Donald Trump 2.0 January 2025

What Does It Mean? A Conversation with Heather Cox Richardson
(Politics Girl) We’re at the start of a new year, a new quarter century, and a new administration and a lot is up in the air, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to chat with one of the smartest people I know, about where she thinks America stands in the course of history and what to expect next. (YouTube)
Isolationist? Nationalist? No, Trump Is Something Else Entirely.
By Jennifer Mittelstadt, professor of U.S. history at Rutgers University, studies the state, the military and political movements
Historians tend to slot conservatives into three major, sometimes overlapping, groups: anti-communists, defense hawks and neoconservative nation builders. Those proved awkward fits for Mr. Trump in his first term, gesturing toward but not capturing his essence.
(NYT) …Hidden in plain sight in the dusty papers and collections of everyday right-wing Americans lies a whole new way of thinking about Mr. Trump’s foreign policy. He is a “sovereigntist.”
… In 1919, a group of senators known as the “irreconcilables” blocked the United States from joining the League of Nations. They were backed by a grass-roots movement of patriotic organizations, veterans’ groups and Protestant fundamentalists who argued that the League aimed to usurp American governance. In their words, it would replace the Constitution with world government, diminish America’s unique history and culture, and allow uncivilized, nonwhite and non-Christian states to exert power over its citizens.
Their movement aimed to preserve not only America’s formal sovereignty in international relations, but also the traditional forms of rule to which its white, native-born leaders were accustomed.
Trump isn’t a narcissist – he’s a solipsist. And it means a few simple things
John R MacArthur
The president delights in being attacked, since it keeps the focus on him. The press should handle him like parents with an ornery child
(The Guardian) A narcissist, while deeply self-infatuated, nevertheless seeks the approval of others and will occasionally attempt seduction to get what he wants (I think of the French president, Emmanuel Macron). For Trump the solipsist, the only point of reference is himself, so he makes no attempt even at faking interest in other people, since he can’t really see them from his self-centered position.

Trump embraces role of demagogue on divine mission to reshape America
Sworn in as the 47th US president at the US Capitol in Washington, Trump delivered an inaugural address that cast himself as a holy warrior and made his “American carnage” speech from 2017 seem almost innocent.
“My life was saved for a reason,” he said, recalling how he survived an assassination attempt by inches at a campaign rally on a Pennsylvania field last year. “I was saved by God to make America great again … For American citizens, January 20, 2025 is liberation day.”
Donald Trump: The Creep, The Kremlin, and the Curious Case of the Black Box
(Closer to the edge) SO… DOES RUSSIA HAVE THE GOODS?
That’s the riddle. After years of investigations, endless news cycles, and one giant political circus, the kompromat question refuses to die.
There’s no smoking gun — but there’s plenty of smoke. There’s no proof — but there’s a trail of breadcrumbs that refuses to disappear.
If Russia doesn’t have dirt on Trump, he’s done a spectacular job acting like they do — groveling before Putin like a man terrified that whatever’s in that black box might still see daylight.

Trump’s Official Inaugural Portrait Hailed as ‘Supervillain Pic of the Year’
(Daily Beast) Donald Trump’s official inaugural portrait has been dubbed the “supervillain pic of the year,” and the MAGAverse is loving that it nods to his infamous mugshot.

Trump makes laughingstock of America with repeated embarrassments in early days of new term
Rachel Maddow looks at the myriad ways Donald Trump has not only humiliated himself with foolish statements ill-considered ideas, but also embarrassed the United States of America for electing a fool for president -29 January

20 March
Trump The Bully
Columbia Concedes to Trump’s Demands After Federal Funds Are Stripped
The administration has moved to cut $400 million in federal funding to the university without changes to its policies and rules.
Paul Weiss Chair Says Deal With Trump Adheres to Firm’s Principles
On Thursday evening, the chairman, Brad Karp, sent a firm-wide email detailing the agreement he had reached with Mr. Trump, which allowed the firm to escape an executive order that could have cost it significant business.
Despite Mr. Karp’s assurances, the deal that he had reached with Mr. Trump during a meeting at the White House was causing concern among the broader legal community that large law firms were capitulating to Mr. Trump’s demands instead of fighting them in court.
Under the deal, the firm agreed to do $40 million worth of pro bono work on causes supported by the Trump administration, such as working with veterans and fighting antisemitism.
Trump Revokes Security Clearances for Biden, Harris, Clinton and More
The tally of names read like President Trump’s enemies list, from Letitia James to Liz Cheney.
… Last month, Mr. Trump nixed security clearances for Antony J. Blinken, the former secretary of state, and Jake Sullivan, the former national security adviser (both of whom were named again in Friday’s memo).
Trump’s Appetite for Revenge Is Insatiable
The president is making good on his campaign promise.
By Peter Wehner
Trump stripped security details from people he had appointed to high office in his first administration and subsequently fell out with, including General Mark Milley, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, the former diplomat Brian Hook, and the infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci. The National Institutes of Health, where Fauci worked for 45 years, is being gutted by the Trump administration. The environment there has become “suffocatingly toxic,” as my colleague Katherine J. Wu reported.
Trump has sued networks and newspapers for millions of dollars. His Federal Communications Commission is investigating several outlets. And he has called CNN and MSNBC “corrupt” and “illegal”—not because they have broken any laws, but simply because they have been critical of him. …

