Top agenda items in Year Two of President Donald Trump's term: health care, the economy, Greenland
President Donald Trump has said Republicans need to do more to sell voters on the benefits of his tax-and-spending megabill. Credit: Bloomberg / Francis Chung
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is entering the second year of his second term with a razor-thin Republican majority in Congress, a competitive midterm election season on the horizon, a delicate situation in Venezuela and looming Supreme Court decisions on some of his most sweeping policies.
In the year ahead, more legal and political battles await the president as he looks to launch more of his agenda, including a new health care plan that proposes direct payments to consumers to offset the cost of insurance and a hawkish foreign policy vision that eyes a greater role for the United States in Venezuela and Greenland.
"Going into 2026 his plate is filling up pretty fast," said Christopher Malone, a political-science professor at Farmingdale State College.
The hurdles come after Trump spent his first year back in office rapidly executing major pieces of his agenda through executive orders and via a tax-and-spending megabill approved by the Republican-majority Congress last summer.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- President Donald Trump is entering the second year of his second term with a razor-thin Republican majority in Congress, a competitive midterm election season on the horizon, a delicate situation in Venezuela and looming Supreme Court decisions on some of his most sweeping policies.
- More legal and political battles await the president as he looks to launch more of his agenda, including a new health care plan that proposes direct payments to consumers to offset the cost of insurance and a hawkish foreign policy vision that eyes a greater role for the United States in Venezuela and Greenland.
- Trump must also grapple with tighter margins in the House of Representatives after a number of early departures in the chamber, and must brace for a midterm season that is historically tough for the sitting president’s party.
Now Trump must grapple with tighter margins in the House of Representatives after a number of early departures in the chamber, and must brace for a midterm season that is historically tough for the sitting president’s party.
Trump — who signed 225 executive orders last year — will likely keep rolling out more orders but could still need to act fast to secure congressional Republican support to pass other legislative priorities, including his push to ban mail-in voting nationally and to implement national voter ID requirements, said Meena Bose, director of Hofstra University’s Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency.
"In the modern presidency the window of opportunity for action is greatest in the first 12 to 18 months," Bose told Newsday in a phone interview. After that period the midterms and the focus on the next presidential election, "start to overshadow policy and legislative prospects."
Focus on midterms
Congressional Republicans in competitive districts, including Reps. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) and Nick LaLota (R-Amityville), have started to show an increasing willingness to break with Trump on some of his legislative demands or unilateral actions.
As the election season draws closer more rank-and-file Republicans may try to distance themselves from Trump depending on the state of the economy, making "nuanced political calculations depending on the moods of their districts," said Grant Reeher, a political-science professor at Syracuse University.
"I would think some will look for ways to demonstrate some distance from the president, perhaps picking one significant thing on which to break with him in order to show their constituents they are not in lockstep," Reeher said.
With the economy remaining the top issue for voters heading into the midterms, according to national polls — Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles has said in media interviews that Trump expects to hit the road more often to talk up his economic agenda.
Recent polls show the majority of Americans are unsatisfied with his handling of the economy in his first year, but Trump and White House officials maintain those numbers will improve once tax-filers take advantage of the tax exemptions and credits included in the tax megabill passed last summer.
The president has publicly said congressional Republicans need to do more to sell voters on the different tax components of the megabill, such as new exemptions on tipped earnings and a boost in the child tax credit for most families.
"You have so much ammunition, all you have to do is sell it," Trump told House Republicans at their annual winter conference on Jan. 6, his message coming as congressional Democrats rally around an economic message of affordability that proved successful for the party in key local races last year.
Global conflicts
On the foreign policy front, Trump continues to face questions about his administration’s plans for Venezuela, after the president authorized an operation to depose the oil-rich country’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.
Trump has said the United States will play an active role in reviving the beleaguered country’s economy, but U.S. oil companies have expressed hesitation about returning operations to the South American nation, citing in part its political instability.
The "America First" president has said brokering an end to the Russia-Ukraine war and persuading NATO allies to annex or sell the Danish territory of Greenland to the United States remain top priorities. The administration also faces mounting tensions in the Middle East, and strained relationships with longtime western allies over Trump's tariff policies and push for Greenland.
The Associated Press reported Saturday that Trump plans a 10% tariff starting in February on eight European nations that oppose his plans in Greenland.
"If he continues to act unilaterally, all of these multilateral partnerships we created over the last 80 years might deteriorate to the point where we are isolated from all of the things that he wants to accomplish," Malone said.
As the Trump Administration weighs the future role of the U.S. military in Venezuela, Greenland and the Middle East, the president also continues to press for increased use of the U.S. National Guard to aid in his mass deportation campaign.
The president has recently threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy U.S. troops domestically, to Minnesota, as protesters there continue to denounce the administration’s surge of immigration officers and the president’s ongoing mass-deportation campaign.
The conservative U.S. Supreme Court has mostly sided with Trump over the past year, but they handed the president a rare defeat last month, blocking his deployment of National Guard troops to Illinois. The decision prompted Trump to withdraw National Guard troops previously deployed to California and Oregon to quell protests.
The court is expected to render a number of consequential decisions on Trump’s executive actions, including his push to eliminate birthright citizenship and his sweeping tariff plan.
Regardless of how the court responds, Trump and his top aides will likely continue looking for other avenues to push back on any unfavorable rulings, Bose said.
"I think what you see is the Trump administration is kind of action oriented and determined to move forward in every area they deem a priority," Bose said. "The operating principle appears to be: Act now and then see what other institutions do to respond."
Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.
'We have to do better' Newsday high school sports editor Gregg Sarra talks about a bench-clearing, parent-involved incident at a Half Hollow Hills West basketball game.
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