When President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated in January, he’ll assume the powers of the presidency with a surer sense of what he wants to accomplish and how to get it done, after four years on the job and four years planning his return.
A Republican-controlled Senate likely puts his nominees on a glide path to confirmation, while the question of House control is still being determined.
Here’s what may be in store for Trump’s second term, based on what he’s said since he left office in 2021.
Pardoning Jan. 6 rioters
Trump has praised those who breached the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, as “patriots” and referred to them as “hostages” of a Justice Department “weaponized” against him. He has said that those who were arrested as a result of their actions during the Capitol riot should be freed, and he vowed to pardon a “large portion” of the more than 1,000 people who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes stemming from the Jan. 6 attack.
Even before his election victory, defendants were trying to delay their cases, anticipating pardons. At least one defendant invoked Trump’s win in an effort to delay proceedings in his case; lawyers for 21-year-old Christopher Carnell said in a filing the day after the election that Trump has “made multiple clemency promises” to Jan. 6 defendants and wrote that Carnell is “expecting to be relieved of the criminal prosecution that he is currently facing when the new administration takes office.”
They said Carnell “is now awaiting further information from the Office of the President-elect regarding the timing and expected scope of clemency actions relevant to his case.” His request was swiftly denied.
At a recent Trump rally in North Carolina, an attendee yelled at Trump to “pardon the January sixers.” Trump looked at the man and replied, “Yeah, it’s true.”
Firing special counsel Jack Smith
Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt recently that he’d fire special counsel Jack Smith, who has brought two federal criminal indictments against him, “within two seconds” of becoming president. Smith was appointed independent special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee Trump’s federal criminal investigations and cases.
Dispensing with criminal cases against him
The Justice Department and special counsel Jack Smith’s office are engaged in active discussions about how to wind down the ongoing federal prosecutions against President-elect Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the talks.
At the center of the discussions is the Justice Department’s longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president and the need to enable a smooth transition to a second term in the White House for Trump, the sources said.
Experts told CBS News the Justice Department is likely to drop Trump’s federal criminal cases. Smith charged Trump with four counts stemming from his conduct after the 2020 election, as he and others sought to overturn his defeat in that race.
That case appeared to be heading for a spring 2024 trial before Trump’s lawyers appealed a decision related to presidential immunity to the Supreme Court, which in July concluded former presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts during their time in office.
In a separate federal criminal case in Florida, Trump was accused of mishandling sensitive government records. The judge dismissed the case in July, ruling Smith had been unlawfully appointed special counsel by the attorney general. Smith has appealed the decision.
If he had been convicted in the federal cases, he could have tried to pardon himself because the Constitution confers broad pardon power. But Trump can’t pardon himself from his New York conviction in a case stemming from a “hush money” payment because that’s a state offense. His sentencing date is set for Nov. 26, but it remains to be seen whether that will go forward.
Trump could simply move to dismiss the cases against him, said Mark Tushnet, a constitutional law scholar at Harvard Law School.
“He won’t have to pardon himself — as the chief executive and chief law enforcement office of the U.S. government, he can simply order that the prosecutions be dismissed,” Tushnet said.
In Fulton County, Georgia, Trump’s 2020 election interference case has been delayed amid allegations of impropriety against the district attorney. That delay is likely to now be extended.
Lead Trump attorney Steve Sadow told a judge in a hearing last December that proceedings would not be pushed off indefinitely if Trump won the presidency, suggesting 2029 is the year the trial could resume.
Exerting more influence on the Federal Reserve
Trump has given mixed responses on the future of the Federal Reserve chair he appointed in 2018, Jerome Powell. In February, Trump said he wouldn’t reappoint Powell.
But after Trump won this year’s presidential election, Powell said he would not leave if asked to resign by Trump. Powell’s term expires in 2026.
In February, Trump said he had a “couple of choices” for Fed chair, but didn’t say who those options might be.
Trump has accused Powell of being “political.” However, in July, he told Bloomberg Businessweek, “I would let him serve it out,” Trump said, and he added, “especially if I thought he was doing the right thing.”
Beyond the question of who would lead the Fed is a bigger issue: Trump has previously said he thinks the U.S. president should have more influence on Fed decisions — a risk to the central bank’s historical independence from political meddling, according to experts.
“I feel the president should have at least a say in there. Yeah, I feel that strongly,” Trump said in an Aug. 8 press conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. “I think that, in my case, I made a lot of money, I was very successful, and I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve or the chairman.”
Trump will expect the Fed to support economic growth by continuing to ease borrowing costs for consumers and businesses while containing inflation. That amounts to a delicate balancing act, given some of the president-elect’s key economic policies, like imposing stiff new tariffs, boosting federal spending and deporting undocumented immigrants, could lead to higher prices.
