Where does the GOP go from here? With the Trump era at a sudden and shattering end, how can the party find new leadership and continued relevance? What’s waiting in Washington for America’s Orthodox Jewish community, where many are approaching the next four years with trepidation?

Has the spell Donald Trump cast over the Republican Party been broken following last week’s ugly Capitol Hill riots, or can he or his supporters retain their grip?

Could a yawning chasm between pro and anti-Trump forces destroy the Grand Old Party or will it maintain its political equilibrium?

Closer to home, how will the Washington scene play out for America’s Orthodox Jewish community, where many are approaching the next four years with trepidation, while others are breathing a sigh of relief?

In any presidential transition, there are more questions than answers. But this time, the uncertainty abounds  

Making political predictions is risky business for a journalist, and one I normally shy away from, but this one doesn’t require going out on a limb.

Republicans will not select Donald Trump to be their standard-bearer in 2024. No shock, considering last week’s lethal riot on Capitol Hill, for which even some Trump supporters placed the blame at the doorstep of the White House.

The endgame might have looked different had Trump bowed out gracefully once it became apparent that he could not produce hard evidence that could stand up in court to prove his claims of voter fraud.

Perhaps if Trump can rehabilitate himself and hold onto his base, he might be able to launch a third-party candidacy in 2024. However, viewed from a cold political perspective, the riots provided antsy Republicans who resigned from his administration en masse with the pretext they needed to create a separation between themselves and Trump.

At this stage, there are too many other potential Republican candidates jockeying for position in 2024 for Trump to elbow them out of the way.

We saw a long list of them basking in the spotlight at last week’s Republican National Committee (RNC) meeting in Amelia Island, Florida, headlined by Nikki Haley, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and Tom Cotton, not to mention Trump’s 2016 rivals Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, and Mitt Romney, who might very well make another stab at it.

In 2016, many of Trump’s rivals underestimated the man they called “the Donald.” They thought his campaign was a publicity stunt. They won’t take Trump for granted again — but at the same time, they also won’t be intimidated from running hard and taking Trump head-on now that he has chinks in his armor.

Any speculation of a Trump comeback must be tempered by the prospect that Trump might lose interest in the job in another four years, when he will be 78. While age didn’t seem to bother Joe Biden, who’s also 78, Trump might eventually come to terms with his loss and rededicate himself to his real estate empire and to improving his handicap on the golf course.

No matter what Trump decides, he has left little doubt that he still has plenty of fight left in him. Trump leveraged his allegations of election fraud to raise funds for a considerable campaign war chest that he has threatened to deploy in the 2022 midterms against Republicans disloyal to him. Perhaps because of that, most of his supporters are sticking with him at least publicly, even if they’re secretly hoping he fades away. Trump loyalists Ronna McDaniel and Tommy Hicks scored easy reelection victories last week as chairwoman and co-chairman of the RNC, which implies that Trump maintains at least one hand on the party’s levers of power.

Yet while the staid Republican Party rarely airs its dirty laundry in public, some key Republicans acknowledge the split between pro-Trump and anti-Trumpers is real and growing. Too many red states turned blue between 2016 and 2020, with Georgia the most noticeable flip. This prompted Bill Palatucci, an aide to former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, to admit to Politico that the party needs a strategy for surviving a post-Trump world: “We don’t have a future as a party,” he said, “if we can’t win Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.”