The GOP's Trump-centered platform, annotated

Trump’s signature motto is now the official tagline of the Republican Party.

The idea that the modern United States is leaving people behind is central to Trump’s populist message. His base of support is built on White voters without a college degree.

Putting the United States above all other countries is central to Trump’s populism. There are echoes of that in US history. The isolationist effort to keep the United States out of World War II, for instance, was also called “America First.”

This two-paragraph history of the United States is meant to inspire. It fails to mention the Civil War or the civil rights movement and idealizes the past. It asserts that what’s needed is not to improve what we have, but to go back to what we’ve lost.

In addition to remaking the Republican Party, this platform is interested in remaking punctuation. All caps, random capitalizations and extreme usage of exclamation points — the mechanics of a Trump social media post — are now the official style rules of the GOP.

Many of the nation’s leaders in recent decades have also been Republicans. This platform criticizes all who came before Trump, and the anti-elitist view is in keeping with the growing fringe claim that an entrenched uniparty has been controlling the country.

Here is some extreme nostalgia for Trump’s four years in office. It’s fair to say not everyone’s spirit was reignited by his presidency.

Citing truth and justice is ironic given Trump’s demonstrated history of misstating facts and his argument that he would be justified in using the judicial system to go after his political enemies.

Immigration and the border are the issues that have motivated Trump’s political career, so it makes sense they get top billing in this platform. Elements of his message remain the same from his first run in 2016, but much has changed.

Trump is still promising to build more wall along the southern border, but there’s no longer any talk of Mexico paying for it. Instead, Republicans say it will be affordable.

There is also more of a focus on Trump’s promise to deport millions of undocumented people currently in the United States, for which he has previously floated the idea of using local police forces.

This is not exactly the same as Trump’s claim, echoing “Mein Kampf,” that some undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country. But arguing that the country would be irrevocably changed by such migrants is adjacent to the controversial “replacement theory” popular with the far right.

Restoring manufacturing jobs has been a promise of both parties. President Joe Biden also points to a resurgence of manufacturing jobs under his watch.

But it is interesting to see Republicans argue they have been the party of workers. It is at odds with the history of Democrats appealing to union workers. But the evolving base of the GOP now lies among Rust Belt households that feel left behind.

The United States is an energy superpower. While China, with its reliance on coal and the growth of its renewable energy production, is the world’s top energy producer, the United States is the second-largest energy producer and the top oil and natural gas producer. This is a matter of disagreement between Republicans and Democrats, particularly as Democrats push the United States to invest more heavily in renewable sources of energy and Trump opposes electric vehicles and actively supports more oil production.

Keeping things simple and putting them in all caps is effective communication. Accomplishing all of these things very quickly would be impossible.

Trump already enacted a large tax cut during his time in the White House. It gave corporations permanent tax breaks, but the tax cuts for workers actually expire after next year. He will have to work to extend his own earlier tax cuts or it will feel like Americans are getting a massive tax hike.

This pledge to end a tax on tips is a new plank for Republicans. Democrats have long argued for raising minimum wages. The Republican alternative to that seems to be a further tax cut.

Iron Dome is the missile defense system in Israel, which the United States helps fund. The US already has missile defense capabilities meant to counter the threat of long-range nuclear weapons. It’s not clear if Republicans are talking about something completely different here, but the geography of the United States, a massive nation with oceans to the east and west and allies to the north and south, is very different compared with Israel.

No cuts to Social Security or Medicare AND large tax cuts for workers. It is not surprising there is no mention in these 20 platform priorities of the spiraling national debt. That used to be a major issue for Republicans.

Voter ID laws will no longer suffice for Republicans. Instead of requiring a driver’s license to vote, they are now pushing proof of citizenship.

Another all caps list, but this is not the same as the 20 promises above.

How exactly? Simply saying you can bring down prices is one thing. Accomplishing it is something else. The Federal Reserve has tried to tamp down inflation by raising interest rates. Plus, Trump’s plan to enact new tariffs on goods coming into the United States would, according to many economists, drive up inflation rather than ease it.

The United States did become the world’s No. 1 oil producer during Trump’s presidency. And it has continued to increase oil production under Biden, despite his efforts to push EVs and renewable energy.

The idea here is that simply having Trump as president and further increasing US defense spending would bring countries such as Russia and China into check. It’s a debatable idea.

Trump did enact policies meant to cut down on illegal immigration. But as the libertarian CATO institute wrote in 2021, those policies did not end illegal immigration. In fact, Trump’s focus on the border led to a decrease in the removal of undocumented immigrants during his term in office. There have been more removals under Biden’s watch, although there has also been a larger volume of undocumented border crossings in recent years.

Trump has said he would model a deportation initiative on “Operation Wetback,” a 1950s government program with a racist and insensitive name launched under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. CNN wrote about that program in 2016, when Trump first mentioned his immigration plan.

This is quite a phrase to be part of the official Republican Party platform. Is an influx of communists, presumably from China, threatening the United States? It is reminiscent of Trump’s pledge in 2016 to bar all Muslims from coming to the United States, something that led to a travel ban on several mostly Muslim countries.

A major storyline in the immigration debate has been the busing of migrants by Republican-led states to major Democratic-run cities, including Washington, DC, Chicago and New York. Mayor Eric Adams of New York, in particular, has said that the migrants sent by Texas has created a crisis in his city.

