How Far Can Republicans Stretch The Power Of The Trifecta?
“Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government practically just so much.” – Abraham Lincoln, 1856
Following a historic 2024 election season, the landscape on Capitol Hill will drastically change when the 119th Congress meets for the first time on Jan. 3, 2025. Public anger over the state of the economy and a surge in illegal immigration across the southern border helped Donald Trump secure a resounding victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, sending the former president back to the White House. And while Americans still remain deeply polarized, the results of the 2024 election indicate a rightward shift across almost all voting demographics in nearly every state.
These dynamics not only helped Trump retake the White House but saw Republicans gain a majority in the Senate and secure enough seats to maintain control of the House of Representatives.
In the Senate, Republicans picked up four seats: Businessman Tim Sheehy defeated Democratic incumbent Jon Tester in Montana; businessman Bernie Moreno knocked out incumbent Sherrod Brown in Ohio; former West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice secured the seat vacated by the retiring Joe Manchin; and Dave McCormick edged out Bob Casey in Pennsylvania. Those four flips will give Republicans a 53-47 majority in the upper chamber come January.
On the House side, Republicans flipped seats in key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Ohio to ensure the party maintained control of the chamber, although by only the slimmest of margins. The Republican trifecta will have GOP lawmakers hoping for a more productive congressional session than the 118th Congress, which saw the fewest laws passed in the first year of a two-year session since the Nixon era.
Outside of a few bipartisan votes to avert government shutdowns, the last congressional session was characterized largely by Republican infighting, upheavals in leadership, censures, an expulsion, and retirement announcements. This time around, however, Republicans are aiming to use the budget reconciliation process to quickly and decisively implement the Trump agenda — including extending tax breaks, strengthening immigration restrictions, and rolling back federal regulations.
The question remains: Will Republicans remain united?
Although the Republican trifecta gives Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and incoming Senate Majority leader John Thune (R-SD) a favorable battleground on which to advance the Republican mandate, their razor-thin majority poses limits to their advantage. Thune will need Democratic senators to cross the aisle to help clear the threshold needed for some major legislative goals, while Johnson will need to hold his members in line amid internal ideological divisions.
As detailed in the following briefs, Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress will look to move fast on key issues ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. History shows midterm elections often go poorly for a party with total government control.
Economy, Jobs & Taxes
A deep discontent with the country’s economic situation and the Biden administration’s handling of issues like inflation and immigration helped usher Trump back into the White House and Republicans sweep Congress. Exit polls showed that 67 percent of Americans felt the economy was in bad shape, with 45 percent saying their own financial situation is worse now than four years ago.
Against this national backdrop, Trump and Republicans are planning to pursue a series of economic initiatives — with extending expiring provisions in the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act at the top of the list. Those provisions include an increase to the standard deduction, lower marginal income tax rates for most income brackets, an increase to the estate tax exemption, and restoring companies’ ability to immediately deduct research and development investment.
Although the corporate income tax rate is not among the expiring provisions, Trump has floated lowering it to 15 percent for certain U.S. businesses. He has also suggested he wants to eliminate the cap on state and local tax deductions, also known as SALT.
To move quickly on these economic priorities, Republicans are gravitating toward fast-tracking legislation through budget reconciliation, a process that lowers the 60-vote threshold for Senate passage to a simple 51-vote majority.
While reconciliation bills are typically confined to issues such as taxes, federal spending, and the federal debt, Republicans are signaling that they may use the process to achieve broader policy goals. House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) recently noted that Republicans were “going to push the outer limits to include as much pro-growth strategy as we can. One of those would be regulatory reform. Another one will be border security and immigration reform.”
However, this may not be a done deal among Republicans. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that extending the Trump tax cuts for the next 10 years would add $4.6 trillion to the deficit. This has led to a split within the GOP, with some congressional Republicans calling for a full extension and deficit hawks calling for balancing tax policy and annual federal deficits.
Some of the GOP’s deficit hardliners have suggested that they might not support tax cuts without spending offsets, which could include cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. As Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) noted: “There’s no guarantee I’m just going to go along with the same old business as usual. I doubt I would. … We either do big change now or big change will be forced on us in a horrific debt crisis.”
Tariffs
Trump made tariffs a signature piece of his economic agenda, and he has since vowed to follow through on his campaign promises. On Nov. 25, Trump declared in a series of social media posts that he would impose tariffs on all products coming into the U.S. from China, Mexico, and Canada on his first day in office. He said this would include a new 10 percent tariff on products from China and a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico, the latter of which he claimed would remain in effect until illegal drugs and migrants stop coming across the border.
While Trump cannot unilaterally impose these tariffs, a friendly Congress can selectively delegate tariff-setting authority to the president — something it frequently did during his last term when he slapped new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and more than $300 billion in Chinese goods. Trump can also use an existing trade investigation from his first term to place new tariffs on China, and his advisers have argued he can quickly impose tariffs by declaring an economic emergency.
Despite Trump’s fondness for tariffs — he has called tariffs “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” — he may face a backlash from within his own party if Americans begin to bear the burden of the tariffs. The National Retail Federation estimates that Trump’s proposed tariffs on imports could lead to consumers losing between $46 billion and $78 billion in spending power each year on products, including apparel, toys, furniture, household appliances, footwear, and travel goods.
