Donald Trump was barely in his second week in the White House when he declared that his last presidency already announced “the golden age of America”. Others have reached more disturbing characterizations of the orders of the new administration that rocked the US government: Blitzkrieg, Shock and Admiration, Criminal.
Trump came out of the starting door quickly with a repression “pleasant to the crowd” against undocumented immigrants, the cancellation of federal diversity programs and the wholesale rejection of independent anti-corruption inspectors from a bafon d ‘Federal agencies.
But the deepest orders constituted a power of power of the White House, with a purge of senior officials considered as insufficiently deferential To Trump of the Ministry of Justice to the National Security Council, a request for mass resignation of civil servants and an illegal attempt to take control of billions of dollars in public spending on the congress.
The president did not do everything in his own way. The White House was quickly forced to retreat on its frost expenses in the face of legal challenges. But that may not be more than a bump on Trump’s road when he works to redo the whole federal government in his image following a plan provided by the strategists on the right.
William Galston, former deputy assistant assistant assistant to President Bill Clinton, said Trump had sparked a “deluge” of policies to overwhelm the opponents, to forgive about 1,600 rioters recognized as guilty of the January 6 insurrection who was born in the United States.
“This is a deliberate strategy. Shock and fear. You try to do a lot on as many fronts as quickly as to confuse and overwhelm the opposition by volume and speed to make it impossible to resist. Consider it as a blitzkrieg, “said Galston.
“So far, it has been quite effective. It was as if an army had struck enemy lines in a number of different places. Trying to regroup to resist is very difficult, and it takes time. »»
To the delight of many of his most ardent supporters, the first days of Trump’s second term in the White House felt very different from the start of his first mandate eight years ago. At the time, he was inexperienced and retained by the figures of the establishment that he was advised to appoint. This time, Trump surrounded himself with those who conduct his policies, including the authors of the plan of the 2025 project for an authoritarian control of the government.
Leading the Charge are the multi -loulionaire Elon Musk, who Has Already Placed a Trometed Cohort from His Own Businesses in Several Federal Agencies to Carry Out Deep Cuts and Purge Those Deemed Insufficiently Loyal To The Trump Agenda, and Stephen Miller, The White House Deputy Chief of The staff who are at the forefront of the aggression against immigrants and diversity initiatives as well as the judgment of the Ministry of Justice to pursue new cases of civil rights.
Trump campaigned on a promise to “dismantle the deep state” and “bureaucrati thugs” bags.
“We get rid of all cancer – I call it cancer – cancer caused by Biden administration,” he told journalists by signing a decree of screening for civil servants of several of their job protections .
On Tuesday, the Personnel Management Office (OPM) sent an e-mail to around 2.3 million federal workers encouraging them to resign by offering eight months of salary if they gave their opinion in a week. Although this decision has equipped the broader commitment to reduce the government, it also contained an index with a more insidious intention because it spoke of the need for a “reliable, loyal and reliable” workforce.
The email wore the fingerprints of Musk. The richest man in the world has promised to flow and make his way through federal bureaucracy such as Trump’s choice to lead a “Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE)”. The e-mail object line, Fork on the road, is the same sentence as Musk used in a message to employees when he bought Twitter in 2022 and got rid of about 80% of his staff.
Musk’s political action committee, America PAC, said the administration wanted to get rid of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, which could lead to around $ 100 billion in savings. “
Not by coincidence, the OPM also published an order giving the federal agencies 90 days to identify officials who should be stripped of the legal protections which prevent them from being dismissed for political reasons. The order was so widely written that it was potentially applied to a large number of federal employees, including those of “important functions of the development or determination of policies”.
This decision is a Trump attempt to bypass the 1978 public service law ensuring that career federal workers are hired to merit, not by political loyalty, and cannot be rejected arbitrarily. Trump issued a similar order but less wide in 2020, but he was canceled by Biden.
Everett Kelley, president of the largest federal workers’ union, the US Federation of Government employees, accused the Trump administration of an assault against the independence of the public service.
“This offer should not be considered voluntary. Between the burst of anti-transcript decrees and policies, it is clear that the objective of the Trump administration is to transform the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot remain even if they wish ”, a- he said.
Daniel Schuman, Executive Director of the American Governance Institute Transparency Group, said that the long -term vision of the Trump administration was to redo the American government by reducing the separation of powers so that no party is independent of the will of the president.
“There has been a long pressure within the Republicans to advance the unitary executive theory, which is essentially that the president is a king and can do what they want. There have always been people who consider the congress and the legislative branch as an obstacle to the policies they wish to advance and who should not be allowed to stand on their way, “he said.
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“Now that the Republican Party has been either largely purged, or the dissidents pushed in silence, and has taken control of the legislative, executive and judicial branches, and also leaves after independent actors such as general inspectors, There are not many things surprised that they do things that will maximize their ability to exercise power. »»
Musk has inserted long -standing allies into the main positions of federal agencies. They include Amanda Scales, who recently left the artificial intelligence society of Musk Xai, as a new Chief of the OPM staff and Brian Bjelde, who worked at SpaceX, as an advisor to agency. Steve Davis, who directed the reduction of costs on Twitter, is now working at Doge.
However, Trump has already encountered problems.
Wednesday, the White House was forced to retreat just two days after having imposed a large frost on spending about 3 ts of dollars in federal subsidies and loans which threatened the support of schools, medical research, police services and a slew other beneficiaries. A judge blocked the move on the grounds that the president did not have the power to replace how the congress allocates money.
This decision is an original idea of Russell Vought, head of the management and budget office during Trump’s first term and the president’s choice to resume the relay. Vought, founder of the Rightwing Center for Renewing America Thinktank and one of the perpetrators of the 2025 project strategy, seeks to obtain the question before the Supreme Court in order to overthrow a law of 1974, the Act on Control of restraint , preventing the president from blocking funds allocated by the congress.
Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute, said that if the Supreme Court was to break the law, this would remove a major constraint on the power of Trump.
“If an authority that the president had, it would greatly weaken the legislator and give the president an extraordinary power to reward his friends and punish his enemies, where we seem to go,” he continued.
“The consequence of allowing the administration to engage in deductions would be to fundamentally destroy a primary power of the legislative branch, which is the power of the handbag.”
The White House said that she was not withdrawing from her position and would still not return all expenses with deep cuts, a position widely supported by Trump voters.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist for the first months of his last administration, praised the rate of change on his podcast in the war hall.
“Any pedal, no brake. Drive it, drive it, drive it, “he said. “When you have this kind of momentum, you don’t stop, you don’t think. You go, you go, you go.
It remains to be seen if Trump can keep this pace of change and the American system can survive.
Galston, Clinton’s former political adviser, is skeptical.
“If President Trump and the surface Republicans their hand, there could be a major decline in the mid-term elections and this would end the legislative phase of Trump’s presidency,” he said.
“But if he is four years old to work on his will, I think we will look at a different country. This would force him to maintain the type of popularity he won during the presidential campaign and that I enjoy now, and I am skeptical that he can do it on his current course once the American people will have time to discover the things he does. But if the administration plays its cards well and does not exceed, then it could very well be four years old. And if he is four years old, I think the country will be considerably modified. »»