A new year, a new administration. 2016 has finally come to an end after 365 days of celebrity deaths, alt-right memes, and a beautifully brutal presidential campaign. In just a few short weeks, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 45^th President of the United States. There are countless questions surrounding the incoming administration and what that means for the future of both governance and politics. The hangover from the election has largely subsided and the president-elect has moderated his rhetoric as he prepares to enter the office. A surprising number of people are actually optimistic about Trump now that he has transitioned somewhat from candidate to president. The incendiary remarks from the campaign season and Trump’s calls for mass deportations, carpet-bombing ISIS, and building a southern border wall were just political posturing, an appeal to the ultra-conservative base that has effectively wrangled control of the Republican Party. Once in office, Trump will pursue a more level-headed, centrist agenda.

Perhaps Trump does intend to do so. I do not necessarily doubt that sentiment. After all, he is a relatively non-ideological and has garnered a reputation as being more pragmatic than anything else. However, I do doubt that Trump will be able to pursue such an agenda. His cabinet nominees, paired with healthy Republican majorities in Congress, suggest that a wave of right-wing policies is in the making. I speculated in an earlier opinion piece about a conservative government headed by Trump as one where Republicans will more or less have free reign, in terms of policy. Still, what exactly does that mean for the United States? I urge people to look no further than North Carolina.

In a lot of ways, North Carolina is the quintessential crossroads of America. Decades of pro-business, centrist governance, striking a healthy balance between government regulation and free markets, acted as a catalyst for near exponential economic growth and diversification. The population of North Carolina is now also healthier, wealthier, and well-educated compared to previous generations. North Carolinians are more socially liberal, supporting progressive policies on reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues, immigration, and social justice, and fiscally conservative, showing preference to lower taxes, a less intrusive government, and controlled spending. But North Carolina lost its balance somewhere along the way. Highly-educated urban elites, many of them migrating from the Northeast to the sunny south, reaped the spoils of this renaissance while blue collar whites out in the large rural swaths of the state were left behind as small town America slowly died.

Resentful bubbled over and for the first time in over a century, Republicans took control of the General Assembly, the state’s legislative body in 2010. Two years later, Pat McCrory defeated his opponent after unpopular Democratic governor Bev Purdue chose not to run for reelection. becoming the first Republican governor of the state since the early 1990’s. What followed was a slew of reactionary policies that were embarrassing, mean-spirited, and outright concerning.

The Republicans that overtook the state government were not the traditional, business-oriented types that former House Speaker John Boehner embodied. They did not adhere to the traditional values of American intellectual conservatism, namely free-market capitalism and limited government. Rather, they were driven by the same right-wing, conservative Christian, nationalist forces the propelled Donald Trump to victory in November. The wreaked havoc on a state long heralded as the most progressive in the south that, until recently, had only the brightest of futures.

Starting in 2012, state lawmakers and Governor McCrory began to target the LGBTQ community. Amendment One was a ballot initiative that amended the state constitution to strictly define marriage as between one man and one woman, effectively banning gay marriage. The amendment passed by a comfortable margin, driven by low voter turnout and a multi-million dollar campaign funded by right-wing special interests. The amendment was subsequently nullified by the 2015 Supreme Court decision that guaranteed same-sex marriage as a constitutionally-protected right. However, that was only a temporary setback for conservative lawmakers.

In March of 2016, the Charlotte City Council, Charlotte being the largest city in North Carolina with a population of over 800,000, passed a non-discrimination ordinance that expanded protections to include the LGBTQ community. Additionally, the ordinance allowed for transgender people to use public restrooms that corresponded with their gender identity, not their biological sex. This alarmed state lawmakers and in response they convened a special session of the General Assembly to draft and pass House Bill 2 (HB2). The law not only nullified the Charlotte ordinance, it also invalidated every single municipal non-discrimination ordinance in the state that included protections for gays and lesbians. Such ordinances were on the books of every single major metropolitan area in the state including Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Winston-Salem, and Asheville. The only legal non-discrimination ordinance was the one in the state code. It explicitly excludes LGBTQ North Carolinians. Currently, it is legal to be fired in North Carolina for being gay.

The backlash from the public and businesses alike was significant. There were protests for weeks. North Carolina lost billions of dollars in revenue from businesses that pulled out of the state. The NBA relocated its All-Star Game from Charlotte. The NCAA relocated a seven championships outside of the state. The Atlantic Coast Conference moved its championship football game outside of the state. Bruce Springsteen, Maroon 5, and Pearl Jam all canceled shows in North Carolina. PayPal pulled out of an expansion plan that would have created 400 new jobs. Other large corporations including Target, Delta Airlines, SAS, and Red Hat issued harsh condemnations of HB2. In late December, Democratic and Republican lawmakers, in conjunction with the Charlotte City Council, reached an agreement to repeal HB2 in a special session. At the last minute, conservative lawmakers, who faced no risk of being voted out of office in their rural districts, pulled out and HB2 remained on the books.

