The GOP Platform Is a Cruel Blueprint for Causing Misery

This is the second of a two-part article. Read part one here.

The worst of Donald Trump’s first term was felt by immigrants. Looking over the 2024 Republican platform, which was more or less dictated by Trump and his team (down to its Weird use of Capital Letters), I can state with confidence that the worst of Trump’s second term, if there is one, will once again be felt by immigrants. That is, I’m sorry to report, a selling point for many voters; according to Gallup, fully 41 percent of the population wants immigration to decrease, against 26 percent who want it to increase and 31 percent who want it to stay at the same level. Border crossings are at record levels, and so too is anti-immigration sentiment. Opposition to immigration is higher than it’s been in 10 years (though it’s still low compared to the mid-1990s, the previous high for border crossings, when the proportion that wanted immigration to decrease exceeded 60 percent).

The GOP instinct here is to pander. Its 2024 platform pledges to “complete the Border Wall,” though Republicans no longer pretend that Mexico will foot the bill, as Trump promised in 2016. (Trump spent 15 billion taxpayer dollars on the wall during his first term.) Trump now claims, falsely, that he said only that Mexico would pay for “a piece” of the wall, and that Mexico’s deployment of troops to intercept migrants met that requirement, which it did not.

President Joe Biden halted construction on the wall when he entered office. If the project is to be started up again, more border fencing will have to be built than Trump is willing to admit. The border with Mexico is about 2,000 miles long. There is now fencing along 706 of those miles, 52 miles of it introduced by Trump. That’s about one-tenth as much as Trump claims to have built. If Trump matches that pace in a second term he’ll leave office with slightly more than one-third of the southern border fenced.

Does border fencing work? Not if you measure by border crossings, which started rising while Trump was still president and by the end of last year were 14 times greater than in early 2020. In March 2022 The Washington Post’s Nick Miroff reported that during the previous three years smugglers sawed through border fencing more than 3,000 times. Smugglers also built tunnels, including one more than 4,000 feet long, and vaulted the wall using $5 ladders.

To supplement wall-building, the 2024 platform pledges to deploy thousands of Army troops to the southern border, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars a president from using the military to keep the peace inside U.S. borders. The platform also says Trump would deploy the Navy to “impose a full Fentanyl Blockade on the waters of our Region.” Sailors would board ships to look for “fentanyl and fentanyl precursors.” Since Mexico and China are “the primary source countries,” according to a 2019 report by the Drug Enforcement Agency, the blockade would have to cover the entire West Coast, and perhaps the Gulf Coast as well. Since the West Coast and Gulf Coast are where most imports arrive in the United States, the blockade proposal would do at least as much as the platform’s “baseline Tariffs on Foreign-made goods” to increase prices on imports. I should have included the blockade in my earlier discussion of the various ways the Republicans’ 2024 platform would increase inflation.

The platform says Trump would bring back the Muslim ban that he called for in his 2016 campaign. After he assumed office Trump was compelled to relabel this a “travel ban.” But it’s still a Muslim ban. Most of the countries included were predominantly Muslim, and to make absolutely sure nobody misses the point the platform specifically promises “extreme vetting” of “jihadist and jihadist sympathizers.” As I noted Wednesday, Republicans also said they would exclude “Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists” from these pristine shores.

Let’s move on to health care. Republicans tend to be fairly closed-mouthed on the subject and, indeed, it doesn’t even get its own chapter; it rates only one paragraph. Here is what it says:

Healthcare and prescription drug costs are out of control. Republicans will increase Transparency, promote Choice and Competition, and expand access to new Affordable Healthcare and prescription drug options. We will protect Medicare, and ensure Seniors receive the care they need without being burdened by excessive costs.

“Choice and competition” is Washington-speak for “Medicare Advantage,” the privatized version of Medicare that is very popular with seniors; 52 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in Advantage plans. Advantage is popular mainly because it spends 22 percent more per patient than regular Medicare does. Congress allows this because congressional Republicans want to demonstrate that private spending is better than public spending. The only way they know how to do that is to drown the private sector in cash.

