What will happen once Trump leaves office? It's not good.

What will happen once Trump leaves office? It's not good. | Opinion

Opinion

What will happen once Trump leaves office? It's not good. | Opinion

Dace Potas, USA TODAY

Sun, November 30, 2025 at 9:01 AM UTC

6 min read

I’m no stranger to many of the alarming actions of President Donald Trump and his authoritarian second term, as any intermittent reader of my columns will know.

He has taken it upon himself to rule by executive power, handed out utterly corrupt pardons, infringed on due process and enacted an unconstitutional tariff regime. The list is long.

My record on the issue of Trump should say something about how much more concerned I am with what comes after him, as the battle for control of MAGA will shift into full gear.

Those who love what makes America truly great should be as alarmed as I am.

I worry about Trump, but I worry more about what comes next

President Donald Trump participates in a video Thanksgiving Day call with U.S. service members from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 27, 2025.

The American right is no longer primarily conservative. There is a conservative faction hidden in the party, but we are just one of many. Compare that with the Republican Party up until 2016 (or even some time shortly after), where conservatism was the party orthodoxy with little room for dissent.

In his first term, Trump was held in check to some extent by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell and other establishment Republicans. I’ve often likened his first term to a gunslinging quarterback that is taught to play within a controlled offensive system. But once he had mounted the greatest political comeback in history with the 2024 election, Republicans built their offense around Trump himself, with no plan for succession.

However, others have made plans for a post-Trump GOP.

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When people hear about “the new right,” they often think of Trump and his defenders. But Trump has no coherent ideology behind him, at least not one that overrides his lust for political power. What comes next, however, is extremely ideological.

American conservatism is about conserving the values of the American founding, which counterintuitively were liberal. When I refer to liberalism in this sense, I am referring to the ideology that defends individual rights, rather than the modern colloquial meaning of the word.

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There is a coalition of relatively new voices making the age-old argument that liberalism isn’t the right way of doing things. Postliberalism is the intellectual faction believing that liberalism, as it relates to individual rights, has either outlived its usefulness or that it was wrong from the outset. Nationalism, though controversially defined, holds that government is meant to act for the good of “the nation,” even at the expense of individual rights.

Catholic integralism argues that political actions ought to be judged only against the Catholic faith. Common good constitutionalism sacrifices the Constitution’s original meaning in exchange for a malleable pursuit of a subjective “common good.”

A throughline of all of these movements is a concept of a common good, a nation or other metric for determining how we ought to be governed ‒ as opposed to the defense of individual liberty that America was founded upon. They all sacrifice America’s founding principles for a rationale that can be shaped to mean whatever those in power want it to. These are the big political debates happening as we endure Trump's final administration.

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Expect JD Vance to take control with his nonconservative ideologies

Vice President JD Vance and President Donald Trump speak to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Sept. 25, 2025.

This is the coalition that forms the new right. All of these intellectual movements are somewhat integrated into the MAGA movement, and surely all of them view Trump as someone who can be used to usher in their own particular flavor of illiberal governance.

Conservatives still exist within the Republican Party, but they are rapidly being pushed out or forced to adapt to the new paradigm.

Mainstay right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation has become increasingly friendly to these ideologies, reaching a recent crescendo through its gutless defense of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. In a more proper fashion, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an organization that helps produce the next generation of conservative leaders (including yours truly), has woven these postliberal ideas into the mainstream of young conservative debate.

Illiberal ideologies are not simply having their moment in the intellectual circles of the right. This coalition is growing roots within positions of power and storied right-wing institutions.

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Vice President JD Vance has used the term “postliberal” to describe himself. While it's hard to pin down exactly where Vance stands concretely due to his being a spineless political chameleon, he pretty obviously is hostile toward Bush-era conservatism, free markets and free social governance.

Vance is both the figurehead of these various factions and the early favorite to be the next GOP nominee for president.

Vice President JD Vance addresses service members at Fort Campbell Army base in Kentucky on Nov. 26, 2025, the day before Thanksgiving.

As Trump approaches the lame duck period of his presidency, the right as a whole is posturing for what comes next. To this point in the second Trump presidency, we've seen these various factions actually breaking with Trump in certain cases, namely on immigration and foreign policy.

The nationalist and isolationist right has been vocal about their complaints that Trump has maintained a high level of involvement with Israel, culminating in the backlash Trump got for bombing Iran's nuclear facilities.

In a similar fashion, the new right has largely broken from Trump on the issue of H-1B visas and other legal immigration programs. Their view is generally that any job going to a foreign worker is one that could be held by an American. Trump, on the other hand, has acknowledged the interest in bringing skilled laborers from other countries to train or fill jobs for which America has shortages.

I fully anticipate Vance to orient his 2028 presidential campaign around this new right model, while others run against him, posturing as a more traditional conservative or even as a continuation of Trump's brand of MAGA. But Vance has a unique edge as the sitting vice president, and is the most natural heir to the populist right.

The new right seems certain to have its moment, at least in the primary for 2028. I hope I’m wrong, because the free-market system has led to a period of prosperity. Regression to the flaws of more repressive nations and times would be a grave mistake. We'll find out which side wins once Trump leaves office.

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.

You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: I'm worried about who will take over GOP when Trump leaves | Opinion

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