What it means now Trump controls all three branches of government
After Republicans secured the 218 votes needed for a majority in the House, Donald Trump has Republican majorities in all of the three branches of government.
After a week of vote counting, Republicans have secured a majority in the House of Representatives – meaning president-elect Donald Trump has complete control of the US government when he takes office.
The federal US government is divided into three branches – the legislative (the House and Senate), the executive (the presidency) and the judicial (the US Supreme court).
While Trump may have had control of two of the branches when he took office in 2017, he did not yet have a hand in the makeup of the Supreme Court (he nominated the first of three justices he picked during his tenure shortly after taking office) – marking a big difference this time around.
To have such a strong mandate is not only incredibly rare, but according to experts, may give any president the power to reshape the US in his image.
Here’s what we know so far.
What are the three branches of government?
To understand the extent of Trump’s power, it’s worth taking a look at how the three branches of government work in the US.
The federal (country-wide) government in the US is made up of three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branch. They were created in the US Constitutional Convention back in 1787.
"The system was was designed so that each branch of government, the legislative — that's Congress — containing the House of Representatives and the Senate, and the executive branch, that's the president, and then the judiciary, the Supreme Court, can keep each other in check," Katie Pruszynski, a Trump specialist and PhD candidate at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, told Yahoo News.
"This way, no one party, person, or ideology can become too dominant."
The executive branch includes the president, the vice president, their cabinet, and about 5,000,000 other workers like civil servants. This also consists of government departments and agencies like the FBI.
The second branch, the legislative branch, has parallels with the UK system.
"The House of Representatives and the Senate are both the places in which laws are written and made much the same as we have in the UK with the House of Commons and the House of Lords,” Pruszynski said.
“There is the lower chamber of the House, the upper chamber of the Senate, and laws typically move through them and then to the president's desk for a signature.”
The third branch, the judicial, includes the supreme court and its nine justices. The Supreme Court, the highest court in the US, heads up the judicial branch of the state.
It has the power to review and overturn legal decisions made by lower courts, is responsible for interpreting the US constitution, as well as ensuring each branch of government recognises the limits to its power.
While each system is separated to maintain checks and balances on power, the system can become vulnerable if each part of the branches are under one political party's control.
"With all of those powers considered, you have the ability to enact a much more extreme political agenda if all of those traffic lights are on green," Pruszynski said.
The Supreme Court
For Trump, the Supreme Court is already stacked in his favour.
In the US, presidents can nominate justices of the Supreme Court.
Currently, the majority (five out of nine) of the justices have been appointed by Republican presidents with increasingly conservative positions. In fact, three of those five were appointed by Trump during the last four years he was in power.
The other Republicans – Clarence Thomas, who was nominated by president George HW Bush, and Samuel Alito, Jr, who was nominated by president George W Bush – may decide to retire during Trump’s term.
“If they retire, he will be just one of four presidents who have been able to nominate a majority in the Supreme Court,” Dr Dafydd Townley, a teaching fellow in international security at the University of Portsmouth told Yahoo News.
Added to this, Supreme Court justices are appointed for life — with their influence long outlasting their nominator's presidency.
“Previously, Trump appointed very young judges,” Professor Todd Landman, the Rights Lab research director and professor of political science at the University of Nottingham, told Yahoo News.
“Of course, when they’re appointed, they're appointed for life. So if you appoint someone in their 40s, they will retire in their 70s. You're buying 30 years of loyalty and decision making."
Less likely would be the decision of one of the liberal justices to retire during Trump's tenure. Of the three – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – just one (Sotomayor) is considered to be of retirement age, and at 70 is slightly younger than Thomas and Alito.
One of the most significant consequences of Trump's appointments, Landman explained, was already felt in 2022.
"The Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade — the legal ruling that recognised the constitutional right for women to have an abortion — was made in the Supreme Court."
"It is often signalled as this is just the beginning of a much more draconian set of decisions that may come down the pipeline."
Additionally, the Supreme Court's ruling in July that a former president has broad immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts will grant the president-elect additional legal protection.
"That's basically saying that there is a presumption of immunity for official acts and a presumption of immunity for those at the periphery of the office," Landman added.
"He'll push the boundaries of the interpretation of that ruling. He already has by trying to dismiss all the legal cases against him."
