The United States is preparing to restructure their federal government; invoke a massive deportation of their immigrant population, and rewrite their international tariffs, foreign alliances and extraterrestrial ambitions.

With 74+ million votes, the 60th quadrennial presidential election was a landslide victory for Ohio senator JD Vance and former president Donald Trump who’ve realigned the U.S. electorate. Trump is scheduled to be inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States on 20 January 2025.

At 78, Trump is the oldest person ever elected to the White House; and the first convicted felon elected to the presidency. Rewriting America’s political status quo, perhaps the time has come for the nations of the world to take stock of their state of affairs.

America First

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — which can expel drug cartels and criminal gangs without a court hearing — may become the linchpin at the southern border. Between 8-10 million migrants have crossed the southern border since 2021, and while more border agents, detention camps, and fencing may slow their roll the “Catch-and-Release” program and “Remain in Mexico” policy will hold asylum seekers in their native sphere pending their appeals. Nevertheless, Trump won over Latino and Hispanic voters in historic numbers.

Moreover, a 10 and 20 percent across-the-board tariff on all $3 trillion U.S. imports will prevail and a stunning 60 percent tariff on all Chinese goods, too! The International Emergency Economic Powers Act will ensure the executive absolute authority to control economic transactions after declaring an emergency. Despite warm congratulatory remarks on X, expect trading partners around the world to retaliate.

Though a free trade agreement known as U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement replaced NAFTA in 2020, revoking permanent normal trade relations with China will require congressional approval. Expect the U.S. Congress to take up trade and tariff issues when reconsidering Trump’s 2017 tax cuts next year. In sum, import tax is expected to raise revenue and reduce the U.S. trade deficit.

Burgeoning, in part, due to the U.S. evolvement in foreign wars. Over $130+ billion to Ukraine over the past 10 years, and $310 billion to Israel since its founding in 1948 add to the nation’s $35 trillion national debt.

While Trump has promised to bring lasting peace to a tumultuous Middle East, its worth mentioning that Trump won over a seemingly contradictory coalition: Arab Americans outraged by U.S. support for Israel and right-leaning Jews who consider him Israel’s champion. In the Abraham Accords, Trump orchestrated the first diplomatic relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors in his first term. The UAE and Bahrain acknowledged Israel’s sovereignty in exchange for a gilded signing bonus: a $3 billion cash gift to foster economic growth and cooperation in the Middle East.

Iran's trickier. The U.S. and Iran have had an adversarial relationship since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution; a takeover of the U.S. Embassy; and a 444-day hostage crisis. Her militant proxies continue to stymie the Middle East peace process, and the antagonism between the two nations is now personal.

Trump ordered the assassination of an Iranian major general in 2020, Qasem Soleimani, and American intelligence officials have very recently warned the president-elect of real and credible assassination threats against his life from Iran. While Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has final say on all matters of state, Iran’s new reformist president has kept the door open to talks with Trump.

Cut to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offering insight. “I’m not worried about Trump’s break from decades of American foreign policy strategy,” Zelenskyy says, suggesting that Trump will stay the course with Ukraine. Trump met with Zelenskyy in September and said, "I promise you will be happy with me."

“He behaved, in my opinion, in a very correct way – courageously, like a real man,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said of the assassination attempt on Trump in July. Asked whether he was open to holding talks with Trump, the Russian leader replied, “Ready."

Russia currently occupies 20 percent of Ukraine; has displaced 8 million Ukraine nationals; and triggered the largest migrant crisis since World War II. While Trump passionately claimed during the campaign "I can end the Russo-Ukraine War in 24-hours," he's been petty with the details.

Perhaps the question isn't one of principle but policy? Trade between Russia and the United States is at its lowest levels since the end of the Soviet Union, and Trump has vowed to lift all sanctions imposed by the Biden administration. "We have things much more powerful, actually, than sanctions. We have trade. We cannot lose our dollar's standard."

Hence, expect Washington to reduce America’s alliance with Beijing; blunt the country’s technological advancements; implement harsh penalties for intellectual property theft; and hike tariffs whilst all the while trying not to remind this sleeping dragon that China actually owns $770 billion of the U.S. Treasury.