Appointing new Supreme Court justices
Supreme Court justices sometimes try to time their retirements with a presidential administration corresponding to the party of the president who appointed them. When Trump takes office, there will be three justices who were appointed by previous Republican presidents — Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Trump nominated the other three members of the conservative wing during his first term — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Thomas is the longest-serving member of the court, having been nominated by President George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 1991. Roberts and Alito were both tapped for the court by President George W. Bush in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Thomas, 76, and Alito, 74, are also the two oldest members of the Supreme Court.
None of those three justices have publicly indicated an interest in leaving the Supreme Court.
Trump’s Supreme Court nominations during his first term widened the court’s conservative majority from 6-3, and replacing any of the three other members would maintain that ideological split.
Any nominations during Trump’s second term would likely be of younger judges who could serve for decades, ensuring a conservative hold on the court for years to come. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were in their 50s when he nominated them, and Barrett was 48.
Trump told CBS News in August that he’d release a list of potential Supreme Court nominees ahead of the election, but that list never arrived.
Deporting undocumented migrants en masse
At his final campaign stop in Pennsylvania before Election Day, Trump again promised to start mass deportations, but acknowledged “it’s terrible to do.”
“I don’t want to do that. I’m not looking to do that,” Trump said. “I think it’s terrible to do, but we have no choice.”
Nearly 80% of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. have been in the country a decade or more, and millions of them work and have families here. A concerted effort to round up, detain and deport people by the millions would not only raise legal and human rights concerns, it would cost billions of dollars a year.
But Trump told NBC News after winning the election that there is “no price tag.”
“It’s not a question of a price tag,” he told NBC, adding, “We have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”
Trump has said he may start with deporting undocumented migrants in Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado — two communities targeted by his campaign rhetoric. He said in his debate with Harris that in Springfield, migrants were “eating the dogs” and cats, and said of Aurora that it was being overrun by Venezuelan gangs. Local and state officials of both parties disputed Trump’s claims.
Rolling back climate and clean energy policies
Trump has long cast doubts on the threat of climate change and prioritized increasing U.S. oil and gas production. “Drill, baby, drill” became a refrain at campaign rallies. He has vowed to unlock new lands for drilling, expedite drilling permits and speed up approval of natural gas pipelines.
Trump has also expressed desire to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act and redistribute any unspent climate funds, which, among other things, support electric vehicle production, EV tax credits, and incentives for battery production and critical mineral mining.
Such a move could prove unpopular with consumers, the automotive industry and even some members of his own party, who have recently supported certain programs funded by the IRA that have brought major manufacturing projects and jobs to conservative districts. Eliminating the individual tax credits for EV could be catastrophic for the automotive industry, which continues to see EV sales numbers grow, and many companies are basing production goals on these growing sales numbers. If the tax incentive is revoked, it would make EVs more expensive and harder to sell.
One of Trump’s most prominent backers, billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has benefitted from EV incentives.
During his first term, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, which included national goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Mr. Biden later rejoined the accords.
Trump’s record on climate issues has prompted warnings from scientists and climate activists about the accelerating dangers of failing to move rapidly toward clean energy and more sustainable development. “The science on climate change is unforgiving, with every year of delay locking in more costs and more irreversible changes,” said Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS.
Climate advocates say four more years of Trump policies will mean the most robust action to fight climate change will need to be pursued at the state and local level, as well as by the business sector.
Putting vaccine denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of health care
Kennedy’s name has been floated to oversee a variety of health-related issues in a second Trump administration, including to run the Department of Health and Human Services. It’s unclear, though, whether a nomination to a Cabinet position would receive the necessary support from Senate Republicans.
Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, told CNN that the Senate will “give great deference to a president that just won a stunning, what I think is an Electoral College landslide when all is said is done and a mandate.”
“He’s being given a mandate to govern, and I think presidents who are given a mandate to govern deserve from the Senate the opportunity to surround themselves with people who are going to execute their policies,” Rubio said.
Kennedy has spent years promoting false information and fears about vaccines, baselessly linking vaccines to autism long after such claims were disproven. He also falsely claimed COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack certain ethnic groups while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people — a conspiracy theory that drew accusations of antisemitism and racism. Kennedy also claimed Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water, a pet project of Kennedy’s.
Kennedy has said recently that he doesn’t want to take vaccine options away from Americans, but his skepticism of them and conspiracy-laden views on science and medicine alarm public health experts.
Kennedy has also campaigned against pesticide use in agriculture and processed food additives.
