What Does Donald Trump’s Election Mean For…

Abortion

On Wednesday morning, amid a sea of losses, one bright spot prevailed for Democrats: out of 10 nationwide ballot initiatives regarding abortion laws, seven states saw the passage of protective measures, including in traditionally red states like Arizona, Missouri, and Montana.

"Trump won in five of those states, which suggests that voters chose to protect reproductive rights even as they voted for Trump," says Linda McClain, the Robert Kent Professor of Law at the BU School of Law and codirector of the LAW Program in Reproductive Justice.

During his most recent campaign, Trump's "rare message discipline" in downplaying his previous administration's role in the 2022 Dobbs Supreme Court decision muddied his persona as an antiabortion avenger, McClain says. In August, he claimed that his second term would be "great for women and their reproductive rights," and he's also said that he would not support a federal ban if it were proposed. McClain, and many others, are not convinced that this represents a turnabout in reproductive politics.

"Even as he argued that the abortion issue now properly rested with the states and that he would veto a national abortion ban, he asserted that some state laws were too harsh and those would be 'fixed' if he were elected," she says.

If Trump were to back Project 2025-an ultraconservative political initiative he has heretofore kept his distance from, but which members of his inner circle openly support-he would be permitting its enforcement of the Comstock Act of 1873, an obscure law that prohibits the mailing of "obscene" materials for illegal means. Under a reinvigorated Comstock, abortion-inducing drugs like mifepristone, medical instruments used to perform abortions, and potentially, even standard forms of contraception could become illegal to transport.

"Will Trump continue to claim no connection to Project 2025 or will his administration target medication abortion?" McClain wonders. "What form will Trump's pledge to protect women 'whether they like it or not' take? Given J. D. Vance's natalism and the disturbing stream of sexist and racist insults directed at Vice President Harris, her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, and prominent supporters of the ticket, it is a sobering question."-Sophie Yarin

Photo by Jim Watson/Getty images

Immigration

Trump has touted a sweeping overhaul of U.S. immigration policy, promising, during his campaign, to carry out what he calls the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history."

"We have to believe him," says Sarah Sherman-Stokes, a clinical associate professor at the Boston University School of Law. "We don't know exactly what the next four years will hold, but whether or not he's successful in actually carrying out the details of his plans, I think what we know from his first term is that he will sow the seeds of fear and chaos."

Sherman-Stokes, who is also the associate director of the Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic at BU, is concerned that Trump and his administration-with help from a Republican-controlled Senate (and possibly House)-could make drastic changes to legal immigration pathways, such as the process for securing temporary protected status. At the very least, that fear and chaos his policies are certain to create will "have a devastating impact on immigrant communities," she says.

"He will probably mobilize more immigration enforcement officials. There probably will be more raids and more terror in immigrant communities, and that I am really, really afraid of. I'm thinking back to 2016 and 2017, when many of my clients were afraid to go to the doctor. They were afraid to send their kids to school. They were afraid that interacting with any kind of government or service provider could put them at risk of being detained and deported. And I think that's what scares me the most."

Still, Sherman-Stokes emphasizes that there's reason for hope-or at least determination. "Regardless of who's president, we still have community, creativity, solidarity, and opportunities for resistance," she says. "Being at the School of Law and having law students who are excited to jump in and do this work and push back against injustice is really amazing."-Molly Callahan

Photo by Michael Kappeler/AP Images

Higher Education

Attacks on the legitimacy of higher education were reaching crisis levels even before Trump won a second term, part of a larger assault on access, knowledge, and information, says Mary L. Churchill, associate dean of strategic initiatives and community involvement at BU's Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.

She cites the closure of local newspapers, book bans, and the banning of civics education classes in many public K-12 systems (mostly in red states) as part of the same onslaught.

"If you look at what happens in other countries, like Turkey, China, and Russia, where there are these kind of authoritarian takeovers, it really denies access to freedom of information to people," says Churchill, Wheelock program director of higher education administration and a professor of the practice. "And so what happens in higher ed in these types of situations, and what has been happening, is more attacks on professors. Even J. D. Vance [who attended Ohio State and Yale Law School] said university professors are the enemy because they teach people to think independently."

Churchill warns about renewed attacks in a second Trump administration, including continued discrediting of the value of a college education, and about a continued decline in college attendance rates, especially among white men.

"We're also seeing some of the lowest beliefs in the validity of science, right?" she says. "People don't trust doctors. They don't trust faculty. So we're in a real crisis point where the work we do in higher ed is even more important, as is the connection between higher ed and our K-12 systems" to help young people develop a college-going identity.

What's more, she says, expect to see continued attacks on institutions' diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and chilling effects on free speech and campus protests. Faculty will feel less emboldened to speak up on issues where they have expertise. Churchill says moves made under President Biden to ease the financial burden through student loan forgiveness and income-related repayment will cease as well.

International students and faculty may be negatively affected if Trump makes it more difficult for students and scholars to study and work in the US. "So continuing to be a place where we are supportive of our international colleagues is going to be really, really important, as they are likely to come under attack," she says.-Amy Laskowski

Photo by Jackie Ricciardi

LGBTQIA+ Americans

The past few years have already seen a record number of bills aimed at the LGBTQIA+ community, including criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors, banning transgender students from playing on sports teams that don't match their gender at birth, and outlawing drag performances in public spaces.

President-elect Donald Trump frequently targeted gender-nonconforming Americans in his remarks on the campaign trail. He falsely claimed that students were undergoing gender-reassignment surgeries at schools, vowed to "keep men out of women's sports," and mocked LGBTQIA+ people in the military, among other talking points. He also promised to pursue multiple anti-LGBTQIA+ policies if elected, such as eliminating federal funding for any hospital that offers gender-affirming care to minors and requiring federal agencies to twilight programs that promote gender transition.

