Donald Trump will conduct four types of activities when he reenters the White House that Americans should watch for, legal analyst Benjamin Wittes wrote in a column Thursday.
Writing for Lawfare, Wittes said those baskets are the Midnight Judges Basket, the Nominations Basket, the Day One Basket, and the Longer Term Basket.
The least important thing is examining what President Joe Biden could do on his way out the door, he said. Wittes called this the "Midnight Judges Basket," which could include anything from pardons to clemency to "regulatory actions and policy shifts designed to make it harder for the new administration to make its own changes."
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The more important issue is what Trump will do when he comes into office.
The "Nominations Basket" refers to Trump's promises to supporters that he would include them in his Cabinet. Some of those nominees face many uphill battles.
"How Pam Bondi (attorney general), Kash Patel (FBI director), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (secretary of health and human services), Tulsi Gabbard (director of national intelligence), and Pete Hegseth (secretary of defense) comport themselves before the Senate, what questions they face, what answers they give, and how the Senate reacts to them is not mere noise," wrote Wittes.
USenators may be loyal to Trump, but it will determine how loyal.
"So the Senate’s posture here is not a light switch but a rheostat," said Wittes. There could also be a more cautious line drawing of Trump rather than a full-on bat signal.
The "Day One Basket " examines what Trump will actually do on his first day in office.
Trump will likely spend the first week ushering in executive orders that either begin new policies or cancel Biden's. Wittes predicts that significant changes, such as the mass deportation effort, tariffs, Ukraine funding, and pardons of Jan. 6 defendants, could all unfold in those early days.
"An executive order declaring that we are only doing America First trade now may be dressed up as policy, but it may not actually do anything," Wittes explained.
The "Longer-Term Basket " issues are those that Trump allies claim will be part of the legislative agenda. For example, firing all government civil servants who won't sign a loyalty oath to Trump could be on the table. Another agenda item could be withdrawing from NATO or canceling other international alliances, like invading Panama to take over the canal or Greenland.
"So think of this basket as the major disruptions that will take a year or more to mature," Wittes described.
"This final basket is also the most contingent of the baskets. It matters in those thousand meetings, for example, who the secretary of defense is and whether his word is taken seriously by the Europeans mouthing those platitudes about trans-Atlantic relations," he also pointed out.