During a rally in Henderson, Nevada, Trump suggested Kennedy would “work on health and women’s health,” and said on election night that Kennedy is “going to go make America healthy again.”
In an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson last week, Trump said Kennedy “can do whatever he wants,” adding that he’d like the one-time independent presidential candidate to look at pesticides and vaccines.
“I want you to take care of the women of this country, the men of this country and the children of this country,” he said.
When NBC News recently asked Trump if “banning certain vaccines” might be on the table, Trump didn’t dismiss the idea outright, saying he would make a decision and referred to Kennedy as a talented man with “strong views.”
Cutting taxes and business regulations
Trump has said he would boost economic growth through a combination of cutting taxes and eliminating regulations on business. Specifically, he is expected to push Congress to extend the sweeping tax cuts enacted under the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act (TCJA), many of which are set to expire at the end of 2025.
Trump has also proposed lowering corporate taxes to 15% from their current level of 21%; reversing a $10,000 deduction cap on state and local property taxes; ending taxes on tipped wages and overtime pay; and eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits.
If Congress extends the TCJA cuts, income taxes would decline under Trump for Americans of all incomes, but the biggest beneficiaries would be high-income households, according to an analysis by the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model.
Overall, Trump’s tax cuts would lower federal revenue by $5.8 trillion over the next 10 years, adding to the nation’s mounting debt, Penn Wharton estimates. The national debt has grown significantly under both Trump and Mr. Biden in the last eight years.
On the regulatory front, Trump has pledged to remove federal restrictions on fossil fuel production, eliminate red tape in housing construction and ease rules on cryptocurrencies, among other efforts. Investors expect such moves to drive up corporate profits and, in turn, stock prices.
Imposing massive tariff hikes
Trump has said he wants to impose tariffs on all international imports, which economists generally believe will lead to an increase in the price of goods.
Trump pledged to impose 10% across-the-board levies on all products imported to the U.S. from overseas, something he says will protect American jobs and raise more federal revenue, which suggests that he believes that high tariffs would force companies to bring production back to the U.S., creating American jobs, and therefore more taxable revenue.
But most economists say that would likely backfire. Manufacturers would pass costs on to consumers, effectively creating a new tax on Americans. Trump also proposed a levy of 60% or more on Chinese imports — so, in total, if these tariffs were enacted, a typical middle-class household would face an estimated $1,700 a year in additional costs, according to the non-partisan Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Rolling back protections for LGBTQ+ people
Trump has been inconsistent on questions surrounding LGBTQ rights, but during his first term, he rolled back protections for LGBTQ people — especially transgender individuals — and anti-trans rhetoric became a theme of his 2024 campaign. His campaign spent tens of millions on one such high-visibility ad that ran during the World Series, NFL and college football games with the memorable tagline “”Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you.”
The Trump administration reversed a policy that required schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. His administration banned some transgender people from serving in the military — a policy that Mr. Biden reversed. And he also tried to repeal health protections for transgender people and sought to end protections for transgender individuals in federal prison, among other policies.
During his campaign, Trump pledged to use his second term to punish doctors who provide gender affirming care for minors and impose consequences for teachers who discuss it with their minor students.
Leaving abortion access to be decided by states
The president-elect’s stances on abortion have been contradictory in the years since he began running for the presidency. He’s touted the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning a constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, taking credit for appointing three of the justices who joined the majority ruling.
He frequently says the issue should be left up to the states — some of which have imposed near-total abortion bans. Trump has also pledged not to sign a national abortion ban.
“My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said in April.
At the presidential debate with Harris, Trump said, “I’m not signing a ban,” adding that there’s “no reason to sign a ban because we’ve gotten what everybody wanted.” In October, he went further, saying he’d veto a national abortion ban.
Anti-abortion advocates have called for further restrictions on abortion through a law already on the books. They believe the Comstock Act, which concerns the the shipping of materials deemed as “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile,” could be applied to ban anything used to aid an abortion — not just the mailing of abortion pills. Trump told CBS News in August that he would not enforce the Comstock Act.
On IVF, another reproductive rights issue that has come to the fore in recent months, Trump has pledged to expand access to the expensive fertility treatments. The pledge came in response to backlash following a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that determined that frozen embryos created during the IVF process could be considered children, raising the possibility of infanticide prosecutions if they’re destroyed. This prompted clinics in the state to temporarily halt treatments. Democrats have warned that Republicans want to restrict access to the procedures, while blaming the Alabama ruling and threats to fertility treatments in other states on Trump.