17-18 March
Eugene Robinson: Trump’s circus distracts from a more dangerous threat
The president erodes the rule of law and ignores the will of Congress and the judiciary.
Every day is a new episode of Trump’s reality show and another opportunity for boffo ratings. But each day is also another step in the weakening of the rule of law — and the undemocratic, un-American concentration of power in one man’s hands.
Robert Reich: Telling the federal judiciary to “f*ck off”
Many people wonder if we’re in a “constitutional crisis.” Definitions of that phrase vary considerably as do opinions about whether we’re in one now.
My worry is that Trump is surrounded by extremist anti-democracy nihilists, including his vice president, who are encouraging him to defy the Supreme Court.
If and when he does, we’ll be in a constitutional crisis that should cause every American to take to the streets.
The Ultimate Trump Story
The president’s dangerous tendencies are now magnifying one another in a uniquely risky way.
Donald Trump’s most dangerous tendencies—his hatred of immigrants; his disdain for the legal process; his willingness to push the boundaries of executive authority; and, newly, his appetite for going to war with the courts—are magnifying one another in a uniquely risky way.
At some point…, Trump signed an executive order [invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798]. Before that order was even public, the ACLU filed suit in federal court seeking to block the deportation of five Venezuelans who it believed might be removed. (In a sickening twist, several of the plaintiffs say they are seeking asylum in the United States because of persecution by Tren de Aragua.) By 5 p.m. on Saturday, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia had convened a hearing over Zoom. Things had happened quickly enough that the judge apologized at the beginning of the hearing for his casual appearance; he had departed for a weekend away without packing his judicial robes.

15 March
The honeymoon is over for Trump, whose every unwitting misstep brings chaos and strife
Simon Tisdall
After just a few weeks in the White House, the self-appointed peace-giver has stoked war, accelerated the nuclear arms race and alienated US allies
[The Guardian] Rooted in ignorance, error, wilful blindness and self-defeating prediction, Trump’s rash actions produce contradictory, harmful and often opposite results to those he says he wants. The ensuing chaos characterises what may become the briefest honeymoon in White House history.
Boomeranging US tariffs – which are to American prosperity what the Titanic was to ocean travel – are the tip of the unintended consequences iceberg. Defiant foreign retaliation has brought stock market crashes and inflation fears – the exact opposite of what Trump promised voters.
Trump won a mandate to make America great again, not greater – at least, not territorially. After his threats to invade Canada,…[u]nder the new “elbows up” leadership of the former Bank of England chief Mark Carney, [the Liberal Party of Canada] has a good chance of winning this year’s election on an anti-Trump platform. That was not the plan.
Likewise, Greenland’s voters, stung by a proposed Putin-style imperialist annexation, told Trump to take a hike last week. They are undecided about independence but definitely reject US (or Danish) domination. …
Trump’s Ukraine surrender policy is another calamity. Russia is the aggressor, yet he punishes the victim. US pressure for a ceasefire is all one way – on Kyiv. This is emboldening Vladimir Putin to intensify attacks, notably in Kursk, while stringing muggins Trump along.
The prospective, unintended, consequences of an unjust peace are the undeserved rehabilitation of Russia, de facto amnesty for Putin’s war crimes, a precedent-setting ceding of sovereign territory seized by force, and a deep US-Europe split. So the question arises again: is this really unintended? Whether Trump is a stooge, KGB asset or plain stupid was discussed here last week. Most probably, he has no real idea what he’s doing – or just doesn’t care. How else to explain his belief that proving himself right about tariffs is worth starting a global recession? Or that the ethnic cleansing of two million Palestinians in Gaza can bring peace?
The explanation that Trump’s main concern is China, that he is trying to prise Moscow away from Beijing, is more upside-down thinking. …

14 March
Trump assailed opponents in Justice Department speech
If Mr. Trump’s delivery verged on free association, his message was unmistakable: The president intends to bend the vast powers of federal law enforcement to his will — in the pursuit of an anti-crime agenda and, perhaps, vengeance.
(NYT) During the address, Trump veered from his prepared remarks to launch into a bitter spiel. He accused the department’s previous leadership of trying to destroy him, declared Joe Biden the head of a “crime” family and lashed out at lawyers and former prosecutors by name in a venue dedicated to the impartial administration of justice. “Scum,” Trump called his adversaries.

