President Trump, in one of his first actions back in office, signed an executive order that moves the U.S. government toward designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

The decision is part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to crack down on the flow of drugs and people across the southern border. The full implications of designating the cartels as terrorist organizations will depend, in large part, to how the administration follows through.

Here’s a look at what the order says, and the possible implications:

The order

The order says cartels are a national security threat in a way that traditional organized crime is not. They have conducted a “campaign of violence and terror through the Western hemisphere” with destabilizing effects, including a flood of “deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs” into the United States.

It also says the cartels, as well as two transnational gangs rooted in Central America, pose a national security threat to the U.S., and it says it is American policy to “ensure the total elimination of these organizations’ presence in the U.S.”

The order instructs the U.S. State Department to recommend, within 14 days, whether to designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

What would a terrorist designaion do?

The U.S. government already has tools, including criminal charges and sanctions, that it can use to go after the cartels. A terrorist designation would broaden those options.

The most significant additional tool, experts say, would be the ability to bring what are known as material support prosecutions. Under U.S. law, it is a crime to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization.

Material support can run from money or weapons to lodging, false papers, or even a phone card.

In the context of drug cartels, prosecutors could potentially use this charge against a whole range of actors, including cartel members, the street gangs in the U.S. that sell the narcotics, as well as anyone who provides financial or logistical support.

The ripple effects, though, could be bigger.

Some analysts note that U.S. companies that do business in Mexico routinely make payments to Mexican companies, some of which could be controlled by or affiliated with a cartel or cartel members. That could possibly expose those American firms to penalties.

Migrants could also potentially be swept up in material support prosecutions. Experts say migrants often pay smugglers to get through Mexico or across the U.S.-Mexico border, and those smugglers often have ties to cartels. And that could provide grounds for American authorities to keep those migrants out of the U.S.

There have been questions about whether a terrorism designation opens the door to possible unilateral military action by the United States on Mexican territory.

The U.S. president already has the authority to conduct military action—a designation wouldn’t change that. But American military strikes inside Mexico would be a major step, and Mexico has made clear that it opposes any such action.

Has the U.S. considered this all before?

The idea of designating the cartels as terrorist organizations was considered during Trump’s first term in office, but also during the Obama administration, but ultimately the government never followed through.

There are a variety of reasons why it stopped short, said Jason Blazakis, who led the office at the State Department that makes the designations.

“One of the most significant reasons is the negative impact such a designation would have on the United States-Mexico bilateral relations,” Blazakis said. “Mexico, as a government, has opposed the designation of criminal organizations as terrorists, feeling that it would be something that could jeopardize their sovereignty.”

Another reason, he said, has been a desire to calibrate the list “to ensure that truly terrorist actors who are carrying out political acts of violence against civilians is on that list, thinking along the lines of groups like ISIS and Al Qaida, as opposed to criminal organizations that are primarily motivated by financial concerns.”

He also notes that the U.S. government already has a lot of tools to target the cartels, including criminal prosecutions and freezing assets, and so a designation and the additional tools that come with weren’t viewed as necessary.

What about Mexico?

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has said Mexico will defend its sovereignty but also try to coordinate with the United States.

“We all want to fight the drug cartels,” Sheinbaum told reporters this week.

The cartel issue can’t be viewed in vacuum, said Maria Calderon, an expert at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.

“We need to see the security component of the U.S.-Mexico border relation ingrained with the trade and immigration conversation,” she said. “Those three fields of the U.S-Mexico bilateral relationship are intertwined. You can’t separate them.”

Trump campaigned on promises cracking down on the Southern border, and stemming the flow of both drugs and people across the frontier. He also has threatened to impose tariffs on Mexico.

Since taking office on Monday, he has issued executive actions or publicly addressed all three topics. There is a political messaging side to these moves, analysts say, but they also can be seen as a way to pressure Mexico to coordinate more, including on security.

“I really hope that Mexico takes this as an opportunity to sit down at the table with the Trump administration and view the cartel problem as a joint problem and say, ‘OK, we have the actual designation. How is it that we’re going to we’re going to work together to address this issue?'” Calderon said.

For the second time, Donald Trump will be inaugurated Monday as president of the United States.

It represents a pivotal time in American history, a new period beyond the world order created by the United States and its allies post-World War II.