In 2012, the state government, dominated by veto-proof GOP majorities and headed by Governor McCrory, took up the task of redrawing congressional districts following the 2010 Census. Two congressional districts, the first and the twelfth, were drawn in such a way that they appeared to sprawl across large swaths of the state in a seemingly illogical manner. The purpose of these newly drawn districts was to concentrate as many African American voters in them as possible. This was done to dilute the power of the African American vote in neighboring districts. African Americans vote to overwhelm the Democratic Party, often above 90%. About 25% of North Carolinians are African Americans and many of them are registered to vote. The state legislature wanted to protect Republican lawmakers in neighboring congressional districts. A federal district court in North Carolina invalidated the two districts as unconstitutional- they violated the Voting Rights Act of 1964, a hallmark of civil rights legislation. The case was recently argued before the Supreme Court.

Despite that ruling, 10 of North Carolina’s 13 congressional districts are held by Republicans even though Democrats still have a voter registration advantage in the state. Voter registration statistics aside, North Carolina’s partisan composition is split almost evenly between Democratic and “liberal” voters and Republican and “conservative” voters, with the latter holding a slight advantage overall. The GOP has successfully replicated this partisan gerrymandering scenario at the state level too, effectively granting themselves full autonomy over North Carolina government until at least the early 2020’s when redistricting following the 2020 Census will commence. This leaves them free to continue to pursue an extremely conservative policy agenda that ignores popular opinion.

In 2013, the state legislature came under fire again for discrimination. This time, it was a restrictive voter ID law. The law required all voters to present government-issued photo ID, restricted early voting, and imposed new voter registration requirements that created roadblocks for black voters. Some argue that presenting an ID at the polls is not an unreasonable requirement. However, low-income, minority voters are far less likely to possess a driver's license or a passport. One form of ID that is disproportionately used by African Americans in North Carolina, public assistance cards, were not accepted under that law. A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit unanimously ruled the law as unconstitutional.

To be fair, there are some advantages that the GOP majorities bring to North Carolina. Republicans typically support the pro-business, fiscally conservative policies that allowed North Carolina’s economy to grow and diversify. Governor McCrory pursued a policy agenda that centered on luring businesses into the state through tax incentives. Additionally, the state has maintained a relatively low cost of living and a high quality of life that has attracted hundreds of thousands of migrants from other regions of the country. The extreme conservative lawmakers largely went along with these policies, but were never really responsible for the enactment of them, aside for casting their votes.

It remains to be seen how exactly these economic growth patterns impact low-income earners in North Carolina. Lower taxes, especially benefiting the wealthy, do exacerbate economic inequality. The disparity between highly educated urban professionals and workers without a college degree living in the state’s expansive rural areas is very apparent. There are also questions about the extent to which this expansive growth has included the state’s African American and Latino populations.

So, how does this tie into the incoming Trump administration? In short, the American public is likely to see a slew of pro-business policies flowing out of Washington, mainly in the form of lower taxes and relaxed environmental regulations. That may be beneficial for private sector growth, but at what cost? Economic inequality and climate change are still among the biggest threats to the United States and economic policies skewed too far to the right may do more harm than good in the long run.

Then there is the matter of social issues. Popular opinion has shifted significantly in favor of progressive social policies on reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues, immigration, criminal justice reform, and drug decriminalization. Donald Trump has stocked has a cabinet full of social conservatives who would have been out of touch even in the 1950’s, let alone today.

Jeff Sessions, the incoming Attorney General, has a long and well-documented history of overt racism and has pledged to prosecute states that legalized marijuana in any form. Kathleen DeVos, the incoming Secretary of Education, is a major GOP donor who has supported a variety of anti-gay causes throughout her career. Ben Carson, the incoming Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, was often among the most socially conservative candidates during the 2016 Republican primaries. Scott Pruitt, the incoming head of the Environmental Protection Agency is a vocal climate science denier. Not to mention, the Republicans have healthy majorities on Capitol Hill with many prominent social conservatives poised to lead policy-making.

The issue may not necessarily lie with Donald Trump himself. Trump, despite his penchant for inflammatory rhetoric and his overuse of Twitter, is largely non-ideological and appears to have little interest in governing from the policy side of things, a departure from many previous administrations. That means that important policy decisions will be determined by members of Congress and influenced by cabinet advisors. Trump will almost certainly be required to go along with it all, or he risks expending all of his political capital and could even face a contested primary in 2020, both of which significantly increase the likeliness of him losing power.

That’s what happened in North Carolina. Pat McCrory, despite his tenure as governor, was also a largely non-ideological politician. He was a popular centrist during his fourteen-year reign as Mayor of Charlotte, where Democrats enjoy a near 2-1 voter registration advantage. There were high expectations that he would continue that legacy as Governor of North Carolina. However, McCrory found himself surrounded by a slew of extremist lawmakers and had essentially no choice but to go along with their agenda in order to cling onto his power. In the end, it cost him his office while the lawmakers who started all of this will continue unabated. Congressional Republicans, just like North Carolina state lawmakers, have gerrymandered themselves into power and will continue to enjoy healthy majorities in the House and likely the Senate, given the electoral map for the 2018 midterms. Trump too may soon find himself in such a precarious situation.