The domestic agenda facing President-elect Donald Trump will be a hefty one, political analysts and other experts said.
“It’s huge,” said Hilary Shelton, the NAACP’s senior vice president for advocacy and policy, of the task awaiting Trump.
President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump walk with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky. on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016, following a meeting. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“When he walked out of that meeting with President Obama, Trump looked shook up,” noted Raymond Winbush, director, Institute of Urban Research at Morgan State University. “I think he finally understood the enormity of this job. That’s why presidents got gray hair while in office.”
Trump’s primary focus, many experts agree, should be to begin mending the divisions in America that he himself helped to foment.
“Trump’s first priority should be to allay the fears of a lot of groups in this country. Muslims—they’re afraid. The Southern Poverty Law Center said there has been a gigantic increase in hate crimes against Muslims since Donald Trump was elected. Undocumented aliens are afraid. Black folks are afraid….” Winbush said. “As a first step, Trump needs to calm everybody down.”
But Trump’s cabinet appointments thus far are not helping to calm anxieties—picks such as Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., for attorney general, a man denied a federal judgeship because of his racist history; and former Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon to a senior advisory post.
Congressional Black Caucus Chairman G. K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) was among those who sounded the alarm over the appointments.
“The appointment of Steve Bannon to a senior position within the White House does very little in the interest of healing our country following months of contentious campaign rhetoric from President-elect Trump,” the congressman said in a statement. “Bannon’s appointment is a cold slap in the face to those of us who are working to mend race relations in America, and it further divides our country along the lines of hate and bigotry.”
The appointments are especially important, Winbush said, since these persons would likely be running the country.
“Trump is not a bright person. He’s not smart the way Obama is smart or the way Bush senior was smart. This guy doesn’t read books; he watches television and he tweets,” Winbush said. “He’s going to have a presidency much like George W. Bush—his advisors will determine foreign and domestic policy. He’s going to leave the hard decisions to his staff.”
It is less clear what the appointment of former Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell to lead Trump’s domestic transition would mean for communities of color. There has been no word on whether he was offered a position in the actual administration.
The conservative African American was accused of employing voter-suppressing tactics to help George W. Bush win Ohio during the presidential election in 2004, and that accusation has left a bad taste in the mouths of African Americans in Ohio and across the country, said Winbush, who hails from Cleveland.
“The only thing ‘Black’ about Ken Blackwell is his name,” the Morgan State professor said. “Blackwell is totally out of touch with the Black community. He is viewed as a ‘super slave, and being a super slave he would have a lot of power but would be subject to the wishes of his masters.”
However, Robert Smith, a political scientist at San Francisco State University, said Blackwell could be effective because of his credentials—former mayor, state treasurer and secretary of state, and former HUD undersecretary and ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
“Blackwell, even taking into account his role in voter suppression in Ohio, is a credible person as a cabinet choice,” Smith said.
Trump would need someone with impeccable credentials and know-how to help guide his domestic policies. Chief among those concerns is health care as Trump has promised to “repeal and replace” President Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
“The risks are enormous,” said Judy Solomon, vice president for health policy, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, of Trump’s intention.
Repealing Obamacare would be a “step backward,” Solomon said, since the nation made “tremendous strides” in getting Americans insured—for example, a record 95 percent of American children now have health coverage, approximately 20 million previously uncovered Americans now have health insurance and Medicaid expansion under the legislation allowed millions of poor people to have health insurance for the first time.
Some aspects of Trump’s health plan include allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines, re-establishing high-risk pools for those with significant medical expenses and making Medicaid into a block grant program.
“The thing with block grants is that over time the shortfalls become bigger,” Solomon said. “Right now, the program is very responsive to changing environments. So if there is another recession and more people need Medicaid it would respond accordingly. Under a block grant, that would not happen.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office, repealing Obamacare outright would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 22 million. And a Rand Corp. analysis of Trump’s proposed reforms estimated they would increase the number of uninsured by 16 million to 25 million.
Another key domestic concern is jobs. “There are no jobs,” Trump claimed when announcing his presidential run in June 2015, “because China has our jobs and Mexico has our jobs. They all have jobs.”
While the claim is not totally true—following the Great Recession the Obama administration has helped create about 15 million new jobs—it is true that African Americans continue to fare poorly in employment and other economic indicators compared to other groups, said the NAACP’s Shelton.
Trump’s campaign promise to rebuild the inner cities and to invest $550 billion in transportation and infrastructure overall could be a boon for African-American communities—if Republicans on Capitol Hill allow.
“If he can get Congress to enact this, it would go a long way toward stimulating the economy, increasing jobs and go a long way toward keeping his specific promises to the Black community,” Smith said.
Another marquee issue is immigration—something which GOP obstructionism prevented Obama from tackling and which Trump has promised to deal with in somewhat drastic terms, including the wholesale deportation of illegal immigrants. But, the president-elect has been backpedaling on some of his campaign rhetoric, Smith said.
“I think much of that was campaign red meat and now he is going to be president he realizes how hard doing some of that would be,” Smith said. “He has clearly backed away from the idea he said from the outset which was to deport everybody. He has said he would do essentially what Obama is doing now—deporting criminals.”
For communities of color, Shelton said, restoring the Voting Rights Act of 1965; instituting criminal justice reform, including establishing standards for police, sentencing reform and abolishing the death penalty; and ensuring access to quality and affordable education at the K-12 and tertiary levels are priorities they would like to see President-elect Trump address.
Winbush added that climate change is another area that needs to be addressed as it is going to “the great equalizer.” That is unlikely to happen, however, as Trump has said global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to undermine America’s economic competitiveness and has promised to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency. He has also chosen Myron Ebell, a libertarian who himself has dismissed global warming, to handle transition at the EPA.
Many civil rights activists and minority advocates agree that environmental issues and other matters of import to Black communities will likely take a back burner and conditions may worsen under a Trump administration.
“We’ve been through the Middle Passage; we’ve been through slavery; we’ve been through Jim Crow; we’ll get through four years of crazy,” Winbush said. He added, “The silver lining in Trump’s election is that it is going to force Black people to look inward in their communities for solutions…. We’ve got to stay woke.”
