The
US could be vastly different a year from now. Here's how
If
Donald Trump and his cabinet picks have their way, our country could
be quite changed at this time next year
Scott Lemieux,
Miranda Yaver, Jessica Valenti, Nikhil Goyal and Oliver Milman
Thursday 29 December
2016 05.00 GMT
Every administration
tries to reshape American policy to reflect its ideals. But the
discrepancy between outgoing president Barack Obama and
president-elect Donald Trump is especially stark.
From health
insurance access to abortion rights, Trump and his cabinet nominees
proffer the opposite of the progressive stance that has defined the
last eight years in this country.
And with a
Republican-controlled House and Senate, it’s possible that our new
chief executive could make real headway rolling back Obama’s
agenda. Next year at this time, America could look very different
different than it does today. Here are some issues that could be in
the crosshairs.
US supreme court
A year from now, the
US supreme court will probably look like … it has since Samuel
Alito replaced Sandra Day O’Connor in 2006. Antonin Scalia’s
vacant seat will be filled by a justice very comparable to Scalia,
and on most politically important issues Anthony Kennedy will be the
swing vote. This means a court that is generally conservative but
liberal on a few key issues.
This is a tragic
missed opportunity for the Democratic party, who lost its chance to
have a Democratic-majority court for the first time since early in
the Nixon administration. But Donald Trump will not immediately be
able to transform the court upon taking office.
Still, with three
justices who are approaching or have already passed their 80th
birthday, the possibility of a second Trump appointment is very real
right now. And since the oldest justices on the court are the
liberals Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer and the moderate
conservative Kennedy, a second Trump nomination would be mean a major
lurch to the right that would just start with the destruction of Roe
v Wade. Electing Trump might mean a holding pattern for the supreme
court, or it may mean a majority dedicated to rolling back civil
rights and liberties entrenched on the bench for decades.
Scott Lemieux
Healthcare access
While Senate
majority leader Mitch McConnell declared that his party would begin
its repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on day one, the extent to
which we will soon see departures from the status quo of healthcare
access may hinge upon Republicans’ concerns about electoral
punishment in the 2018 midterm elections.
While Donald Trump
expressed some interest in protecting against loss of coverage for
those with pre-existing conditions, this would not be feasible absent
the far-less-popular insurance mandate, which broadened the risk
pool. The Urban Institute recently projected that with the Republican
“repeal and delay” of the ACA, 29.8 million Americans would lose
health insurance (disproportionately those without a college
education), in addition to inducing market chaos that would produce
conditions worse than prior to the ACA’s passage.
While health and
human services nominee Tom Price and House speaker Paul Ryan make no
secret of their desire to repeal the ACA, the electoral consequences
could potentially constrain their decision-making, even if the health
consequences do not.
Otherwise, it is
likely that millions will struggle to obtain coverage, with the ACA
market eliminated and with the restored ability to raise premiums for
those with pre-existing conditions.
Miranda Yaver
Abortion access
There is no
overstating how dangerous a time the next year will be for
reproductive rights. Already national anti-choice organizations are
gearing up for a fight to overturn Roe v Wade – a real possibility
– and state legislators are starting to pass the most egregious
policies with an aim towards making abortions impossible to obtain.
A year from now, we
could be witnessing the beginning of the end of legal abortion in
this country and a rise in the already-high number of illegal
abortions. It will be a public health crisis.
It’s also
important to remember that the people who are going to be most
impacted by any abortion rights rollbacks will be the most
vulnerable: women of color, immigrant women, young women and poor
women. These women are already suffering because of anti-choice
policies and will undoubtedly be in even more danger a year from now.
That’s why people who care about reproductive rights are going to
need to start supporting small, local organizations now, before the
worst happens.
Jessica Valenti
Public education
By this time next
year, the US public education may look very different. With Betsy
DeVos almost certain to be confirmed by the Senate as the next
secretary of education, fundamental planks of public education could
begin to be dismantled.
The 2015 Every
Student Succeeds Act curtailed the powers of the education secretary,
but DeVos could tap into billions of Title I funding to bankroll a
vouchers scheme, aggressively use the bully pulpit and craft
devastating legislation that would likely pass the
Republican-controlled Congress.
This is frightening,
but there are inklings of a growing and more organized resistance
movement led by students, teachers and parents. Thousands of students
in Boston, Portland, Maryland, New York City, the Bay Area and others
have staged walkouts in protest of Trump’s election with Boston
students, in particular, condemning DeVos’s nomination and her
privatization agenda.
I also expect the
parent-led “opt out of standardized testing” movement to continue
to pick up steam. A few states, too, may jettison these tests in
favor of performance-based assessments, and launch more innovative,
child-centered schools and programs that offer radically different,
experiential and engaging learning experiences for young people.
Our mission in 2017
is to show the public that yes, while our oppressive,
curiosity-crushing public education system requires a sweeping
overhaul, it must be protected from the whims of the billionaire
class.
Nikhil Goyal
Energy policy
Donald Trump’s
energy plans are nothing if not bold – an “America first”
strategy to bolster domestic oil and coal production while still
supporting the growing natural gas sector. The president-elect donned
a miner’s helmet on the campaign trail to tell supporters that the
decades-long decline of coal could be reversed, that the jobs will be
coming back.
Trump’s prescribed
solution is to tear up environmental regulations, open up public land
for drilling and cut funding for climate change and clean energy
programs. Scott Pruitt, his chosen Environmental Protection Agency
administrator, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, expected to be nominated
as secretary of the interior, are both staunch supporters of the
fossil fuel industry and will facilitate this. Rick Perry, the former
Texas governor, has been nominated to lead the department of energy,
an agency he has previously wanted to shut down. Perry, an advocate
for oil and gas drilling, has close ties to large fossil fuel firms.
But this agenda will
do little to alter neither the market forces that have undermined
coal nor the low global price for oil. Republicans remain keen to
pare back the regulations, but the result may well be courtroom
fights with environmental groups and growing public concern over air
and water pollution, rather than new jobs.
Trump is likely to
gut federal clean energy funding although tax breaks for wind and
solar were extended last year, and it’s unlikely that Congress will
want to reverse this. The president-elect has said he wants to
approve the controversial Keystone and Dakota Access oil pipelines,
which could be done relatively quickly, and offshore drilling in the
Atlantic and Arctic could be back on the agenda.
Without huge federal
subsidies coal mines will continue to shut down, however, even if the
Clean Power Plan is killed off. Renewable energy may steadily advance
under Trump, albeit at a slower rate and certainly not quickly enough
to help stave off the worst consequences of climate change.
Oliver Milman
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