Mark Linn- Copy Editor copy@insideuab.com
It’s been almost three weeks since Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States in a stunning upset over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and many are wondering what a Donald Trump presidency will mean for them.
“The truth is, nobody really knows,” said Adamu Shaku, M.A., J.D., a visiting professor at UAB who teaches courses on public policy. “The fact is Donald Trump is a person who did not have a whole lot of ideology, did not have a whole lot of core policy commitments prior to the campaign. Even over the course of the campaign, he sketched his policies only in the broadest possible terms and much of what he said seemed to be very much off the cuff and not very grounded in concrete fact or detail.”
Now that the election is over, president-elect Trump has begun choosing people for his cabinet and addressing how he plans to govern when his first term begins in January. Part of that has included walking back some of his previous campaign promises in several policy areas.
“We’ve already started to see him dial back and qualify and even outright reverse many of the commitments that he made in broad terms during the campaign,” Shaku said.
Healthcare
During the campaign, Trump promised a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which he described as a “complete disaster” that he would replace with a “free-market” system.
Trump initially said that he was in favor of the individual mandate that requires all Americans to have insurance, but later reversed that position when he released his healthcare plan, which called for allowing health insurance companies to compete across state lines. His latest statements since the election expressed a commitment to certain provisions of Obamacare.
“Since the election, he’s been explicit about the fact that there are provisions within Obamacare that work and he would be interested in being preserved, for example allowing young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance up to age 26,” Shaku said. “He’s indicated that he’s committed to doing that and making sure folks who have pre-existing conditions are not denied care.”
The difficulty for Trump and congressional Republicans is that around 20 million people have health coverage today because of the Affordable Care Act, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The uninsured rate hit an all-time low of 8.9 percent as of this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Both Trump and Republicans have reiterated a commitment that those people won’t lose their coverage - and should they lose it, Republicans could face backlash in upcoming elections.
“Pretty much anything that happens over the next four years will have a big ‘R’ next to it,” Shauku said. “Which means any policy outcomes that people don’t like are readily traceable to the Republican party and will reflect on a Republican brand.”
Education
During the campaign, Trump said that he might be willing to cut, or at least substantially shrink the Department of Education, but not cut services provided by the department. On Nov. 23, Trump announced that he had picked Betsy DeVos, a billionaire education activist and top Republican donor to be Secretary of Education.
According to Shauku, cutting the Department of Education has been something on the conservative wish list since its inception in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter.
However, he pointed out that before there was a cabinet-level Department of Education, its role was filled by the Bureau of Education.
“The fact is, even among conservatives, education is considered a major component of social mobility,” Shauku said. “So while a cabinet-level Department of
Education may be this sort of symbol of big government that you want to get rid of for symbolic reasons, the actual things being done at the Department of Education are not likely to be on the chopping block, because they are both progressive and conservative policy commitments.”
While it’s unlikely that federal loans and grants such as the Pell Grant will be cut, there might be an increased focus on promoting charter schools and providing vouchers to low-income children for private schools and a de-emphasis on education initiatives such as Common Core.
The Wall
During the campaign, Trump promised that he would build a wall across the southern border with Mexico, which he believes Mexico will pay for. Since the election, Trump has reiterated his support for “securing the border,” but has said that there “could be some fencing” for some areas of the barrier.
“There are several policy proposals that the president-elect has sort of doubled-down on since he’s been elected, and immigration policy has been a big one,” Shauku said. “President-elect Trump has been meeting with people in his immigration policy transition team that want to take a tougher line on immigration, who want to deport 2-3 million immigrants who are in the country unlawfully today, and they also want to deny entry to people coming from certain countries that have been deemed to be dangerous from a terrorist point of view.”
Muslim Immigration
Another controversial promise Trump made during the campaign was that he would implement a temporary ban on Muslims traveling to the U.S., until representatives could figure out “what was going on.” Since the election, the president-elect hasn’t specifically addressed that issue, but he has repeated his promise to create a registry of identified Muslims.
Immediately following the results of the election, there was a sharp increase of racist and xenophobic harassment reported across the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and extremist groups across the country, collected reports of more than 700 incidents of harassment since the election, primarily directed against immigrants, African-Americans and members of the LGBT community. Another disturbing trend in the reported incidents is that more than 40 percent of them occurred in an educational setting, such as K-12 schools and colleges. Many UAB students and organizations have spoken out against these incidents.
“The Trump campaign encouraged division and exclusion, not only of Muslims, but other minorities, of which all are represented at UAB,” said Mahad Amjad, the president of the Muslim Student Association at UAB. “We are hoping to work with the Muslims on campus, as well as all other students and faculty, to ensure the safety and security of Muslims as President Trump takes office.”
Recently, a multi-faith coalition consisting of Ukirk Birmingham, the MSA, Hillel, the Baha’i College Club and the Secular Student Alliance released a statement condemning unconfirmed reports of harassment on campus and stating their commitment to encouraging dialogue and keeping the community safe for all students.
“The UAB Interfaith Coalition seeks to promote the values of equality and inclusion by establishing strong relationships between students of different philosophical backgrounds,” the statement read. “We do this by engaging in dialogue and working together towards a greater good for communities across the state of Alabama. There have been recent reports of students at UAB being harassed and assaulted because of their religious affiliation and national origin. We strongly condemn these acts of hate and violence and pledge to work towards a community where all students feel welcome, safe, and affirmed in their respective identities. We urge our fellow students to stand with people being targeted on the basis of religion or national origin and report all hate crimes.”
Reproductive Rights
Mishka Naiker, vice president of Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity at UAB, believes that the president-elect and his administration spell trouble for reproductive rights and for members of the LGBT community. During his campaign, Trump stood firm against late-term abortions, and vice president-elect Mike Pence supported conversion therapy for LGBT people while he was in congress.
“This past summer, some of us lobbied in D.C. for the Real Education for Healthy Youth Act that would provide standardized, comprehensive and accurate sexual education to all public schools across the country. Under the president-elect, we’re not sure if that’s going to pass - but we’re not going to stop pushing for it. Here at UAB, we’ll be partnering up with different organizations during Sex Week to provide information at events about safe relationships and safe sex. Additionally, we’re starting a reproductive justice book club and host monthly meetings. Yes, Trump’s election has been scary and we’re not sure what that really means for reproductive in the future: but what we do know is that our work is needed and we’re not stopping,” Naiker said.
Other
“The thing I’ve been telling students in my day to day encounters is, don’t necessarily buy into the parade of horribles,” Shauku said. “This President Trump, even among some of his supporters, is not an ideal candidate, and yet every president matures while in office, and every president is constrained by an institutional superstructure. So I would say, give the process an opportunity to work, don’t be reactionary, use this as an opportunity to become more attentive to how the government works.”
