Thinking about Donald Trump’s time as President, his eccentric ways of leading and expressing himself make it hard for people to see the actual changes in politics. Other than the drama, some long-term changes happened that often go unnoticed.
Let’s have a look at some of them. From banning Chinese-made drones to cracking down on robocalls to legalizing marijuana in some states, his lasting impact on federal policy can’t be denied.
Trump refocused national security
National security policy was redirected to level up in front of the competition with major global powers. The National Defense Strategy managed to capture this significant change. It was reoriented to address the challenges posed by the growing threats from Russia and China. It was marked as one of the most critical adjustments in US defense policy in recent decades.
When it comes to defense policy documents, there are enough to cover the walls of the Pentagon. However, the National Defense Strategy from the Trump administration seems to be more important than you may think. The whole strategy was to focus on the US military to deal with any upcoming threats from Russia and China.
The Defense Department went from following insurgents or terrorists from the Middle East to competing with China and Russia in the long term. The military is now holding different trainings and buying new technologies, as well as prioritizing some areas of the world. This is a shift that changed the way the Pentagon spends money. With support from both parties, Congress approved billions of dollars to strengthen its military presence in the Asia-Pacific area.
A new level of disregard for Congress has been established
The Interior Department sets a new example of ignoring Congress. It’s likely to be influential in the future, even if it’s not widely noticed outside of Washington, DC. What they did was block Congressional oversight and get away with it.
David Bernhardt, the interior secretary who attended the Congressional hearing and decided the department’s budget, ignored the invitations from the House Natural Resources Committee to discuss it. The officials shared the attitude. The head of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement claimed she was too busy to explain to the committee that they were giving out waivers on safety regulations that managed to be created after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The Interior Department delayed even basic information to Congress and the public. Members complained that when responding to written questions, the interior would be overwhelming with irrelevant documents, even pages filled with Wingdings font. This led to a process where the department has been sued and faced internal audits over compliance, indicating that they were deliberately slowing down public responses to public information requests.
This story ended up with no real consequences. Democrats complained, but they didn’t follow the threat of issuing subpoenas. In the last six months of the Trump administration, officials stopped attending hearings about departmental issues. This behavior sets a precedent that’s probably going to last.
He bolstered Obamacare
Even if Trump had the intention of repealing the Obamacare system, he actually managed to strengthen it.
The first thing he did when he took office, as he promised, was to repeal Obamacare, and he attempted to do so through the courts and Congress. Somehow, instead of dismantling the Affordable Care Act, he took actions that inadvertently strengthened it. The main cause is the fact that in his efforts, he ended up directing extra federal dollars into subsidizing Americans’ health insurance coverage, which led to more financial support for the program, which made it even more effective.
How did it happen?
House Republicans tried for years to eliminate the facilities that low-income individuals were getting through Omabacare, such as co-pays, deductibles, and coinsurance. After the GOP’s failed attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare, 2017 came with administrative measures to cut off the subsidies. Democrats strongly criticized his actions, and he was accused of sabotaging the Affordable Care Act.
What was the impact?
Trump tried a lot of actions to undermine Obamacare, but by cutting subsidies, the health insurance exchange didn’t collapse. Health plans and states recovered the lost federal funding by raising the prices of Obamacare’s standard silver-level insurance plans. This led to premiums going up significantly. This is how the government needed to pay much more in subsidies to help low-income people afford assurance. This strategy was known as silver-loading, and it increased the government’s support for exchanges to more than $20 billion each year.
Trump’s actions made the plans more expensive for those who don’t get financial help, and in the end, Democrats didn’t complain because they managed to give Obamacare a lot more money.
No work guidance, no safety for the workers
Trump took the notable decision to not implement an emergency temporary standard during the coronavirus pandemic. This standard was issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and considered some situations where workers were at serious risk by demanding urgent and mandatory workplace safety rules.
These requirements would ask employers to take immediate action to protect employees from potential exposure to the virus. Because the Trump administration decided not to implement this standard, they did not provide any guidelines to enhance workplace safety during the pandemic.
How did Republicans justify this decision? They argued and required companies to adhere to stringent safety standards, that could impose financial strain on businesses already struggling during the economic downturn that started with the pandemic.
Support for religious organizations in education
During her time as Education Secretary under the Trump administration, Betsy DeVos managed to make several changes to federal education policy, which led to bolstering support for faith-based organizations. She first simplified regulations to ease access to federal financial aid for people who were part of religious orders to help them support their educational pursuits.
She expanded the sphere of federal public service loan forgiveness to involve clergy members and help them be susceptible to forgiveness under specific conditions. Then, DeVos implemented protection for faith-based organizations that operate with public universities to make sure they could maintain their identities and practices on campus.
These initiatives were meant to promote religious freedom and bring up the role of faith-based organizations in federal education policies. She sought to provide great education opportunities and protections for institutions and individuals that were religiously affiliated.
Marijuana legalized in most states
Legal cannabis has become a huge industry that brings billions of dollars in state revenues. The trend toward legalization fell into the hands of the Biden administration, but where did it start?
Trump generally supported allowing the states to decide their own cannabis laws as long as they were aligned with the principles of federalism. This way, a lot of states legalized marijuana for medical or recreational purposes without too much federal interference.
Jeff Sessions, as Attorney General, raised concerns among cannabis advocates by strongly being in opposition to marijuana legalization. At this point, the Cole memo was the act providing some level of protection for the states that legalized it.
Despite the repeal of this act, during the Trump administration, it was not actively pursued as a crackdown on state-legal markets. Trump’s stance on legalization was not clear, and he didn’t enact any federal policies either to support or oppose legalization efforts.
Because he did not escalate federal enforcement against the state-legal market, Cole Memo did not have enough power, and it created concern within the industry. However, the Trump administration didn’t take proactive steps to advance the legalization or decriminalization of cannabis.
If you’re interested in finding out more about Donald Trump’s time as President, we recommend this book that you can find on Amazon: Inside Trump’s White House: The Real Story of His Presidency.
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