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Trump won the presidency. Here's what he's said he'll do.
From immigration to retaliation, Trump’s return to the White House has promised widespread changes to the way America is seen on the world stage.
By Gary Grumbach
Donald Trump just won the presidency. Here’s a brief overview of what is expected to be top of mind for Trump when he is set to be inaugurated on Jan. 20.
NBC News projects that Republicans will control the Senate, giving Trump a clear path in the upper chamber to enact policies and fill key slots in his administration. But the race for the House is still extremely close; Republicans are hoping for a trifecta to control Washington, but a Democratic win could provide a check on Trump’s agenda.
How Donald Trump rallied to win the 2024 presidential election
02:43
Trump has said repeatedly that on Day 1, he will “seal” the southern border and launch what he calls “the largest deportation program in American history,” invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — last used during World War II — to help make that happen. Deporting the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States would cost the U.S. billions of dollars and require staffing increases to the tune of tens of thousands of people.
As NBC News has reported, his team is also considering withholding federal police grants from local law enforcement agencies that decline to take part in the deportations.
On the topic of immigration, Trump said he will end “catch and release,” restore “Remain in Mexico” and bring back Title 42, a restriction from his first administration that turns away migrants who arrived illegally and does not allow them to seek asylum, in the name of public health.
Trump said he will also send Congress a bill to ban sanctuary cities. He also intends to ask Congress for funding to hire 10,000 new border agents and approval for a 10% raise for existing agents, as well as a $10,000 retention and signing bonus.
Trump said he will also ensure federally funded benefits are being used by American citizens — and no one else. He’s also promised, within 24 hours of taking office, to shut down the Department of Homeland Security’s CBP One app, which provides potential immigrants appointment scheduling, remote interview access and the ability to fill out necessary forms.
Trump has announced his intention to seize the assets of criminal gangs and drug cartels in the United States and use those assets to provide compensation for victims of violent crime. He also called for the death penalty for any migrant who comes into the U.S. and kills U.S. citizens or law enforcement officers.
Trump has also promised not only to bring back his controversial travel ban targeting certain Muslim-majority countries — and struck down by courts — but to expand the ban to include refugees from the Gaza Strip and institute certain “ideological screenings” for all immigrants.
Abortion
On reproductive rights, a central issue in this election, Trump has said he would veto a federal abortion ban but allow each individual state to restrict the procedure as it wishes. In his first term, Trump managed to get three of his conservative nominees confirmed to the Supreme Court; all three of them voted with the majority to overturn Roe v. Wade.
In comments that were widely criticized by Democrats, Trump said he would “protect” women, “whether the women like it or not.”
Economy
On the economy, Trump said he will “end inflation” and plans to pass what he calls “historic” tax cuts for workers and small businesses. He said this will include no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security benefits and a tax credit for family caregivers who take care of a parent or loved one.
Trump said he will work with tech mogul Elon Musk to eliminate “every single” federal regulation that he says raises prices and kills American jobs. And on the topic of regulations, Trump has promised to end 10 federal regulations for every new one created.
One thing Trump said he will keep in place: the Affordable Care Act, the incredibly popular health insurance marketplace.
He has said he will sign an executive order directing every Cabinet secretary and agency head to target inflation as a key priority.
“We will target everything, from car affordability to housing affordability, to insurance costs, to supply chain issues,” Trump said at a rally in North Carolina in August. “I will instruct my Cabinet that I expect results within the first 100 days or much sooner than that.”
Trump has also promised that under his administration, there will be no tax on the first $10,000 of costs associated with education for parents of children who are homeschooled.
Trump has promised American companies will get “the lowest taxes, the lowest energy costs, the lowest regulatory burdens, and free access to the single best and biggest market on the planet.”
To that point, he wants to lower the corporate tax rate to 15%, from where it is now at 21%, and he has said he will impose a 10%-20% tariff on all imported goods, as well as a tariff of between 100% and 200% on all businesses from countries that don’t want to use U.S. dollars as their reserve currency. This prioritization of “America First” is one that extends to every part of Trump’s platform.
In September, Trump called for reinstating the state and local tax deduction, commonly known as SALT. In 2017, Trump signed the legislation that capped the previously unlimited federal deduction at $10,000 per filer. The policy hit people in blue states the hardest. Even though Trump signed that measure, he has pledged to undo it.
Environment
For cars made in the United States, Trump said he will make interest on car loans fully tax-deductible. He said he will terminate an electric vehicle rule published by President Joe Biden’s administration in March that makes EVs more available and affordable over the next several years, and makes it more difficult for gas-powered cars to keep up with an increasingly stringent Environmental Protection Agency’s standard. Trump also wants to, once again, withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a major international climate treaty.