Old guard retiring
Trump's Republicans now have control of both the upper and lower chamber of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate.
While political parties tend to contain a broad church of political representatives, Landman said this iteration of Republicans is more skewed in Trump's favour, with the "more moderate Republican voice marginalised".
"The Republican party is much more in his mould than it was in 2016," Landman said.
"In 2016, he had some sceptics in the Republican Party, people like Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, who were looking at him and thinking, 'I’m not so sure about that'. Now, of course, McConnell's going to step down, Romney's also had enough. [Liz] Cheney's gone too," he added.
Without those louder, more established moderate Republican voices challenging Trump's thinking, he now has the power to do things he couldn't do in his first term.
"There's a wider, broader remit and ability for him to do things almost unopposed," Landman said.
Because of this, there is likely to be "very little check on the Republican agenda", Pruszynski said.
"Donald Trump will find it much, much easier this time around to get the policies that he wants implemented into law without it taking so much time."
This could also mean "a flurry of laws" coming through that support the Trump and his 'America first' agenda, Natasha Lindstaed, a professor of government and the deputy dean of education in social sciences at the University of Essex told Yahoo News.
This could mean deporting undocumented migrants, cutting climate regulations and imposing steep tariffs on non-US goods at a rapid pace.
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"It's not to say that the entire Republican Party, every single one of them, is going to vote in a way that Trump wants. They might be from a district where they can get away with being more independent," Lindstaed said.
"But I do think most Republicans that are not never Trumpers or defectors are thinking that this is great. They’re thinking: 'We're going to get through all these policies that we want. We've made a deal with the devil. But it's okay. He's got the magic touch'.”
Project 2025
With the other two branches stacked in his favour, the Trump administration also has eyes on transforming the executive.
Plans to do this were detailed in Project 2025, a "frightening" 922-page blueprint for government that some fear could reshape US democracy – although Trump has repeatedly said it is nothing to do with him.
The document proposes setting up a list of personnel who it says will be willing to move to Washington to form "an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on day one to deconstruct the administrative state".
"There'll be large chunks of the federal bureaucracy that will either be reshaped, making it leaner and more loyal," Landman said.
"Using Schedule F, the Trump administration is allowed to fire civil servants and replace them with people loyal to the Trump movement."
One of those targets is the Justice Department. If the department is staffed with Trump loyalists, it could challenge its core value of "independence and impartiality".
"Trump already suggested that he's going to revamp, reform or penalise, the Justice Department, which he believes has been weaponised by the Biden administration," Townley added.
This could be particularly alarming when Trump has suggested prosecuting his political rivals.
By appointing people that are "loyal to the president and not the exercise of legal regulation", this will lead to the "faster imposition of things or deregulation of the economy, particularly around climate", Landman said.
"Trump has repeatedly spoken about drilling throughout his campaign," Landman said.
"There'll be areas of national park that he may get permission to drill that has been in protected areas. Trump's always been really cross about not being able to get into those parts of the country."
Other influential figures
Trump also has some highly influential – and radical – allies outside of government that could bolster his agenda.
Elon Musk, the world's richest person and owner of X, has garnered attention for his vocal support of Trump, reportedly spending election night with the president elect.
Musk's loyalty to Trump has already paid off, with the president elect picking him to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, alongside former presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy.
Vocal anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr. may be placed in a health tsar role overseeing the US Food and Drug Administration, where he proposes removing fluoride from drinking water.
"RFK was saying he's going to break up the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration. There'll be large chunks of the federal bureaucracy that may be reshaped," Landman said.
"Elon Musk has said he's going to take $2tn out of the government budget."
Townley thinks these plans demonstrate Trump has "learned a lot from his first administration".
"Trump has learned not to have any adults in the room," he said. "In his first administration, he had people around who essentially told him he can't do the things he wants to do.
"They're not going to be around – it's going to be Trump and his cronies," he added.
Townley believes that it is "deeply concerning" that Trump has "got the trifecta" — at least for the next two years. "He's got the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the Supreme Court pretty much under control."
As Trump consolidates power, Lindstaed warns that the US could be headed for "a tremendous period of uncertainty."
"He is shattering norms left and right and does whatever he wants."
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