For the right, it presents hope for a future of a country it sees as lurching too far to the left. But for millions of others, it’s the dawning of a dark era, one more nativist, inward-looking and mean-spirited that could leave the marginalized more vulnerable than ever.

Trump has spent years convincing his followers that he’s been victimized by political targeting. Their belief in that, and a conservative media buoying his message, helped insulate him from the kind of consequences that have sunk most other politicians following controversy and misdeeds.

Indeed, Trump is on the precipice of a second term, one he is more prepared for than when he first won the White House in 2016. Loyalists are lined up to help push an economic and social agenda that is sure to hearten his supporters and fuel an even deeper disdain among his detractors.

Another chance for Trump to try to shape his legacy

If there is one thing that has grated on Trump in business or politics, it’s being branded a “loser.”

So after his 2020 election loss, he searched for an off-ramp to explain it away. He found it by suggesting falsely that he actually won.

Many Republicans appeared ready to abandon Trump after he inspired the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the U.S. Capitol — an effort to overturn the legitimate election results. But, as the months went on and Trump’s continued strength with the Republican base became clearer, Republican leaders, one by one, gravitated back.

He had a social media and MAGA podcast army at his back that made the legacy media less relevant and more of a perceived nuisance.

Trump used the criminal cases against him and growing immigration concerns to consolidate the support of his base, while inflation created an environment that could help a Republican take the presidency back.

It’s a remarkable twist of fate, given Trump’s low approval ratings when he left office amid the COVID pandemic. And yet, even though the pandemic barely came up during the 2024 presidential campaign, it was a big reason why Trump wound up winning.

Americans largely disapproved of the way Trump handled the pandemic, but because of the supply-chain shortages it created, it is largely the reason for inflation going as high as it did.

In survey after survey, Americans said inflation and prices were their biggest concern during the campaign — as the pandemic receded from the forefront.

A task to “fix” the economy 

The country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, increased interest rates as a way to decrease inflation. That has made an impact on inflation, but things like mortgage rates and auto loans also went up. So not only did eggs cost more, but so did houses and cars.

Unemployment remained low, wages increased, and the United States wound up recovering better than most other developed countries. But macroeconomics — and a message of, “We’re doing better than most other countries” — was a hard sell when groceries were more expensive than people were comfortable with.

Many Americans have a degree of nostalgia for the pre-pandemic economy when Trump was president. And why not? Prices and interest rates were lower.

The latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that 6-in-10 people said the economy is not working well for them. Just before the pandemic, though, two-thirds said it was.

That’s a big mood swing, and Trump used Americans’ economic uneasiness to pave his path back to White House — with promises of fixing it. He appeared under banners that read, “Make America Wealthy Again” and “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!“

But since Trump’s election, he has admitted that bringing down prices will be “hard.”

It was always reductive to believe that by simply putting Trump back in office, prices and interest rates would suddenly come down, especially when any president has so little control over the economy.

Yet optimism is high — 44% in the NPR poll said that they believe their family’s financial situation will get better over the next year. That’s the highest in 15 years of asking the question by NPR polling partner Marist. Just 22% said they think it will get worse.

That could mean high expectations, but Trump is inheriting a fairly strong economy that’s already headed in the right direction. So, ironically, views of the economy may improve without Trump needing to do much of anything. And if that happens, Trump will likely get credit — deserved or not.

Views of the economy — and Trump’s presidency more broadly — could determine which party controls the White House four years from now, as Trump is limited to just four more years.

The national debt is likely to continue going up

President-elect Donald Trump, Melania Trump and family watch fireworks at Trump National Golf Club on Saturday in Sterling, Va.

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As unusual as Trump is in American politics and despite how much he’s upended political norms and GOP dogma, his economic policy agenda is very much rooted in a traditional Republican playbook: cut income taxes broadly (his cuts in 2017 were projected to benefit the wealthy the most), further deregulate industry, and expand oil exploration and drilling.

Republicans say they want to slash the federal debt, which now sits at more than $36 trillion. But extending Trump’s tax cuts would add almost $5 trillion to the federal debt, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Despite that, Trump’s Treasury Secretary-nominee Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge-fund manager, claimed it would be an economic “calamity” if the cuts are not extended, disagreed that ending the cuts — even for the wealthiest — would help pay down the national debt, and he is against raising taxes even on billionaires.