11 March
Thomas Friedman: A Great Unraveling Is Underway
If you are confused by President Trump’s zigzagging strategies on Ukraine, tariffs, microchips or a host of other issues, it is not your fault. It’s his. What you are seeing is a president who ran for re-election to avoid criminal prosecution and to get revenge on people he falsely accused of stealing the 2020 election. He never had a coherent theory of the biggest trends in the world today and how to best align America with them to thrive in the 21st century. That is not why he ran.
And once he won, Trump brought back his old obsessions and grievances — with tariffs and Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky and Canada — and staffed his administration with an extraordinary number of fringe ideologues who met one overriding criterion: loyalty first and always to Trump and his whims over and above the Constitution, traditional values of American foreign policy or basic laws of economics.
The result is what you are seeing today: a crazy cocktail of on-again-off-again tariffs, on-again-off-again assistance for Ukraine, on-again-off-again cuts in government departments and programs both domestic and foreign — conflicting edicts all carried out by cabinet secretaries and staff members who are united by a fear of being tweeted about by Elon Musk or Trump should they deviate from whatever policy line emerged unfiltered in the last five minutes from our Dear Leader’s social media feed.

8 March
Jeremy Kinsman: The Madness of King Donald
(Policy) The New York Times today reports that Donald Trump told Prime Minister Trudeau that he “did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary…(and) mentioned revisiting the sharing of lakes and rivers…which is regulated by a number of treaties.”
Trump’s threats to Canada, his alignment on the Ukraine war “with my friend Vladimir,” and his betrayal of America’s leadership role among democratic countries as defender of the rule of law in international affairs, all mean that Canadian trust in partnership with the US government is a thing of the past. At least under this president. Canadian leaders and the Canadian public are fed up with the antics of Donald Trump. …
President Trump’s state of mind has long been a topic of wide and active speculation in policy and political circles. Over two hundred psychiatrists and mental health professionals signed in his first term an open letter purporting that Trump suffered from a “severe, untreatable, personality disorder – malignant narcissism” – that rendered him “deceitful, destructive, deluded, and dangerous.” Trump’s behaviour does tick a lot of boxes of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition — notably a “tendency to lie, manipulate, and deceive others.”
A signatory then was mental health specialist Dr. Vince Greenwood. He added that people with Donald Trump’s apparent mental condition”exhibit a grandiose sense of self-importance, derive pleasure from causing harm, and are incapable of caring about other people’s feelings.”
… as Real Time host Bill Maher put it recently, the “American public just don’t want to see crazy stuff,” such as the exhausting onslaught on government by partner-in-chaos Elon Musk. It, and Trump’s mania for tariffs, are destabilizing markets and sapping his support from the big business leaders who believed that slashing the power of government to regulate and tax is a good thing.
Trump boasts to MAGA supporters he is only “draining the swamp.” But the foremost “drain” will be to his popular support as courts, markets, state houses, municipalities, and countless Americans who depend on reliable government services and stability process the price they’ve paid for his derangement.

28 February
America’s Oligarchs Are Trump’s Achilles’ Heel
Gabriel Zucman
America’s biggest vulnerability in a new trade war is its highly internationalized oligarchy of ultra-wealthy individuals whose fortunes depend on a global consumer base. The best thing that countries targeted by punitive tariffs can do is condition market access for foreign multinationals and billionaires on fair taxation.
(Project Syndicate) … America’s Achilles’ heel is its highly internationalized oligarchy: a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals whose fortunes depend on access to global markets. This vulnerability gives foreign governments influence. The most effective countermeasure is simple: tariffs for oligarchs. Countries should tie market access for foreign multinationals and billionaires to fair taxation. As soon as Trump follows through with tariffs on Canada and Mexico, those countries should retaliate by taxing US oligarchs. In other words, if Tesla wants to sell cars in Canada and Mexico, Elon Musk – Tesla’s primary shareholder – should be required to pay taxes in those jurisdictions. …
Trump’s return to the White House carries alarming implications. But it also presents an opportunity. This is a moment to rethink international economic relations, calmly but radically. The best response is a new global economic framework that neutralizes tax competition, fights inequality, and protects our planet. Under such a framework, importing countries would enforce tax justice beyond their borders, ensuring that multinational corporations and their billionaire owners pay their fair share. If it’s a trade war Trump wants, consumers in Mexico, Canada, Europe, and beyond should unite to ensure that Musk and his fellow oligarchs feel the cost.

