If Donald Trump adds the House of Representatives to his clear electoral victories in the White House and the Senate, in January he will become one of the most powerful presidents in the history of the United States, with limited checks and balances.
Five main points guarantee it to solidify its foundations:
Democratic legitimacy
Thursday afternoon, with five million votes ahead in the counted ballots, Donald Trump seems on track to win the popular vote against Kamala Harris.
He will then be the first Republican president in 20 years to achieve this feat, proving wrong the pollsters who predicted the opposite.
The 78-year-old has already won a clear majority in the electoral college, with a gap that he could further widen once the results are known in Arizona and Nevada, where the counts place him in the lead.
If he is declared the winner in these last two states, Donald Trump will have achieved a grand slam in the seven key states.
“America has given us a powerful and unprecedented mandate,” he said on Wednesday.
Unlike 2016 when Hillary Clinton obtained more votes than him, Donald Trump will be able to rely on this popular legitimacy, particularly in the face of the judges who are prosecuting him and whom he accuses of being corrupt.
An Allied Congress?
While there are still around thirty seats to be allocated out of the 435 in the House of Representatives, the Republicans are leading the race to maintain their majority.
The Trump camp already regained control of the Senate, the upper house of Congress, on Tuesday. This crucial organ of federal power has very important prerogatives, particularly in the appointment or dismissal of key figures in the executive, or even in the confirmation of federal magistrates.
Note that the president-elect has successfully worked to stifle any dissent within the Republican Party, which now espouses his “Make America Great Again” line.
A new immunity
Donald Trump will be the first president to take office with a comfortable dose of immunity while carrying out his duties.
This stems from a historic ruling by the Supreme Court, rendered on July 1 in the case of federal prosecutions against the former president for his illicit attempts to reverse the results of the election won in 2020 by Joe Biden.
This decision brought respite to Donald Trump, who escaped three of the four resounding criminal trials he feared this year. Having become head of the executive again, he will benefit from a completely clear judicial horizon.
A government of the faithful
Then a political novice, Donald Trump accepted, at the start of his first term in 2017, to be surrounded by seasoned officials with experience in public affairs, a way of reassuring foreign chancelleries.
Faced with the sometimes unpredictable behavior of the leader, these moderating elements were nicknamed the “adults in the room”.
For his second term, the septuagenarian does not hide his intentions to surround himself with followers, in particular by rewarding those who helped him in his campaign, including billionaires Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk.
Note that Donald Trump, who spent his first term attacking the sovereign decisions of the central bank of the United States, will have the opportunity to appoint in 2026 the successor to the current head of the Fed, Jerome Powell. The governor warned Wednesday that he would not resign if the new president asked him to do so.
A revamped Supreme Court
After having anchored the Supreme Court of the United States in conservatism during his first term, by appointing three judges out of nine, Donald Trump will now be able to cement this anchoring over time.
Two conservative pillars of the high court, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, aged 76 and 74 respectively, could indeed consider stepping down and letting the president appoint – for life – two significantly younger replacements.
The highest American judicial body, which decides important social debates as well as electoral disputes, would then retain its conservative majority possibly for decades.
