“Now that it is clear Donald Trump will become president again and will have a Republican Senate and almost certainly a Republican House to back him, it’s important to ask: What will he do with these majorities? And given his track record last time, what will it mean for poor Americans and the programs they rely on?

The last time Trump won the presidency, in 2016, I wrote a piece predicting a huge rollback of the safety net. The Affordable Care Act (ACA), with its massive expansion of Medicaid and patient protections, would be repealed; Medicaid itself would see its funding slashed and its guarantee of coverage to poor people eliminated; food stamps would be cut deep and maybe turned over to the states, much as welfare for single parents was in 1996, largely destroying that program.

I was wrong. Trump, and especially then-House Speaker Paul Ryan, did try to do all of that, but in the end enough Republicans realized repealing the ACA wasn’t viable. Medicaid and food stamps survived more or less intact. A Democratic House after the 2018 midterms and, more importantly, a global pandemic, meant that by 2020, the safety net was significantly stronger than in 2016.

I do not know that the same scenario will play out in 2025, and I certainly hope the pandemic part does not repeat. But despite the devastating electoral blow to Democrats, there are reasons for safety net supporters to be optimistic.”