21-23 February
Max Boot: Trump and Hegseth’s Pentagon purge undermines the armed forces
How to damage military morale and recruiting? Trump and Hegseth seem to be trying to find out, alas.
… It is quite possible — likely, even — that Trump will be as disenchanted with Caine as he was with generals he previously appointed, such as Mark A. Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or, for that matter, Brown. But the fact that Caine might have been chosen for political reasons — even if those reasons aren’t based in fact — nevertheless sends a troubling message to the armed forces. So, too, does the firing of the judge advocates general, who are charged with enforcing compliance with the nation’s laws and the laws of war. Taken together, these moves suggest that Trump and Hegseth are trying to manipulate the armed forces for political ends while planning to ignore the rule of law. If so, that would endanger the values that have made the American military great.
Trump fires top US general in unprecedented Pentagon shakeup
Trump announces unprecedented military leadership shake-up
Trump to nominate retired Lieutenant General Dan Caine as Brown’s successor
Defense Secretary Hegseth skeptical of Brown’s appointment
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of U.S. military leadership.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer.
‘Absolute insanity’: Trump sparks widespread outrage after ‘Friday Night Massacre’
(Alternet) Democratic consultant David Axelrod tweeted, “So the president who dodged the draft with ‘bone spurs’ fires the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — a decorated fighter pilot and Four-Star General — because he’s not a ‘warfighter?'”
Heather Cox Richardson February 21, 2025
While Trump and his team have claimed they have a mandate, in fact more people voted for someone other than Trump in 2024, and his early approval ratings were only 47%, the lowest of any president going back to 1953, when Gallup began checking them. His approval has not grown as he has called himself a “king” and openly mused about running for a third term.
A Washington Post/Ipsos poll released yesterday shows that [t]he number of people who strongly support his actions sits at 27%; the number who strongly oppose them is twelve points higher, at 39%. Fifty-seven percent of Americans think Trump has gone beyond his authority as president.
… As Aaron Blake points out in the Washington Post, a new CNN poll, also released yesterday, shows that Musk is a major factor in Trump’s declining ratings. By nearly two to one, Americans see Musk having a prominent role in the administration as a “bad thing.”
Trump is also under pressure from the law.
The Associated Press sued three officials in the Trump administration today for blocking AP journalists from presidential events because the AP continues to use the traditional name “Gulf of Mexico” for the gulf that Trump is trying to rename. The AP is suing over the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Today, a federal court granted a preliminary injunction to stop Musk and the DOGE team from accessing Americans’ private information in the Treasury Department’s central payment system. Eighteen states had filed the lawsuit.
Tonight, a federal court granted a nationwide injunction against Trump’s executive orders attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion, finding that they violate the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.
… In packed rooms with overflow spaces, constituents have shown up this week both to demand that their representatives take a stand against Musk’s slashing of the federal government and access to personal data, and to protest Trump’s claim to be a king
… Americans’ sense that Musk has too much power is likely to be heightened by tonight’s report that the United States is trying to force Ukraine to sign away rights to its critical minerals by threatening to cut off access to Musk’s Starlink satellite system.
And Americans’ concerns about Trump acting like a dictator are unlikely to be calmed by tonight’s news that Trump has abruptly purged the leadership of the military in apparent unconcern over the message that such a sweeping purge sends to adversaries. He has fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Q. Brown, who Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested got the job only because he is Black, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the Chief of Naval Operations, who was the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and whom Hegseth called a “DEI hire.”

20 February
Trump’s honeymoon is over
Analysis by Aaron Blake
New polling shows Trump’s approval ratings declining — and a number of major warning signs appearing
(WaPo) Americans seem to be quite concerned by how far Trump is going, and most of his signature policies and initiatives appear to be quite unpopular — especially those spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk.
The Trump Backers Who Have Buyer’s Remorse
With every new policy and offhand remark, Trump belies the imaginary versions of himself that inspired many of his supporters.
(The Atlantic) A month after Trump’s inauguration, the honeymoon is over; some of his backers are waking up next to the man they voted for and wondering if they’ve made a terrible mistake. With every policy he implements and offhand remark he makes, Trump is falsifying the imaginary versions of himself that inspired many of his supporters. …the outrage of some influencers who believed he’d further their causes is a warning: As president, Trump is no longer the vessel into which people can pour their discontent with the status quo. With every disappointment, it will become harder for him to hold together the coalition that delivered him the narrowest popular-vote victory since Richard Nixon’s in 1968.

Trump’s Executive Orders, Explained
(Bloomberg) President Donald Trump has begun his America First overhaul of government, signing scores of executive orders in his first weeks back in office. Some are muscular power grabs, while others amount to little more than press releases. Together, they channel his MAGA vision and move to create a federal government accountable to the president.
Trump has set an aggressive pace with his early barrage of executive orders, and many of the actions have already drawn court challenges. Some of his orders deliver immediately on campaign promises, such as his moves to eradicate diversity efforts or militarize immigration enforcement. Some are brazenly political, such as his pardons of Jan. 6, 2021 rioters or his attempts to unwind former president Joe Biden’s legacy. Across energy, technology and national security, as well as government staffing, foreign aid and trade, Trump’s many signatures are enabling his allies to move fast and make big changes.