Interestingly, there is nothing in this platform about working toward a comprehensive reform of the immigration and border security system.

While Trump’s 2017 law made tax cuts for corporations permanent, it allowed tax cuts for people to expire after 2025. This was, in large part, to make it appear on paper like the tax law would not wreck the US balance sheet in the ensuing years. Now, Biden also wants to extend most of the tax cuts, although he would allow them to expire for people making more than $400,000. Read more.

Again, the lack of any discussion of deficit spending or the national debt in this document is a stunning departure for Republicans.

Pursuit of cryptocurrency is portrayed here as a personal right. Within this innovation section, with regard to both crypto and artificial intelligence — two developments that are changing how the world works — Republicans’ fear of government regulation is greater than the fear of untethered technology companies.

But how? These are broad goals, and there’s not much here to explain how all this will happen. Reducing mortgage rates by slashing inflation is an optimistic goal but easier said than done. Presidents for decades have been trying to bring down prescription drug prices. Biden and Democrats, for instance, gave Medicare the ability to negotiate drug prices and set price caps on drugs such as insulin. What would Trump and Republicans do about drug prices? It’s not clear here.

Biden and Democrats have tried to forgive student loans as a way to retroactively make college more affordable. Republicans say they will help develop alternative education options, but that is far from a concrete plan.

Biden left Trump-enacted tariffs in place after taking office and has pursued additional tariffs on Chinese goods, which has kept prices on some goods high. Trump and Republicans would go further, with tariffs on more foreign-made goods. That would, in theory, drive prices up rather than bring them down. Read more.

Florida has a law to prohibit Chinese nationals from buying real estate. CNN has reported on the results.

At the center of Biden’s climate policy is an effort to cut down on tailpipe emissions and push the United States more toward hybrid and electric vehicles. It’s a proposal that requires fewer new gas-powered vehicles but tries to give flexibility to manufacturers and also protect American jobs, though companies such as Toyota have complained. Trump, on the other hand, is a climate change skeptic whose main energy goal is to keep gas prices low and who opposes electric vehicles.

These programs are already on an unsustainable path. Within the next decade, lawmakers will have to figure out how to continue to fund them in order to keep paying full benefits. Neither party is talking seriously about that issue this year. One problem is that the US population is aging. New and younger workers — i.e., immigrants — could be needed to put the programs on a more sustainable path.

At the state level, this movement has included allowing parents to use taxpayer funds to pay for nonpublic education. Critics argue that those efforts only hurt public schools, which are already starved for funding. Here’s an argument in favor of universal school choice at CNN Opinion.

Giving more deference to parents over what is taught in school has been a key issue since the pandemic, and “parental rights” have morphed into a key grassroots issue for Republicans.

Efforts to neutralize “critical race theory,” which is not technically part of K-12 curricula but has become shorthand for a view of US history that highlights inequality and slavery, are a big part of the parental rights movement. Another flashpoint is gender. The Biden administration’s effort to protect LGBTQ students under Title IX, the federal gender equality law, has been stalled in court.

Conservatives on the Supreme Court have shown a willingness to reevaluate the principle of separating church and state and keeping religion out of public schools. Oklahoma is experimenting with teaching the Bible in classrooms as a “necessary historical document.” In Louisiana, a new law requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms. Keep an eye on this issue.

Unlike previous Republican platforms, this one does not refer to marriage as between a man and a woman, though it does refer to the “sanctity” of marriage.

Violent crime in the United States is on the down swing, but there are undeniable problems in many American downtowns, which are still reeling from a lack of workers in offices since the pandemic.

How much control to give Washington, DC, residents over their city has been a recurring debate in US history. DC residents only gained the power to elect a mayor in 1973. They gained more power in 2012, and Democrats have largely supported making DC a state. But now Republicans will try to assert more control over the city.

It’s not clear when or how Republicans feel American beauty ended, but they clearly want to restore it.

The 250th anniversary of 1776 hits in 2026. Great time for a national party.

There are serious efforts to reform the makeup of the US Supreme Court, but they do not currently have the bipartisan momentum that would be needed to enact them.

It is wrong, however, to say that the high court was always meant to have nine justices; it has had as few as six, according to the White House. The current number, nine, has been in place since 1869.

Trump has said he would pardon people convicted of storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. This is a promise to go further and use the Justice Department for retribution. Don’t forget that Trump’s two federal criminal indictments were handed down by separate grand juries and overseen by a special counsel, not anyone in the Biden administration. Both trials have also been delayed until after the election.

Most Americans — 68% in a 2023 Gallup poll — identify in some way as Christian, which seemingly would make widespread bias against them difficult to achieve.

The word “abortion” appeared 35 times in the 2016 Republican platform. It only appears one time in this document. The de-emphasis of language opposing abortion restrictions, along with following Trump’s lead to turn the issue wholly over to state governments, is controversial among conservatives.

Federal law already prohibits voting by noncitizens.

The foreign policy section of this America First platform reads like an afterthought. There is no mention of Russia or Ukraine and only glancing mention of “alliances,” which we can assume includes NATO. Defending democracy in other countries is not mentioned.

A key concern raised about a second Trump term is that he will fire a large portion of the federal workforce and instead hire loyalists. Trump denies any involvement with the Project 2025 plan, which was written and publicized by the conservative Heritage Foundation. But this line in the platform suggests he will certainly try to fire people at the Pentagon who he does not view as loyal.