With the new Congress set to certify President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory Monday, a remarkable political comeback will be complete.

Of course, the scene in Washington is expected to be much different than Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to block the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. That fateful day led to five deaths and was thought for a time to be a definitive end to the Trump era, but the former — and future — president was acquitted by the Senate in February 2021 of charges he incited an insurrection, the second impeachment proceeding related to his first presidential term.

In the transitional period following his 2024 victory over Kamala Harris, Trump has already been wielding power on Capitol Hill, lining up congressional Republicans eager to work on his agenda and push through his eye-popping Cabinet picks.

Trump has given some indication of what he’ll do early in his second term, but how will it all play out?

The players in a new Trump administration

Throughout his first run for the White House, speculation ran wild about the kind of figures Trump, who then lacked any government experience, would include in his Cabinet. Picks like Ben Carson and Mike Pompeo ultimately aligned well with the administration’s priorities, while Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson flopped disastrously.

If 2017 was the year of the unknown for Trump’s cabinet, 2025 is the year of the bold. His announcement of Susie Wiles as the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff set the tone, while 27-year-old Karoline Leavitt is poised to become the youngest-ever White House press secretary.

Of course, these picks pale in comparison to vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. A new “Department of Government Efficiency” will be headed by world’s richest man Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — staunch Trump allies who will advise the president on various issues. Ramaswamy has already committed to dismantling the advisory body before America’s 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026.

Rounding out the administration are bureaucratic firecrackers like Tom Homan, who spent decades in immigration law enforcement, as Trump’s border czar apparent and Kash Patel, a former federal prosecutor, to head the FBI, an institution Trump has repeatedly charged with political bias. Homan and Patel will oversee crackdowns on illegal immigration and the weaponization of federal law enforcement, respectively.

Much of Trump’s first 100 days will see the new GOP-led Senate tasked with voting to confirm (or reject) his nominees.

Economy and energy

Poll after poll showed that the economy was the most important issue for voters in the 2024 election. Post-COVID inflation gave way to stubbornly high prices for utilities and services across the board, while negative attitudes toward President Joe Biden’s — and by extension Harris’ — handling of the situation cost the Democrats dearly.

By contrast, Trump’s message of “drill, baby drill” to cut energy costs in half within his first year back in office carried the day. He has vowed to sign a broad Day 1 executive order directing agency leaders to “use every tool and authority at their disposal to defeat inflation and to bring consumer prices rapidly down.”

Similarly, Trump’s support for expanding America’s nuclear energy resolve was central to his “all of the above” energy approach. His former Secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt, said Trump will bolster production by modernizing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, working to keep existing nuclear power plants open and investing in small modular reactors.

Otherwise, the new Congress seems likely to extend provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — better known as the Trump tax cuts — which were set to expire in 2025. Trump and his allies credit the act with increasing middle-class incomes in the late 2010s, while Democrats take issue with its lower corporate tax rate and describe it as a giveaway to the wealthy.

Illegal immigration

If Biden and Harris had another weak area that cost them the White House, it was undoubtedly illegal immigration.

Nearly a decade after Trump’s infamous “drugs, crime and rapists” speech, support for deporting immigrants who enter the country illegally has never been higher. Most migrants have settled in major cities that saw a violent crime spike early in Biden’s term — prompting intense debates about the extent to which they were responsible for said crime spike. Data shows that “undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes,” according to the National Institute of Justice.

With Trump and Homan at the helm, the questions become: Who exactly is up for deportation? And to what extent will migrant-heavy cities cooperate with federal immigration authorities in any widespread deportation operation?

Experts expect Trump to start by going after those with existing orders of removal who have exhausted all legal options. Vice President-elect JD Vance has suggested the administration could deport more than 1 million people each year. At the same time, Trump has threatened to cut federal funding to states and cities that do not assist in deportation plans.

Maryland leaders like Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, a Democrat, have hinted at how they plan to react to the administration’s efforts. In November, Scott told The Sun he was concerned about federal agents interfering with Baltimore Police resources in any widespread Trump-led deportation operation.

“We would hope that this administration, who says they want to come down and make sure that violence is going down in cities, doesn’t come disrupt the apple cart when violence is going down in the city to a level it has never had before,” Scott said.