Warning signs for Trump in new polling
Two new polls show the president’s approval rating is slipping.
(Politico) One reason for the erosion of support: a slight majority of respondents in both surveys said Trump has overstepped his presidential power in his attempts to reshape the federal government driven by tech billionaire Elon Musk. Many of Trump’s most controversial early initiatives, including a sweeping spending freeze, have been blocked in court thus far, but the new administration has still made waves with layoffs of federal workers, cuts to federal contracts and a flood of executive orders.
Those activities haven’t been popular, the new polling found. In the Post survey, for example, 58 percent of respondents opposed laying off large numbers of federal workers. And Musk, Trump’s most high-profile adviser, is not getting good marks either…

7 February
‘In a real sense, US democracy has died’: how Trump is emulating Hungary’s Orbán
Trump has moved to gut the federal government, fire critics and reward allies – a path similar to ‘would-be dictators’ like Orbán, experts say

3 February
The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s power grab: a coup veiled by chaos
The US president is testing the limits of executive authority, sidelining Congress and enriching allies while destabilizing the global economy
(Editorial) … His plan took shape last weekend when Mr Trump removed a top-ranking Treasury official who had been blocking his billionaire crony, Elon Musk, from accessing the federal payment system – exposing the sensitive personal data of millions of Americans, as well as details of public contractors who compete directly with Mr Musk’s businesses. The system disburses over $5tn annually, and Mr Musk and his allies, wrote analyst Nathan Tankus, are “clearly aiming to redesign” it to serve the Trumpian agenda – opening the door for the US president to seek retribution against his political opponents. …
Michelle Goldberg: Trump Is Running America the Way America Ran Iraq
…JD Vance compared his ambitions for a conservative takeover of America to U.S. policy in postwar Iraq. “We need like a de-Baathification program, but a de-wokeification program in the United States,” he said, referring to the campaign to root out members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. If and when Donald Trump returned to the White House, Vance argued, he should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”
Vance’s words were prophetic, because the first days of the second Trump term have a distinct Coalition Provisional Authority vibe. …

30-31 January
Trump is in it only for himself
Dana Milbank
The president’s ugly hijacking of a plane crash adds to a pattern emerging from his administration.
(WaPo) “In moments like this,” Trump said in the White House briefing room on the morning after Wednesday night’s crash at Reagan National Airport, “the differences between Americans fade to nothing compared to the bonds of affection and loyalty that unite us.”
In the next breath, he used the tragedy to pursue his usual political vendettas — against Democrats, against civil servants and against diversity programs.
No one yet knows what caused the crash, but Trump didn’t hesitate to blame what he said were Joe Biden’s and Barack Obama’s “mediocre” and “lower” standards for air traffic controllers. He blamed Biden’s transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, for offering nothing but “a good line of bulls—” as he oversaw the Federal Aviation Administration. And Trump blamed the FAA itself for deciding that “the work force was too White” — and pursuing diversity in hiring rather than “people that are competent.”
Was he grave, sombre, the consoler-in-chief? Are you kidding – this is Trump
David Smith
Hours after the Washington plane crash, the president’s desire to politicise tragedy was breathtaking in its audacity
(The Guardian) With aggression creeping into his voice, Trump pivoted to an all-out attack on his Democratic predecessors and blame the accident on policies of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The norm-busting desire to politicise tragedy was breathtaking in its audacity.
Trump blames predecessors, diversity programs for fatal air collision
Without evidence, the president told the nation that his predecessors, Democrats and diversity were to blame for the crash between an Army helicopter and American Airlines passenger jet near Reagan National Airport.
(WaPo) On Thursday, Trump said he consciously decided against a more measured approach. He said the absence of information from the preliminary investigation would not stop him from sharing his views.
“We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas,” he said. “And I think we’ll probably state those opinions now, because over the years I’ve watched as things like this happen and they say, ‘Well, we’re always investigating.’”
At turns, he raised the possibility of errors by air traffic control, managed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Army pilot, who was flying a routine training mission.

