WASHINGTON — At the start of the week, President Donald Trump warned ominously that the U.S. will retake the Panama Canal or “something very powerful is going to happen.”
By week’s end, he announced that he was killing off a prior mandate for government to buy paper straws, the environmentally friendly sipping utensil that dissolves “disgustingly” in the mouth, he wrote on his social media site.
The two pronouncements bookended a frenetic seven-day period in which Trump also made himself head of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with creative sway over performances, signed an order banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports and cheered on Elon Musk while a cadre of engineers swept into federal agencies to cut staff and programs with an aim to downsize government.
Actions are coming at so dizzying a pace that it can be tough to track what Trump has done and what he’s turned around and undone.
At a news conference Tuesday, Trump said that he would send U.S. troops into Gaza, if need be, to stabilize the bombed-out territory. He backtracked two days later in a social media post.
The president imposed 25% tariffs on imports from two U.S. allies, Canada and Mexico on Saturday, Feb. 1. Two days later, he paused the tariffs for a full month.
A 25-year-old staff member working with Musk resigned Thursday after being found to have made racist comments online and was rehired the next day.
The Denali — or rather, Mt. McKinley-size stack of executive orders gushing from the White House span so many governmental and cultural fronts that disoriented Democrats appear unsure how to fight back.
Last month, Senate Democrats had planned a news conference devoted to Trump’s blanket pardons of those who took part in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. But they scrubbed it focus on a newer outrage: a freeze on trillions of dollars in federal spending.
“We are figuring it out,” Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview. “We don’t have the perfect plan yet.”
A strategy at the start of Trump’s first term was to “flood the zone with s—,” as Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House strategist, memorably described efforts to keep the news media off balance.
But the speed at which Trump is moving this time around makes the phrase seem quaint. Trump allies and supporters have embraced a different term: “Shock and awe.” Indeed, an NBC News review shows that Trump signed more executive orders in 10 days than any of his recent predecessors had signed in their first 100 days.
The 47th president, Trump, has left the 45th president, Trump, sucking wind.
“He [Trump] is delivering on every single campaign promise at a record pace even as the Democrats keep trying to die on hills the American people don’t support them on, e.g., USAID [the U.S. Agency for International Development] funding to export a progressive social agenda out of touch with Main Street America,” Peter Navarro, the administration’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, told NBC News.
Resistance to Trump’s agenda is coming largely from two places: Democratic elected officials who are waging a fight for public opinion, and lawyers who are battling Trump in the courts. At this point, the lawyers are having far more success.
On Friday, a federal judge paused a deadline for the Trump administration to slash the USAID to a few hundred workers, down from 5,000.
Meantime, a group of 19 Democratic attorneys general filed suit on Friday to block Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team from gaining access to personal data including Social Security numbers and bank account information housed at the Treasury Department.
A federal judge on Saturday issued a ruling that temporarily blocks Musk’s team from getting access to the data. The judge, Paul Engelmeyer, cited the risk “of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.”
New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew Platkin, whose state was among the plaintiffs, told NBC News: “There’s a lot of talk now that President Trump is flooding the zone. That just is a nice-sounding phrase for committing a whole bunch of illegal acts at once.”
Platkin said he and his colleagues prepared carefully for Trump’s return to office. They studied his speeches as well as the governing blueprint that some of his past and present appointees drafted in a document called “Project 2025.”
Trump redux, by contrast, seems to have left Democratic lawmakers shocked, awed and largely ineffectual in their countermoves.
“A lot of administrations would measure things based on the first 100 days,” said Tim Murtaugh, a former Trump campaign spokesman. “This administration put points on the scoreboard in the first 100 minutes.”
“The Democrats have simply not been able to keep up,” he added. “On Friday, the Democrats will be fighting Tuesday’s battle.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the body’s 74-year-old Democratic leader, led a protest against Musk at the Treasury Department on Tuesday.
“We will win,” he and his Democratic colleagues chanted.
Late night talk show hosts ridiculed the event, airing footage of Schumer together with Rep. Maxine Waters, an 86-year-old California Democrat, as 77-year-old Rep. Al Green of Texas waved his cane in the air.
“We need an actual strategy that is more focused on speaking to the everyday voters we lost, in simple and clear terms, and provides some clarity on what we stand for, not just what we oppose,” said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist. “We will not start escaping this painful political wilderness unless we stop repeating the mistakes that got us into this damn mess.”
A common miscalculation of newly elected presidents is the assumption they have a popular mandate. After winning reelection in 2004, George W. Bush sought vainly to revamp the Social Security system.
“I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” Bush said after defeating Democrat John Kerry. His proposal failed.
Trump claimed that his victory last year was a “massive” mandate, though his popular vote margin over Democrat Kamala Harris was just 1.5 percentage points. (By contrast, Joe Biden won the popular vote over Trump by 4.5 percentage points in 2020).
Democrats believe that as voters learn more about the spending cuts Musk produces, they’ll recoil and turn on a president who has misread the meaning of his victory.
“There’s been an overreach in trying to stop payments that ordinary Americans rely on,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D., Calif., said of Trump. “It’s almost been a reminder to voters that there are things about government that they like, such as their Social Security, Medicaid, and funding for schools in working class neighborhoods.”
Congressional Democrats also believe they have leverage over Trump that may derail his plans. With Republicans holding a slim majority in the House, they need Democratic votes to avert a potential government shutdown next month. Last week, House budget negotiations stalled.
“Not one Democrat will give a vote until there’s an ironclad agreement that our appropriations that help people will be spent,” Khanna said.
