. The future of the new national Republican coalition seems to depend on that.
Bob Gleeson
[i] With more than 99 percent of all votes tabulated.
[ii] One third of the U.S. Senate is elected each two years.