29 January
Trump Retreats From Fund Freeze Attempt After Uproar
(Bloomberg) The Trump administration retreated from its attempt to freeze trillions of dollars allocated by Congress, including grants, loans and financial assistance, after triggering a national uproar and a rap on the knuckles from a federal judge who partially blocked the potentially unconstitutional edict before it could take effect.
Prior to that, lawmakers fielded calls from concerned constituents, Democrats decried what they saw as the latest illegal power grab of the new administration and even some of President Donald Trump’s GOP allies expressed unease with the scale and suddenness of the moves.
The abrupt reversal—only two days after the freeze was first announced—quickly drew parallels to the chaotic policy rollouts that regularly unfolded during Trump’s first administration, something his aides have said wouldn’t happen this time around.
Amid the Chaos, Trump Has a Simple Message: He’s in Charge
The new president has moved with lightning speed to purge officials he deems disloyal and rid agencies of policies he considers liberal.
(NYT) When he took office last week, President Trump said he would measure his success in part by “the wars we never get into.” But he has eagerly waged a full-fledged assault on his own government.
In his first eight days in office, Mr. Trump mounted a lightning blitz against the federal government that has the nation’s capital in an uproar. He has moved quickly and aggressively to eliminate pockets of resistance in what he calls “the deep state” and put his own stamp on far-flung corners of the bureaucracy.
It has been a campaign of breathtaking scope and relentless velocity, one unlike any new president has tried in modern times. It has been a blend of personal and political as he seeks revenge against those who investigated him or his allies, while simultaneously demolishing the foundations of the modern liberal state and asserting more control than he or any of his predecessors had in the past.
Mr. Trump has purged perceived enemies from a range of agencies; begun to rid the government of diversity, environmental, gender and other “woke” policies that he objects to; sought to punish those who acted against his interests in the past; and fired independent inspectors general charged with guarding against potential corruption and abuse by his administration. His directive to temporarily freeze trillions of dollars of federal spending touched off a firestorm and prompted a judge to block him, for now.
How Donald Trump and Project 2025 previewed the federal grant freeze
(AP) — A White House order to freeze federal grants reflects a theory of presidential power that Donald Trump clearly endorsed during his 2024 campaign. The approach was further outlined in the Project 2025 governing treatise that candidate Trump furiously denied was a blueprint for his second administration.
… Trump has declared himself the final arbiter of government spending
In some ways, the president and his campaign went farther than Project 2025 in asserting presidential power over federal purse strings. In his Agenda 47, Trump endorsed “impoundment.” That legal theory holds that when lawmakers pass appropriations to fulfill their duties laid out in Article I of the Constitution, they simply set a spending ceiling, but not a floor.
The president, the logic goes, can simply decide not to spend money on anything he deems unnecessary, because Article II of the Constitution gives the president the role of executing the laws that Congress passes.

24 January
There Is No Resistance
The response to the January 6 pardons shows that the president faces no effective constraints from within his party.
By Jonathan Chait
… The most revealing statement on the pardons came from House Speaker Mike Johnson. “The president’s made his decision,” he said. “I don’t second-guess those.” Here, Johnson was stating overtly what most of his colleagues had only revealed tacitly: that he does not believe that his job permits him to criticize, let alone oppose, Trump’s actions.
This admission has profound implications. It shows that Trump faces no effective constraints from within his party. Given the Republican trifecta, this means he faces no effective opposition from within the elected branches of the federal government. Even if his allies personally believe that a line exists that the president cannot or will not cross, what matters is that if he does cross it, nothing will happen to him. This realization ought to shake their confidence that the next imagined red line will hold. Instead, they have declined to revise any of their deeper beliefs about Trump.
21 January
Trump gave pardons to hundreds of violent Jan. 6 rioters. Here’s what they did
(NPR) Throughout his 2024 campaign for president, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to give pardons to his supporters who had been criminally charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. But up until the moment he reentered the Oval Office on Monday night, his exact plans remained vague. Even his Vice President, JD Vance, appeared to be unaware of the new president’s plan as recently as Jan. 12.
In the end, Trump granted clemency to every defendant accused of committing crimes that day, including those convicted of brutal assaults on police officers.
More than 1,500 people who had been charged in connection with the attack, received a “full, complete and unconditional pardon.”
14 people — all of whom were linked to the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, extremist groups that planned elements of the attack — received commutations. While those defendants’ felony convictions will stand, Trump cleared the path for their imminent release from prison. Meanwhile, in federal court in Washington, D.C., Trump’s new appointee at the Justice Department began filing motions to dismiss ongoing cases related to Jan. 6.

22 January
Trump’s Second Term Might Have Already Peaked
As far as policy accomplishments are concerned, it could very well turn out to be as underwhelming as the first.
By Jonathan Chait
(The Atlantic) His nominees are sailing through their confirmation hearings, including some who are underqualified and ideologically extreme. Titans of business and media are throwing themselves at his feet as supplicants. He has obliterated long-standing norms, unashamedly soliciting payoffs from corporations with business before the government. (The Wall Street Journal reports that Paramount, whose parent company needs Trump’s approval for a merger, is mulling a settlement of one of his groundless lawsuits.) Steps that even his allies once dismissed as unthinkable, such as freeing the most violent, cop-beating January 6 insurrectionists, have again reset the bar of normalcy.
…when it comes to getting away with self-dealing and abuses of power, he has mastered the system. But a politician and a party that are built for propaganda and quashing dissent generally lack the tools for effective governance. As far as policy accomplishments are concerned, the second Trump term could very well turn out to be as underwhelming as the first.
After being sworn in on Monday, he signed a slew of executive orders in a move that has been termed “shock and awe.”
Some are genuinely dangerous—above all, the mass pardon of about 1,500 January 6 defendants, which unambiguously signals that lawbreaking in the service of subverting elections in Trump’s favor will be tolerated. Others, including withdrawing from the World Health Organization and freezing offshore wind energy, will be consequential but perhaps not enduring—that which can be done by executive order can be undone by it.
What’s really striking is how many fall into the category of symbolic culture-war measures or vague declarations of intent. Meanwhile, Trump has already scaled back many of his most grandiose day-one promises from the campaign. Broker an end to the Ukraine war before taking office? He has “made no known serious effort to resolve the war since his election,” The New York Times reports. Ask again in a few months. Bring down grocery prices? Never mind.

