A hundred days into President Donald Trump’s second, nonconsecutive term, an Economist magazine cover was already in countdown mode to its end, with the headline, “Only 1,361 Days To Go.”
The accompanying article was a full-throated defense of “neo-liberalism,” with an embrace of free trade, the U.S. dollar as the world’s default currency, and a broadly internationalist foreign policy —basically, a move away from the nationalist-populist push of Trump’s MAGA movement over the past decade.
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The underlying argument is that people unhappy with Trump’s presidential tenure should effectively wait him out, that with Trump leaving the White House on Jan. 20, 2029, Republicans would revert to “normal,” opposing tariffs, seeking to project U.S. strength abroad, and much more. U.S. voters, more broadly, would once again see the wisdom of that policy approach, with real-world effects, among others, being a free trade boom, and fulsome American government support for international and multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and NATO.
Whether the remainder of Trump’s presidency, and the years beyond, play out that way is very much an open question. It’s an updated approach, of sorts, to a debate that’s been brewing since the onetime media gadfly, real estate developer, and reality television show host declared for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and quickly overtook a field of establishment-friendly GOP politicians. Is the appeal about the person Trump, which would recede once he’s off the political scene? Or a more lasting Trumpism, part of a deeper, conservative populist wave with real political staying power?
Higher education battleground over Trump and Trumpism
It’s too early to provide any definitive, or even well-grounded speculative, answers to the Trump-or-Trumpism debate. However, arguments on both sides are playing out not only in the political realm, but also in business and finance, where investment decisions are partly grounded in long-term national and geopolitical predictions and trends. And especially in academia, with top colleges and universities a main target of Trump’s second administration.
Like no other president, Trump has used the government’s control over federal research funding to push for changes in higher education. Trump and allies are decrying elite colleges and universities as places of extreme liberal ideology and antisemitism. Ivy League schools Columbia University, Brown University, and the University of Pennsylvania reached agreements to resolve federal investigations. The Republican administration is pressing for more, citing the deal it negotiated with Columbia as a “road map” of other institutions of higher education.
Some Trump-hostile university presidents seem to think the situation is only temporary — that their institutions can wait out Trump for the three-plus years left in his term. It’s an approach exemplified by Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber and Wesleyan University President Michael Roth.
The latter has “emerged as an important resistance figure,” the Atlantic reported in August. Roth “is, by the standards of university presidents today, unusually sharp-elbowed and bellicose” in criticizing the Trump higher education pressure campaign.
Eisgruber, at the end of an April Association of American Universities panel discussion in Washington, the magazine reported, “turned on the chancellors of Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis, all but accusing them of carrying water for the Trump administration.”
The pair referred to, Vanderbilt University’s Daniel Diermeier and Washington University’s Andrew Martin, have taken a very different approach than the maximalist resistance stance of many elite university leaders. Each has talked up and acted upon the notion that universities’ illiberal and often hypocritical approaches to issues concerning free speech and antisemitism need to change.
It’s a tension at play since anti-Israel protests widespread across elite college campuses broke out immediately after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked the Jewish state, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 as hostages.
Martin and Diermeier began working on a “Statement of Principles” for higher education that, in many ways, went against the grain of academic administration peers who largely bowed to and were cowed by anti-Israel campus activism.
“If research universities are to pursue the truth wherever it lies, they cannot have a political ideology or pursue a particular vision of social change,” they wrote. Their university boards adopted the principles as official policy in the fall of 2024.
In late March, per the Atlantic, “Martin and Diermeier assembled several dozen like-minded college presidents, board chairs, and think-tank leaders in Dallas to launch a coalition of institutions that are focused on reform.”
It all makes for an implicit acceptance that changes to university governance and behavior by the Trump administration aren’t a passing fad. That some, if not most, of the changes to higher education in the second Trump term won’t be so easily reversible by the next Democratic administration.
Tough to unwind Trump policies
In many policy realms, Trump’s influence is here to stay, like it or not. That’s the conclusion of Megan McArdle, an oft-Trump-critic, libertarian-minded Washington Post columnist.
She cites the Trump administration’s tariff regime, the most protectionist since at least the Gilded Age, more than 120 years ago, along with a recent announcement that the federal government would convert billions of previous funds and pledges into a 10% stake in struggling chipmaker Intel. The government’s deal with that onetime industry leader makes the feds one of the company’s biggest shareholders.
McArdle says many of Trump’s second-term policies will be simply too ingrained in the economy and foreign policy to ditch starting in early 2029, due in part to old-fashioned political inertia and how hard it would be at that point to change course, particularly if there’s any form of divided government.
In a July 31 column, “Trump’s policies are here to stay,” McArdle recalled the yearslong Republican push to repeal the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement in office. But congressional Republicans couldn’t muster the votes to do so, even with full GOP control of government during Trump’s first term.
“I suspect the same will prove true of many of Trump’s innovations, especially on tariffs, immigration, and civil rights policy,” McArdle wrote. “Not because voters will be so thrilled with the results. But by the time Trump leaves office, these policies will be the status quo, and the status quo almost always wins.”
This view stands in marked contrast to “wait Trump out” advocates. One prominent member of that group has been former national security adviser John Bolton, a first-term Trump administration figure-turned-strong critic.
During a June 30 panel discussion at the 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival, Bolton argued for sitting tight while the Trump presidency runs its course.
“I would say it is important not to overestimate the damage Donald Trump is doing,” Bolton said in Colorado. “I remain hopeful. And tomorrow is July. By the 20th, we will be six months in, one-eighth of the way through. It’s almost over.”
Bolton, though, likely had a different view of Trump’s potential for damage when, on Aug. 22, FBI agents raided his Maryland home and Washington, D.C., office. They brought two broad warrants to search the “premises.”
Reporting is mixed about the nature of the FBI raid and the evidence sought. No charges have been brought against Bolton. But it was a stark reminder about the presidential powers Trump will hold for more than three years to go.
Bolton was unbowed. An Aug. 25 Washington Examiner op-ed by Bolton referenced the FBI investigation. Trump’s former national security adviser then resumed criticizing his foreign policy on Ukraine.
“Donald Trump’s Ukraine policy today is no more coherent than it was last Friday when his administration executed search warrants against my home and office,” Bolton wrote, repeating the same line in a post on X. “Collapsing in confusion and haste, Trump’s negotiations may be in their last throes, along with his Nobel Peace Prize campaign.”
Bolton is in a different political camp than many Trump critics — he’s a veteran of multiple Republican presidential administrations and a leading foreign policy hawk — compared to Trump foes from the Left who detest him not just on policy grounds, but hold a burning personal animus.
Some Trump critics aren’t optimistic about a wait-it-out approach, such as renewable energy adviser Rick Petree.
“There is obviously no help coming from any true-to-their-oaths GOP electeds,” wrote Petree, the managing director of Global Power Partners, a renewable energy-focused investment banking firm, in an Aug. 22 X post. “They’ve all be spayed, and will answer to history.”
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“The judiciary can only do so much, and SCOTUS is in the tank. We’ve got 3 1/2 more years of this coming. What will save us?” Petree asked.
Whether the country needs “saving” under Trump’s leadership is a matter of fierce debate. As for the prospects of real change from the Trump years? We’ll start to find out in about 1,200 days.