By Luke Broadwater
The last time President Donald Trump held office, he tried to make deep cuts to foreign aid but was blocked by Congress. He is finding little resistance from fellow Republicans this time to his move to freeze such funding.
During a special counsel’s inquiry in his first term, Trump expressed a desire to fire the investigator, but White House lawyers stopped him. This term, Trump has swiftly forced out a slew of federal officials who had oversight roles over his administration.
In the final days of his first presidency, Trump tried to hire a loyalist to help run the FBI, until Attorney General Bill Barr objected, Barr said in his book after he left office. Now that same loyalist, Kash Patel, is poised to lead the bureau.
At every step in his second term, Trump is demonstrating how unbound he is from prior restraints, dramatically remaking domestic and foreign policy at a scale that has little parallel. His swift moves in his first month back in office underscore the confidence of an administration with a much firmer grip on the levers of government than during Trump’s last stint in the White House.
Long gone are the veterans of the Bush and Reagan administrations who pushed him to hew to more traditional conservative policies. In their place are a group of mostly America First Republicans helping Trump radically reset the country’s policies — as well as billionaire Elon Musk, whom the president has unleashed to barrel through the bureaucracy.
“We’ve never seen anything on the scale of what Donald Trump’s new administration is doing,” said Jeffrey A. Engel, who leads the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. “It’s not just a reversal of previous administration policies — which we always expect to see a little bit of — but a reversal of the fundamentals of American foreign policy since 1945.”
Consider Trump’s actions in the past week alone:
— He ended efforts to isolate Russia diplomatically after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago, speaking at length with President Vladimir Putin. Trump characterized the conversation as the opening of talks to end the war — with no clear role for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
— His administration began widespread layoffs across the government, targeting most of an estimated 200,000 federal workers on probation, a sharp escalation in the president’s drive to shrink the workforce.
— Top Trump officials plunged the Justice Department deeper into chaos with its move to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, triggering a cascade of resignations from prosecutors.
— Trump proposed an aggressive global reworking of tariffs — devising what he calls “reciprocal tariffs” that could shatter the commitments the United States has made internationally through the World Trade Organization and potentially usher in a new era of trade wars.
Amid it all, the president continued to sign executive orders at a breakneck speed, taking moves to weaken the job protections of career diplomats and expand Musk’s power over the federal workforce.
Trump’s allies say his actions show how fast he is moving to fulfill the promises he made to voters.
“It’s been at a rapid pace,” said Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican in the House. “If you compare Donald Trump’s first month in office in 2017 to what you’re seeing today, you’re watching a much more focused and aggressive president.”
He added, “He’s taking the lessons from his first term and delivering bigger results, faster results for the American people.”
So far, the upheaval caused by Trump’s early moves has not appeared to have brought a large shift in public opinion against him, though it remains to be seen how the spending freezes and cuts to the federal workforce will resonate among his key constituencies once the impacts are clear.
“Most of the people that voted for him wanted change,” Engel said. “I would argue most of the people that voted for him were not really into the weeds of Page 632 of federal law. So the headlines are, ‘Trump did something,’ and they sense action.’”
The blitz of policy changes Trump has undertaken during his first month in office have little precedent, historians say.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a similar flurry of activity during his first 100 days in office, but those measures aimed to build up American institutions, not tear them down.
“In Roosevelt’s case, that was a revolution to create institutions,” Engel said. “This is not a construction site. It’s a wrecking ball.”
Unlike with other presidents, there appear to be few checks on Trump.
Congress, under Republican control, has cast off its traditional oversight and budgetary roles in deference to his agenda.
Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that he is all too happy to cede the power of the purse to Musk’s team in the executive branch. He indicated he has no objection to Trump canceling or clawing back funds approved by Congress.
“I’ve been asked so many times, ‘Aren’t you uncomfortable with this?’” Johnson told reporters. “No, I’m not.” He added, “We the people are applauding what’s happening in the new administration.”
One of the few Republicans in Congress who has not moved in lockstep with Trump has been Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has declined to vote for some of the president’s more polarizing Cabinet nominees. But the former party leader’s “no” votes have not held back the confirmations of figures such as Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary.
Where Trump had encountered resistance, it has been in the courts. Some federal judges have stepped in to temporarily block some of Trump’s actions — including his attempted repeal of birthright citizenship, his freeze on foreign aid and some of Musk’s intrusions into the federal government.
That has drawn Trump’s ire.
“Billions of Dollars of FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE, has already been found in the investigation of our incompetently run Government,” the president posted on Truth Social, without providing evidence of specific misspending. “Now certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop. Losing this momentum will be very detrimental to finding the TRUTH, which is turning out to be a disaster for those involved in running our Government. Much left to find. No Excuses!!!”
Federal officials who have been pushed out in Trump’s rapid purges say he is systematically eroding any checks on his administration. He pushed out 19 inspectors general; the chair of the Federal Election Commission; the head of the Office of Special Counsel, a government watchdog agency; and the chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board, which protects civil servants from unjustified disciplinary action. Many of those terminations are now being challenged in court.
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