Rolling back civil rights, including reproductive rights

During the election campaign, Trump spent around $21 million on ads associating Kamala Harris with LGBTQ+ equality, and transgender rights in particular. His campaign stated that “Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you,” and included a pledge to “get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools”.

Trump’s presidency will once again bolster so-called anti-gender ideology as well as roll back important rights for already marginalised LGBTQ+ communities, racialised communities and women.

Even though Trump hasn’t committed to a federal ban on abortion, it was his previous administration that paved the way for Roe v Wade (key legislation that enshrined the right to abortion in US law) to be overturned by the US supreme court in June 2022. During his first term, Trump handpicked supreme court justices who would support ending this right, including Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh.

However, a Trump presidency has promised to make in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment free for Americans.

Scrapping the Affordable Care Act

For his 2024 campaign, Trump once again promised he would repeal and replace Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. “The cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare. I’m seriously looking at alternatives,” the former president wrote on his social media site, Truth Social. Although his administration took steps to undermine the legislation, his attempts to scrap it altogether were blocked by congress.

Attempting to scrap this legislation again is unlikely, especially as Obamacare is more widely used now than it was in 2017, but it’s still concerning.

Cutting taxes for family caregivers

One pledge that may come to benefit many women – even though the specifics aren’t known – is Trump’s new policy to support a tax credit for family caregivers who take care of a parent or a loved one. “It’s about time that they were recognised,” Trump said. The Republican party added that they would overturn disincentives that lead to a shortage in care workers and support unpaid family caregivers through tax credits.

Trump has also briefly spoken about the affordability of childcare and said that his plan to increase tariffs would raise enough funds to make childcare costs more affordable. But again, he hasn’t expanded or explained how or when this would happen.

Emboldening a culture of misogyny

By far the biggest concern of a Trump presidency is the normalisation of misogyny and the abuse of women. As a president who has a history of abusing women, which includes the findings in a civil lawsuit involving the writer E Jean Carroll, this election win sets a worrying precedent for those in power and how we hold them accountable for their actions.

A demographic that Harris struggled to win over was young men in America, who found something in Trump’s messaging that resonated with them more. Speaking to the BBC, the director of polling at the Harvard Institute of Politics, John Della Volpe, said that young men often feel that “if they ask questions, they are labelled as misogynist, homophobic or racist”.

“Frustrated at not feeling understood, many then get sucked into a bro-culture of Donald Trump or Elon Musk. They look at who the Democrats prioritise – women, abortion rights, LGTBQ+ culture – and they ask ‘What about us?’”

The presidential inauguration will take place on 20 January 2025.

US election 2024: as Donald Trump declares victory, this is what it means for women