In Republican-led states, governors and other officials have supported various initiatives designed to aid Trump’s deportation efforts. Democratic governors, like Maryland’s Wes Moore, have issued broad statements emphasizing the value of “immigrant communities” without explicitly addressing illegal immigration.

Abortion rights and health care

Broad opposition to federal involvement in the nation’s health care policies has characterized Republican politicians in recent decades, but the political reality changed overnight with the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Democrats used the abortion issue to outperform expectations in that year’s midterms, but last November’s result showed it did not resonate as much as the economy or immigration.

Of course, Trump appointed three of the five Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe and generally avoided the issue during his 2024 campaign. When he did discuss abortion, Trump said he would not support a federal ban and pledged support for protecting exceptions related to rape, incest and the life of the mother.

“Everyone knows I would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it, because it is up to the states to decide based on the will of their voters (the will of the people!),” Trump posted on Truth Social during the October 2024 vice presidential debate between Vance and Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

More broadly, Trump took a lot of heat for his “concepts of a plan” to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) when debating Harris in September. Trump and Republicans have long tried to repeal and nearly succeeded in his first term, but the law is now nearly 15 years old and would be difficult to overhaul entirely.

Some Republicans have called for procedural changes to the ACA, such as changing the funding structure for Medicaid by reducing the amount of insurance the federal government pays. The administration could also direct Congress to let premium-reducing subsidies through the Inflation Reduction Act expire at the end of 2025, which some studies say could cause premiums to double or more.

Foreign policy

During Biden’s term, Russia launched an invasion of neighboring Ukraine while Hamas fighters launched a surprise terror attack into southern Israel. These conflicts erupted into full-blown wars and continue to rage today — nearly three years on and 15 months on, respectively.

Trump seems most interested in ending fighting to minimize American casualties without giving much thought to the geopolitical implications of each region. He has vowed to “settle” the Russia-Ukraine war through negotiations with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyrr Zelenskyy within 24 hours of taking office, and some of his diplomats are gearing up for a trip to Kyiv this month. Those in the Trump camp have said a potential visit to Moscow is not off the table.

In the Middle East, Trump is expected to continue his close bond with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the country uses American weapons against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem during his first term and brokered historic peace deals between Israel and nearby Arab countries and will likely continue these efforts in some way.

Trump will also contend with a developing situation in Syria, as longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December after a 13-year civil war. Last month, the Pentagon reported that about 2,000 American military personnel were still in Syria — more than double the number of troops previously thought.

America’s European allies have fretted about Trump’s return to power, seeing it as a missed opportunity to build upon climate initiatives like the 2016 Paris Agreement — which Biden brought the U.S. back into after Trump withdrew in his first term. Some leaders across the Atlantic are also worried about what Trump will mean for the NATO alliance against Russia, as the president previously suggested the U.S. should not defend NATO countries that do not spend a designated amount of their GDP on the military.

Finally, Trump’s rhetoric around Greenland and the Panama Canal has been perhaps his most intriguing of the transition period.

Trump has floated an American purchase of Greenland — a territory of Denmark, which says the island is not for sale — to explore vast quantities of minerals and counter Russian influence in the Arctic. Melting sea ice seems poised to open new shipping routes and strategic bases in the harsh polar region.

He also sparred with Panama’s president over ownership of the canal, which the U.S. originally constructed under Theodore Roosevelt but handed over in 1999. Trump has expressed frustration with high fees for American ships traveling through the canal and said that re-taking it could help curb his questionable claims of Chinese influence in Central and South America.

Trade and regulation

In 2024, Republicans made big inroads with traditionally Democratic union members by running on protectionist trade policies designed to keep blue-collar jobs in America. Trump’s second term will look to expand tariffs on imports from Mexico, China and other key partners.

The Wall Street Journal has noted a change in the attitudes of American businesses toward Chinese tariffs compared to Trump’s first term. Across multiple industries, companies have shown a lower tolerance for China’s struggling economy and highly centralized business climate, which has caused executives to look elsewhere for foreign investment.

Otherwise, Trump has vowed to restore his “two for one” rule — meaning two regulations must be eliminated before a new one can be enacted — for deregulating several sectors. He has called for abolishing the Department of Education and returning control of public schools to the state and local levels.

Have a news tip? Contact Carson Swick at cswick@baltsun.com.