But where does that extra 22 percent go? Certainly not to the patient. The program generates an estimated $75 billion annually in overpayments to insurers. Advantage has also come under fire for refusing to cover a variety of medical procedures. A national commission last year found no evidence that Medicare Advantage delivered coverage that was any better than regular Medicare.

“Any honest agenda for improving health care,” said the 2016 Republican platform, “must start with repeal of the dishonestly named Affordable Care Act of 2010: Obamacare.” That highly specific language is gone, and in its place is a promise to expand “Affordable Healthcare and prescription drug options,” whatever that means. In the 2016 campaign Trump pledged to replace Obamacare with “something terrific.” Eight years later, the Republican Party still can’t tell you what that would be.

The 2024 platform’s education chapter is mostly a declaration of culture war. On its single page the phrase “parental rights” appears four times. “Parental rights” is culture-war-ese for “censorship.” Censorship of school libraries was up 33 percent in the 2022–2023 school year, the last for which data is available, according to PEN America. These empowered parents pulled more than 3,000 books from school shelves—and the GOP’s education chapter promises more of the same. Republicans, the platform says, “will oppose politicized education models” and eliminate “Leftwing propaganda” and “inappropriate political indoctrination.” (Apparently appropriate political indoctrination may continue.) Specifically, the GOP will “stop schools from discriminating on the basis of Race.” If this last assertion surprises you, keep in mind that Republicans judge the aggrieved group to be Caucasian children forced against their parents’ will to learn about slavery, Jim Crow, etc.

The Republican nominee, it can never be stated enough, stands convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. How to address this? By pledging to “hold accountable those who have misused the power of Government to unjustly prosecute their Political Opponents.” Reality check: There is absolutely no evidence that Trump’s four indictments were orchestrated by politicians. This plank is a promise to misuse government power to prosecute Republicans’ political opponents, i.e., anybody involved in the Trump prosecutions.

One of the more surprising promises in the 2024 platform is to “strengthen Alliances.” Hey everybody, Trump’s decided to stop beating up America’s allies! But which alliances would the GOP strengthen? The plank doesn’t mention NATO (an acronym absent from the entire platform) or Europe (mentioned, as I discussed earlier, only in the context of ending military aid to Ukraine). Who, then, are these allies? The only country identified by name is Israel.

“We will stand with Israel,” the platform says, “and seek peace in the Middle East.” The Democratic platform will no doubt say something similar. But the Democrats will also (a) recognize that the United States has alliances with countries other than Israel; and (b) address Palestinian grievances. The Republicans can’t bring themselves to do either.

The 2020 Democratic platform pledged to “restore U.S.-Palestinian diplomatic ties and critical assistance to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza.” Biden restored diplomatic ties his first week in office. As for “critical assistance,” that will require more specifics when the Democrats produce their 2024 platform next month. These will likely fall short. But keep in mind that to the Republican nominee, the very word “Palestinian” is a slur. In the June debate, Trump said of Biden: “He’s become like a Palestinian.” Since the word “Semite” denotes not merely Jews but also Arabs and Phoenicians, Trump’s put-down was antisemitic (and therefore contradicted the 2024 platform’s claim that “Republicans condemn antisemitism”). Trump is, of course, no stranger to the anti-Jewish variety of antisemitism as well.

I haven’t shared here every last outrage in the Republicans’ 2024 platform (who has that much time?), but those are the high points. The GOP is promising, in writing, to deliver four years of truly terrible governance. At the moment we don’t know whether the Democratic nominee will be Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Wes Moore, Andy Beshear, Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Roy Cooper, or George Clooney. But does it even matter? Whoever the Democratic nominee is, please give them your vote and consign this rancid document to the oblivion it so richly deserves.