“I think that these are the job creators,” he said in response to Sen. Raphael Warnock’s, D-Ga., line of questioning during his confirmation hearing this past week.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters earlier this month that Trump does not want Social Security and Medicare cut.

“No, the president has made clear that Social Security and Medicare have to be preserved,” Johnson said.

Entitlements make up more than half the federal budget. The other massive chunk is defense spending, but an even larger defense budget is expected under Trump.

There are simply not enough possible discretionary, non-defense domestic spending cuts to make a dent in the debt.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who boosted Trump’s election efforts to the tune of more than $250 million, is aiming to slash some $2 trillion through his informal effort with former tech CEO Vivek Ramaswamy to identify cuts at every level of government. They’ve declared their endeavor the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Even if they could get that ambitious level of cuts accomplished, it would be less than half what extending the Trump tax cuts would cost. Musk himself has already cast doubt on being able to cut that much.

Trying to make up some revenue, Trump has stepped outside GOP orthodoxy, touting tariffs as a budgetary panacea. Many economists disagree and believe they would in fact damage the U.S. economy and cost consumers.

Americans also don’t appear to be buying Trump’s tariffs narrative. The NPR poll found, by a 48%-31% margin, respondents thought tariffs would do more to hurt than help the economy.

Trump’s tax-cut, deregulation and drilling agenda will more than likely make money for the wealthy and big businesses, but the national debt will almost certainly increase again.

The debt went up about $8 trillion during Trump’s first term, but he’s banking on a broad tax-cuts extension pacifying cash-strapped Americans, while he also pushes forward with the heart of what’s fueled his populist political rise — social and cultural issues, as well as grievance politics.

The culture war agenda is coming

Protesters opposed to the incoming Trump administration attend the “People’s March on Washington” on Saturday in Washington, D.C.

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Trump is expected to aggressively pursue mass deportations of those in the U.S. without legal status soon after he’s inaugurated.

He is also likely to go after diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, push to make curriculum in schools more conservative and try to change Title IX protections to exclude transgender students, potentially affecting everything from respect for pronouns to which bathrooms and locker rooms transgender students can use.

The incoming president is also pledging retribution against those he sees as political enemies. He has pledged to pardon many, if not all, of those involved in Jan. 6, and he’s threatened to go after people he believes have wronged him, from journalists to the political class and prosecutors.

Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, said at her hearing last week that she will not let the Justice Department be politicized. The country will find out soon enough how she’ll run the department.

Americans, though, don’t seem convinced about all of Trump’s policies. The NPR poll found people were split on mass deportations, and more than 6 in 10 opposed pardoning those involved with Jan. 6.

Trump won despite promising to do those things during the campaign. That’s because the economic mood is really what seemed to matter most, and many people don’t take a lot of what Trump says seriously because of his penchant for bombast and his transactional nature.

Corporations, though, appear to be taking Trump’s threats seriously and are trying hard to get in his good graces — from CEOs meeting with him at Mar-a-Lago to tech billionaires like Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg all expected to be at Trump’s inauguration.

It’s not new for America, though, to have billionaires at the ball. Take this from the library of former President Chester Arthur on the inauguration of 1881:

“The attendees included most Republican Stalwart luminaries of the day, and a who’s who of the business establishment and ‘billionaires’ of the day, including Jay Gould, J. Pierpont Morgan, and John Jacob Astor. Former President Grant was seated at the head of the center table, flanked by Dorsey on one side, and Arthur on the other, in a lavishly decorated private dining hall.”

Despite that precedent, President Biden warned that something new is afoot. In his farewell address last week, Biden described a growing “Tech Industrial Complex” and a new rising American “oligarchy.”

Trump has claimed that he has an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” That’s hard to do when a candidate doesn’t even win a majority of the popular vote, but presidents often overread their electoral mandates and wind up overreaching. After all, people don’t vote for a president’s entire agenda. It’s far more complicated than that.

Democrats haven’t figured out a resistance strategy yet. Most are in a wait-and-see mode about what Trump actually does. Trump’s second inaugural address will give the first clues about what he will prioritize, and mark the beginning of what comes next politically in this country and opening the question of who will emerge to lead it beyond the Trump era.