Without providing a plan as to how he’ll make this happen, Trump has said he will cut consumer energy prices in half within 12 months of taking office.
“We were energy independent four years ago,” Trump frequently reminded his supporters at rallies, promoting the use of fracking and drilling for oil on Day 1. He’s also hoping to lower housing costs by building on the “periphery of cities and suburban areas,” where land is cheaper, canceling what he calls Biden’s “anti-suburban housing regulation.”
Foreign policy
On foreign policy, Trump said he will end Russia’s war in Ukraine within a day.
Republicans win!!!!!!!
Trump declares victory as early results point to landslide
Story by Tony Diver, Henry Bodkin, Ben Butcher, Meike Eijsberg • 9h •
Donald Trump has claimed victory in the US presidential election as early results pointed to a landslide for the Republican party.
Addressing supporters in Florida, Trump hailed a “magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again”.
“We are now winning in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Alaska which would result in us carrying at least 315 electoral votes,” he said.
As well as the presidency, Trump is leading in the popular vote and Republicans are ahead in the race for both the Senate and the House, in what would be a stunning clean sweep.
“Winning the popular vote was very nice, very nice,” Trump said. “It’s a great feeling of love.
“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate, we have taken back control of the Senate – wow.”
Trump also thanked Elon Musk, declaring “a star is born”.
Fox News called the election for Trump around 2am eastern time after he won the key swing states of North Carolina and Georgia, and was predicted to win in Pennsylvania.
The 78-year-old’s victory appeared to be driven in part by strong results with Latino and black voters.
so far, Ms Harris is underperforming Joe Biden’s 2020 results across the country and the Republicans have made large gains in the Democrat stronghold of New York.
According to a tally from CNN, she had failed to beat Mr Biden’s vote tally in any county across the entire nation.
Huge cheers broke out at the Florida Convention Centre in Palm Beach when Fox called the election result, with crowds chanting “USA! USA!”.
Kamala Harris had been expected to address supporters who had gathered at Howard University, her alma mater.
But as the early results came in showing a strong lead for Trump, her campaign said that she would not be giving a speech.
The crowd quickly thinned out as Democrat voters faced up to their probable defeat.
Party insiders began to turn on Ms Harris after projections showed that Trump was set to become the 47th president of the United States.
Lindy Li, a member of the DNC National Finance Committee, criticised the decision to pick Tim Walz as the candidate for vice president.
Ms Li told Fox News: “People are wondering tonight what would have happened had Shapiro been on the ticket. And not only in terms of Pennsylvania. He’s a famously a moderate. So that would have signalled to the American people that she is not the San Francisco liberal that Trump said she was, but she went with someone actually to her left Minnesota.”
In another sign that voters were shifting rightwards across the country, voters in California passed a measure toughening punishments for theft and drug-related crimes.
One of the first hints at a Trump victory came when he won Iowa, overturning an influential poll that had predicted his defeat.
Trump’s senior advisors pointed to a significant increase in the Latino vote for their candidate, with one exit poll indicating a surge among men in particular, with Trump rising 18 points to a majority of 54 per cent.
Early results in Florida show a large jump in Latino support for Republicans.
In counties with over 60 per cent Hispanic electorates, the Republican has seen his vote share increase by four points.
In the bellwether county of Pinellas, where over 80 per cent of the vote has been tallied, Trump has secured 52 per cent of the total, a three-point jump on 2020.
Pinellas has predicted the winner of every election since 2004.
Trump’s success with Latinos comes despite a major campaign gaffe last month, where a comedian at a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden compared Puerto Rico to a floating island of “garbage”.
Trump also appeared to be making gains with black voters, a further constituency targeted by his campaign.
In the bellwether of Baldwin County, Georgia, an area with a large black population that voted for Mr Biden in 2020, Trump was in the lead.
According to an NBC exit poll in Wisconsin, one of the key swing states, Trump won 20 per cent of black voters.
In 2020, he secured only eight per cent.
Meanwhile, the Democrats hold on the “Blue Wall” appeared to be slipping.
In Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, which includes Mr Biden’s home town of Scranton, the vote has swung to the Republicans by around 5 points in early voting returns.
Cris Dush, a Republican state senator who represents rural Pennsylvania, said: “This is a massive shift that’s coming in rural Pennsylvania… and part of it is that my working class, middle-age and senior constituents are seeing what’s happening to their jobs and with inflation and this craziness,” he said.
“With a man now being able to be called a woman: that kind of stuff too. They’ve just finally had enough.”
According to an exit poll from NBC, Trump has a six-point advantage among independents in Pennsylvania, which carries 19 electoral college votes.
The result makes history in being the first time a former president will return to the White House after being previously voted out of office. In the process, it prevents a similarly historic moment – the US seeing its first female president.
