David A. Graham

So I do think there will be some pullback.

And I think you see in the small breaks between members of Congress and Trump, the beginnings of members trying to edge towards the center and away from these more extreme ideas.

I think many of these things are not going to be easy to reverse.

You know, if there is a weakness to what Trump has done, it's that he has relied heavily on executive orders and not on legislation.

And so a new Democratic president could come in, you know, on January 20th, 2029 and reverse a lot of those things.

A Democratic Congress could push back on a lot of them.

But these broader shifts in the way government power works and the relationship with citizens, I think are going to be a lot harder to undo.

We have the most powerful presidency we've ever had.

And taking that back, you know, you can have a president who is more willing to be restrained in the way he or she uses that power.

But unless there is a real effort to rebalance the way government works, to give Congress more power, for Congress to be more forceful, to take back control over things like independent regulatory agencies.

We're not going to see those things reversed.

And any president could continue to act in these really kind of unrestrained ways for whatever policies they might be proposing.

And I think that is something that's going to take years to redo.