Now that Trump is set to return to the White House, how could his presidency-coupled with a Republican Senate and conservative Supreme Court-further impact the lives of LGBTQIA+ Americans?

"I imagine that there are going to be restrictions on healthcare-that's probably going to be the big one," says Katy Collins, director of BU's LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center. "I also think we're going to see [attacks on transgender people] in sports, and I worry about folks being emboldened to be violent towards trans folks and anyone they perceive to not fall into a gender binary."

At the LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center, Collins says, the focus is on helping the BU community feel supported now and in the weeks to come.

"We want people to know that they have a place here," they say, "that there is a community that is here for them, and that we organized in 2016 and we will organize again."-Alene Bouranova

Photo via iStock/SCM Jeans

Climate Change

Scientists already fighting an uphill battle against climate change amid public skepticism and corporate opposition face an even more difficult foe in a Trump administration. Trump calls climate change a hoax and has made clear that he will favor fossil fuels over clean energy.

"I have major concerns about the potential negative impact of the forthcoming Trump administration, as they may reverse positive measures that have been taken to limit adverse consequences of climate change," says David Hamer, a BU School of Public Health and Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine professor of global health and of medicine. Hamer is also a core researcher at BU's Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Aside from planetary consequences, if climate change proceeds unchecked, public health will be at risk, a warming environment will bring an increase in vector-borne diseases spread by birds and mosquitoes, such as eastern equine encephalitis to dengue fever, as well as ocean-borne diseases moving north in warming water, Hamer says. There are also major public health risks associated with worsening storms and flooding that impact water and sewer systems. Storms knocking out electricity for refrigeration and cooling is a major concern, including for heat stroke.

Climate scientists "need to try to convince him and his administration that it's not a hoax, it's a real problem, and it's going to have real major repercussions over the next few years and even more so over the next few decades," says Hamer.-Joel Brown

Photo via iStock/Maxim Shmakov

Health

Riffing on his Make America Great Again slogan, Trump promised his administration would "make America healthy again." One way he said he'd do that is by allowing vaccination and water fluoridation opponent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to "go wild on health…go wild on medicines." Trump also pledged to bring down healthcare and drug costs, protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF), and ban gender-affirming care for minors.

But until these become formal policies or laws, Michael Stein, a professor and chair of health law, policy, and management at the School of Public Health, is focusing on another potential health impact of the second Trump presidency, one which many decried during the COVID pandemic.

"Since we don't know which Trump campaign suggestions will be activated toward policy in 2025, I am more concerned about public health becoming delegitimized through the abandonment or silencing of experts and evidence," Stein says.

"I am worried that health scientists who present factual evidence that policymakers don't want to hear will again become targets of threats, silenced, fired, even physically attacked, as occurred during the first Trump term," he says. "Delegitimization is dangerous. A system in which people are appointed to influential public health positions because of their allegiance to a particular political belief, or disregard for a particular scientific result, as we've already seen, is disastrous."-Andrew Thurston

Photo by Janice Checchio

The Economy

"By controlling Congress, he's in the difficult position of having to deliver on what he promised," says Laurence Kotlikoff, a William Fairfield Warren Professor and a professor of economics at BU's College of Arts & Sciences.

"Eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits, cutting the corporate tax, and other expensive tax cuts, which means he will need to impose his 20 percent, across-the-board tariff. Which is going to mean inflation of 20 percent, most likely, and a trade war with Europe, China, and other countries who will retaliate. That may lead the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and make this situation worse.

"I see major economic turmoil. But he may decide, with his economic advisors, to go a different direction, for more fundamental fiscal reform that makes sense. We have fiscal policies and healthcare systems that need to be rationalized so that people have better incentives to work and we can get more revenue. There's a potential here for some good things to happen if they think big."-Rich Barlow

Photo by Nuthawut Somsuk

Supreme Court and Justice

Trump left office in 2020 with a judiciary largely shaped by him. With the nomination of three conservative justices on the Supreme Court and hundreds of conservative-leaning federal judges who are still serving lifetime appointments, he had a firm grasp on the federal court system-one that will only be further entrenched as he enters his second term, says Robert L. Tsai, a professor of law and Harry Elwood Warren Memorial Scholar at the Boston University School of Law.

To start, he may have a chance to appoint one or two more Supreme Court justices. Samuel Alito, 74, Clarence Thomas, 76, and Sonia Sotomayor, 70, are among the oldest currently on the bench. And if Sotomayor, a liberal justice, retires, Trump could expand the conservative majority to 7-2. Even if he doesn't get a chance to appoint a justice, it's still a court forged by conservatives, and one where "you're not going to get any meaningful expansion of individual rights or liberties through the litigation," Tsai says.

Beyond the Supreme Court, Trump campaigned on a promise to seek retribution against his perceived political foes, as well as a strong desire to end the federal criminal investigations against him. To achieve these goals, he'll need an attorney general willing to do his bidding-and he'll likely find one, Tsai says.

In this second term, after many moderate or at least more traditional Republicans have already sounded the alarm about Trump's worst tendencies, "You're going to have more ideologues come in, more loyalists come in and fill some of those positions," Tsai says. "And that's where the Senate becomes really important, not just for the judicial picks, but for things like the next attorney general."

Republicans gained control of the Senate on Tuesday, while the House still remains contested.-Molly Callahan

Photo by Valerie Plesch/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

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