Reprinted from the Wall Street Journal
What the People Want—and Don’t
Voters back some of Trump’s promises, but others are sure to set off a backlash.
ET
Every incoming presidential administration is tempted to overread the electorate’s support for its agenda. Judging by the tone and content of President Trump’s Second Inaugural Address, his administration will be no exception.
As he enacts his agenda, Mr. Trump would do well to heed the electorate’s wishes. Based on a synthesis of five major postelection surveys, here’s a summary of what the American people want—and don’t want—from the 47th president:
A majority of Americans believe that government is almost always wasteful, inefficient and self-serving, and that our politics has been “broken” for decades. They believe that the economic system “unfairly favors the wealthy.” They believe that immigrants strengthen our country through their hard work and talent but that the large number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years is increasing crime in the U.S. They believe that climate change is real and caused by human activities. And they believe that the U.S. is too active in world affairs and should pay more attention to its domestic problems.
Americans want action to reduce illegal immigration, reduce high prices and end overseas conflicts. They’re divided on how they view higher tariffs. They want antidiscrimination statutes to continue protecting people who identify as transgender but oppose transgender athletes participating in women’s sports and minors receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapies. They want—or at least say they want—less partisan division and more compromise to solve problems.
Here’s what the majority of Americans don’t want Mr. Trump to do: use the Justice Department to investigate his political rivals, punish reporters for writing stories he dislikes, pardon people convicted of committing crimes on Jan. 6, 2021, replace civil-service workers with political appointees, impound funds appropriated by Congress, or use force to stop protests against him. Nor do they want their new president to eliminate the Education Department, make childhood vaccinations voluntary, withdraw from the Paris climate accords, expand into Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal, or rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
As Mr. Trump cracks down on illegal immigration—a major focus of his inaugural address—he will be challenged to keep his balance and maintain public support. On the one hand, there’s overwhelming support for deporting illegal immigrants who have committed violent crimes since entering the U.S. A smaller majority of Americans favor deporting all immigrants who have illegally entered the country in recent years, regardless of their conduct within our borders.
On the other hand, most Americans don’t support deporting longtime residents who came illegally but who have obeyed the law since their arrival. Nor do they support expelling the Dreamers—children who came to the U.S. illegally with their parents, grew up here as Americans and know no other country as home.
The public cares not only about who is deported but also about how it’s done. Americans oppose using the military to carry out mass deportations. They also oppose seizing illegal immigrants from churches, hospitals or schools, or deporting parents if it means separating them from their children who were born here as citizens.
And finally, most Americans oppose ending birthright citizenship. Mr. Trump aims to do so with an executive order, despite the language of the 14th Amendment. It is hard to believe that this gambit will survive judicial scrutiny.
Mr. Trump isn’t a man who likes to do unpopular things, and he may genuinely believe that the things he wants to do—some of which he’s already done in his Inauguration Day executive actions—enjoy majority support. If so, he’s in for a rude awakening. The people who put him over the top on Nov. 5 weren’t members of his fervent MAGA base. Rather, they were swing voters who decided in the campaign’s closing days that he was more likely to solve their core economic problems—especially high prices for the basics of daily life—than Kamala Harris was. He had little to say to these voters in his inaugural address. And it remains to be seen whether higher tariffs and mass expulsions of immigrants who are key to our construction and agricultural sectors are consistent with making daily life more affordable for working- and middle-class Americans.
It may be that Mr. Trump’s victory represents the long-awaited realignment of America’s party system, as he evidently believes it does. But it isn’t clear that our politics has broken out of its long cycle of narrow and shifting majorities. The man who triumphantly returned to the White House has a chance to end this cycle and establish Republicans as the dominant American party—if he doesn’t overplay his hand.
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