Wild West

Trump has promised to let vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” with Health and Human Services who he says are “the captives of the industries they regulate” by eliminating toxic additives, pesticide and residues in food; ending fluoridation of public water; and promoting alternative medicine.

On health care, expect an erosion of the Affordable Care Act’s consumer protections; the imposition of work requirements in Medicaid and funding cuts to the safety net insurance; and challenges to federal agencies that safeguard public health. On the campaign trail, Trump opined “whether they like it or not, I’m going to protect women” so expect abortion restrictions to tighten nationwide with a possible effort to restrict the mailing of abortion medications. Here again, Trump can restrict access to abortion medications either by withdrawing the FDA’s authorization for the drugs, or by invoking a 19th-century law called The Comstock Act.

More than 45 million Americans carry student loans, owing $1.74 trillion in federal and private student loan debt. The average annual cost of a private university hit nearly $60,000 in 2024.

While many debt-relief plans are tied up in court, Trump has indicated how he’ll proceed: First, eradicate the U.S. Department of Education responsible for billions of dollars in scholarships; replace accrediting organizations that oversee colleges and universities; and create a platform for “more affordable alternatives to a traditional four-year college degree.”

While the U.S. Congress would need to approve any major dismantling of the department, the executive can seek deep funding cuts and reallocate key responsibilities to other agencies. In 2020, Trump nixed a popular public student loan forgiveness plan that didn’t pass. However, his administration denied almost all of the program’s applicants.

The Paris Agreement — an international treaty on climate change, mitigation, adaptation, and finance — has 195 member states collectively known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The United States withdrew from the agreement in 2020, rejoined in 2021, and will likely withdraw again in 2025.

Trump has held for decades that America's allies are "freeloaders and free riders on America's protection," and apparently they've been listening. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is seeking to start off on the right foot with Trump by praising the United States president-elect's attempts to get NATO countries to spend more on defense, beyond the current 2 percent of GDP target. "We will have to spend more ... It will be much more than the 2 percent. I’m clear about that."

While America’s national debt recently exceeded $35.88 trillion, and the federal deficit for 2024 topped $1.83 trillion, year after year the federal government continues to pay itself and its agencies on borrowed credit. In “The America We Deserve,” Trump’s missive was a rare acknowledgment from a public figure that the nation’s fiscal policy is reckless and needed reform. It’ll require changing the tax code, cutting spending in ways that will be painful, and reforming entitlement programs.

New Frontier

Trump summarizes his foreign affairs approach with a Reagan phrase: “peace through strength.” But unlike Reagan, Trump appears isolationist, non-interventionist, even undiplomatic. Two republican icons — a self described protégé and his mentor — perfectly cast in the same role on two very different stages of time.

For Russia, China, and the U.S.A were once in play as they are today, and in the wings of their performances were the lights, magic and technology. Trump’s new missile defense system — reconstituted from Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) — could render nuclear weapons obsolete during his historic second term. While nuclear weapons pose the only existential threat to the world, nuclear systems are accelerating planetary science for missions across the solar system.

Due in part to the world’s richest person who's embedded with China; has private phone calls with Vladimir Putin; and will soon take his seat in the Trump administration. Elon Musk plans to soar through and beyond his 6,426 Starlink satellites sometime soon "to secure the long-term survival of the human species by colonizing Mars."

While doomsday is roughly 1.3 billion years away, "humans will not be able to physiologically survive on Earth due to the natural evolution of the sun," according to the European Space Agency. Extreme weather events like floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and severe storms are already effecting life on Earth by causing damage to infrastructure, disrupting food production, displacing communities, impacting health, altering ecosystems.

The United States Space Force was established in 2019 during the first Trump administration with a motto, "Semper Supra" or "Always Above." It's mission to "secure our nation's interests in, from, and to space" has the largest extraterrestrial presence of any nation on earth. An ensign to the free world, the global leader of technology no longer invokes the term discovery but survival.

Settler colonialism is a capitalist enterprise; an enslavement of peoples through the appropriation of resources; and the exploitation of natural resources to produce goods and services at a low cost for an elite class. Elon Musk joined Trump's post election call with Zelenskyy. An advisor privy to their conversation overhead him say, "Sail on, oh ship of state. Sail on, oh union strong and great."