21 January
Trump Set to Meet With Top Republicans as First-Day Orders Reverberate
A first-day blitz of executive orders signed by President Trump has led to widespread uncertainty, trepidation and defiance in the industries and communities affected by them.
Chicago neighborhoods were fearful of an immigration crackdown, which was leaving many migrants across the southern border in a state of despair. Trade policy experts were straining to understand the scope of a new federal agency he has called for, the External Revenue Service. And automakers were facing an assault on electric vehicles programs, in which they had invested billions of dollars with the Biden administration’s support.
The orders were already receiving fierce legal pushback. Attorneys general from 18 states on Tuesday sued the Trump administration to block an order that refuses to recognize the U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants as citizens, as required by the Constitution.
On the first full day of the second Trump administration, the president is set to meet with top Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, to discuss the early priorities of his term, including legislation that would extend expiring tax cuts that Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017.

Trump plans to announce an $100 billion A.I. initiative.
President Trump on Tuesday is expected to announce a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle to create at least $100 billion in computing infrastructure to power artificial intelligence, according to two people familiar with the announcement.
The venture, called Stargate, adds to tech companies’ significant investments in U.S. data centers, huge buildings full of servers that provide computing power. It could eventually total as much as $500 billion over four years, said the people. The three companies plan to contribute funds to the venture, which will be open to other investors and start with a first data center in Texas.

20 January
Trump’s Return to Power Shows Dueling Quests for a Legacy and Revenge
Trump’s aides and allies are broadly united around his vision, but have been sorting into factions that channel his different core instincts.
(Bloomberg) Moments after he was sworn in as the 47th US president, Donald Trump gave a staid inaugural address in the Capitol rotunda filled with policy pronouncements on inflation, immigration and energy, along with a call for common sense in politics.
Barely an hour later, he was in entirely different form. From Emancipation Hall in a lower level of the building, he delivered an animated rant in which he decried a “rigged” 2020 election, called former US Speaker Nancy Pelosi “guilty as hell” and railed against former congresswoman Liz Cheney. He said his advisers had told him not to talk in his first address about the pardons Joe Biden had issued or the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters.
If the defining clash of the first Trump administration was between establishment figures and MAGA loyalists, the dueling speeches offered a glimpse at the central push-and-pull of his second: The new president’s desire to score policy victories that offer the tantalizing possibility of a Ronald Reagan-esque legacy, versus his thirst for retribution and vindication.
The Gilded Age of Trump Begins Now
His second inaugural address promised a “golden age,” but the ideas in it evoked the late 1800s more than any recent presidency.
By David A. Graham
(The Atlantic) The speech was saturated with 19th-century imperialism. Trump announced that he would order the name of America’s highest peak to be changed from Denali back to its old name, Mount McKinley, and he extolled the 25th president’s use of tariffs. (Left unmentioned was the fact that William McKinley was beloved, and bankrolled, by the plutocrats of his era, and twice defeated the populist William Jennings Bryan.) Trump also said he would rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America,” and he promised to “pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars,” invoking the controversial slogan of expansionism. Picking up an idea he had voiced in recent weeks, he also vowed to seize the Panama Canal from Panama.
Trump Says ‘America’s Decline Is Over’ as He Returns to Office
(NYT) “The golden age of America begins right now,” Mr. Trump declared as he began a 29-minute Inaugural Address, shortly after he and Vice President JD Vance took their oaths in the Capitol Rotunda. He added: “My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all these many betrayals that have taken place and give people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy and indeed their freedom. From this moment on, America’s decline is over.”
Transcript: Donald Trump’s Second Inaugural Speech
In the first remarks of his second term, President Trump painted a grim portrait of the country while declaring that “the golden age of America begins right now.”
Trump’s 2025 Inaugural: From American Carnage to Golden Age
Tasha Kheiriddin
(GZERO media) “Nothing will stand in our way. The future is ours and our golden age has just begun.”
With those words, President Donald J. Trump concluded his 2025 inaugural address, promising an American renaissance. Invoking the doctrine of American exceptionalism, he declared that “We are going to win like never before” and pledged to be a unifier and peacemaker who would nonetheless put America First.
A shift in tone. The speech was a stark contrast to Trump’s inaugural address of 2017, where he painted a gloomy picture of “American carnage”: a nation riddled with crime, poverty, and economic decline. This time, while he heavily criticized the previous administration for its decisions, Trump adopted a more optimistic and forward-looking tone, emphasizing unity and national restoration – and even territorial expansion. Trump invoked the concept of Manifest Destiny, promising to plant the American flag on Mars, as well as rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” and retake the Panama Canal.
Factchecking Trump’s inauguration speech, from inflation to healthcare
Following up on key claims made by 47th US president during his day one address
Trump claims on the Panama Canal
The claim: Trump pledged to take back the Panama Canal, while repeating a number of false claims including that 38,000 Americans died during the building of the canal. He also claimed that “China is operating” the canal.
Trump claims inflation caused by ‘massive overspending’
The claim: Trump claimed that the US experienced “record inflation” that he said was caused by “massive overspending and escalating energy prices”.
The facts: US inflation peaked at a four-decade high in summer 2022, when it was 9.1%. But the highest inflation rate in the country was 23.7% in June 1920.
Trump claims the US can’t respond to climate emergencies
The facts: Trump has repeatedly spread incorrect claims about both of these events. He and other fellow Republicans boosted false claims about the recovery effort in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, including that the US government can influence the weather to theories that crucial aid was being withheld, prompting some government officials to warn of threats to federal emergency workers.
Trump, during the wildfires in California, called on the Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, to “release the water” from northern parts of the state, despite the state’s water experts saying water supply was not an issue, but rather generators to pump the water.
Election results don’t support Trump’s claims of a landslide and mandate
(WaPo) The president-elect’s popular-vote win was narrow, and his electoral victory was modest by historical standards
Trump inauguration: Zuckerberg, Bezos and Musk seated in front of cabinet picks
Stagecraft comes under fire from Trump critics as sign of oligarchy and the powerful influence they wield
(The Guardian) In comments over the weekend, Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House chief strategist, described the tech titans gathering at Monday’s inauguration as “supplicants” to Donald Trump making “an official surrender”, akin to the Japanese surrender to allied forces on the deck of the USS Missouri in September 1945.
The comments came as former president Biden warned that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy” and of “the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people”.