Trump announced last month a new plan that would require the federal government to pay for the fertility treatments or require insurance companies to cover costs associated with IVF. He has not said how the government would pay for the high cost of IVF, and the idea of an insurance mandate for IVF treatments runs counter to one of the main pursuits of his first term, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. He did succeed in killing the law’s individual mandate through the enactment of his 2017 tax cuts.
Changing U.S. policy on Israel’s war with Hamas and Hezbollah
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was among the first foreign leaders to hail Trump’s victory.
“Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America,” Netanyahu said in a tweet even before Trump’s election win was confirmed.
Netanyahu spoke to Trump in a “warm and cordial” phone call, his spokesperson said, adding that the two men “agreed to work together for Israel’s security” and also discussed “the Iranian threat.”
Trump has not said how he’ll address Israel’s still-expanding wars against Iran-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, but he’s suggested he can end the conflagration in the heart of the Middle East quickly.
Netanyahu, under intense domestic and international pressure over his handling of the multi-front war, has relied heavily on Washington, Israel’s closest ally, for military and diplomatic backing to continue the fight. He will be urging Trump to keep that vital support coming amid intense international pressure over the humanitarian crises in Gaza and Lebanon, and growing domestic pressure over his handling of the war.
But veteran Israeli diplomat, government adviser and now journalist Alon Pinkas told CBS News ahead of the U.S. election that in his view, Trump is a “very transactional man” who fails to understand the complexities of the wars Israel is fighting and the motivation behind them.
“He’s war averse,” Pinkas said of Trump, adding that the president-elect’s isolationist tendencies presented “a great risk” for Israel.
Even if Trump were to decide to back away from active support for Israel and essentially let Netanyahu do as he sees fit, without criticism or threats of suspending aid, Pinkas said that wouldn’t be enough to ensure Israel’s security.
“If you look at the last six months, about American involvement in intercepting Iranian ballistic missiles in April, in deploying a THAAD missile system in Israel just three weeks ago, in deterring Iran to the best of their ability and providing Israel hardware and munitions that otherwise Israel may not have received,” said Pinkas, “it’s not enough that they write, the Congress…a blank check of $3.8 billion, which is the annual military aid, and say, ‘leave us alone, do with it what you want.’ There needs to be active American diplomacy.”
Pressuring Ukraine to cede ground to Russia to end war
Trump will take over as the U.S. commander-in-chief amid the deadliest conflict on the European continent since World War II. He’s said he can end the nearly three-year war sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine before he even takes office.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had an “excellent” conversation with Trump after the election, adding that they had agreed to “advance” cooperation.
But on the campaign trail, Trump never said how he would end the war, and Ukrainians have voiced fear for months that he could do so by curbing the U.S. military and financial support — already worth more than $50 billion — which has been a lifeline for the country’s defense, and force Zelenskyy to meet Russia’s demands to cede occupied territory.
Any fresh attempt to end violence like this is likely to involve peace talks of some kind, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has said repeatedly that the war will not end until the areas his forces have unilaterally and illegally annexed — around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory — are recognized as part of Russia.
Zelenskyy insists that all of Ukraine’s land must be returned, and he’s warned repeatedly that allowing Putin to seize ground will embolden the Russian leader, with direct implications for America.
“This aggression, and Putin’s army, can come to Europe, and then the citizens of the United States, the soldiers of the United States, will have to protect Europe because they’re the NATO members,” Zelenskyy told CBS News early this year.
Heaping pressure on NATO allies to cough up more cash
There is clear precedent for Trump’s stance on the U.S.-led NATO alliance that was born out of the military partnerships formed during World War II. During his first term and since, Trump has made it clear that he feels America’s European NATO allies slipped into complacency, relying on their superpower partner for theoretical defense in what had been decades of peacetime.
He demanded publicly, repeatedly that some of America’s oldest and closest allies meet their NATO membership commitment to devote at least 2% of their annual GDP to their defense budgets. Trump accused some allies of freeloading – benefitting from the guarantee of NATO’s collective defense principle without paying their fair share.
While the European jitters over the Ukraine war are undoubtedly a factor, his reprimands seem to have worked, to some degree. The majority of NATO member states now meet at least the 2% threshold. It’s little wonder, perhaps, that the only two countries that devote more than the U.S. to defense, proportionally, are Poland, which borders Ukraine, and Estonia, which borders Russia.
There are still wider concerns, meanwhile, among NATO partners over the level of Trump’s commitment to the alliance, and he vowed on the campaign trail to “fundamentally reevaluate NATO’s purpose and mission.”
Alain Sherter, Paula Cohen, Imtiaz Tyab, Mary Cunningham, Kaia Hubbard and Tracy J. Wholf contributed to this report.
Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.