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The 2024 presidential election is over — and Donald Trump is the victor. There is no doubt about the election’s legitimacy: Trump is on track to win the Electoral College by a wide margin, and potentially win the popular vote for the first time.

Yet while the election itself was clearly on the level, what comes next may not be. Having won power democratically, Trump is now in a position to enact his long-proposed plans to hollow out American democracy from within.

Trump and his team have developed detailed plans for turning the federal government into an extension of his will: an instrument for carrying out his oft-promised “retribution” against President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and anyone else who has opposed him. Trump’s inner circle, purged of nearly anyone who might challenge him, is ready to enact his will. And the Supreme Court, in its wisdom, has granted him sweeping immunity from his actions in office.

In nearly every conceivable way, a second Trump administration will likely be more dangerous than the first, a term that ended in over 1 million deaths from Covid-19 and a riot at the Capitol. A predictable crisis — a president consolidating power in his own hands and using it to punish his enemies — looms on the horizon, with many unpredictable crises likely waiting in the wings.

Yet as dire as things are, America has reserves it can draw on to withstand the coming assault. Over the course of the country’s long democratic history, it has built up robust systems for checking abuses of power.

America’s federal structure gives blue states control over key powers like election administration. Its independent judiciary stood strong during Trump’s first term. Its professional, apolitical military will likely push back against unlawful orders. Its politically active citizenry has a proven capacity to take to the streets. And America’s world-leading media will fiercely resist any effort to compromise its independence.

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No country at America’s level of political-economic development has ever collapsed into authoritarianism. There are some reasonably close modern analogues, most worryingly modern Hungary, but even they are different in crucial respects.

This is not to make an argument for complacency or naive optimism. Quite the opposite: The next four years will be American democracy’s gravest threat since the Civil War; if it survives them, it will surely do so battered, bruised, and battle-scarred.

But this realism should not be cause for succumbing to despair. As grim as things feel now, it’s possible that — if people take the gravity of the threat seriously — the republic may come out intact on the other side.

We do not know why, exactly, America’s voters have chosen to return Trump to high office. The data isn’t fully in, let alone analyzed in detail. But as murky as the electoral picture remains, certain elements of the policy future are crystal clear. Trump’s own comments, his campaign’s statements, and allied documents like Project 2025 give us a relatively coherent picture of what the agenda will be in the next Trump administration.

Much of it resembles what you’d see from any other Republican president. Trump will appoint corporate allies to lead federal agencies, where they will work to slash regulations on issues ranging from workplace safety standards to pollution.

He has already proposed regressive tax cuts without off-setting hikes, which would increase the federal deficit in the same way as President George W. Bush’s fiscal policy did.

He will likely take steps to curtail abortion access, end federal police efforts to rein in abusive police, and crack down on federal protections for trans people — all examples of how his agenda would hurt certain groups of people, typically already vulnerable ones, more than others.

Trump’s biggest breaks with his party in traditional policy areas will likely come on trade, immigration, and foreign policy. Trump has proposed a “universal” tariff on imported goods, a mass deportation campaign that detains suspected “illegals” in camps, and weakening America’s commitment to the NATO alliance. These policies would together be a recipe for economic decline, domestic turmoil, and global chaos — at an already chaotic time.

But perhaps the most dangerous Trump policies will come in an area that traditionally transcends partisan conflict: the nature of the American system of government itself.

Throughout the campaign, Trump has proven himself obsessed with two ideas: exerting personal control over the federal government, and exacting “retribution” against Democrats who challenged him and the prosecutors who indicted him. His team has, obligingly, provided detailed plans for doing both of these things.

This process begins with something called Schedule F, an executive order Trump issued at the end of his first term but never got to implement. Schedule F reclassifies a large chunk of the professional civil service — likely upward of 50,000 people — as political appointees. Trump could fire these nonpartisan officials and replace them with cronies: people who would follow his orders, no matter how dubious. Trump has vowed to revive Schedule F “immediately” upon returning to office, and there is no reason to doubt him.

Between a newly compliant bureaucracy and leadership ranks purged of first-term dissenting voices like former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Trump will face little resistance as he attempts to implement policies that threaten core democratic freedoms.

And Trump and his team have already proposed many of them. Notable examples include investigating leading Democrats on questionable charges, prosecuting local election administrators, using regulatory authority for retribution against corporations that cross him, and either shuttering public broadcasters or turning them into propaganda mouthpieces. Trump and his allies have claimed unilateral executive authority to take all of these actions. (It remains unclear which party will control the House, but Republicans will be in charge of the Senate for at least the next two years.)

This is why the second Trump presidency is an extinction-level threat to American democracy. The governing agenda Trump and his allies explicitly laid out is a systematic attempt to turn Washington into Budapest-on-the-Potomac, to deliberately and quietly destroy democracy from within.

It is important to remember that, as dire as things are, the United States is not Hungary. 

The US Constitution is nearly impossible to amend. America’s federal structure also creates quite a few checks on the national government’s power. Election administration in America is done at the state level, which makes it very hard for Trump to seize control over it from Washington. A lot of prosecution is done by district attorneys who don’t answer to Trump and might resist federal bullying.

Trump is taking office with roughly half the voting public primed to see him as a threat to democracy and resist as such. He can expect major opposition to his most authoritarian plans not only from the elected opposition, but from the federal bureaucracy, lower levels of government, civil society, and the people themselves.