17 January
Coldest inauguration forecast since Reagan’s in 1985 forces Trump’s indoors
Wind chills are expected to be in the single digits on Monday.
The Capitol grapples with Trump’s last-minute inauguration switch
Employees only have 72 hours to move the inauguration setup indoors — and lawmaker offices have to tell constituents they’ll no longer be able to attend.
Donald Trump won’t be crowing about crowd size at his second inauguration. Barely more than 2,000 people will pack into the Capitol Rotunda for a cold-weather inaugural ceremony backup plan not seen since Ronald Reagan.
Trump’s Inauguration schedule is out
The four days of activities include a MAGA rally, a fireworks display and three inaugural balls.

Trump Begins Selling New Crypto Token, Raising Ethical Concerns
The president-elect and his family have a direct and potentially lucrative stake in the sale of a cryptocurrency product that surged in value in the hours after going on sale, days before his inauguration.
He is calling the token $Trump, selling it with the slogan, “Join the Trump Community. This is History in the Making!”
The venture was organized by CIC Digital LLC, an affiliate of the Trump Organization, which already has been selling an array of other kinds of merchandise like Trump-branded sneakers, fragrances and even digital trading cards.

Trump’s planning a flood of immigration executive orders on Day 1
The president-elect will aggressively crack down on the border, with a slow start to his mass deportations agenda.

For Those Deemed Trump’s Enemies, a Time of Anxiety and Fear
Donald Trump is returning to the White House vowing to seek retribution. Those in his sights are worried both about him — and his supporters.
As Donald J. Trump returns to office, the critics, prosecutors and perceived enemies who sought to hold him accountable and banish him from American political life are now facing, with considerable trepidation, a president who is assuming power having vowed to exact vengeance.
Mr. Trump has promised to investigate and punish adversaries, especially those involved in his four prosecutions and the congressional investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Marco solo: Trump could end Day 1 with a one-man Cabinet
Only Rubio appears to be on track for a Jan. 20 confirmation.

15 January
Why Greenland? And Canada, Mexico, Panama…
Timothy Snyder
“America First” has nothing to do with the interests of Americans facing a challenging world, and no one has even pretended very hard that it does. What “America First” means, in the 2020s as in the 1940s, is that America should be the first democracy to imitate leading foreign dictators. Trump has admired dictators and will admire dictators. This might be in his interest: again, in the basic sense that he needs to learn how to stay in power and die in bed. But it has nothing to do with the interests of Americans.