Last fall, The Chronicle conducted a campus-wide election poll, where we asked Duke community members to rank their top policy priorities in advance of the 2024 presidential election.
As the nation watched Donald Trump be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States Monday, The Chronicle tracked where the top five issues showed up in his inaugural address to see how the next four years of federal action on Blue Devils’ biggest concerns might play out.
Given a list of 16 options, we found that community members’ top five policy issues ordered from most to least important were abortion, climate change, the economy, gun control and democracy.
Here’s where they were — or weren’t — mentioned in Trump’s first address to the nation in his second presidential term.
Abortion
Trump did not touch on abortion or reproductive rights in his inaugural address — the top issue for Duke community members.
The returning president’s record on abortion has been mixed over the years. Although he labeled himself “very pro-choice” in 1999, he had reversed his stance by 2011.
He pledged to overturn Roe v. Wade during his 2016 presidential campaign, which he achieved in a 6-3 ruling in 2022 after nominating three conservative Supreme Court justices during his first term. He supported punishment for women seeking abortions and cut federal funding for reproductive health services.
However, Trump became noticeably less vocal about the issue during his 2024 campaign, writing on Truth Social in April that he believed the question of abortion regulation should be left to the states. He has also expressed support for in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment.
Climate change
While Trump did not make explicit mention of “climate change” in his address, he did spend a substantial amount of time touting his plans for the country’s energy policy.
The president said he would soon declare a “national energy emergency,” which he followed up with a promise to “drill, baby, drill.” He based much of his campaign around “unleash[ing] American energy,” a stance on which he doubled down Monday when he pledged to “export American energy all over the world.”
The oil and natural gas industry will likely be a key player in this work. Trump has long maintained close ties to oil and gas executives — infamously suggesting in May that they donate $1 billion to his reelection campaign to ensure preferential treatment — and he asserted in his speech that his administration would invest heavily in further fossil fuel development.
“We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” he said.
Immediately afterward, he resolved to “end the Green New Deal” and “revoke the electric vehicle mandate.” Congress has not passed a Green New Deal, but the Biden administration did implement incentives to grow the electric vehicle industry, setting a target in 2021 to have half of all new vehicles sold produce zero emissions by 2030.
The economy
Trump made headlines when he announced his intention to institute a slew of tariffs on foreign goods to “put America first.” In a monumental step toward that goal, he announced that he will be establishing a new “External Revenue Service” to oversee the implementation and collection of revenue from those tariffs.
Trump imposed a number of tariffs during his first term, including a 25% tax on imported steel and a 10% tax on aluminum, which grew into tariffs on $500 billion worth of Chinese goods by the end of 2018.
In November, he announced a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on Chinese goods, which he is likely to impose through executive order early on in his presidency.
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Trump’s tariff plan is intended to feed into his commitment to bring down rising consumer prices, which he alluded to in his Monday address in a pledge to “defeat … record inflation and rapidly bring down prices and costs.” However, many leading economists have said that the president’s economic plan would likely worsen inflation.
Still, he has held strong to his tariff approach.
“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens,” Trump said in his speech.
The president’s economic agenda also rests upon pillars of investment in the manufacturing and energy sectors. In his address, he promised that America would “be a manufacturing nation once again” and pointed to the auto industry and oil and gas as particular interests.
Gun control
Trump did not make any mention of domestic gun control policies in his inaugural address, but he did speak briefly about the assassination attempt he faced at a Pennsylvania rally in July.
“I felt then — and believe even more so now — that my life was saved for a reason,” Trump said. “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
A longtime proponent of Second Amendment expansions, Trump has made no indication since the attempt on his life that his pro-gun stance had changed.
Democracy
Trump made several allusions to his support for democratic values and protecting individual liberties in his address. He resolved to “give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and indeed, their freedom.”
Noting that the federal government faces a “crisis of trust,” he pledged to end the “vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government.” Trump, who faced four criminal cases earlier this year, has criticized the department in the past for pursuing what he has decried as a “witch hunt” against him.
Along similar lines, he also promised that the “immense power of the state” would not be “weaponized to persecute political opponents” under his administration.
Trump previously made over 100 threats to prosecute his political rivals, ranging from former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney — who chaired the U.S. House of Representatives select committee tasked with investigating the Capitol insurrection — to the “entire Biden crime family.” His predecessor, former President Joe Biden, pardoned his son Hunter in December and issued additional pardons for federal officials and five members of his own family Monday morning — none of whom have been charged with any crimes.
“Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end,” Biden said.
Several speakers at Monday’s ceremony emphasized the “peaceful transition of power,” which stood in contrast to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump's supporters staged a violent attack at the Capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of Biden’s victory. Trump has never conceded his loss in 2020, and in an address to supporters seated in the Capitol Lobby following his inaugural speech in the Capitol Rotunda, he again referenced the “rigged election.”
“This time, we made it too big to rig,” Trump said.
The bulk of Trump’s address was built around a theme of American exceptionalism, which he promised a return to, invoking his signature slogan.
“Nothing will stand in our way because we’re Americans,” he said. “The future is ours, and a golden age has just begun.
Zoe Kolenovsky is a Trinity junior and news editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.