This is the case against despair.

As grim as things seem now, little in politics is a given — especially not the outcome of a struggle as titanic as the one about to unfold in the United States. While Trump has four years to attack democracy, using a playbook he and his team have been developing since the moment he left office, defenders of democracy have also had time to prepare and develop countermeasures. Now is the time to begin deploying them.

Trump has won the presidency, which gives him a tremendous amount of power to make his antidemocratic dreams into power. But it is not unlimited power, and there are robust means of resistance.

The fate of the American republic will depend on how willing Americans are to take up the fight.

Last night, Republicans also won a majority in the Senate, flipping the body after four years of Democratic control.

This was the predicted outcome given how vulnerable Democrats were this cycle: While they were defending nine battleground seats, Republicans were only defending three. The GOP successfully flipped key states including West Virginia and Ohio, while holding off unexpectedly competitive challenges in places like Nebraska and Texas.

In their campaigns, Republican Senate candidates leaned heavily on critiques of Democrats’ economic policies as many voters continued to grapple with inflation and high costs of living. They also capitalized on anti-incumbent sentiment to win back seats. 

Under a new Trump presidency, the Republican Senate could effectively offer him a blank check on appointments, and allow him to resume stacking the courts with his judges. 

—Li Zhou, political reporter

Voters in 10 states also considered ballot measures to overturn sweeping state abortion bans or strengthen protections against future restrictions on reproductive rights. 

The biggest abortion rights loss of the night was undoubtedly in Florida, where advocates had raised more than $100 million to reverse the state’s near-total ban on abortion. The ban, which took effect this past spring, has decimated access not only for residents living in the third most populous state but also for people across the South who had been traveling to Florida since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

While a majority of Florida voters backed the proposal, which would have restored abortion rights up to the point of fetal viability (typically between 22 and 24 weeks of a pregnancy), Florida law requires at least 60 percent of voters to approve a ballot measure to pass. This “supermajority” threshold is simply a high bar for any referendum, and Florida’s earned 57 percent. Of all the winning abortion rights ballot measures that have passed in red or purple states since Roe’s overturn, none have reached that 60 percent level. 

But another Trump presidency poses big questions about whether Trump would move to ban abortion on a federal level. As a candidate, Trump waffled on his positions on abortion; last month, he posted on social media that he would “not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances.” 

But it could affect the abortion fight in myriad other ways. Read on for more on what the Trump presidency could mean for the future of abortion rights. 

—Rachel Cohen, policy correspondent

Have questions about the results? 

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We finally heard from voters, and we're guessing some of you need help making sense of what they told us. Vox's Explain It to Me is here to help. Send us the questions on your mind this morning in a voicemail at 1-800-618-8545, fill out this form, or send us an email at askvox@vox.com.

Instagram/Mark Longo/AP handout

Peanut the Squirrel, symbol of the right: New York state seized an OnlyFans star’s social-media-famous pet squirrel to test it for rabies and euthanized it. Peanut’s owner, Mark Longo, and the squirrel’s nearly 700,000 followers are devastated. Republicans are calling the decision to euthanize an example of government overreach and are making AI MAGA memes about the matter. If this whole story sounds nutty, it is. We break it all down for you here. 

Ballot curing, explained: Some voters in Nevada are reportedly having their ballots rejected because the signature they used to sign their ballots does not resemble the signature the state has on file. Here's what you should do if this happens to you. 

Was Trump really Epstein’s “closest” friend? Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in his jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, described former President Donald Trump as his “closest friend” in recordings from 2017 with author Michael Wolff, which Wolff released this past week. Here’s what we know so far about the tapes, which include claims about Trump’s sexual infidelities.

How to deal with ambivalence about parenthood: It’s normal to feel unsure about whether to have children. Our advice columnist says not to let FOMO rule your decision. Instead, focus on your core values, and allow yourself to be open to possible outcomes.

Family estrangement doesn’t have to be forever: A survey found that 27 percent of Americans over 18 years old were estranged from a family member. These kinds of emotional wounds naturally take time to heal, and while no one is owed reconciliation, pondering what it might be like to mend a broken relationship is the first step toward change. Reconnecting with someone you’ve cut ties with isn’t easy — here’s how to go about it.

The Boeing strike is officially over: After 53 days, union members voted in favor of the company’s recent contract offer, allowing work to restart at assembly plants. [Seattle Times]

What we know about Russia’s bomb plot: According to a Western security official, Russia attempted to start fires on cargo planes bound for North America in order to disrupt support for Ukraine. [NBC News]

Jens Schlueter/Getty Images

— Anthony Salvanto, CBS News’s executive director of elections and surveys, who oversees the network’s decision desk. 

Decision desks — groups of political scientists, statisticians, pollsters, and reporters who use data, statistical models, and on-the-ground reporting to understand how a candidate is faring — play a key role in providing election coverage to the American people. Given the doubt that former President Donald Trump has sown in the past about elections and the media, it’s worth understanding how these processes work and why consumers of news should trust those results. You can read more about the science of election calls here.

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Today’s edition was produced and edited by senior editor Lavanya Ramanathan, with contributions from staff editor Melinda Fakuade. We'll see you tomorrow!

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