It came amid a sombre mood at Democrat headquarters, at Howard University, in Washington DC, where boos rang out earlier as a live CNN broadcast was projected onto big screens and reported Trump’s early lead in the polls.
The vice president secured the nomination unopposed late in the race after Mr Biden was persuaded to withdraw, meaning she was not subjected to the scrutiny of a primary process.
Democrat hopes had been raised earlier in the night by an exit poll indicating that abortion was a more important issue to many voters than immigration.
The red shift among Latino voters is complex, but analysts believe that Trump’s two main campaign issues ─ the economy and immigration ─ are major concerns for that group.
Latinos are more likely to be economically insecure and earn less than white voters, which has made them vulnerable to high levels of inflation during the Biden administration.
He has also said that he will “seal” the southern US border, which some Latinos believe would give them greater job security.
In other electoral races, Sarah McBride, a Delaware state legislator, won her contest for the House of Representatives, making her the first openly transgender person elected to Congress.
Meanwhile, vote counting in Nevada has been thrown into chaos because young people cannot sign their own names, a state official has said.
Mail-in ballots in the state require voters’ signatures to match with signatures that officials already have on file in state or federal databases.
Many teenagers and people in their 20s have only signed their names electronically – and the versions they have written in by hand do not match up.
President Joe Biden, right, walks during a tour of areas affected by Hurricane Milton in St. Pete Beach, Fla., following an aerial tour, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Politics
President Joe Biden, right, walks during a tour of areas affected by Hurricane Milton in St. Pete Beach, Fla., following an aerial tour, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Politics
Biden surveys Milton damage in Florida and announces funding for electric grid
"For some individuals, it was cataclysmic," Biden said of Milton during his speech. "All those folks who probably lost their home, and, more importantly, those folks who lost their lives, lost family members, lost all their personal belongings."
Biden's motorcade rode through the devastation brought by Milton before speaking from a hard-hit neighborhood in St. Pete Beach. Entire buildings were torn down, bent palm trees and piles of debris still litter the streets. One hotel sign reading “come as a guest, leave as a friend” was toppled over.
Trooper was found tied to a fence on the side of I-75 in Tampa.
National
Florida dog found tied to fence and abandoned before Milton is safe with rescue group
As part of his visit, Biden announced $612 million for six Department of Energy projects to improve the resilience of electric grids in areas affected by hurricanes. This includes $94 million for two projects in Florida: $47 million for Gainesville Regional Utilities and $47 million for the company Switched Source, which helps modernize existing infrastructure, to partner with the utility Florida Power and Light.
President Joe Biden speaks following a briefing by federal, state, and local officials in St. Pete Beach, Fla., during a tour of areas affected by Hurricane Milton, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024.
President Biden speaks following a briefing by federal, state, and local officials in St. Pete Beach, Fla., during a tour of areas affected by Hurricane Milton, on Sunday.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Some 850,000 customers across the state are still without power, according to PowerOutage.us, as of 3 p.m. ET — down from more than 3 million that lost power after Milton hit.
Biden's speech took place just off St. Pete Beach’s Gulf Blvd., in front of a toppled building.
After speaking with members of Hillsborough County Fire Rescue a man paddles back into a flooded neighborhood in Valrico, Florida. Flooding from a nearby waterway turned nearby neighborhoods into rivers forcing dozens to evacuate their homes.
National
'There is no home': Floridians find helping hands after floods
In what seemed to be an indirect response to criticism from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans, Biden said that disaster relief is not a partisan issue.
“We are one United States,” Biden said.
Trump and others have falsely alleged that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has no money for hurricane recovery because of spending on migrants and foreign wars (none of these claims are true).
On Friday, Biden approved a Major Disaster Declaration for Florida, freeing up federal funds for residents and business owners to use for temporary housing and home repairs and low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses. Biden said he directed FEMA to open 10 disaster recovery centers across the state so residents can access resources for federal assistance.
National
Hurricane Milton could have an impact on Florida in the long term
Notably absent from Biden's visit was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who following the storm was engaged in a spat with Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
A palm tree next to the beach before Hurricane Milton's arrival on Oct. 9, 2024, in Fort Myers Beach, Fla.
Untangling Disinformation
How FEMA tries to combat rumors and conspiracy theories about Milton and Helene
NBC News reported this past week that DeSantis refused to take Harris' call about hurricane relief — a charge the Republican governor has denied. DeSantis then claimed that Harris was trying to "politicize the storm." Harris called him "utterly irresponsible" and "selfish."
October 13, 2024 • President Biden touched down in St. Pete Beach, on one of Florida's barrier islands hit hard by the storm. He announced more than $600 million for shoring up parts of the nation's electric grid.
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