I asked several political scholars about Trump’s 2025 agenda. Some were less alarmed than others at the threat posed by the former president.

Gregory Wawro, a professor of political science at Columbia University, replied by email to my questions: “My bet is that 2025 Trump would look a whole lot like 2017 Trump. He would try to play the ‘hits’ again (immigration ban, wall building, tariffs, tax cuts, etc.), because he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who evolves or is going to come up with innovative policy ideas.”

It’s hard, Wawro continued, “to see how a second Trump administration would be more effective and purposeful — and less chaotic — than the first. Chaos has long been Trump’s modus operandi and it’s difficult to believe that he would or could change at this point.

Wawro did agree, however, that Trump’s civil service proposals could be significant:

The Schedule F approach could actually be an effective way to undercut the professional civil service. In my view, these kinds of moves would be generally more effective for changing the functioning of American democracy than are the more visible tactics Trump and his supporters have pursued. There is compelling evidence that democratic backsliding happens more through existing democratic procedures and institutions than it does through moves pursued outside those channels. Trump’s supporters seem to have figured out that the way you subvert elections is not by storming the Capitol or through post-hoc, meritless lawsuits. You put structures and people in place in existing institutions prior to the election that give you ways to change the popular outcome.