Ever since Trump became a candidate for the 2016 presidential election, he had promised to give the Republican Party more power. As a Republican supporter, Trump attempted to enlarge the Republican Party in order boost his popularity and authority in the entire government. This would include opening more seats for the Republicans and executing obscured ways to lesson the other parties’ representation in the government. However, in order to elevate the Republicans, Trump must deal with his major opponent, the Democratic Party. Before the 2016 election, the Democratic Party had dominated the entire government with not only its massive number of representation in Congress, but with the support of the Democratic president of the United States, Barack Obama. After Obama’s two terms, Trump announced to the people, especially the Republican Party, that he would lessen the number of Democrats in the government and remove as many policies as Obama had enacted during his presidency.

Trump’s removal of the Democrats’ power has so far been successful. As proof of this success, he gave the Republicans more power at the Supreme Court by choosing Neil Gorsuch to fill in Antonin Scalia’s seat. Thus, five out of the nine judges would be Republican compared to before his presidency, where there were five Democratic justices and only four Republican justices. His biggest action to expand the Republican Party’s power was to let go of some Democrats in the legislature. Trump claimed on Twitter that the Democrats were “taking forever to approve [his] people, including Ambassadors… They are nothing but OBSTRUCTIONIST!”, saying that the Democrats in the legislative branch had been a huge burden to his and the Republican’s actions.

Trump along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had been laying off many Democrats, from the House of Representative and from the Senate, without any clear reasons and without announcing this to the public. However, Trump did not plan to fill those vacant seats at the legislature with Republicans to expand the party’s representation and power. Trump announced that it was part of his plan to make a smaller government. It was not a surprise to the public as he constantly argued for a smaller government since the 2016 election. Yet, the removal of only the Democratic politicians indicated Trump’s strategy to evenly distribute the amount of representation between the Democratic and Republican Party where the Democrats had dominated before. The Democrats, though, argued that Trump was not shrinking the government and leaving more seats vacant, but was nominating more politicians, mostly Republicans, to fill those seats at a very slow, indistinct rate.