Immigration and The Border
Arguably the second biggest issue — at least for candidates — during the 2024 election season was immigration and the influx of migrants across the southern border with Mexico. While Trump has made immigration one of his key issues since he announced his first presidential run almost a decade ago, it became a flashpoint for Republicans and Democrats during the 2024 campaign, with candidates from both parties vowing to crack down on illegal border crossings.
Democrats — and some Republican senators — have proposed a more moderate approach to the issue, with the upper chamber introducing a bipartisan immigration bill in early 2024. That legislation, however, collapsed amid objections from Trump and Speaker Johnson, who said publicly that he would not allow the Senate bill to reach the House floor for a vote.
Instead, when the 119th Congress meets in January, the debate over immigration will largely focus on Trump’s plan for mass deportations, ending the Biden administration’s strategy to create more legal pathways to citizenship, and making it much harder for migrants to seek asylum or temporary protection in the U.S.
While Democrats and many immigration activists have warned of the humanitarian and economic crisis of a mass deportation program, Trump has said there is “no price tag” on his plan and could even maneuver around any resistance from Congress with the appointment of Tom Homan as “border czar.” Homan, the former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director, will not need congressional approval to serve under Trump and will be insulated from other forms of legislative branch scrutiny — meaning there will be little oversight over any mass deportation plans he puts in front of Trump.
Whether through a Trump executive order, plans developed by Homan, or action taken by a Republican-controlled Congress, U.S. immigration policy priorities will look drastically different in January than they have under the Biden administration.
Foreign Policy
Trump and the Republican Congress inherit a global landscape marked by multiple conflicts in which the U.S. remains strategically and financially entangled. While Trump’s first term in office was largely defined by his isolationist stance toward foreign affairs, the president-elect has already made promises of ending the war in Ukraine and expressing more support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the war against Hamas.
While much of the U.S.’s posturing when it comes to those conflicts will be spearheaded by Trump’s nominees for secretary of state and ambassador to the United Nations — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), respectively — Congress will play a major role in determining the financial packages that are sent, or not sent, to those countries.
With hard-right Republicans criticizing the bipartisan immigration bill for including aid to Kyiv, it is likely that the new administration and Congress will be less generous with its financial and military support for Ukraine. Given this, President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said in early November that the outgoing administration will push Congress on Ukraine aid and for a ceasefire in its ongoing war with Russia. The Biden administration also promised to send the $6 billion left in approved funding for Ukraine before Biden’s term is up on January 20.
Funding for the war in Ukraine may divide Congress essentially down partisan lines, but the conflict between Israel and Hamas is murkier. Some Democrats are calling on the Biden administration to sanction members of Netanyahu’s government over anti-Palestinian violence in the West Bank before he leaves office. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) went a step further, introducing failed legislation to block the sale of certain of weapons to Israel. These moves, however, can be seen as last-ditch efforts by left-of-center lawmakers ahead of the Republican takeover of Congress and the White House.
Given Trump’s warm embrace of Israel during his first term, which included moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and Republican praise for his support of Netanyahu’s government, there will likely be little appetite from the 119th Congress to sanction or cut funding or arms sent to Israel.
One area of possible discord between Trump and the incoming Congress could be NATO, from which Trump has repeatedly threatened to withdraw the U.S. Senators from both parties agreed last December to include language in the annual defense bill that limits a president’s power to pull the U.S. out of the alliance. Trump, however, could pursue a policy to make NATO dormant, for example, by reducing the number of exercises Americans take part in with NATO allies, further reducing U.S. troop presence in Europe, withholding payments to the NATO infrastructure, or cutting down on the U.S. military budget.
One potential voice in the Trump Cabinet, however, who may moderate Trump’s stance on NATO is Marco Rubio, his nominee for secretary of state. Rubio was the sponsor of the bill intended to curtail presidential power over the U.S.’s role in NATO and has promised to maintain the alliance.
Regulatory Rollbacks
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump and congressional Republicans promised to repeal or cut back a number of Biden administration achievements, including clean energy tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and expanded subsidies in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). However, the potential consequences for millions of Americans could force Republicans to moderate roll backs of those laws.
Although the IRA failed to garner a single GOP vote in the House or Senate, there is internal debate over the extent of the cut given that the law has spurred billions of dollars in manufacturing projects across the country — including in Trump-favored congressional districts, which saw three times as much manufacturing and clean energy investments as those districts that leaned toward Biden.
Additional IRA restrictions on fossil fuel producers are also expected to be targeted for elimination, including a program that charges oil and gas producers for emitting high levels of methane emissions. Trump’s transition team has also said it will kill the IRA’s $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicle purchases. Wind subsidies, “green bank” investments, and other IRA provisions could additionally be on the chopping block.
On health care, Democrats have introduced legislation to preserve the enhanced subsidies available to low-income Americans under the ACA, but Republicans argue they are too costly and susceptible to fraud. If the subsidies are allowed to expire, 4 million people could become uninsured, leading hospitals and insurers to believe that despite their animus toward the ACA, Republicans will keep the subsidies in place.
